I’d see it as more of an African-style situation.
mind you if America was still allied with the Brits North America would have joined the war ages earlier.
It would have also definitely adopted anti slavery laws much earlier avoiding the holocaust of Africans being trafficked in to the states.
But you might still have anti homosexuality laws on the books, but at least Top Gear US would have been awesome!
“If the French Revolution still happened”. But it wouldn’t have. The French revolutionaries were inspired by the success of the American Revolution, even if they were of course far more radical. And besides the differing results with no Napoleon and his wars (which means their probably wouldn’t have been a united Italy or Germany later on), there wouldn’t have been a Soviet Union either, because the Russian revolutionaries modeled themselves after their French equivalents – in fact their early anthem was just “La Marseillaise” with new Russian lyrics.
no they’d still have happened, they would just have happened differently.
You want to prevent revolution through time travel? Then convince the ruling class to not be complete ass holes.
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Actually, I was alluding to the Draka series, in which American loyalists emigrate to South Africa after they lost the war.
I could give a description, but I’m trying to forget the sadistic wank fest the series turned out to be.
Even way back when, the British weren’t happy with the slavery situation in the southern states. I think the south would have still rebelled over the issue, and if they had won, the map would look very different.
Mexico would probably still have claim to the south west. The original Canadian provinces would have simply joined New England as states instead of forming their own country. And Russia would never have sold Alaska to the US because they hated the British.
There would a lot of similarities and some big differences. Firstly the American colony probably would extend beyond the Rio Grand, Spain was in no position to halt the expansion. Slave would have been abolished, leading to no US civil war and the south would be much more prosperous. No Jim Crow laws would have passed.
On a World stage, with North American (NA) industrialization couple to the UK industrial revolution, the British empire’s industrial might would be unequaled. Plus the British Empire would be in control of approximately a third of the world both population and land mass.
As to World Wars, the First would be over sooner as the British Empire would be able to defeat the German Austohungarian alliance and the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles would be kinder to Germany. This leads to WWII not happening in Europe and the Japanese expansion, now facing the might of the Expanded British Empire, without having to fight Germany, would be severely curtailed. Any fight would be massively disastrous for Japan.
My favorite take on this is Harrison’s 1973? “A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!” with a cyberpunk British Empire full of nuclear powered trains and Victorian mores.
It’s fun to speculate though.
The US Revolution only succeeded because the French monarchy stepped in. The US was losing. If the US had lost, odds are western expansion would have been slowed. The Brits (and the American south) were against expansion. This could have led to a western rebel state fighting against the allied Brits and native tribes, perhaps an industrialized Iroquois Federation (one of the more successful responses to the European invasion). How fun is that?
The big engine, of course, was the modern nation state driven by Renaissance technologies. Spain and Portugal had coalesced and built their technologically based colonial empires in the 15th and 16th centuries. England and France in the 16th and 17th. Germany, Italy, Japan and the US in the 19th and 20th.
If the US had lost the revolution, odds are it would have followed a path similar to Canada’s, but the late 18th and early 19th centuries were a golden age for big thinkers like Napoleon and Burr. (The latter nearly built himself an empire in Mexico.) Like Asimov’s Mule, the wild cards mean that anything could have happened.
Hi everybody, you all seem to be missing something. There is an Alternative USA.
It’s called Canada.
In fact there are two existing Alternative USA’s. One is English Canada and the other is French Canada. English Canada is an America where the revolution never happened. French Canada (which is mostly confined to Quebec) is a USA where France won control of North America.
Imagine a USA that looks much like modern America. But then you look around. The Queen’s picture is in the Post Office. The road signs are in metric. The police cars look the same but often have crown symbols on the doors. That’s just the start. The 1% does not run Alternative USA, at least not yet. Gun control, universal health care, a national value added tax, gay marriage (and openly gay politicians), a state run broadcaster, heavily regulated bank system, many state run businesses, a small (but deadly) armed forces and, of course, a multi-party parliamentary government round out the picture.
In real present day Canada, the Canadian version of the Tea Party has succeeded in taking over the ruling Conservative Party. Step by step they are turning Canada into their right wing vision of what Canada should be (which looks a lot like New Jersey).
Still, for now, Canada is what the US might have been if the richest man in America hadn’t lead his colony to revolution because he wanted lower taxes.
Cream? In tea? You utter utter barbarian!
Planet of the Apes would have been Planet of the Petunias.
Red Dawn would be an epistolary novel written in the early 19th century about a group of spunky teenage woodsmen fighting partisan war against the British redcoat occupation.
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Actually, Turtledove (well, Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss, yes, that Richard Dreyfuss) wrote a version of that history.
Cream, milk, whatever dairy substance it is that people seem to use to adulterate perfectly good tea.
Or, maybe I should say that if it were truly good tea, you wouldn’t need to add anything to it…
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