Note: The first three-quarters of this scenario appeared in StrategyPage.com. They decided not to run the last of the four sections for some reason, so it appears here for the first time.

People have speculated on what might have happened if the American Revolution had never happened, or if it had failed. I’m going to look at another possibility: What if Britain had been able to hang onto a significant block of the southern states at the end of the revolutionary war?

I’ll briefly summarize what actually happened, figure out what it would have taken to get to a partial British victory that left them in control of at least some of the southern states, and look at the consequences of that victory.

What actually happened: In 1780, after several years of concentrating on the northern and middle colonies, Britain decided to concentrate on retaking the southern colonies, then gradually moving north as the rebellion was crushed in one colony after another.

Britain already held Florida and Georgia. In May of 1780 a powerful British army crushed American forces in Charlestown South Carolina. The British won a number of additional victories in the southern colonies, but they found those victories hard to sustain. Rebel militias kept springing back up in conquered areas, always a threat. Continental army forces always lurked on the border of the conquered area, usually just out of reach of the British.

Meanwhile, the British kept picking up more enemies. The French had come in after the British defeat at Saratoga, looking for a way to avenge their defeat in the French and Indian War. The Spanish joined them in June 1779 in a bid to recover Gibraltar. The British provoked a war with Holland in December 1780 to stop the Dutch from shipping vital naval supplies to their enemies.

British General Cornwallis eventually passed through a large part of South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, but actually controlled little of the territory of those states. Actual British control weakened as they theoretically conquered more territory. Eventually Cornwallis found himself trapped in Virginia between a French and American army and a French fleet and was forced to surrender his army, effectively ending the American part of the war.

The American Revolution as a proto-World War: Like many wars of the late 1700s and early 1800s, the American Revolution was eventually fought on almost every continent or significantly influenced by events on those continents.

While the rebels and redcoats fought in North America, powerful French, Spanish and eventually Dutch fleets challenged Britain for control of the English Channel and attacked British shipping. Spain and France challenged Britain for control of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean island of Minorca. All three powers fought the British for colonies in the West Indies that they considered more valuable than the forests of North America.

Unrest in the Spanish colonies of South America made Spain wary of supporting the possibly contagious example of independence for American colonies, while the British contemplated raids along the Pacific coast of South America and against Manila. The British attacked or planned to attack Dutch possessions in South Africa and Asia, while fighting French-supported hostile powers in India.

Armies, supplies, and ships flowed between theatres. Battles or hurricanes in the West Indies changed the naval balance of power along the coast of North America, making it possible or impossible for the British to support and reinforce their armies. Ships of the line sent to India or held back to defend against a French/Spanish invasion of Britain were obviously not available to maintain British control of North American waters.

The European powers had to guess where the opposing countries were going to send fleets and manpower, and move to counter those moves. They did that in a world where it could take months to transmit orders or move a fleet from theatre to theatre, even assuming favorable winds and no communication breakdowns.

What would it have taken to give Britain control of the Deep South at the end of the revolution? There are two issues to consider here. First, we’ll look at the situation on the ground. Second, we’ll look at what it would take to get the combatants to accept that situation as an acceptable end of the war.

The difficulty of having Britain end up in control on the ground differs from state to state. East Florida and Georgia probably wouldn’t be too much of a problem. Georgia was thinly populated and the British held onto it without a great deal of trouble. Britain held East Florida (most of the territory of the state of Florida) throughout the war. This was territory seized from Spain as part of the French and Indian war, and never considered part of the 13 colonies. It was traded to Spain at the end of the war as a consolation prize for Spain’s failure to get back Gibraltar.

West Florida, which consisted of a strip of the Gulf Coast reaching at least to Mobile Alabama, and arguably further west, was conquered by Spain in 1780 and 1781, one of the few Spanish military successes of the war. It was a thinly settled area without a great deal of apparent value to the combatants, but it would be important for the future of any British-held area in the south.

South Carolina would be more of a problem for the British to hold on to. Rebel militias kept springing up and waging guerilla war against the British. The presence of strong Loyalist militias made the battles in South Carolina in many ways a civil war, and a very bitterly fought one, with atrocities and allegations of atrocities on both sides.

British forces and their loyalist allies could probably have held the more settled coastal areas of South Carolina against rebel militia and the small portion of the continental army that Washington could spare for the South if they had concentrated exclusively on that, especially if they had been able to avoid self-inflicted wounds like the loyalist defeat at Kings Mountain. The British would have had ongoing difficulties controlling the Scot/Irish settlers in the hills and mountains further west, and they would have remained somewhat vulnerable to a joint American continental army/French attack of the kind that historically destroyed Cornwallis’s army at Yorktown.

