DBWI: What if the American Uprising of 1775-77 actually succeeded?

[HotSauce]

A relatively obscure rebellion against the British crown was put down, with George Washington, its ringleader, being executed and the rest of the leaders exiled to some godforsaken land in the middle of nowhere. I had a theory that if they won a few more battles, some European powers could have backed them, but it stayed as a colonial uprising which was no trouble for the British.

Could they have even survived if they had won? How would history be changed?

 

[xsampa]

The British Union would not have retained the American territories that were essential later on in the late 19th and 20th centuries to counterbalancing its other colonial possessions such as the Indian states [Bombay, Madras, Bengal etc.], the African possessions [Senegambia-Malee, Algeria and Egypt] or its Asian possessions [Formosa, Choosan] as they gained [limited] political rights.

 

[xsampa]

Also, the French invasions of Spain would not have resulted in the Bicontinental Occupation and the increasing strength of Carolina over protectorates like New Granada, Venezuela, and increasingly, much of the Old Carribean, long a preserve of British ambitions.

 

[HotSauce]

The British Union would not have retained the American territories that were essential later on in the late 19th and 20th centuries to counterbalancing its other colonial possessions such as the Indian states [Bombay, Madras, Bengal etc.], the African possessions [Senegambia-Malee, Algeria and Egypt] or its Asian possessions [Formosa, Choosan] as they gained [limited] political rights.

I've read the proposed Articles of Confederation, and they allow too much autonomy to states for the proposed United States to actually stay united. If they won, they would have just squabbled themselves into separate countries anyway. The states would never have sacrificed their rights for a strengthened government, especially after just beating George III.

The British Crown also extinguished the disgusting practice of slavery after the rebellion, after black people rose to prominence in fighting for the Crown. The 1780 Emancipation Proclamation Act presented to Parliament by The Right Honourable Frederick North, was passed almost unanimously in the aftermath of the crushing of American Uprising. The Act extended the historical policy of freeing slaves within the British Isles to the whole British Empire, and made it a moral imperative of the monarch as chosen by God, to combat the "Barbarous trans-Atlantic practice of the sale of Africans." The Act was just the final ending of slavery in an otherwise long history of the British favouring abolition gradually over several decades.

The Americans couldn't have abolished slavery, lest their already weak proposed government would have collapsed with their economy.

 

[AlexG]

To paraphrase former PM Olivier: “Do you really think 300 years of Britain could so easily be delivered into the hands of a mob!?”