As Little Nemo says - Dominion status would have been sensible (although I doubt whether the political feasibility of the idea was evident fifty years before it took place in Canada’s provinces.
If it had, though, it probably would have resulted in a British-dominated Americas, with no Monroe Doctrine to keep Britain out of South America.
Scorched Earth.
You don’t have to worry that the Americans are going to cross the ocean to seek revenge in the homeland. If they try to attack you headlong, your forces are likely to be better than theirs, and on the defense - which is generally easier. So long as you are careful at targeting revolutionaries or their sympathizers, you won’t increase the level of animosity towards the homeland significantly among the rest of the populace. Of course, the revolutionaries will grow more angry, but only up to the point where they start to starve and find themselves wandering around penniless.
Of course they can. Rome, Alexander, the Mongols, William the Conqueror - history is jammed full of successful invasions.
“We had to destroy the Colonies to save them” ?!!???
How do you do a scorched earth program that only targets revolutionaries and their sympathizers?
And don’t assume England was completely beyond American revenge. John Paul Jones landed a raiding party at Whitehaven in 1778 and burned the town.
Of course none of those were across 3,000 miles of ocean.
I would write Lord North and say (in upper-class 18th-Century English) “Look, why don’t we just give the Americans representation in the Commons already?! Only about one-third of these people are ‘Patriots’, about one-third are Loyalists, one-third neutral or indifferent – this whole thing is bound to go away if we make a couple of concessions.”
:dubious:
They had 13 local legislatures, and the Colonial Congress wasn’t exactly something London approved too highly of.
But mroe on point, that’s effectively what the Colonists were asking for. They were (specifically and legally) subjects of the King, not Parliament, and they in essence wanted to deal with himdirectly, as a lesser Parliament (well, not lesser; diagonally to the side, really 
)
But America’s top politicians – “gentry” by mere-colonial standards – were not too different from Britain’s to work together in the same Parliament, were they?
The problem was that if you let the people of Boston and Philadelphia have representation in Parliament, then the people in Birmingham and Manchester were going to start demanding the same thing. And that would have turned an overseas revolution into a domestic one. Parliament felt it had to defend the theory of virtual representation in America in order to protect it in England.
They were essentially advisory. All of the colonies had a governor appointed by Parliament who held all real power. The governors could enact or repeal any law he wished without local approval. So all the legislatures could really do is make suggestions and hope the governor would agree.
For several decades this had worked. The governors had a policy of allowing the local legislatures to take care of things with the governors mostly going along with things. This was the period of “salutary neglect” when London didn’t really much care what was happening in America.
But in the second half of the eighteenth century this changed. Parliament began to assert its control over the colonies. It began appointing governors who were more assertive and began enacting laws over colonial affairs. Parliament also began to appoint more local officials to positions in America which had previously been controlled by the colonial governments. When the local governments complained about this, they were told they had no legal authority and if they persisted in complaining they would be disbanded.
Bottle Boston, Charleston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Savannah (all done during the war, actually) and encourage uprisings by slaves and Indians in the rural areas with promises of freedom and weapons. Then wait for it… Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!
So you’re counting on an alliance between Doctor Who and the Daleks? With Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and Harry Potter supporting them no doubt. A clever strategy but can they stand up to the combined might of George Washington, Uncle Sam, Superman, and Jesus?
Don’t be silly- Uncle Sam, Superman, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and Jesus were in other centuries. The Daleks time travel though. (They even showed up on Nicola Tesla’s personal letterhead.)
Yes. Yes, it would. But I’m hoping the British politicos of the day wouldn’t work out the full implications until it’s too late to go back. And when a few more generations have passed, Old Britain will be just the quaintest little province in the American Empire. 
(Her Majesty does love to visit, Scotland in particular, whenever she can get away from her state duties in New York.)
Divide and conquer. Pick off the colonies most willing to trade loyalty for money, land, titles, and some representation. Let them take land from the other colonies who don’t play ball. You don’t go after Massachusetts and Virginia, that’s where all the trouble makers are. Go for New Jersey, bribery works well there. Give them exclusive rights to the Hudson River and Bay and the land up to that point. Beat Gerald Ford by 200 years and tell New York to drop dead. Make a deal with Rhode Island. Another colony that knows how the game is played. Give them the land in Mass east to the Atlantic, including the Cape. Give them control of Long Island Sound. And of course there’s South Carolina. They don’t even want to be part of the US. Give them as much of North Carolina and Georgia as they can take. Send the money and arms to these colonies, name a few lords, and make a deal with the richest men to give them rights to the newly acquired land. Give each one a seat in Parliament. That’s just 3 seats. Station enough troops there to aid the locals in repelling treasonous colonials who don’t recognize the authority of the crown. A few more colonies will want to sign up. They don’t need the titles, or seats, just bribe the richest men with money and land. They’ll bring in the State House vote. The really stubborn revolutionaries will move west, and the rest of the colonies will fall in line.
NYC had a huge loyalist population. By some accounts the majority of the city’s inhabitants ranged from pro-Crown to otherwise unenthusiastic about the rebellion.
New Jersey did have a lot of corruption, but they also had a weak governor and legislature. Easy to bribe to get a road contract, but it wasn’t going to do you much good to bribe them for troops or loyalty of the state or what have you that the government couldn’t provide. (And of course they famously arrested Governor Franklin in '76.)
Spies, loyalist sympathizers, informants, etc.
If I recall my history right, the populace was divided about evenly between people who were revolutionary, ambivalent, or loyalist. Even if the numbers skewed in favor of revolutionaries, it’s still likely that you have 50% of the general populace who could be used as sources of information.
Offer loyalists the land and properties of revolutionaries and you’ll have people jumping over each other to help you.
Ok, so you don’t tell New York City to drop dead then. If they’re that cooperative, seperate them from the upstate, and make them part of New Jersey. They’ll want the control of the Hudson. Alternatively, couple them with Rhode Island through Long Island.
It takes bribery at the high level to get the system set up. Give them enough money to hire soldiers, and arm them. The incentive for the powers that be is the new land that will be taken from their neighbors. It’s not really important how it all works out in the end. The idea is get the colonies fighting among themselves instead of fighting Mother England.
Some people have speculated that if James Wolfe hadn’t been killed conquering Quebec in 1759, that he would have been the ideal commander for the British in 1775. He was a very aggressive commander, many people compared him to a rabid dog. I don’t think William Howe and most of the other British generals were aggressive enough. You see Washington do things like cross the Delaware on Christmas night 1776 to lay a whoppin’ on the Hessians at Trenton. When the British made plans, they were often haphazard (Howe and Burgoyne didn’t cooperate on trying to conquer New York state by launching simultaneous attacks. I think Washington was the key to the colonial war effort…he was about the only man universally respected by everyone.