Most of North Carolina and Virginia were probably beyond Britain’s power to take and hold at this stage of the war, at least with the armies they could reasonably have been expected to have available. A British-held block consisting of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and possibly part of North Carolina was probably about the best that the British could hope for in the south by 1780.

What would it take to get the combatants to accept an end of the American Revolution that has Britain holding on to the Deep South and the letting the rest of the colonies become independent?

Spain wouldn’t have a problem with that outcome. Spain jumped into the war to pick up easy booty in the West Indies, and get back Gibraltar and Minorca. To Spain, the thirteen colonies were a threat, both as a bad example to the Spanish Empire and as an expanding force that would eventually push against that empire’s weakly held North American frontiers. Spain was willing to get out of the war as long as it got Gibraltar back. The problem was that British public opinion wouldn’t allow that, and Spain was incapable of retaking Gibraltar, even with French help.

France was more friendly to the American rebels, but by 1780 it was in a great deal of financial trouble, trouble that eventually played a role in the French Revolution. The French toyed with the idea of a peace in place, which would have left the British in control of the Deep South, plus New York City and part of Maine. They would probably have been willing to go for that if the campaigns of 1781 had been less successful.

The American rebels would not have been happy with that kind of partial victory. At the same time, the infant US was in far less control of its fate than it had been earlier in the war. The reasons for that were mainly financial. George Washington had built up a continental army good enough to stand up against the British regulars, but the colonies had not figured out how to pay for that army. The continental congress had no direct authority to tax. It was dependent on individual states for money and supplies.

The states were financially hard-pressed too, and often used the resources they had to build up local forces. All but two of the states had their own navies. Those were mostly for coast and river defense, but a few states like Massachusetts and Virginia had significant forces of seagoing ships.

By late 1780, the American rebels had been at war for over four years and were at the end of their financial ability. They were only able to feed and pay the army because of a French subsidy and they were chronically short of equipment, especially cannons and gunpowder.

The continental congress’s paper currency was becoming nearly worthless, demoralizing the people who had accepted it as payment. Unpaid soldiers would eventually mutiny, fortunately after the British had given up on their efforts to retake the colonies. Rebel leaders feared that the continental army would eventually disintegrate or that popular support for the rebellion would collapse due to the economic problems.

The British administration would be the major obstacle to peace. While support for the war was dwindling in Britain, the king saw American independence as a personal humiliation and influential ministers saw the British southern strategy not as a way to carve off some colonies but as the beginning of a process of gradually rolling up the colonies and restoring British rule. It took the major defeat at Yorktown and the fall of the British administration to force Britain to give up on that hope.

So, what would have had to happen to get the combatants to agree to an independent United States that did not include the Deep South? Britain would have to hold onto the colonies on the ground, but suffer some shock that convinced the government that winning back all of the American colonies was no longer possible. France would have to be convinced that continuing the war served no useful purpose.

If Spain decided to leave the war France would probably be forced to also because only the power of the French and Spanish fleets together made confronting Britain at sea feasible. Spain would either have to get back Gibraltar or be convinced that getting it back was no longer possible.

If France and Spain decided to make peace it would be difficult for the infant US to continue, because French supplies and subsidies were vital to the continental army. What would it take to put all of those factors in place?

The divergence: The key to making this work would be knocking Spain out of the war while giving the British a reason to go along with a peace that left the bulk of the infant US independent. Since the American Revolution was only part of a worldwide war, all of that war is fair game as a point of divergence.

Naval power shaped the land battles of the war, so let’s look for a naval divergence. In the summer of 1780, the British home fleet tried to do two things at once. It tried to protect incoming and outgoing convoys while preventing a concentration of the enemy fleets in the channel that might allow an invasion. On August 9, 1780 it failed rather spectacularly in protecting a major convoy. After spending over a month looking for the enemy, the British fleet went back to port to resupply. A primarily Spanish fleet then captured at least fifty-five out of sixty-three outbound ships in a large convoy. The Spanish and French fleet took over 3000 prisoners, many of them soldiers bound for the West Indies, along with large amounts of material.

Let’s see if that could be our point of divergence. Let’s say the convoy sailed a week earlier. Historically the British fleet accompanied it briefly on August 2, then parted company and eventually left the area. Now it is quite possible that the two fleets and the convoy would simply sail past one another with no contact, but the presence of the two fleets and a huge, valuable convoy could set up a major naval battle over the convoy.

The British would have been somewhat outnumbered, probably 24 or 25 ships of the line to 32. On a ship versus ship basis, the British had a slight advantage over the French, and a major advantage over the Spanish—primarily in training and leadership. Also, the Spanish and French had trouble coordinating their actions, and that could give the British a major edge.

Sea battles of this era between evenly matched fleets were rarely decisive, but the huge prize involved makes this one more deadly than usual. The Spanish fleet is reluctant to let the convoy get away, and the British fleet finds it difficult to disengage because doing so would leave the convoy to its fate.

