This is admittedly unrealistic, but is it possible at all for any European nation to keep most of its colonies and eventually grant all citizens of their empire equal rights regardless of race or religion? I researched this a bit myself and I find it easier to see Europe do this with a POD prior to 1900 so to make this more challenging the POD has to be after WWI and WWII (or an alternate equivalent conflict) has to happen.
Is it possible for Europe to keep its colonies and grant the natives equality?
France tried to do this, but failed. Mostly they were just too late to get it to work effectively.
Germany was doing a decent job of this in Tanzania and Cameroon. I could see this evolving, especially with the Askari's support in WWII. (Germans win and give the Askari equal status?).
The only places it would work is with colonies that have small populations. These ideas were floated by most of the empires at one time or another, but inevitably racism kicks in and all sorts of excuses come to the front as to why it can't be implemented. The stark truth is that colonial powers are only really comfortable in "sharing" power if the power imbalance is so extreme that there is no risk to the authorities' own power base. You see evidence of this in French Algeria where the colons continually complain about the Algerian birth rates outpacing their own and that being one of the arguments for not progressing with full citizenship.
1914 is far too early to estimate the outcome of a surviving German colonial empire, given the host of political transformations which occurred in the French and British empires in the following decades. Also while they invested a vast amount of money into their colonies, and had in some areas effective education, I've heard nothing about their political administration being even vaguely progressive, outside of German Samoa.
The Germans treated the Askaris well after the Great War, but that had important political objectives in mind, aiming to attempt to show that they weren't uniquely evil in colonialism as the British portrayed them as, the black legend of German colonialism (true to some extent in Africa, the Germans were the only ones to have done a genocide there, with butchering a hundred thousand people in Namibia, plus the hundreds of thousands they murdered in Tanzania). If there wasn't that political objective, I'd expect that they would be exactly like the French and British - lots of promises, and not much actual work on the ground.
In addition to being too late, there is also the severe problem of that it was a negative cycle which steadily undermined French colonial ambitions. The French hope was to update colonialism and bind French Africa more tightly into the colonial system, utilizing assimilation as the supposed goal, and doing it with the drain on metropolitan resources being limited. These were incompatible. Assimilation worked at keeping African politicians in line, but it fundamentally introduced the corollary that Africans would have equal status, and equal treatment, as the French. This undermines political control of course, and so for example French colonial authorities were less able to suppress strikes vis-a-vis the pre-war period, but even more importantly it led to the political campaign on the part of African civil servants to link their pay scales to that of Metropolitan civil servants. This couldn't happen in British colonies since they weren't part of the same administrative unit as Britain, they were part of the Empire, but they weren't Greater Britain, unlike in France. The same with workers, where unions in Africa wanted the linkage with unions back in France so they could claim that they were pressing for the same pay scale. Costs steadily escalated and grew and paying the costs of civil servants was crippling for financial projections. Ultimately the French decided to make local territorial assemblies responsible for the funding of the civil servants, and while that was an expansion of their power, the French were freed of the weight of having to pay for them... promptly, most of the territorial assemblies cut civil servant pay.
Which is the problem economically, in that it isn't sustainable, unless if Africa has a lot higher per capita income, for Europeans, except on a very small scale, to fund their colonies to the extent that they are able to make real the idea that the two regions are part of the same nation. The French, who have the largest remaining colonial empire, can do it, but it costs billions of euros every year in transfer payments overseas, and there are "just" a few million people in their colonies. Compared to the rest of their colonial empire.... the cost is not sustainable. Assimilation made for a useful rhetoric which helped keep the colonies in check longer than they would have been otherwise, but it was never a practical long term plan, and ultimately the French recognized it when the costs of this strategy started outweighing the benefits.
And that's only dealing with it economically. There was enough fear that France was being converted into a colony of her colonies, and that was with the colonies having a dramatically reduced representation in the French parliament than they would be entitled to have on their population level. I made a joke about that a while ago in another thread, that giving colonized people rights is all fun and games until black and asian people start voting in elections affecting you, and it still sums up the problems with political assimilation into the metropole.
End of Empire in French West Africa by Tony Chafer is a good book on the subject.
The Brits could not even sincerely offer this to populations like in Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. A language and culturally unified industrial mega state girding the globe would have been near superpower status. But the possibility of Greater Britain was lost in petty objections on all sides and terminal lack of vision.
Imagine Britain trying to extend the welfare state to India.
Obviously. Why I was referring only to Canada, Australia & new Zeeland.
That was back when the aristocracy still had the power & was trying to preserve it.
How about a scenario in which every colonial subject is given vote, ie. a British Empire in which minority of voters are white?
Most of its colonies - no, ex-colonial populations have become large enough that Europe would be run from outside Europe (except for a few countries such as Denmark) meaning fundamental problems for European welfare states
Some colonies - yes, in theory, where they are wealthy enough to be roughly budget neutral or small enough not to matter
The only way this might happen is if colonialism itself changed from an extractive set up to a developmental one, with massive transfers of wealth to the colonies before WW1, which is a) never going to happen, b) probably not going to lead to empires lasting indefinitely anyway and c) if it ever did work out Europe ceases to be anything other than a geographical appendage of Asia/Africa/RoW so why would Europe want this?
Some colonies - yes, in theory, where they are wealthy enough to be roughly budget neutral or small enough not to matter
The only way this might happen is if colonialism itself changed from an extractive set up to a developmental one, with massive transfers of wealth to the colonies before WW1, which is a) never going to happen, b) probably not going to lead to empires lasting indefinitely anyway and c) if it ever did work out Europe ceases to be anything other than a geographical appendage of Asia/Africa/RoW so why would Europe want this?
Not Portugal. For most of the 20th century, we were under a facist government. So, any kind of equality was out of the question.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
No, it's fundamentally impossible for any true equality between the Europeans and the people they brutally subjugated without some radical change in the 19th century, or beforehand.
They where still really in charge at the point that AUS/CAN/NZ where "lost". I simply cant see a united state formed post 1914 if not a couple of decades earlier and I think its hard to suggest that the lords and aristocracy are not still well established in power at that point?
Yes, the whole idea of colonies is to have someone exploited, not having someone as equal.
I was referring to the 1770s with that remark. The American revolution & all that.
The previous remark was aimed the other 'white' colonies much later.
Yes but I was replying that I think your remark about aristocracy covers both eras as lords did not lose power before 1911 and by then its probably too late not to lose AUS/CAN/NZ?