The American Revolution did not cause the French Revolution, but it contributed to it and inspired it. What would have happened in France had the American Colonies been brought to heel is uncertain, but the uprising in France most likely would have been considerably different (perhaps a realignment of the French peerage), and Napoleon probably never would have gained control the way he did.
I assume the US would eventually have gained independence (by 1947 at the latest) and when it did, it might have set up a parliamentary government with the queen as head of state. It might still be a member of the Commonwealth.
Ok, you have a point, but ours is the major inspiration, we agree.
Neither the Red River resistance nor the FLQ were prolonged geurrilla campaigns.
Manitoba’s in the books as a rebellion. Admittedly one with a very low bodycount, but guns and soldiers were involved and “quashing” is an accurate verb there.
I didn’t include “terrorist organizations” in my list, but I think you’ll agree that’s not something you want to encourage. The FLQ had a bodycount and it had explosions and it had a terrorist agenda.
Just because Louis Riel’s forces collapsed like a house of cards in a breeze, and the FLQ were aggresively quashed, it still doesn’t speak well for a repressive government.
Once the cotton gin kicked in, I don’t think there would be much interest in the abolition of slavery in Britain, especially if they wanted to keep their cotton mills going. Britain did tend to side with the south in the Civil War.
It wouldn’t have been a good thing for the U.S. to lose the war.
We’d still be playing cricket and eating those nasty little sandwiches at teatime.
^^And driving on the wrong side of the road.
Well, first of all, the terms of the peace.
The UK had offered home rule; the Continental Congress had come close to asking for home rule, so a less ambitious revolution achieving some kind of reforms is plausible, but that’s not exactly a LOSS.
I think to lose, we have a situation where Washington is captured in 1776, there’s no Saratoga and the world barely hears of American unrest. Congress is forced to relocate, as it did historically, but there is nothing stopping British power from projecting into every major city. Benedict Arnold’s betrayal is more decisive.
The founding fathers are hung at minimum. Taxes are immediately set on the colonies, and the major cities of America are heavily garrisoned. The major mistake will have been the ‘benign neglect’ of Britain allowed its colonies to partially sever their connection, a mistake that could have been devastating.
It’s also very convenient that a large rebellion, trying to take up the dissident ideology of Liberalism, failed. This would signal a move towards Absolutism, away from votes and enfranchisement.
None of this makes Louis XVI more popular at home. It does mean that liberal agitators struggle to create a workable cause. I’d imagine that there may be no French Revolution, so much as opportunists decide it’s time to choose a new King. This man would not be a Corsican artilleryman; it would be another high nobleman–reforms come mostly from the success of this new king, but there is a large difference between a royal decree banning droit du sengiuer and abolishing all powers of blood.
The rest of the world sees little threat here and does not immediately pursue decades of war over this. There probably is, given their rivalry, another Anglo-French war, but the effect of this might be to complete shred French colonial control out of the Americas, India and the far east entirely.
This leads to the next major arch of history. The UK is already beginning to industrialize; it’s colonial empire is greater than historical. But there’s pressure against, rather than in favor of, liberalizing and democratizing. Bear in mind that even the failed Napeolonic reforms in Europe would echo and ultimately cause nations to abandon absolute monarchy by degrees.
The thirteen colonies aren’t a collective unit, and I suppose that questions about the ‘colonial’ status would emerge. The UK might very well decide to disband Massachusetts as a colony and create a replacement entity instead. Some kind of strengthening would be in order, perhaps even creating a new nobility in parts of America. Slavery wouldn’t leave on the historical timetable; the UK may well wind up owning Haiti in an alt UK-French war, and slavery is obviously too useful in the southern colonies. Part of the problem is that with liberalism heavily weakened, the claim of universal rights rings hollow. And if that is demonstrably not true, who cares about people who ‘aren’t us?’.
However, there is going to be a liberal rematch in a familiar struggle–Spanish America. Spain is, even without a Napoleonic War, having a hard time holding onto its vast holdings. While they didn’t always adhere to the fine points of the doctrines, revolutionaries cited similar claims to the Declaration of Independence–and while this could be delayed a bit, Spain somehow holding on to this much territory is going to fail.
So liberalism makes its start in Latin America, fifty years behind the United States. This far beyond the point of departure, the world has basically butterflied everyone. People who lived and died in various wars are shuffled, including an Alt-King of France, and a Europe that is still skeptical of liberalism, a fringe belief that perhaps has some Latin American nations championing it.
There is a illiberal industrialization. Royal factories are created, governments directly build factories instead of requiring venture capitalists, and strikes against his majesty’s railcar plant are treason against the state. The seeds of industrialization predate the American Revolution, but the twist of nobles building factories is basically them gaining the benefits of capitalist wealth and keeping the benefits of bloodline and traditional power. This also means that economic questions are directly united with personal liberty–Karl Marx may never be born, but someone will find the plight of the people worth risking arrest.
