What would this country be like if we hadn't won our independence from Britian?

Question

See, I'm Native American from South Dakota and have been wondering this question for quite some time.

Answer 1

That's a very interesting question, and almost impossible to answer. So many factors and influences in world history would be different. I think Harry Harrison wrote an amusing little book based on something like that - I think it was called The Trans-Atlantic Tunnel, or something along those lines. You might be interested to see how he projected it.

Answer 2

What if questions are very shaky, especially when you ask what the world would be like 200 years after the change. My best guess is that there would have been no great westward expansion past the Mississippi River. The Louisiana Purchase never would have happened, leaving the Mississippi Valley and Plains under French control, at least until whatever happened to them after the French Revolution. The West would be controlled by Spain, perhaps by now an independant Mexico stretching as far north as California. This picture is into the early 1800s. Beyond then it is impossible to really say, would the South have fought when the British ended slavery? Maybe, maybe not, they were the original loyalist after all. Probably no economic or industrial boom without the expansion westward. What would become of Britain without the huge, unified, American aide in the World Wars is probably not good. The allies may well have lost and the whole world would be quite different.

Answer 3

The closest equivalent experience would be First Nations in Canada (first contact 1605).

Then possibly Australian Aboriginals (fc ~1800), and New Zealand Maori's (fc ~1820's) - however these interactions came later so were of a slightly different character.

There is a huge difference between when Brits new how to control smallpox, and when they didn't, because this was what killed most native Americans, on one occasion even deliberately.

There is also an outside possibility that North America would now be like either India, or Mexico. Totally independent but heavily culturally marked by outsiders. See link below.

P.S. as to the bad teeth comment made above, I'm originally from the UK, and I have perfect teeth, and I got all the treatment for FREE on the NHS as did all of my school friends (go see Sicko it's mostly true).

Answer 4

Well, I don't know about Americans, but in Canada we would probably have different accents. But really nothing else would be much different. America would probably be more like Canada though, you know, have a prime minister instead of a president, and have the Queen on the money, have a Governor General that acts in the place of the Queen in the house of commons ect...and stuff like that since it's pretty much the British political system. As for Native Americans, it would probably be the same, since nothing has really changed there since independance anyway. Plus Americans would say "God Bless the Queen" instead of "God Bless America". But the flag colours are the same. I mean, America thinks it doesn't have a class system, but it does, more so then Canada. With celebrities and the uber rich as royalty, and nobility, and then the middle class as the "common people", and the poor as the peasants.

Answer 5

Well, as we seem to have taken a lot of English culture and philosophy into the building here, we'd be similar in a lot of respects. BUT, we'd probably drink a lot more tea, and a lot less coffee, and maybe we would not be so gun-conscious after an unsuccessful revolution where we ended up stressing every citizens right to bear arms? While I like tea, I'd prefer to have the guaranteed choice to bear arms. Oh, we'd still speak a different variety of English than they do in England - especially since we (as the USA) wouldn't have purchased all the land from France, Spain, and Russia that we did, so there would be much more influence on this region of this continent from other languages and cultures.

Answer 6

Long live the Queen!

You would have held on to your land for another 100 years or so. But eventually there would have been problems.

Realize that the colonists were no match for you until after the civil war. But the Natives refusal to cooperate brought them down the same way the Greeks refused to ban together against the Romans.

Answer 7

Simple - Canada is that example! Still a colony, under British rule, it has vibrant inner cities, no slums, perfect teeth, fantastic food, a soaring Dollar, a magnificently humming industries, no deficit, no war mongering Bush, very little racism, friendly population, not much enemies. On the down side, it borders on the USA

Answer 8

My guess is that we'd be a great deal like Canada, and the whole issue of Native territories would've been settled a a long time ago, purely from necessity.

Answer 9

British.

Answer 10

england was happy with it's lil 13 colonies, the french only wanted to trade for gold and furs. None of us had any use for gold, to soft to make a knife or anything useful.

The Spaniards only wanted gold. Almost all of them longed to go back to spain.

I think we'd still have MOST of our lands. The poor that came here probably would have just adapted to our ways and not really caused a problem.

Them poor irish were just looking for food