With executive power held firmly by Westminster, the Southern Veto wouldn't have held as much sway as it did during early US history; in fact, the American South would've likely remained a rebellious province and forced London into a hostile and combative relationship with it, likely damaging the economic prospects of the South in that timeline

Then we have to take into account the rapid industrialization of England itself, which would've mirrored the dynamic the American North had with the South, even if the South still developed into the cotton export powerhouse it was, that economic logic would still run against the imperial logic of forestalling slave revolts and advancing the industrial labor agenda

The inevitable French revolution and the inevitable slave revolts it would've triggered would still led to an explosion of abolitionist thinking in London, for the simple imperial reasons that slave revolts are expensive and the entire British Empire can't put all its eggs in a perpetually disloyal province, no matter how lucrative the commodity it exports

To say nothing of the legal precedents of Somerset and Dunmore that the Amercian abolitionists could've wielded like a bludgeon in the colonies

[–] Euergetes@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Althistory quibbles

spoiler

there's a pretty big divergence between a TL where the independence war kicks off and dunmore does the decree, and one where the yankees are pacified in some other way. the latter (which i think is the neater counterfactual) also offsets the Revolution in France without the war debt. it was extremely difficult for the british to win the war as it was so the divergence for a counterfactual needs to predate hostilities a bit. no Quebec act, giving the entire ohio valley to Virginia, shit like that

But you make a mistake in identifying the Revolution as the catalyst to the heap of abolitionism in Britain, their abolitionist societies predated it and were very moderate. so they tried really hard to distance themselves from the Revolution, article I read recently talked about the 'radicals setting back' the abolitionist agenda for years. being seen to be associated with the Jacobins in the 1790s was extremely bad, and the Jacobins really highlighted it when they abolished slavery in 1794.

The big question which i allude to in the spoiler, is whether the integration of the 13 colonies to avoid independence gives the slavers authority and stakes in government or not. by bourgeois graft or formal sanction i think it's much more likely the planters would have grains in parliament and block the abolitionists better than the group from the Bahamas and Jamaica.

[–] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

it was extremely difficult for the british to win the war

Nah, even a minor change in strategy after the capture of New York would've destroyed the Continental Army and led to a likely British victory, and after 1778 even a slight uptick in naval deployment would've forced the French out (that ridiculously narrow ass margin in the Chesapeake), the British were just being cheap

But you make a mistake in identifying the Revolution as the catalyst to the heap of abolitionism in Britain

That's not what I was saying; my point is slave revolts in the Caribbean served as a catalyst and supercharged abolitionism in Britain by giving abolition an imperial logic and elite social sanction (even if the elites were politically divided and Jacobins weren't popular in themselves); the fear of slave revolts served to sour British elites on slavery as an imperial enterprise

The French Revolution absolutely triggered slave revolts in the Caribbean, but the slave revolts themselves didn't create some grand upsurge of moralistic feeling; no, even better, it led to elite terror at the idea that slavery would generate more Jacobinistic radicalism, which in its own cynical way had a profound effect on the prospects of abolitionism everywhere

[–] Euergetes@hexbear.net 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Absolutely not. the Battle of Long Island, though it could have been concluded with that heap of a douchebag Washington on a tree, was in our TL an overwhelming British victory. you don't automatically win the war by pressing that more. They still needed to take Philly.

The congress was still active and frankly, sans Washington, they would have had a better command staff.

[–] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

Focusing on taking useless cities and not pursuing the reeling Continental Army to its destruction is precisely why the British lost, they treated the war as a peer-to-peer conflict and naively believed taking the capitals would end the war

If the Continental Army had disintegrated, the blow to morale and legitimacy would've been absolute, and the colonial loyalists would've won the day politically, especially in the south