Yes . . . but, at the time, Ireland already had a Parliament (all Protestant); and, when it was abolished in 1801, the Irish were allowed representation in Westminster. Until 1829 only Protestants could vote or hold office, but the principle was established.
Ireland had a Parliament, but it was an Irish Parliament only. They didn’t have a voice in the British Parliament, and the British Parliament, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the Crown could all overrule any decisions it made. In effect, the Irish Parliament had no power. That’s different than what you’re proposing, in which the American colonies have representation at Westminster.
OK, I think that had the colonies been given representation, we might actually have seen more aggressive empire-building, with a faster conquest of Africa and India, because there would be more troops available. However, this might well have been seen as a major threat by Spain, France, Germany, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire leading to major naval battles in the 19th century with Russian attempts to break out of the Black Sea and the Med coinciding with a Spanish attempt to recapture Gibraltar and massive naval battles between Spanish South America and British North America, with Portugal - and thus Brazil - being pro-British too. And there’d be battles in the Pacific - Russia might try and capture New Zealand or Australia. British ships and troops would perhaps be spread too thinly. If British come to an accommodation with the Japanese allowing British ships to be based in or near Japan - on the basis that Russia and China are common foes - then we might have an early Tsushima.
The purchases of Louisiana and Alaska would be conquests instead. Texas might well become a buffer country - or England and Spain would agree to divide the West at Panama. Or there could be major land battles, there except I think that there would be too few actual British and too few actual Spanish.
So perhaps you’d end up with Britain being the hyperpower controlling North America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, and many smaller places; China and Russia controlling Asia; Spain controlling South America; with no other major powers. Russia might well conquer Eastern Europe.
Similar to Roman times, I think the centre of power would be London.
Come the industrial revolution and the invention of powered flight, I think we might see the secret development of bombers by France or Germany and then an attempt at an invasion of England by France, Germany, and Russia, and if that were successful we’d see the seat of the Anglosphere shift to America.
But this is all wishful thinking.
Ah, but there wouldn’t be more troops available. As long as there is (nearly) free land for the taking in the colonies, it just isn’t that easy to persuade people to become troops. England even as it was was hardly ever able to muster a particularly large army. Their genius was to have a small but very, very good army (and the biggest/best navy to fire it at the enemy).
And a bigger empire, with local representation in Westminster, creates many frictions within England. If not semi-universal (male) suffrage then what sort of 3/5ths compromise must be worked out to avoid schism within the empire.
But what happens in Europe is indeed the question. Perhaps during a failed attempt at colonial recovery after the 7 years war the French discover nationalism and levee en masse and their generals overrun central Europe (which states are on the English payroll or near states on the English payroll or on the way to states on the English payroll). The tax/debt/revenue crisis hits mid war and perhaps the royalists win, perhaps they lose.
In any case, with the great empire to be won in India and the vast reaches of America perhaps catching the eyes and capturing the imaginations of the (European) Englishmen perhaps England goes into splendid isolation a hundred years ahead of schedule.
That’s one of the things I like about the idea. Maybe with some radical MPs from New England and Pennsylvania on their side, the Chartists would win! 
An interesting thought. I think that had I chosen to be a professional historian, this topic would have been addressed in my dissertation. Politically, I am neutral with no favoritism toward either the United States or Great Britain, but my thoughts on the matter are as follows:
- Would America be as big as it is today if it had remained subject to the British Crown?
This is a really tough issue to contemplate. The British, as was noted already, were much friendlier to the Native peoples (or the First Nations,) so this would have at least delayed Western expansion. Also, much of the territory in the West was owned by other nations, like France and Spain, and later Mexico.
Would the French have sold Louisiana to their archenemies? I think not!
Would Mexico have had the inspiration to declare independence from Spain had their northern neighbors not led by example? If not, would Britain have invested much time in fighting the Spaniards over this land, seeing as it was on the other side of French Louisiana and there were other interests to be considered elsewhere in the world? I really doubt it.
Would Russia have sold Alaska to the British? I could see an argument either way. Hard feelings might have lingered between the two powers from the Crimean War, and Russia might not have been willing to seal the deal. On the other hand, Russia had more territory than it needed. Alaska would have been an interesting addition to British Canada.
- Would slavery in America have ended sooner?
Considering that the northern colonies were willing to end slavery almost immediately after the Revolution, I see no reason why they would have done otherwise had they remained colonies. As soon as the proposal hit Parliament, the southern colonies would have been furious, and they might have even been angry enough to rebel against the British, but consider the military might of the British Empire, both naval and ground, along with all of its colonies compared with a relatively small section of the world. Resistance in the South would have been crushed swiftly.
With regard to popular support, writers like Charles Dickens probably would have stirred the majority public to support the end of slavery. Hence, Parliament would have eventually voted to end slavery, regardless of whether it had MPs from the South representing the slave owners.
In conclusion, I believe that like other British possessions, America would at least have held on until the end of the first World War. After that, it might have felt the need for more independence as a result of the casualties from that war (two cases in point being Ireland and India, who grew tired of British domination following this war.) Or like Canada and Australia, who had populaces similar to the American colonies, America might have eventually become a Commonwealth realm. These are my personal views, and they are not intended to offend anyone.
