Could the british empire have survived until the present day?
- Thread starter JJ18160
- Start date
In a word, no. You'd have to butterfly WWII at the very least, and perhaps WWI. The focus would have to be bringing the colonies up to First (or at least Second) World standards of living rather than pure resource extraction. So you'd have neoconservatism 150 years early, in essence.
Sachyriel
Banned
But WW1 happened after 1900...
I think if you had a more spread out royal family, perhaps the princes/princesses and others maintaining good will throughout the empire at most of the time, getting raised in the mixed indigenious/English culture environment they would show a better understanding of their citizens and maybe get more people saying 'we would like to be british' then 'we would like dominion'.
what about a scenario where the british territories are integrated into the nation, like if they recieved representation in the british parliament and had full british citizenship rather than just being a colony? under these circumstances would it be less likely that these places would break away?
India had representation in parliament? I know they had their own colonial parliament, but as far as i've ever known they didn't have representation in the parliament of the UK.
terence
Banned
Who says it hasn't survived?
Just because we've let a few uppity natives swan around with all sorts of pretentions it doesn't mean they got any real power.
Polo in Jaipur, a drink at the FCC in Hong Kong, lunch at the Rand Club, a test match at the MCG. In Nairobi they still know how to serve a G&T at five o'clock. Nothing's changed except they've put in air-conditioning and all the punka-wallahs are off running take-aways in Hounslow.
Just watch the oily toadies bowing and scraping to Her Maj at the Commonwealth conference--Oh! And I hear that we are about to annex Ruanda.
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jorawar singh
Banned
britain could retain india
britan could have easily retained indian as a part of the empire even after 1945 without much difficulty.the main reason the british was because the british govt after ww2 was a anti colonist govt and plus the americans had also put pressure on the british to leave india[source-the march on delhi]as early as 1944 when american soilders provided supplies to indians during independence marches during the year 1944
the things working in th favour of england was the the princes were loyal to the british and they held nearly half of india under their cantrol and their subjects were loyal to them.
the army was also loyal to the british all the top of the anti british movement there were 1 million people in the army at the same time there were 2 million soilders.
so the only thing the british need to do is keep the local rulers both landlords and princes happy and thry would keep all disisents quiet.
except for this a economic development is required to keep the large number of educated people employed and away from the communist.
britan could have easily retained indian as a part of the empire even after 1945 without much difficulty.the main reason the british was because the british govt after ww2 was a anti colonist govt and plus the americans had also put pressure on the british to leave india[source-the march on delhi]as early as 1944 when american soilders provided supplies to indians during independence marches during the year 1944
the things working in th favour of england was the the princes were loyal to the british and they held nearly half of india under their cantrol and their subjects were loyal to them.
the army was also loyal to the british all the top of the anti british movement there were 1 million people in the army at the same time there were 2 million soilders.
so the only thing the british need to do is keep the local rulers both landlords and princes happy and thry would keep all disisents quiet.
except for this a economic development is required to keep the large number of educated people employed and away from the communist.
I Blame Communism
Banned
I can't really see a way to keep it in a recognisable form. Colonial rule isn't sustainable, as we saw by the mounting pressure we came under in India, and once one thing goes (and by 1900, India was pretty much going) everything wobbles. But I don't really see how Imperial Federation would work terribly well. As Faeelin points out, there's a point at which it's an Indian Empire, which Britain has no interest in. To make it workable means economic development, economic development means an educated middle class, an educated middle class means a movement for more autonomy. You can either concede more and more independence to the colonies, who will eventually just move to full independence (as happened OTL) or make Britain effectively subordinate to them by centralising, which isn't going to happen (but see thoughts about commies below).
EdT has done two interesting takes on the idea. In AGB, he imagines that Britain remaining an independent actor on the world stage with more resources and prestige thanks to no 2nd world war could result in real strategic co-operation amongst the Old Commonwealth and various friendly regimes in the former empire. It's not an "empire" as much as a power-blow, but it's the nereast plausible thing, I should think.
In FabR, it seems he had created the conditions for a *communist regime in Britain which wants to spread socialism across the world and so has no interest in giving independence to anywhere and is entirely willing to use brutal repression to maintain itself. It, of course, is "anti-nationalist" and doesn't care if it does end up as something of an "Indian Empire".
