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Simple question really, what's the earliest that the Great Powers can start getting the hell out of the rest of the world and start shutting down their Empires?
There was some talk in the UK over the immoral nature of EIC governance before and during the Indian Mutiny. If somehow the Mutiny is successful or Britain divests herself of ruling India - the raison d'etre of a lot of the rest of the Empire goes away. but idk seems a little utopian to me
On reflection that would make a good AH story, playing with the readership's expectations. I tried to do it a bit with the Great Jihad in LTTW (uprising that could be painted as 'anti-colonial' ejects Britain, France and Portugal from parts of India, just ensuring that those parts will become Chinese, Korean etc. colonies instead a few years later).I think the big difficulty is how you keep another colonial entity from coming in and conquering the colonies.
Well, then I guess the POD should be early enough to fix that, shouldn't it? I'm fond of a POD I saw mentioned on this forum: Victoria dies young, so Augustus of Hanover becomes King of Britain, and Chartism gets going into a real revolution. I suspect a British republic under the red, white, and green would have a different foreign policy, even if not entirely anti-colonial in practice.The only exception I can think of to this is a few Chartists, who were fairly powerless anyways.
Well, then I guess the POD should be early enough to fix that, shouldn't it? I'm fond of a POD I saw mentioned on this forum: Victoria dies young, so Augustus of Hanover becomes King of Britain, and Chartism gets going into a real revolution. I suspect a British republic under the red, white, and green would have a different foreign policy, even if not entirely anti-colonial in practice.
Sure, sure. It's still nineteenth century Britain. But a Britain that treats Africa and Asia like the US treated Latin America (maintaining nominal independence and nominal native government even in the midst of military occupation) is going to make the decolonization process play out very differently IMO.There are a couple of issues with this. First of all, I’m unsure if a Chartist Britain would really get rid of the colonial empire. Even on Ireland, they were divided - while O’Connor supported repealing the Act of Union, Lovett did not. On colonialism, most Chartists definitely supported it, albeit with reforms. The Chartists opposed to all forms of colonialism I was talking about were pretty obscure - these were 1850s Chartists, when the movement was on its deathbed.
Sure, sure. It's still nineteenth century Britain. But a Britain that treats Africa and Asia like the US treated Latin America (maintaining nominal independence and nominal native government even in the midst of military occupation) is going to make the decolonization process play out very differently IMO.