# Would The World Have Been Better If There Was No American Revolution **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 4, 2010, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901 "2010-12-04T03:21:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/1 "2010-12-04T03:21:33Z")
If the American Revolution had been avoided or had been ended quickly and had resulted instead in America being granted certain rights in sort of a compromise would the world have been a better place? ---
**Author:** ![Capitaine\_Zombie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e95f7d/32.png) [@Capitaine\_Zombie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capitaine_Zombie)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/2 "2010-12-04T03:23:04Z")
Depends. ---
**Author:** ![threeorange](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@threeorange](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threeorange)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/3 "2010-12-04T03:26:16Z")
> [@Capitaine\_Zombie](#): > > Depends. Well, that wrapped up quickly. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/4 "2010-12-04T03:33:28Z")
The OP isn’t clear enough: Is Palpatine or is Palpatine not the king in this hypothetical? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/5 "2010-12-04T03:40:12Z")
For one, I guess we’d be pledging allegiance to the Queen instead of the flag and God. ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/6 "2010-12-04T04:14:15Z")
The Ape Wars of 2050 would’ve happened a half-century earlier, and we’d all be slaving away in a banana mine somewhere right now. Also the Milwaukee Braves would’ve beat the Yankees in the 1958 world series, other then that, history remains unchanged. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/7 "2010-12-04T04:16:22Z")
Okay, possible effects of no American Revolution. 1. Different political climate. Ideas like Republics and Democracy and Constitutions and Equality would have remained mostly theories. 2. No French Revolution. A major cause of the collapse of the French government was the cost of supporting the American Revolution. No French Revolution, no Droits de l’Homme, no Reign of Terror, no Levee en masse, no Napoleon, no Congress of Vienna. This would be big. 3. Britain would have been less influential. Sure, they would have had their colonies along the Atlantic coast. But they would have stayed along the coast. There would have been no drive to fill the continent. France and Spain would have maintained their colonies in North America and that would have imposed a limit of English expansion. And no Napoleonic Wars (see #2) would have meant no British victory in the Napoleonic Wars. 4. Eurocentrism. There would have been no outpost of western civilization in the New World. Europe and western civilization would have remained synonymous. 5. Imperialism. The United States was the first colony to break free. Its example led to other colonies doing the same. Without a successful revolution in North America there might never have been successful revolutions in South America or Asia or Africa. Better or worse? I dunno. But definitely different. ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/8 "2010-12-04T13:49:09Z")
Who would be blamed for all of the evils of slavery and how would all that turn out? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/9 "2010-12-04T14:00:17Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > If the American Revolution had been avoided or had been ended quickly and had resulted instead in America being granted certain rights in sort of a compromise would the world have been a better place? According to you(in another of your threads), we have no way of knowing: > [@The Extent of the Butterfly Effect](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-extent-of-the-butterfly-effect/562902/1): > > I am interested in alternate history but I find it ridiculous when the writers ignore the butterfly effect and have FDR in a TL that diverged during the Civil War twenty years before Roosevelt was born. Do the writers realize the conception of FDR would not happen in the exact same way in happened in our world? Even if say the divergence happened on May 1st and a man named John Smith was conceived that night-suppose Smith’s father read the newspaper that night instead of procreating with his wife-everything changes! It seems that you’ve answered your own question. Would you like the mods to close this? ---
**Author:** ![Simplicio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c37758/32.png) [@Simplicio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simplicio)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/10 "2010-12-04T14:12:48Z")
> [@What\_the](#): > > Who would be blamed for all of the evils of slavery and how would all that turn out? I imagine at least part of the US would’ve revolted later in resistance to UK efforts to end slavery in 1833. ---
**Author:** ![Frank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Frank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frank)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/11 "2010-12-04T14:15:14Z")
> [@What\_the](#): > > Who would be blamed for all of the evils of slavery and how would all that turn out? Slavery would have been abolished on August 1st, 1834. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/12 "2010-12-04T14:49:25Z")