Physically speaking, we could have retained India for longer than we did, but it would have come at a massive cost to both nations. We had uietly recognised the reality of the situation during the war, at the latest.
EdT has done two interesting takes on the idea. In AGB, he imagines that Britain remaining an independent actor on the world stage with more resources and prestige thanks to no 2nd world war could result in real strategic co-operation amongst the Old Commonwealth and various friendly regimes in the former empire. It's not an "empire" as much as a power-blow, but it's the nereast plausible thing, I should think.
In FabR, it seems he had created the conditions for a *communist regime in Britain which wants to spread socialism across the world and so has no interest in giving independence to anywhere and is entirely willing to use brutal repression to maintain itself. It, of course, is "anti-nationalist" and doesn't care if it does end up as something of an "Indian Empire".
Physically speaking, we could have retained India for longer than we did, but it would have come at a massive cost to both nations. We had uietly recognised the reality of the situation during the war, at the latest.
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terence
Banned
I think that 1945-1948 was far too late. From 1940 onwards Congress spread so much poison that there was civil and other unrest throughout WW2. By 1948 'loyal' Indian armed forces were in open mutiny, the guarantees to the independent Indian States were worthless and the communist traitors Mountbatten, Cripps and Atlee didn't help.
The window of opportunity for retention of Empire really ended in 1919-maybe then a Federal India solution (as per Canada and Australia) could have avoided the religious problems and maintained some independence for the Priincely states----as it was all was botched.
I Blame Communism
Banned
Desire for national independence is pretty toxic stuff, yeah.
It wasn't like our Indian troops fought fascism and won VCs or anything...
Understandable, since there weren't any. They all depended on Britain.
This is beyond laughable. Atlee and Cripps would be laughable reactionism, but Mountbatten?
Technically...
Technically, we still do. We still have the Falklands, Gibraltar (no matter how much the Spanish claim it's theirs, after they stubbornly keep voting to be British), and a scattering of other naval bases. In my eyes, it is a shame that New Labour renamed them "British Overseas Territories" in their politically correct insanity, but there you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories (Yes, I know wikipedia is bad, but downright factual innaccuracy of who owns which country is beyond it in my eyes.)
As for India? Have Ghandi get killed at Spion Kop by a stray Boer shell, and the British Empire could have had a slightly easier job. But I don't know that much about Indian independence movements (apart from watching "Ghandi" with Ben Kingsley), so...
----
And "I Blame Communism": technically, as the British were not directly sitting in their thrones and ordering their subjects around, those Indian States were independent. Technically.
Technically, we still do. We still have the Falklands, Gibraltar (no matter how much the Spanish claim it's theirs, after they stubbornly keep voting to be British), and a scattering of other naval bases. In my eyes, it is a shame that New Labour renamed them "British Overseas Territories" in their politically correct insanity, but there you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories (Yes, I know wikipedia is bad, but downright factual innaccuracy of who owns which country is beyond it in my eyes.)
As for India? Have Ghandi get killed at Spion Kop by a stray Boer shell, and the British Empire could have had a slightly easier job. But I don't know that much about Indian independence movements (apart from watching "Ghandi" with Ben Kingsley), so...
----
And "I Blame Communism": technically, as the British were not directly sitting in their thrones and ordering their subjects around, those Indian States were independent. Technically.
Faeelin
Banned
Of course, AGB has a crazy totalitarian Hindu-fascist state on the subcontinent, and we have no idea how FabR is gonna work out.
Faeelin
Banned
Without Gandhi, you still have Nehru. And Bose. God help us all, you still have Bose.
Well, India was a Soviet client state (or at least Soviet-oriented) until Rajiv Gandhi's accession to power, most dramatically with the Friendship Treaties of 1971 IOTL.
I Blame Communism
Banned
Indeed. If we have a more OTL-ish situation in India, there wouldn't be any "imperial" presence to speak of in that part of the world, but that outline remains about the nearest thing you can get to a surviving empire in my opinion.
The FWR might go under in the long run, but the general idea is that the best candidate to hold together a globe-spanning empire into the modern era is a regime willing to use force, having pretty much no democratic input, but also pragmatic and willing to let the inhabitants of all its components at least nominally have an equal chance in its system, and the most likley candidate is radical socialism.
"Cold-war friendship with Moscow" is one thing, "part of globe-spanning socialist dictatorship in which *Bose and *Mosley partake in court intrigue" quite another!