A huge disorganized sea battle ensues, which the British win due to their superior training and lack of coordination between the French and Spanish parts of the opposing fleet. The French get away fairly lightly, with a few ships severely damaged, but none taken. The Spanish lose heavily, with six ships of the line captured, two more damaged so severely that they sink on the way back to port, and most of the rest of the fleet badly damaged.

The French have recently developed a tactic of firing mainly at the rigging of opposing ships rather than the hull to destroy their mobility rather than sinking them. That tactic takes its toll on the British. The British actually lose only one ship of the line, but the fleet comes out of the battle in shambles, with over half the ships severely damaged, mainly in their rigging.

The convoy makes its way out of the battle zone and on to its destinations. That makes the British considerably stronger in the West Indies. It also means that other things being equal they will have much more ability to move troops and supplies for the rest of the war. The British fleet limps back to port with only ten ships of the line capable of going back to sea without major repairs. In spite of the captured prizes, the British wonder if they’ve won a Pyrhic victory. The French fleet is still fairly much intact, and the British don’t have a lot left in home waters to stand in its way if the French try another invasion. As that realization strikes home, it shifts some minds and votes in parliament, bringing home to British leaders just how perilous a position the war is leaving them in.

The naval battle impacts North America after a lag time of a month or so. The British administration sees both peril and opportunity. The peril comes from the damage to their fleet. Too few ships of the line stand between Britain and a French invasion. The opportunity comes from the heavy Spanish losses. Britain and Spain have been quietly negotiating for a separate peace. Now the British hope that another Spanish defeat will knock Spain out of the war.

The British can’t do a lot about the invasion peril other than trying to get ships seaworthy again as soon as possible. Moving ships from the West Indies or North America won’t help much because by the time they got back the weather in the channel would make an invasion extremely unlikely. The British tough it out for the next couple of months. They are forced to delay outgoing convoys and divert incoming ones because of the temporary French superiority at sea, but the French aren’t fully aware of the British weakness and probably couldn’t put an invasion force together quickly enough to take advantage of it anyway.

The British try to take advantage of the opportunity by looking for ways to go after Spain. British General Cornwallis loses about a fourth of his army, and is ordered to go over to the defensive shortly after winning a smashing victory over the Americans at Camden so that the British can go on the offensive in West Florida, where Spain has recently taken some British posts. The added forces in West Florida allow the British to retake Mobile in West Florida. In the longer term, British plans to attack Spanish possessions in the Pacific go forward.

Negotiations between Britain and Spain continue, but they can’t get past the fact that Spain insists on getting Gibraltar back and British public opinion simply won’t allow that, even if the British government thought it was necessary. The negotiations do allow Spain to extract more help from France. The French need Spain to have any chance of winning the naval war, but Spanish priorities are drawing French resources away from French objectives in the West Indies and North America.

Cornwallis spends the rest of 1780 hanging on to the territory he has already seized in South Carolina and seething about being denied a chance at following up his decisive victory. He doesn’t know that going on the defensive has short-circuited a process that would have turned his victories into a series of defeats. He doesn’t move into North Carolina, which means that there is no battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780. Historically, the Battle of Kings Mountain revived rebel confidence and destroyed one of the most effective Tory forces in the south.

The British repair their home fleet and regain their self-confidence in a few months. By that time it is probably too late in the year for a French invasion anyway. The crisis does force them to rethink their attitude toward Holland for the time being. Adding twenty Dutch ships of the line to their enemies makes even less sense in this version of 1780 than it did in ours.

As the perceived crisis passes in the channel, a new one develops in the West Indies. As happened historically, a powerful hurricane devastates the English-held islands in late 1780, leaving them vulnerable to an attack. As the hurricane season passes, ships of the line and manpower flow back to the West Indies to cover the losses.

In late 1780 and early 1781, British operations in the Pacific take their toll on the Spanish empire. The English take Manila, just as they did late in the French and Indian war. British privateers and warships appear on the Pacific coast of Latin America, causing panic far beyond what their numbers justify. In Peru, Spanish defensive measures against the British divert manpower from a serious Indian revolt led by a man claiming to be a descendant of the Incas, making that revolt even more serious.

As they did historically, the British try to attack across Nicaragua and seize a port on the Pacific coast, but fail due primarily to disease. A Pacific port at the end of an overland route short enough to be practical would revolutionize the balance of power in the Pacific, but for now the British have to make small raids at the end of a very fragile supply line.

France sets the 1781 campaigning season as the deadline to do something decisive in the war. Spain is definitely getting wobbly as an ally and needs victories to shore her up. As happened historically, the French try a slightly different strategy than in previous years. They bring essentially all of their naval power north from the West Indies in the summer of 1781, giving them a temporary naval superiority over the British in North American waters.