> [@What\_the](#): > > Who would be blamed for all of the evils of slavery and how would all that turn out? In the real world, Parliament passed an act to (gradually) abolish slavery in most of the British Empire in [1833](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833). Of course, that might have triggered a revolution in some of the Empire’s North American dominions right there. On the other hand, real-world Virginia had a debate about abolishing slavery in 1832 (in the aftermath of Nat Turner’s rebellion). Perhaps the wishes of South Carolina and the other slave [del]states[/del] colonies would not have loomed as large in an Alternate History British Empire. The AHBE might also have been more centralized than the real-world United States, with Parliament able to ignore the wishes of its colonial dominions in a way the U.S. Congress can’t generally do to the states–though that might depend on exactly how the British Empire in the Thirteen Colonies survived. > [@The Extent of the Butterfly Effect](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-extent-of-the-butterfly-effect/562902/1): > > According to you(in another of your threads), we have no way of knowing: > > > [@The Extent of the Butterfly Effect](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-extent-of-the-butterfly-effect/562902/1): > > > > I am interested in alternate history but I find it ridiculous when the writers ignore the butterfly effect and have FDR in a TL that diverged during the Civil War twenty years before Roosevelt was born. Do the writers realize the conception of FDR would not happen in the exact same way in happened in our world? Even if say the divergence happened on May 1st and a man named John Smith was conceived that night-suppose Smith’s father read the newspaper that night instead of procreating with his wife-everything changes! Thus how strong do you think the butterfly effect is once one thing changes? > > It seems that you’ve answered your own question. Would you like the mods to close this? I think that’s a bit of a different question. If there had been no American Revolution (or the American Revolution had failed), it seems very unlikely that a British colonial subject named Franklin Delano Roosevelt would have been born “on schedule” in Her Majesty’s Province of New York in January 1882 (and still less so that he would go on as Prime Minister of the United Empire Parliament to lead the Empire to victory in a great World War against an alliance of Germany and Japan)–barring some (to me really unlikely) ironclad force of destiny or fate, there would simply be too many random and not so random changes in the timeline for such a person to have ever existed, let alone led some kind of parallel life with the real FDR. To put it more personally, if the Axis had won World War II, I would not exist. Just to look at one factor out of many, one of my grandfathers was a bomber navigator in the U.S. Army Air Force in the European theater. Rather than returning home to father my father, in a “Hitler Wins the War” timeline he would have been shot down and killed in the Battle of Buffalo, or died of typhus in a German P.O.W. camp in 1945, or simply been locked up in a German Stalag until the Armistice of 1947 (my father was born in 1946), or for that matter, he might have come home early, or never gone to fight in the first place (if the reason Hitler wins the war is that the U.S. never gets in it to begin with)–but in any event, the chain of events that leads to my father and then to me would have been broken. None of that means you can’t at least speculate about alternate histories; it just means that the habit of some fiction writers of having amusing little in-jokes like, hypothetically, having the American Quisling or the Leader of the Resistance (depending on the writer’s political preferences) in Nazi-occupied America being led by one “George Walker Bush” don’t make a lot of sense (since the real-world analogue of the Alternate History character in question was born in 1946 and is the son of a U.S. Navy officer, who, again, would have been a P.O.W., or dead, or otherwise occupied at the crucial moment that led to the younger George Bush’s birth. You could, of course, include a fictional analogue of George H.W. Bush in your “Hitler Wins the War” story.) ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/13 "2010-12-04T15:58:36Z")
> [@Frank](#): > > Slavery would have been abolished on August 1st, 1834. I don’t think you can assume that if the economics of the slaveholding south was still more closely tied to England. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/14 "2010-12-04T16:24:41Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > The OP isn’t clear enough: Is Palpatine or is Palpatine not the king in this hypothetical? If this is going to be another crap prequel, I’m out. In response to the OP: Better - Everything north of the Rio Grande is now Canada. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/15 "2010-12-04T16:29:00Z")
If I remember correctly, jetliners would have never replaced the dirigible for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [December 4, 2010, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/16 "2010-12-04T16:45:52Z")
> [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](#): > > If this is going to be another crap prequel, I’m out. > > In response to the OP: Better - Everything north of the Rio Grande is now Canada. Oh, and I forgot. Greater Canada declared war on Germany on December 10, 1939. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/17 "2010-12-05T03:38:24Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > In the real world, Parliament passed an act to (gradually) abolish slavery in most of the British Empire in [1833](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833). Of course, that might have triggered a revolution in some of the Empire’s North American dominions right there. It did so over the strenuous opposition of the West Indies planters. It’s possible that if America hadn’t revolted, the additional opposition from there might have delayed or stopped British emancipation. ---
