English Canada/French Carolina: A Timeline
- Thread starter Gabingston
- Start date
In the late 19th or early 20th Century.
Anyway, my British Isles update is well underway. One of my next updates is going to be on the Anglo countries in the Southern Hemisphere (Australia, Natal and Patagonia), and with Patagonia I've decided to change their flag. So far British Patagonia's flag has been that of OTL's Falkland Islands with a red backdrop, but given the large Mapuche population, who I imagine sided with the British over the Spanish given the centuries-old conflict between the Mapuche and Spain, I've changed it to one with the Star of Arauco on it. So, behold, the new flag of Patagonia:
Here is the link to the flag's source:
Part 155: The British Isles Chapter 1 - Rule Britannia
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Part 155: The British Isles - Rule Britannia
In the nearly six years I have been writing this timeline, I do not believe I have done an update focusing on the British Isles. That is admittedly quite surprising, given that the British Empire has played a huge role in this timeline. Well, better late than never I guess. Once a rainy, mysterious archipelago on the outer fringe of the civilized world, Britain had become in many ways the center of said world, the beating heart of one of history’s largest empires. While the height of Britain’s power and influence, even within their own empire, had long passed, old Britannia still maintained its status as the historic heart of the Anglosphere. I could continue the intro for a while longer, but I think it’s better to start the update proper now, so let’s commence our tour of Britain in by far its largest and most important city…London, founded by the Roman Empire in 47 AD and located along the lower reaches of the River Thames, had become the world’s largest city in the early 19th Century, and while it had been surpassed by others in the 20th Century, it was still one of the world’s largest, most important and most iconic cities. 7 million people called the Greater London area home, one of Europe’s largest cities alongside Paris, Berlin, Constantinople and Moscow. The city’s landmarks like St. Paul’s Cathedral, The Tower of London and the Abbey and Palace at Westminster were icons of not just London, but the UK at large, drawing tourists from far and wide. While the majority of the core Anglosphere’s population lived outside of the UK (primarily in America), London remained the primary residence of the royal family, with multiple mansions and palaces throughout the city and surrounding area being home to royalty. The city was divided into a variety of neighborhoods, with the cityscape of said neighborhoods ranging from working class tenements and elegant row houses in the inner core of the city to more spacious houses and duplexes on the outskirts. Like the cityscape, the populous of London came from a variety of backgrounds. A variety of social classes inhabited the city, from the blue collar working class to the now quite large middle class and finally the city’s upper class, whether they come from old aristocratic or nouveau-riche business origins. This isn’t even factoring in the increasing number of foreigners that were settling in London, whether they be from Continental Europe or other parts of the Anglosphere. London was arguably the cultural capital of the Anglosphere, with the posh upper class accent being the prestige dialect in the UK, Australia and Patagonia and heavily influencing the Commonwealth’s prestige dialect. London was a massive center of media, whether it be literature, music, theater, radio or the newfangled box of idiocy, television. London was home to the primary base of operations for the Royal Broadcasting Agency, or RBA for short, the primary public media outlet across the Anglosphere, with local branches located both in the UK and elsewhere. Being the capital of such a large imperium, it was no surprise that London was an economic juggernaut. The Old Quarter of London was the home to both the Bank of England, one of the biggest banks in the world and the London Stock Exchange, one of the biggest stock exchanges in the world. The city had abundant greenspace in the form of the Kensington Hyde, Green and St. James’s parks, among other parks and gardens scattered throughout the city. There was also an extensive transit network, from the world’s first underground railway network to one of the world’s largest and busiest airports, flying to destinations as far away as the American West Coast and Japan. The UK was the first country to build railways, and London, to no one’s surprise, was the main hub of the country’s network. Rail lines radiated out from the capital in all directions, though primarily north and west due to London’s position in the southeast. On that note, I think it’s time we leave London and explore the rest of the island.