The French don’t have the wide margin they did historically because they’ve had to detach ships to support the depleted Spanish fleet in European waters. They also don’t have the easy target that Cornwallis gave them at Yorktown.

Washington wants the French to join him in an attack on New York, but the British defenses there make the French wary. The French could attack Charlestown in South Carolina, but the defenses there are also strong, and Washington would find it difficult to move a significant part of the Continental Army there in time to coordinate with the French, who have a fall deadline to get back to the West Indies.

In the end, the French make a half-hearted attempt to help Washington take New York, fail, and go back to the West Indies. Spain really wants out of the war by now. It is willing to take Minorca and the return of Manila for its trouble. The French also want out, especially after they suffer a rather severe defeat in the West Indies in early 1782 as they did historically.

The invasion scare in Britain has convinced the government that it needs to come to some sort of agreement as soon as possible, as has the growing cost and unpopularity of the war.

Negotiations get serious, and the infant US is faced with the choice of either cutting a deal or fighting on alone. It chooses to cut a deal which leaves the British with a southern bloc of colonies—Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, along with theoretical control of their hinterlands all the way to the border with Spanish-held Louisiana.

The British may or may not hang on to New York City and the immediate vicinity. The British may or may not hold on to more of the old Northwest than they did historically. In the next segment we’ll look at the impact of this on the rest of history.

As the war ends, Loyalists flee the independent states in considerable numbers. Some of them settle in Canada. Others settle in the British-held areas of the south, solidifying British rule in those colonies. Thousands of ex-slaves who have been freed by the British and who would have died in the battles leading up to Yorktown settle in British Florida, making a majority of the population in some areas.

So where do things go from here? The Revolution has left unfinished business from the point of view of both sides, just as it did historically. Now ‘the lost southern states’ join Canada as points of friction between Britain and the newly independent states.

There will almost certainly be at least one more war between the mother country and the newly independent states. Historically that happened in the war of 1812. In this set of circumstances it might happen sooner than 1812 or possibly a little later. A lot depends on events in Europe. Does a different and slightly earlier end of the American Revolution make a difference in the French Revolution? A slightly earlier or later French Revolution might set off a train of ripples that would turn Europe unrecognizable. Napoleon might not have a chance to rise, or he might rise and maintain power in Europe.

Would the states that gained their independence form a union like the one that formed historically? The balance between slave and free states would be thrown off by the fact that there would be two less slave states to begin with and much less room for easy expansion of slavery. There would be more of a military incentive for a strong union with British held territory both north and south of the independent states. On the other hand, some of the compromises that made that strong union possible would be more difficult with two southern states missing. It is possible that the independent states would fragment, with an independent Virginia, a loose New England confederation, and a bloc of the middle states. On the other hand, the English threat might force a much more centralized United States.

The southern colonies would presumably eventually gain a status similar to Canada’s, with a great deal of autonomy but with defense ties to the mother country. They might face continuing military challenges in the back country.

The Scots/Irish settlers in the frontier areas would probably not accept the loss of independence. Some of them might immigrate north to the independent states. Others might push further inland and establish “free republics” like the Boer states of South Africa. Those republics would be on British claimed territory and among hostile Indians. Trade and especially arms shipments between the independent states and the “free republics” would be a continuing source of friction between Britain and the United States (assuming that there was a United States).

If European politics stayed on approximately the same course it did historically, Britain would probably seize Louisiana rather than see it bought by the United States. That might actually be the precipitating event for a war between the two powers. (The war of 1803?)

If the southern colonies remained a British possession, the United States and Britain would almost inevitably be forced into a continuing rivalry as the frontier flowed west. Would control of the southern colonies strengthen Britain more than that rivalry weakened it?

If the southern colonies remained British, there almost certainly wouldn’t be an American Civil War in anything like the form it took historically. On the other hand, there could easily be other friction and even wars—between eastern and western states or between New England on the one hand and the western and southern states on the other.

How would all of this affect the industrial revolution? How would it affect the development of railways and mass interchangeable production? Would the British still develop the ‘second British empire’ in India? Would the British still send convicts to Australia and settle New Zealand? How would this affect the British Empire’s attitudes toward slavery? The British Empire would have at least two colonies that depended on it. Would the British still conquer and settle of South Africa? Would the British pressure on Spain in the Pacific be enough to tip the balance in favor of the Indian revolt in Peru? (Extremely unlikely, but not totally impossible)

Would there still be World Wars in this alternate history? If so, would the United States and Britain fight on the same side or would this lead to the kind of World Wars in North America scenario that Turtledove has explored? Would this version of the US be a technological leader or a backwater? Certainly the history of the southern part of North America would be dramatically more convoluted.