Brooklyn Redone

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Much is continually made of how Lord Howe threw away certain British victory in the war of American Independence by letting George Washington escape repeated traps in the battles around New York City in 1776. Let us presume that Howe actually wanted to win. Alternately presume that the command was given to Cornwallis. Washington and the entire Continental Army are bagged in Brooklyn.

The presumption is that the colonies surrender. Presume that some wayward Whigs return to allegiance to the Crown. A hard core will not. The British can occupy Philadelphia before Christmas instead of stopping on the Delaware. They can occupy Albany and cut New England off from the rest of the colonies.

Now what?

Let us presume that a hard core of 5-10% of the population remains in rebellion with armed bands scattered throughout the interior. In 1777 the British occupy every seaport and every state capital. Except for Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston these were cities by courtesy. The bulk of the 3-4 million ‘Americans’ were scattered through an area larger than Western Europe. The British Army was unsuited to chasing partisan bands and after such victories would be even less willing to give meaningful roles to the local Tories than in OTL.

So the rebellion drags on as a continental size version of the irregular war in South Carolina 178-83 in OTL. The French, Spanish and Dutch do not enter as there is no US to support. A group of rump fugitive state legislatures send occasional delegates to an even more fugitive Continental Congress but what continues is a broken back war draining British men and money while ruining a market of some concern to British merchants.

My presumption is that after a few years of this the British reach the conclusion they did in 1777-78 in OTL, offering blanket amnesty just to make this go away. It failed in OTL because of Saratoga and the French alliance. Have it succeed here. Franklin and Washington become the leaders of the ‘reformed’ Whig loyalists. With their aid the fringe 2-3% are run to ground or seek exile in Europe. A British North America that does not pay taxes and has minimal garrisons with a parliament of sorts in New York is the result. Probably the British do not allow New England colonies to have elective legislatures or judges for say a generation. They probably also break the hold on power of the Congregationalist Church. The only restrictions kept in place are the requirement that royal officials actually be paid, that the small garrison be paid for and a restriction on settlement of Indian lands in Ontario, north of the Ohio and among the Cherokee and their southern allies – essentially West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky are the only lands open to settlement.

Now there is debate as to whether without the expenses of the losing world war that was the American Revolution the French revolution happens. Let us presume that the French Bourbons find other ways to be profligate. So France by 1789 is less bankrupt but still broke enough to call the Estates. Let us also presume that the few tens of thousands of American exiles such as Jefferson, Henry, Randolph, Madison and Paine make sufficient trouble in Paris, Geneva and Amsterdam to make up for the lesser financial strife. So I get us back to the French Revolution happening on schedule with war to follow on schedule.

Only now Louisiana is still French. The land hungry Americans that didn’t flow into the Indian lands have already been spilling into nominally French lands in Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi. With Franklin as chief adviser to the British governor general in NYC [the American colonies lost a generation of economic and demographic growth from the war in OTL – much of that loss does not occur in this TL], Washington is sent by sea with an ‘American’ expedition to take New Orleans. It falls easily and Americans flood into the interior up river.

Essentially by skipping the Indian lands there are more Americans in the lower Mississippi valley when Spain switches sides [Treaty of San Ildefonso, August 19^th, 1796]. Washington as governor of British Louisiana immediately calls for volunteers and takes Cuba. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Americans will have taken Puerto Rico, California, all of Mexico, Caracas, all of central America, Trinidad and Tobago, the Guyanas, the Dutch and French Antilles, and what is now northern Argentina [greater Buenos Aires, the Pampas and Uruguay]. Essentially this is what the British took or attempted in the wars plus Mexico. These were all tangential to the British. A stronger British America gobbles it all up. You can add a failed try for Santo Domingo if you choose. The same combination of fevers plus guerrilla that beat the French would beat the Americans.

With all of this lost to Spain, Napoleon’s puppet kingdom will be somewhat more popular and Wellington’s job somewhat harder. However the probability is that post 1815 Ferdinand VII washes his hands of his remaining rebellious American provinces, which make their own deal with the British crown rather than be overrun with Yankees.

So the remainder of Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay and the rump of Argentina [draw the border where you choose] become formally part of the British Empire. In OTL Spanish America was only informally part of the British Empire. Here all of the Americas except Brazil and Alaska are British / American by say 1822. This means that Victorian England will develop them all under the protection of the British flag and using British capital. It will also mean that Brazil will probably NOT get most of its modern interior. The British will use influence in Lisbon and loans to arrange the frontiers to their convenience.

The protected American Indians will ultimately have to open their lands to settlement. However they will do so as crown protectorates, not as defeated savages. They will be rich land sellers with the new purchasers denied any political rights until into the 20^th Century.

Alaska will be taken from the Czar during the Crimean War. The further reaches of Siberia and the Kuriles will probably also be taken as well. Jacksonian populism will still hit the American domains before the British Isles but the power of the crown will make it an evolution rather than a revolution.

By the 1880’s, essentially all of the Americas and not just the modern US and Canada will have been developed with British capital to essentially British standards. So the ‘Commonwealth’ will include roughly 300 million industrialized English-speaking persons in the Americas alone. Essentially the sun will never set on the Union Jack.