While the UK was made up of several constituent countries, anyone could see that England was the head of this union. Not only was the aforementioned capital in England, but England was home to over 80% of the UK’s population and most of its largest cities. Southern England outside of London was split into 22 counties, from Cornwall in the west to Norfolk and Suffolk in the east. The South of England was a land of rolling green hills and charming towns and villages (the Cotswolds being the prime example), which served as inspiration for many a poet and painter. Some of the most notable landmarks in Southern England were the ancient, mysterious structure of Stonehenge, the white Cliffs of Dover just 20 miles across The Channel from France and various cathedrals such as those in Canterbury and Winchester. Important cities and towns in England’s south included Oxford and Cambridge, the homes of two of the world’s most prestigious universities, the resort towns of Brighton and Torquay, the historic towns of Bath and Salisbury and finally the port cities of Portsmouth, Southampton and Plymouth, the latter being the point of departure for the Pilgrims in 1620. Southern England, while being the home to some industries, was not the industrial heartland of the UK. For that, we’ll have to move a bit further north to the Midlands.
The Midlands, as the name would imply, were situated in the center of England. The Midlands consisted of 11 historic counties, from Shropshire and Herefordshire in the west to Lincolnshire in the east. The Midlands’ premier city was Birmingham, a key city in the birth of the Industrial Revolution. Birmingham, after all, was the city where chemist and engineer James Watt invented the version of the steam engine that would kick the industrialization of Britain into high gear, and Birmingham would be a major center of said industrialization. Jewelry and gunmaking were two distinct industries of the city, and many other forms of manufacturing were present in the city. While not the cultural juggernaut that London was, Birmingham was home to a number of theaters, concert halls, galleries and other cultural institutions. Add in nearby sister cities like Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton and you get one of the largest urban areas in the UK, with a population surpassing two million. Other important cities in the Midlands included Nottingham, home to a certain bow-wielding folk hero, Leicester, whose name was pronounced without half of its letters, Peterborough, Stoke-on-Trent and last but not least Coventry, the destination of exile for many an alternate historian. Outside of the big cities, places like Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon and the many charming villages and centuries-old castles that dotted the landscape defined much of the region, as was the case for England as a whole. Now let’s go to the other of England’s three macro-regions, the industrial heartland of Britain, Northern England.
While the South and Midlands had their fair share of industry, it was the North of England that was the most industrial of the trio. Coal deposits were found in all three of England’s macro-regions, but the North had the largest deposits, giving it an edge in terms of industrialization. Cities like Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Hull, Middlesbrough and Newcastle boomed with factories during the industrial revolution, employing thousands upon thousands of workers.
The two big dogs of the North’s cities, though, were Liverpool and Manchester. Separated by a mere 30 miles, Liverpool and Manchester were close enough that they could be considered one greater metro area, the second largest in the UK after London if considered as such. Liverpool, with its location on the coast at the mouth of the River Mersey, was the UK’s main transatlantic trading port, with goods brought in from the colonies (often produced by slave labor) fueling local industry. During the 19th Century Liverpool was one of the busiest ports in the world, and while its position in global trade had slipped since then it was still very important to Britain’s trading sector.
Manchester, a short drive or ride away from Liverpool, was Britain’s main textile manufacturing hub, using both local linen and wool as well as cotton imported from abroad, whether it be The Americas, Egypt or India. While textile manufacturing had long passed its peak by the mid-late 20th Century, the industrial heritage was baked into the city’s culture and cityscape, and other types of manufacturing had since established themselves there. Manchester was also Northern England’s primary financial hub, second to London within the UK. With its proximity to Ireland, many Irish had settled in the Liverpool-Manchester area, as well as a number of other foreigners who were drawn in by the industrial work that could be found. As a result the two cities had a distinctly Irish character that could be felt even at this point in time. Nearby to Liverpool and Manchester were Warrington (located directly between the two), Bolton, Rochdale, Wigan and St. Helens.