The United Kingdom is ultimately challenged by a rising nation, a unified Germany. Since Napoleon has never taken the first steps with his Confederation of the Rhine and partially unifying the country, this is very probably a Super Austria that has more people and more resources. This smells of WW1, but alliances may very well be radically different. The Old Order has now added factories and mass production into the hands of nobility, but it still is prone to getting into wars with each other and, even if masses accept that god’s chosen rule the world, in their hearts they still wish it were otherwise.
The world goes into a terrible orgy of violent destruction. In what would today be the United States, there is an awful butchers bill. At best the UK has been forced to pull its forces to fight in Denmark, or Africa, or perhaps even alongside their old rivals in France, at worst there is a heavy handed conscription. But there is an ideology to get behind, a moment of weakness and perhaps even a friendly rival that would enjoy the opportunity to support a rebellion in their enemy’s colonies. For in our timeline, the Germans sent Lenin to Russia, to create a revolution and win WW1. Would the Germans send Eugene Debs to New York to the same thing here?
And thus the United States is reborn; Germany becomes its great patron and ally. Questions of whether this new nation will control Not-Canada or Haiti, British Honduras and Bermuda are battlefield matters, and for the sake of fun the United States is victorious. It’s independent, it despises the capitalist/royalist elements that created it, and, let’s face it, abolishes slavery. The United States is poorly industrialized compared to its 1920 self, has heavily benefited from Jubilee soldiers, but perhaps only around half of its modern size. It’s diverse, its founding fathers may go too far in their beliefs, but this is a nation that frankly is forced into a humility our USA has never known. Seventy years after other nations in Latin America have succeeded with their own Liberal experiments, the United States is a social democracy, and indebted to and an improvement upon those that came before.
Technology creates a terrible race: Will there be another great war, or will there be a nuclear standoff. I think the world would lag behind in technology, and that the world may be 25 years behind. There are a couple more gigantic wars, and mostly they prove that the USA is here to stay. At the conclusion of WW3, someone, perhaps Germany, unleashes nuclear weapons, and there will be no more world war.
At an alt 2020, the world is now around 30 years behind in technology. Half the world has nobility and there is no great separation between being old money and making what would be ‘capitalist’ money. The United States is a regional power, rejecting slavery, monarchy and poverty. Now more than equal to most of the more developed Latin American republics, the USA struggles in the shadow of a now failing British Empire. It is not forgotten that the basic idea that everyone has rights, a declaration made in 1945 in our timeline, has never been accepted by this world. The US is too weak to try to promote its values around the world at the risk of angering nuclear armed great powers; wining and dining El Presidente is one matter, trying to stop abuses like Jewish forced resettlement into Central Asia and nobles literally being above the law is not happening.
I think that happens is that the USA does not lead the world. It follows others that set that tone instead. The rise of MegaCorp Capitalism and its advantages and disadvantages is a fundamentally American development, the rise of a more equitable but less rapid growth its most likely negative. Liberalism, however, if that takes more time, it may very well mean that the role of people in their nation changes.
So this is just for fun, but I think better.
But at least you might field a decent football (soccer) team.
Ah, scrub that, didn’t work out for Canada or Australia.
Canada doesn’t do any of those things. And we even correctly refer to the front part of a car as the “hood”, not a goddam “bonnet”, and a “boot” is something you put on your foot, not the trunk of a car. We do, however, spell words like “colour”, “flavour”, and “cheque” correctly. IIRC, the reason Americans spell them wrong is because Noah Webster changed the spelling out of spite against the British, as a sort of orthographic assertion of American independence. 
So many different possibilities and knock-on dependencies.
Assuming the war was lost and simply avoided, then France is going to be in deep financial trouble still, even if the Revolution isn’t there to inspire. The Revolution may still have happened, but without a new Atlantic power in its rear the UK may have been more assertive in squishing it. The Revolution may have taken on different characteristics - and much later.
After the French Revolution went violent the British Parliament turned quite conservative against democratic experiments, such as they were in the early 19th Century. If the American revolution failed and the French revolution was still violent, there wouldn’t be much taste for experimenting with liberalism as there was in Britain by the 1830s. Maybe the Great Reform Act would not have passed, and Britain descend into Prussian-style reaction.
As for the Empire…it’s impossible to tell but there’s a range of possibilities, from peaceful dismemberment like we saw in our timeline to an Imperial Federation as 19th/early 20th Century politicians envisioned. Without American independence being a pressure, perhaps there would not be much taste to permit Canadian Home Rule, or other places. Maybe the Empire would have crumbled in Irish-style violent separations.
Assuming that instead the Empire by the early 20th is evolving into Home Rule Dominions like in our timeline, then Britain is much more dangerous in WW1. WW2, however…
I wonder if independence was great for America not just because of being able to create a democracy accountable to its people but because it meant America propelled into a wealthy industrial powerhouse. If America is a British province still, would it have remained a periphery? Without America bristling with industrial output, wealth and population, would Britain have been able to endure in WW2 against Germany AND Japan? I’m not so sure.
Yes–I’m glad you all don’t use “bonnet” and “boot” and stuff. That was hard to get used to when I was stationed in Australia. AND–driving on the wrong side of the road.
The pronunciation of aluminum was different as well.
I’ve read articles on Noah Webster and the spelling change.
Nice, you shoudl NaNowrmo this in a short