**Author:** ![godix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/278dde/32.png) [@godix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godix)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/18 "2010-12-05T05:20:02Z")
I’m bored so I’ll take a half-ass shot at an answer Bad crap in US history - Slavery. It may have become illegal a few decades earlier, but it would have still existed regardless if the US stayed colonies or not, as proven by the fact it did exist while the US was a colony. - Indian removal. A policy that started with colonial powers, but the US took it to a whole new level during it’s manifest destiny. However, the continent was probably going to be conquered by someone. Spain and England would most likely do similar actions. France was fairly nice to Indians, for a given value of ‘fairly nice’. But France would have lost it’s new world holdings after Napoleon most likely, so Indians would still get fucked over. - Several very questionable wars. Vietnam, Iraq, Spanish/American war, etc. would have not happened if the US didn’t exist. - Central & South America wouldn’t have had the US domination games we played for a century. Mostly those have stopped, but we got a long history of fucking over the rest of the Americas. So on the bad side of things, if the US existed there are several wars that likely wouldn’t have been fought and the rest of the Americas may have had a better history. The other bad things probably would have occurred regardless Good things in US history - WWII. Yeah, we took our own sweet time joining. Europe would have been won without us too. However, without the US then fighting Japan really wouldn’t have really even started until after the European war was over. Which would make the war years longer, or would leave a war weary Europe to make peace and leave Japan with it’s holdings. Considering what Japan did to defeated people, that would be a very bad thing. - Cold war. Considering how much WWII devastated the European powers, it’s hard to imagine another nation that could have served as a check against the Soviet Union - Relatively benign world dominance. Yeah, we have our Iraq moments and there was bad crap we supported in the cold war. However, historically speaking, the US has been one of the least harsh world powers ever. When Spain, England, France, etc invaded third world countries they would stay for centuries. When the US does it, we’re planning withdraw less than a decade later. I think without the US then today the world powers would probably be Soviet and Japanese, with almost all of Europe being under soviet control. As such, no, I don’t think the world would be better off if the US never rebelled. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/20 "2010-12-05T06:54:28Z")
All that say that WWII would had been different? I think you forget WWI. In an alternate **WWI** The colonies would had send troops in 1914 instead of waiting for 1917. Even if the American colony had been smaller (no California, Texas and the South) I think Germany would had been defeated early with more resources from America; so, no time for Russia to fall, less of a chance of Lenin to succeed (No communist threat). Without a paranoid like Stalin then if Hitler had appeared later in Germany the Russian army would had been more prepared and less willing to sign non aggression treaties. (Hitler would also most likely had remained a painter, one big reason Hitler was allowed to gain power was because he was going to fight against the communists, both in Germany and in Russia) OTOH Imperial Japan’s chances would had been better, so I would still go in favor of the American Revolution taking place. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2010, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901/21 "2010-12-05T07:49:16Z")
> [@](#): > > - Several very questionable wars. Vietnam, Iraq, Spanish/American war, etc. would have not happened if the US didn’t exist. > > - Central & South America wouldn’t have had the US domination games we played for a century. Mostly those have stopped, but we got a long history of fucking over the rest of the Americas. Not seeing this. Vietnam started as a colonial uprising against the French. A lack of Americans wouldn’t have changed that. Latin America and the Philipines would have been targets for Britain or some other power if the United States hadn’t been around. (Germany was nosing in that direction at the same time as the United States was.) And there still would have been oil in the Middle East - if the United States wasn’t the superpower intervening there, someone else would have been. > [@](#): > > All that say that WWII would had been different? I think you forget WWI. > > In an alternate WWI The colonies would had send troops in 1914 instead of waiting for 1917. Even if the American colony had been smaller (no California, Texas and the South) I think Germany would had been defeated early with more resources from America; so, no time for Russia to fall, less of a chance of Lenin to succeed (No communist threat). Another big factor is that you wouldn’t have had Wilson promising any Fourteen Points and League of Nations. Nobody would have made Germany any idealistic offers that were later withdrawn. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-the-world-have-been-better-if-there-was-no-american-revolution/562901.md?page=2)