Apart from the industrial cities already mentioned, Northern England had the historic cities of York, Lancaster, Doncaster and Chester, which showed off some of the most historic architecture in all of Great Britain. I’ve mentioned the rural beauty of England in the segments on the South and Midlands, but it was the North that probably had the most striking scenery of the three. The Pennines, a chain of hills that ran through the center of England’s north gave it more topographic variation than the more southerly parts of the country. Areas like the Peak District between Manchester and Sheffield and the North York Moors in, well, north Yorkshire were places where those from the industrial cities of the north could experience nature without breaking the bank. The Lake District, located in the county of Cumbria, was possibly the most notable area of natural beauty in all of England. The picturesque landscape of pristine blue lakes, quaint villages and uplands that included England’s highest mountain made the Lake District a popular destination for northerners seeking a get away from the city and for foreign tourists looking to see a wilder side of England. All 12 of Northern England’s counties could merit a bit of attention, but now seems like a good time to move on from England to the UK’s other two constituent countries.
Directly west of the English Midlands lie Wales, the smallest and least populous of the UK’s three constituent countries. Wales, with a population of just over 2.5 million, was much like England in terms of its scenery, with rolling green hills, verdant fields and small villages dotted about the landscape. The rolling hills became more elevated highland areas in south Wales’ Brecon Beacons and north Wales’ Snowdonia, the latter being home to Wales’s highest peak. The Welsh population was mainly concentrated along the southern shore, where Wales’s largest cities like Newport, Swansea and the capital Cardiff were located. The main economic engine in Wales throughout the industrial revolution had been mining, particularly the mining of slate and coal, with mining towns dotted the hills north of Cardiff and Newport. Other sectors like manufacturing, shipping and agriculture played a role in the Welsh economy as well.
Politically speaking, Wales was in an interesting spot. While Wales had been politically part of England since at least the middle of the 16th Century, it retained a distinct cultural, ethnic and linguistic identity from the English. While the Anglican Church was the state church in Wales, most Welshmen belonged to other nonconformist Protestant churches, though to be fair that was applicable to many Englishmen as well. What set Wales apart from England the most was the Welsh language, a Celtic language most closely related to Breton and the now extinct Cornish. While Welsh had been losing ground to English for centuries, many in Wales still spoke it as a first or second language, the highest share of Welsh speakers being in the country’s northwest. The Welsh had made their mark within the greater British Empire as well, particularly in Patagonia, where Welsh colonists had founded a number of settlements and, while primarily English speaking at this point, Welsh could still be heard from time to time.
After the First Global War of the 1860s and 70s, nationalism and regional identities became more widely expressed in non-English areas of the UK, and Wales was no exception. While outright separatism wasn’t very common, Welsh regionalism rose throughout the late 19th Century. After the Second Global War, the UK would experience a reorganization regarding its internal nations, with England, Scotland and Wales being formally defined as distinct countries within the UK, “countries within a country”, one could say (Ireland is a different matter we’ll get to later). This model of devolution within the same country would serve as a model to other countries like Russia (more on them in a coming update), and would satiate Welsh and Scottish regionalism.
On that note, I think it’s about time we cover Scotland. Occupying the northern 40% of Great Britain and its outlying islands, Scotland was the other major player in the formation of the UK, alongside England. Scotland had been a united country in some form since the 9th Century, frequently warring with its southern neighbor over the borderlands between the two. The repeated conflicts between England and Scotland over the Borders would end when the Scottish King James I inherited the English throne in 1603, thus uniting the two kingdoms under a personal union. The Union of The Two Crowns would last for a little over a century until, in 1707, England and Scotland were formally combined into the United Kingdom of Great Britain.
