The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92701   Message #1775228
Posted By: Little Hawk
03-Jul-06 - 11:36 PM
Thread Name: BS: What if We had Lost The Revolution ?
Subject: RE: BS: What if We had Lost The Revolution ?
Okay, Jerry, interesting question.

First of all, you should have said "the American Revolution". Do you know how many revolutions there have been in this world? Yours was not the only one, though I know it seems that way when you grow up in the American educational system... ;-)

But I digress...

Let's say that the British monarchy had been more flexible and sensible, and there had been no American revolution in the 1770's or later. Well, then, all of North America would have become a great British dominion instead of just the northermost half of it....the future "Greater Canada"? It would have been a greater dominion than India. Truly the "jewel in the crown" of England.

As such, it would have been administered in a rather different way...more focused on social order and consistent British law, less focused on aggressive individualism. The national policy toward the Indian tribes would probably have been handled in a somewhat more decent and law-abiding fashion (the British tended not to break treaties, for example, while the USA broke basically every treaty)...but the Indians would still have lost everything in the end. There would almost certainly have been far fewer Indian wars, but there would still have been some, I'm sure. The vast expanses of the west would have been opened up in the British fashion (as in Canada):

1. First you send in well-trained government lawmen and administrators, and make sure the structure of law and government is well established BEFORE the settlers pour in!

2. THEN you allow the settlers and business people in afterward. No "Wild West". Social order instead of a few decades of virtual anarchy.

That would have meant a frontier that was far less violent and lawless, it would have meant we would lose most of those great tales we have now about gunfighters, train robbers, whisky traders, and all the other violent stuff that makes American (and Mexican) western stories so much fun! Boring...right? The USA had hundreds of Indian wars out west and thousands of gunfighter incidents. Canada had 2 small Indian wars out west during the same period, and a handful of "gunfighter" type incidents. This was a direct result of the differences between Canadian (British) policy and America's laissez-faire "survival of the fittest" approach to opening up the frontier.

Slavery would probably have ended a few decades sooner, without a war being fought over it.

Napoleon would have had a much tougher time in Europe...if the French Revolution had happened at all, which it might not have.

Presently the entire British North American region would have become independent, as Canada has, through a gradual series of political developments of a parliamentary nature. It would have maintained strong cultural ties to the UK, and it would have directly assisted the UK in WWI and WWII (if WWII occurred at all). The Germans would have had a tougher time in both of those wars, because the odds against them would have been greater from the start.

Big Mick - It's my opinion, having studied Canadian and American history, that the Indians would have been treated somewhat better by a British administration...but...as I said before...they would still have lost everything in the end. They had no real hope, either way.