In The Two Georges, Richard Dreyfuss and Harry Turtledove posit an alternate history where the Crown and the colonies patched things up, and in 1997 America is part of a British Empire that includes the whole British Empire of our timeline, plus the Ottoman Empire and China as protectorates. But if Britain had kept its colonies in the New World, would it have pursued more colonies in the Eastern Hemisphere at all? Might not its imperial energies have been entirely diverted into developing and exploiting such a huge, rich prize as North America?
FWIW Harry Harrison’s A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! posits a similar alt-hist:
The Empire’s worst enemy is Poland, but I can’t recall what was said about the rest of the world.
To answer your question, possibly not. To some degree the British pursued their ambitions in India to compensate for losing America, and also explicitly settled Australia in 1788 to have somewhere to ship convicts they could no longer send to North America.
I think it depends on what you mean by the American Colonies in this scenario. If it’s only what Britain surrendered in the 1783 Treaty of Paris (approximately everything east of the Mississippi River except Florida which still belongs to Spain) then I think British colonialism in Africa remains largely unchanged. Perhaps at a slower pace, but I’m betting that it happens fairly close to the way it played out in history.
I think a bigger question in this scenario is what happens to Spain. Does Spain still end up selling Florida? Will Mexico break away from Spain? What does Texas do and will it be absorbed into the British colonies? If Mexico gains independence AND Texas asks to join Britain then I can see the Mexican-American (Mexican-British now) war still happining and Britain gaining the western coast. If they gain both coasts as well as Canada it’s likely that Britian will take the territory in the Louisiana Purchase, either buying it as the US did or (more likely) by force from France. In this case I don’t think that Great Britain will spend much time in Africa, since they’ll have their hands full with almost all of North America.
It’s worth noting that in this case the American colonies won’t grow as the USA did, since the plains states will be added last. I think some version of Manifest Destiny will happen, but later and only after California gets added to the colonies. Sort of a reverse of what really happened where Manifest Destiny was what helped push the US into war with Mexico.
With Australia and New Zealand as well the British Empire is going to be huge even without controlling India. If they get to keep India and Hong Kong they’re probably going for world domination, economically at least if nothing else. Western Europe probably becomes either a series of client-states or outright British territory following an abreviated WWI. It’s a toss up as to whether they absorb Africa or South America first before taking on Eastern Europe.
If Spain manages to hold onto Mexico or Mexico keeps Texas, then I’m not sure what happens to the Louisiana Purchase. Napoleon isn’t going to be selling it to Britain, that’s for sure! I think that without both coasts there isn’t going to be any analog for Manifest Destiny, so British territory will still stop at the Mississippi River. Mexico/Spain probably ends up controlling most of the territory west of the Mississippi and south of Canada. Here again I think that African colonialism happens at about the same rate as it did historically.
Mostly I think that unless they control all of the current US territory the British will be capable of exploiting both sets of resources.
No Napoleon – if we’re talking about a scenario where the British avoid the American Revolution instead of winning it, then the French Revolution (precipitated by a financial crisis precipitated by French backing of the Americans) is avoided, or at least delayed a few years. Maybe somebody like Napoleon eventually.
The British were always going to be going to India and China - what they wanted there was markets for the goods of their Industrial Revolution, and the primary products of the Asian continent, like silk and spices (and tea!), not land as such.
As such, they were always going to want the Cape of Good Hope, too, as half-way station and also because it would be dangerous to leave it in any potential enemy hands. And from there, there was always going to be someone discovering the diamond and gold fields in the interior to spur them on. So I think there’d definitely have been a part of the Empire in Africa. Only a much earlier-than-historical Suez Canal project would render an Africa colony unnecessary. And even an Earlier Suez scenario requires that Egypt be secured, which, lest we forget, is also in Africa.
And opium. Don’t forget opium.
It has to be remembered that initially there wasn’t much here to exploit, the British Empire would have seen little reason to invest so much for so little. We would have been a backwater anyway, think a warmer version of Canada.
If, as is posited in the book, the Reconquista is never completed, Spain is still partly controlled by Moors, and Ferdinand and Isabella never have the capital to sponsor exploration, then are there any Spanish colonies in the Americas at all?
Wasn’t Canada one of the richest parts of the Empire? And what is now the U.S. is all the best part of the continent.
In the 1770s? No. The West Indies were , or Bengal if you count the East India Company as part of the “Empire”. Canada was valuable because of the fur trade, which was still profitable, but that was pretty much it. Britain was making a lot more money, by that point, on sugar and tea than fur.
At the Treaty of Paris 1763 after the Seven Years war, France was offered New France back (what is now Quebec, Ontario and our Midwest) for Guadeloupe and Martinique.
They said no.
I recall reading that Jamaica was more profitable then the rest of the N. American colonies combined. Canada’s primary value was as a place for lumber to build ships
Yes, with the added industrial resources of the Americas, Britain might establish world hegemony and thus bring permanent peace under a de facto world government.
Without looking up exact events, dates and geographic domain Britain was
already well on the way to control of India before the American Revolution,
having routed its only signaificant opponent, France, during the Seven Years War.
Recall the Boston Tea Party? Well, that tea came from India and the problem
was that the East India company was not profitable, and a scheme was formed
to drum up more business by forcing monopoly EAC tea on the colonies at
monopoly prices. Turned out to be a bad move.
Being already embarked in Asia I can think of no reason Britain would have
taken any different a course if the American Revolution had failed, provided
the Colonies ceased being troublesome, and provided they contributed a
proportionate share of their riches and manpower to British ambitions worldwide.
The British already were in India and there’s no reason to think they would have pulled out. Britain probably would have also picked up a lot of Latin America as the Spanish empire collapsed.
I’ve read plausible claims that the race for Africa started as soon as the technology existed: quinine, steam ships, and machine guns. This made it possible for any European power to conquer Africa and every country knew that if they didn’t grab every piece they could some other country would take them instead. Britain, as an existing colonial power, was not going to forgo its place in the scramble.
But America’s industrial development in the 19th Century might have been delayed in this sort of scenario. And, I suspect, permanent peace under their world hegemony would have been a pipe dream.
I suppose it all depends on how they solved that little “no taxation without representation” thing. If the Americans got representation in Parliament, any policy treating America as a permanently agrarian captive market for British manufactures would have to be . . . re-examined.
There’s also the issue of immigration. I don’t know (how can anyone?) but it’s possible that the mass migration into North America from elsewhere in the 19th Century would not have happened to the same degree. Thus a smaller workforce, fewer innovators and slower development of the continent. If you suppose North America’s migration patterns and material development continued the same under total British tutelage as it did in the real world, then of course you have a British Empire with vastly more industrial might, which would presumably result in some greater, possibly longer lasting hegemony on the part of the Empire.
The British government also advocated alliances with Indian tribes that set limits on white settlement. That was one of the colonists’ grievances, that the crown was making treaties that drew limits on western expansion.
Another policy the American delegates to Westminster would insist on re-examining.
Unless the delegation included Indians . . .