Scotland, with a population of approximately five million, could broadly be divided into two main regions, the Lowlands and the Highlands. The Lowlands, making up the southern and eastern portion of Scotland, was a continuation of the scenery found in Northern England. Rolling hills, lush green pastures and fertile valleys was the typical landscape in the Scottish Lowlands. The Lowlands were culturally part of the Anglo continuum, speaking either standard Scottish English or Scots, a descendant of Old English that was distinct enough from Standard English to where it could be considered a separate language. Most of Scotland’s population lived in the Lowlands, specifically in the Central Lowlands, which was the location of Scotland’s two largest cities. Glasgow, situated at the western end of the Central Lowlands near the mouth of the River Clyde, was one of the centers of Britain’s industrial revolution, and today was Scotland’s main economic hub. 40 miles east of Glasgow lay Edinburgh, Scotland’s political capital and one of the most beautiful cities in all of Britain. The city was home to landmarks like the castle that shared the city’s name and had been home to Scotland’s royalty, St. Giles’ Cathedral, which dated back to the 13th Century and Arthur’s seat, the remains of an extinct volcano that rose 600 feet above the surrounding city. In spite of Glasgow being larger, Edinburgh may be the more well known city outside of the UK, even lending the Gaelic form of its name (Dunedin) to Patagonia’s second largest city (side note, I’m going to use names from OTL’s New Zealand and not-British-ITTL Australia for Patagonian cities, retcons being likely). Some other notable cities and towns in the Scottish Lowlands were Dumfries near the English border, Ayr on the western shore, Falkirk between Glasgow and Edinburgh, Dundee whose name may or may not be paired with a large reptile and Aberdeen, Scotland’s third largest city and an important city for Scotland’s growing offshore oil drilling industry.
Now we get to Scotland’s other main region, the Highlands. Taking up Scotland’s north/western half, the Highlands were the most sparsely populated and wild part of Great Britain. The landscape of mountains, valleys and knolls, long deforested and replaced with pastures for cattle and sheep had become the defining image of Scotland in the imaginations of foreigners, even though most of Scotland’s actual population lived in the aforementioned Lowlands. Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles, sat in the Highlands just east of the town of Fort William. The long, narrow lakes, or loch in Gaelic, were another feature of the Highlands’ landscape that became notorious outside of Scotland, most famously Loch Ness, which was said to be the home of a monster that lurked beneath the waves. Just north of Loch Ness was Inverness, the only real city in the Highlands, but even Inverness only had a population in the low tens of thousands, which goes to show how sparse the highlands were compared to the remainder of Britain.
The Highlands were also culturally different from the Lowlands, as while the Lowlands almost entirely spoke English and/or Scots, many Highlanders spoke Scottish Gaelic. Peripheral areas of the Highlands like the Inner and Outer Hebrides were the heart of Scotland’s Gaeldom, with Gaelic still being a widely spoken language in those areas. With that said, Gaelic speakers were still a small share of Scotland’s total population, even in much of the Highlands, as the language had declined over the previous 150 years in favor of English. The decline of Gaelic was accelerated by the Highland Clearances, where mostly Gaelic speaking peasants were evicted by their landlords and made to move elsewhere, often paid to make long overseas journeys. While the last clearances had taken place over a century ago by this point, their effects could still be seen in the Highlands, as the vast pastures that I mentioned earlier were in large part created by the clearances.
Scotland, with its long history as an independent country, had more nationalism and separatism than Wales, though it wasn’t enough to cause London too much of a headache. With that said, devolution was an active topic of discussion in both Edinburgh and London, namely the question of whether Scotland (and Wales for that matter) should get a separate parliament to handle local matters. The Scottish had a large impact on the British Empire as a whole, having a large presence in the British military. Scotland before the Act of Union had its own colonies, most notably New Caledonia in North America (not sure if the Darien Scheme happens ITTL), and after the union was enacted Scots, whether they be Lowlanders or Highlanders, settled across the Empire from America to Australia. Many places across the British Empire bore Scottish names, as was mentioned earlier with Dunedin in Patagonia. Anyway, I think I’ve spent enough time in Great Britain, so we’ll now cross the North Channel to the Emerald Isle, where things are sure to get a bit interesting…
I've decided to split the British Isles chapter into smaller parts. Part one is on Britain proper, while part two will be about Ireland. I may also have a part three to cover more cultural stuff, but that is yet to be determined.
My plan for Ireland's political status as of now will be limited self-government in the Late 19th Century and full independence as a Dominion after the Second Global War (1911-1916), so around 1920 give or take a few years.
What better way to handle this matter than a poll!
Is Ireland Independent ITTL?: https://strawpoll.com/w4nWWjYLxnA
I voted yes. Independence as a Dominion is different from becoming a fully independent republic.