AHC Remove Britain from the map after 1800 before 1901
- Thread starter marcinL
- Start date
You might be able to break up the United Kingdom, but I'm not sure there's any plausible path to having London annexed by a foreign power in that period.
Napoleon invades in 1803, breaks the union up, to Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England - maybe even break England up to North and South, or North (Marcia or Northumbria), South (rump England) and Cornwall.
At best he has four new states to find rulers for, at worst five, but could he leave George III as a puppet ruling Rump England.
Weigh up the four other remnants between viable Bonapartes and Marshalls, perhaps have London itself become a City State (capital of Rump England moves to Windsor or back to Winchester?).
By the time Napoleon falls, the five regions and the London City State have become too used to their own power and don't want to come back together.
At best he has four new states to find rulers for, at worst five, but could he leave George III as a puppet ruling Rump England.
Weigh up the four other remnants between viable Bonapartes and Marshalls, perhaps have London itself become a City State (capital of Rump England moves to Windsor or back to Winchester?).
By the time Napoleon falls, the five regions and the London City State have become too used to their own power and don't want to come back together.
An amphibious invasion of England is ASB. Napoleon had a very effective army, but a weak navy.
In fact, this pretty much renders any attempted invasion of England ASB unless you completely screw the Royal Navy.
The French navy was about as good as the Royal Navy for most of the 18th century, although it suffered heavily from the Revolution (most of the officer corps were monarchists) and never really recovered its relative position. Ideally, therefore, you'd want to somehow have the French navy remain in better shape after the fall of the monarchy (maybe by causing liberal and republican ideas to make more headway in the pre-Revolutionary period?).
Alternatively, if Napoleon controls enough of Europe, and doesn't get distracted by land wars, he might be able to build enough ships to overwhelm the British navy by sheer force of numbers. This would be much more difficult, though, partly because a France strong enough to do this is also strong enough to provoke the fear and resentment of Austria, Prussia, Russia, etc., and will therefore need to divert considerable resources to its land army, and partly because Napoleon's new navy wouldn't have much opportunity to practise sailing in the open seas, and will therefore be at a huge qualitative disadvantage when it does come out and fight.
it wouldn't seem like too much of a stretch to make leadership roles in the navy more accessible to the middle class during the 18th century. Then the navy doesn't get completely stripped of its leadership during the revolution, which in turn makes it a lot harder for the British to crush it in the 1790s. The navy is still going to have hardships because of the revolution, but it's hard to imagine it'll be in as bad a situation as it was iotl.
Oh that's easy
Do to Britain what Napoleon with his Continental System couldnt, invasion? No, destroy the economy.
Have a british equivalent of spanish silver inflation, the Tulip mania or the Mississipi bubble take place and make the entirety of the rising british industry go bankrupt with their money being left worthless, bonus point if a revolution takes place France-style installing a regime like that of Cromwell before.
Thanks to the dutch we all know that all it took to screw a colonial superpower big time was a weird obsession with flowers(how is that not ASB? Darn reality!) and thanks to the americans we know that if Britain ever got out of money and started doing the usual thing to compensate - you know, taxing everything - their possessions oversea would rather leave, something a stable British Empire could actually try to prevent by sheer use of force but a Britain that barely can pay the british navy certainly couldnt.
Bam, the king's dead, thanks Lousiana!
Still wouldnt be able to invade and take London tho, at least for a while, but as the gap between Empire-less Britannia and the other powers grow a invasion would become more and more possible as the once unbeatable british navy gets left behind, something that would make a certain sea mammal very happy.
Do to Britain what Napoleon with his Continental System couldnt, invasion? No, destroy the economy.
Have a british equivalent of spanish silver inflation, the Tulip mania or the Mississipi bubble take place and make the entirety of the rising british industry go bankrupt with their money being left worthless, bonus point if a revolution takes place France-style installing a regime like that of Cromwell before.
Thanks to the dutch we all know that all it took to screw a colonial superpower big time was a weird obsession with flowers(how is that not ASB? Darn reality!) and thanks to the americans we know that if Britain ever got out of money and started doing the usual thing to compensate - you know, taxing everything - their possessions oversea would rather leave, something a stable British Empire could actually try to prevent by sheer use of force but a Britain that barely can pay the british navy certainly couldnt.
Bam, the king's dead, thanks Lousiana!
Still wouldnt be able to invade and take London tho, at least for a while, but as the gap between Empire-less Britannia and the other powers grow a invasion would become more and more possible as the once unbeatable british navy gets left behind, something that would make a certain sea mammal very happy.
Game changer of some sort. For example, Robert Fulton builds a steam powered navy.
The Tulip mania didn't even put a scratch in the Dutch economy. Not only was the size of the tulip mania greatly exaggerated in the past, it's first history being written by a guy with an open anti-speculation agenda and basing his work on dubious sources of which several were literal propaganda, but the very nature of the entire thing made it impossible for it to damage the economy...
people just traded contracts for speculative future purchases, not at the stock exchange but at taverns and other places like that, and without any advance payments. Few, if any, of those contracts were ever delivered so nobody actually ever paid a stupid amount of money for some tulips. The only way the Tulip mania could have affected someone's finances was if a seller decided to immediately begin buying a stupid amount of stuff on credit immediately after trading his contract. Also the trade was never widespread amongst the population, there was only a very small group of people who actually participated...
Also also, the tulip mania did nothing to screw the Dutch empire either, in fact it continued to grow rapidly for a couple more decades. This all happened before the Dutch conquered Sri Lanka, Elmina, Taiwan, South Africa, Brazil, Malacca, etc.
Also also, the tulip mania did nothing to screw the Dutch empire either, in fact it continued to grow rapidly for a couple more decades. This all happened before the Dutch conquered Sri Lanka, Elmina, Taiwan, South Africa, Brazil, Malacca, etc.
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The only power who could have a chance might be a wank napolionic France which dominates the continent and after a generation or 2 of naval build up, napolionic France has another showdown with britan sometime after 1850 but before 1900 using the rebuilt fleets of the continent to bring briten to heel in a war of annihilaton.
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With the issue being naval supremacy is it possible that a loss in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 could have a downstream effect on that? In addition to losses in the battle itself would this have provoked further action by the League of Armed Neutrality that could do damage to British naval supremacy? It's before Trafalgar so the eventual destruction of the French and Spanish fleets is by no means a given.
If you say the French Revolution is crushed early on France wouldn't actually lose its navy thanks to the Revolutionaries' incompetence.
As for the UK, if there's a viable Jacobite contender out there, that might do the trick.
The Second French Empire was in a quasi-naval arms race against the UK. It had some significant technological advancements as well.
Ah my bad then
Assume Britain just get a huge inflation(maybe from all that latin american metals they got from the iberians?) and/or a british John Law pulls the same shenanigans that led to the Mississipi Bubble
I know the french did recover(before wasting even more money and going on revolution anyway) and the spanish were still able to fight a few colonial wars, but I think a crisis like that(or what the tulip mania is told to have been) would have been catastrophic for the british industry and the american revolution showed the cracks on the british imperial ambitions, if they couldnt sustain oversea armies and kept trying to force the colonists to obey & pay higher taxes I think it's safe to say the empire would be doomed
In the Seven Years War, the Royal Navy fought the allied French and Spanish navies and won. It was only when the British Empire was in a civil war that the French Navy stood a chance.
The UK economy is too large after 1800 for a resource windfall (especially one from American silver) to make a significant difference. In addition they had a central bank which can expand the money supply so they can quickly recover after any bust. 1800 is just way too late a POD.