Adam Smith predicted this in “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776
“The people on the other side of the water are afraid lest their distance from the seat of government might expose them to many oppressions; but their representatives in parliament, of which the number ought from the first to be considerable, would easily be able to protect them from all oppression. The distance could not much weaken the dependency of the representative upon the constituent, and the former would still feel that he owed his seat in parliament, and all the consequence which he derived from it, to the good-will of the latter. It would be the interest of the former, therefore, to cultivate that good-will, by complaining, with all the authority of a member of the legislature, of every outrage which any civil or military officer might be guilty of in those remote parts of the empire. The distance of America from the seat of government, besides, the natives of that country might flatter themselves, with some appearance of reason too, would not be of very long continuance. Such has hitherto been the rapid progress of that country in wealth, population, and improvement, that in the course of little more than a century, perhaps, the produce of the American might exceed that of the British taxation. The seat of the empire would then naturally remove itself to that part of the empire which contributed most to the general defence and support of the whole.”
Old thread, but the abolition of slavery was mentioned in the novel. It happened earlier than it did in real history - probably in 1833 when the British Empire historically abolished slavery.
There was historical opposition to abolition in the Empire. But the slave owners represented a much smaller percentage of the British Empire than they did of the United States. This would have been true in the book’s setting as well; slave owners in the American South and the Caribbean would have been a small part of the overall British Empire and would have realized rebellion was unlikely to succeed.
Decisive leadership was also mentioned. President Buchanan dithered as the southern states seceded and formed a new country. In the book, Andrew Jackson was the Governor General of North America when slavery was abolished and he made it clear right from the beginning that he would use force against any attempts to defy the law.
We might have ended up with England trying to declare its independence.
I am glad that this thread has been resurrected after almost nine years.
After reading the posts following mine, an interesting thought occurred to me:
Suppose that in the 19th century, a mass emigration of the poor, not only from famine-torn Ireland, but also from Victorian London happened. After all, with the end of slavery in the South, there were still cotton fields to pick and to plough, and the starving people from east London could have earned their food working alongside African Americans as sharecroppers or tenant farmers as their forefathers did in the Middle Ages. Imagine Southern accents with a Cockney lilt to them!
Didn’t this happen? The impoverished cockneys had the same ability to emigrate to America if they wanted and probably would have had an easier time fitting in than the Irish, for reasons which seem appallingly quaint now but which were Serious Business back then.
Great Britain was something like the third largest source of immigrants from 1840-1890, after Germany and Ireland. Something like 2.25 million people.
It’s actually amazing in recent years how the English/British influx has been somewhat erased from US folk memory. In 1980 US Census those listing British or English ancestry was far higher than in more recent surveys.
It could’ve ended like Portugal, where, because of its power, Brazil became the center of the Kingdom and hte capital moved to Rio de Janeiro (and later Bahia).
The reasons for breaking away are that being tied to Britain was becoming a drag on our ability to expand and settle territory and our ability to participate in international trade. I believe around the time of the Revolution we had around 2.5m colonists and the UK had a population of around 10m. So if representation was at proportional (most likely it would not have been, historically it wasn’t in the UK at that time) we’d still be significantly outnumbered in Parliament and our interests would not prevail over British interests.
I think the only way the British could have kept us in the fold, even if we had MPs, would have been through devolving significant powers to the colonies. Specifically the colonies would have to be allowed to conduct their own relationship with the Indians and set their own trade policies with other countries. The colonies would also most likely want devolved legislatures immune from Royal ability to dissolve them. They could probably accept appointed Royal Governors but would expect those to mostly be figurehead positions.
Given the British position on issues like that in the 18th century I don’t see the Westminster Parliament or King George agreeing to any of that, and our MPs in London would probably eventually walk out and become our Founding Fathers when they were unable to achieve these goals in Parliament.
These were valid issues but there was also another significant issue: prominent Americans felt they had been cut off from political access. There was basically a glass ceiling in American politics - all offices of importance were filled by appointments made in London.
You can see it from Parliament’s point of view: Members of Parliament wanted to reward supporters and there were political posts in America that needed to be filled. So give those jobs to your supporters. But upper class Americans were seeing their English counterparts filling the jobs they felt should belong to them.
Parliament did finally realize the resentment this policy was causing and did make efforts to appoint more Americans to government posts but it was too little and too late. But if Parliament had adopted an earlier policy of reserving American posts for Americans they might have successfully co-opted the people who led the Revolution. Prominent Americans who were appointed to office by the British government would have had a stake in maintaining that government in power.
But, quite often a vote would not come down to Britain v. Colonies, but Whig v. Tory. And then the colonial members might be in a position to swing it one way or the other . . . in exchange for certain concessions.
Well in our timeline at least the King was very Great Britain George III actually did have the ability to set policy. He regularly refused to make his political opponents PM even when they had the support, he had a string of his hand selected PMs resign because they declared they couldn’t run the government without support in parliament. So I’m not sure on the colony issues it wouldn’t end up being MPs from Great Britain versus MPs from elsewhere.
But they mostly went to the Northern states, I believe, because that was where there were jobs for free men – both before and after Abolition.
There was also internal migration. Lots of lower-class white people moved out of the south to other parts of the country where they felt they’d have better opportunities.