:o I admit that if we’d stayed with you . . . perhaps that little episode could have been avoided. But, hey, that kind of . . . bad time is all part of growing up, sometimes. You know what I’m talking about, Mom! You really know!
Any of the above, and easily. Which is why the British looked to settle it, and why they would have done so even if the American revolution had failed or had not happened at all.
What, just to keep it out of any other power’s hands?! Did the Brits really think that way, then?!
If not Britain, then probably the Netherlands, which already had the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) right next to Australia.
Yeah. We were raging maniacs.
Sorry, not familiar enough with GD and its participants to know for sure if someone’s yanking my chain.
No, no, serious question.
(When I’m joking, I will grimace at the screen like this: )
It was a common way of thinking apparently. My understanding is that’s the main reason the US became involved in Hawaii, because Britain, Russia and Japan were all eying it.
Well, all of the colonial powers were watching what the other colonial powers were doing, and trying to interfere with those activities. So I’d say the answer is yes, that’s how the British thought - if your rivals seem to be interested in a piece of territory, it’s worth getting in there first.
Even if you can’t actually win, you might still try to ensure your rival also fails - hence the French at Yorktown, and the logic behind British support of the Munroe Doctrine.
The proposal was that the British wouldn’t have bothered with Australia if they could have sent convicts to North America instead. I disagree: the British didn’t see Australia and think “Wow! That would be an excellent penal colony!”
According to this site, “taxes were significantly higher in Britain than in the colonies. One estimate suggests the per capita tax burden in the colonies ranged from two to four percent of that in Britain.” and “The actual level of taxation appeared to be relatively modest. After all, the Americans soon after adopting the Constitution taxed themselves at far higher rates than the British had prior to the Revolution.”
The French didn’t, really. The F&I was simply a part of the grand game of European power-grabbing. The French didn’t really want the colonies, or at least recognized they probably couldn’t hold them.
The fun thing is that ZGoerge Washingtonw as sorta involved in starting it. The spark which set things off was a scouting mission he led. At some point, they met some Frenchmen and somebody started shooting. It’s never been clear who, though it’s almsot certain no officer on either side gave the order, so probably it was some idiot private.
That said, the French and British really, really wanted to go at it anyway, so they had an excuse.
A lot of the early European exploration of Australia was done by the Dutch (Willem Janszoon, Dirk Hartog, Frederick de Houtman, Abel Tasman, and Willem de Vlamingh) and the continent was originally named Nieuw Holland.
So, what’s Dutch for, “G’day, mate!”?
It’s conceivable that Australia would have gone like America or Africa (big place, after all) – one Euro power claims and colonizes one stretch of coastline, and another power colonizes another, and so on. Eventually they brush up against each other, and either fight or work out a treaty.
Alvin Rabushka’s (he’s the flat tax guy) “Taxation in Colonial America” claims that British tax burdens were 10 or more times American ones, and, as points out, there was enormous tax avoidance in America that in effect lowered the rate. I’d check out that book, though, because he does give real numbers.
It’s…
[slurred Dutch accent]Wanna toke, mann?[/s D a]
BTW, if you’re interested in AH, check out Uchronia!
Suppose we put these together? When the Acts of Union of 1707 merged the kingdoms of England and Scotland, there was plenty of resistance and dissatisfaction among Scots and rumors that the English had bribed members of the Scottish Parliament. OTOH, the Kingdom of Ireland (dominated by the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy class) was left out of the new union (the Wiki article does not say why), and wanted in on it:
And then the Irish had a problem with that, as we all know.
It would not have taken much political imagination, in 1707, to come up with a constitutional compromise:
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A new state is created, “The British Empire” or “The Empire of the British Isles,” sovereign over all the kingdoms and states and islands of the British Isles and their dependencies. Queen Anne becomes “Empress of the British Isles,” but retains all her other royal titles, Queen of England, Queen of Scotland, Queen of Ireland, Duke of Normandy, etc.
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The kingdoms and parliaments and governments of England, Scotland and Ireland, are left in place (and Wales might be split off as a separate principality/kingdom of the Empire).
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A new Imperial Parliament is created, with members from each kingdom, as well as each colony or Crown dependency (Man, Jersey, etc.). The Imperial Lords could be new creations of the Crown or elected representatives of the royal Houses of Lords, the members of the Commons could be elected directly or by their home legislatures. A new Imperial Government (separate from England’s, but hiving off some of its agencies) is formed; it has the same relationship to Parliament as England’s. Its functions include, at the very least, all foreign, military and trade policy.
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All English colonies in the New World are federated as the new Kingdom of America, with its own Parliament, PM, and Viceroy/G-G.
That arrangement might hold the Empire together in the long run. Even Ireland – their political agitation would be focused on getting votes for Catholics and Catholics into the Irish and Imperial Parliaments.