Ok. So they have probably enough resources to kick off at least small scale industrialization. Probably just processing of crops (canning, spinning, such like). Not to hard to finance that small scale stuff.
NOt a powerhouse economy, but they can pay the bills.
Questions are:
What happens...
Mustering then was all about personal contact. Squire might turn out for King James if asked by an Englishmen. Get a Frenchman fronting up, and no way.
(Damn fool rules about using electronics devices! Hold the thought)
Geo I was a good general, better probably than his son, though no doubt more likely to say 'to hell with this, it's not worth it, Hanover is where I love'
But Geo II was quite competent, and he liked soldiering. Politics and diplomacy confused and vexed him, but fighting was straight forward...
Yes and no. The cricket ball blow caused a large long standing abscess to burst. Absent cricket ball the abscess, would have killed him in a short while anyway.
He wouldn't run. Geo II was many things but coward was never one of them. And he was the last King of England to personally lead his men into battle. He'd fight. (He said as much in '45). And there'd be a lot would fight beside him. A Papist prince , at the head of a French army , even...
You really need smokeless powder also, the fouling from black powder was a big problem for rapid fire weapons. As was heat build up.
Lots of people tried really hard for a long time, and had pretty much the right ideas. The reason that repeating machine gun type weapons didn't come along...
Thing is, 1000BC ships were a LOT smaller than in the nineteenth century. So a canal linking the Red Sea and the Nile was in fact a link between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, because the Nile was navigable for such small boats/ships .
They didn't need a big ship canal , so they never built...
Well, we know that Darius I built such a canal about 500BC, wide enough for two triremes to pass. But there are traces of earlier similar constructions dating back 12000 years before that.
The key word there is 'could'. Almost anything in this world could happen, if it does not breach the laws of physics. But would is another horse. That is the essence of handwavium, to propose a scenario which is not impossible, but which is implausible, and hand wave away the problems.
It...
Indeed. You may note that is actually one of the scenarios I envisaged (I added the USA to use the Spanish American war as a trigger). It has to assume, though, that the UK watches all the preparation for this and ignores it.
It is like saying that UK, France, Mexico and Spain could all have...
Not really relevant. The colonial stations, trade protection squadrons etc were made up of frigates/light cruisers ( plus a few heavies and obsolete battleships) , gunboats, brigs etc, depending on era.Ships that didn't form part of the battle line.
The sail of the line/ capital ships were...
1817 to 1945 , not realistically possible.
It would need absurd levels of handwavium ( a political revolution puts massively socialist government in power in the 1920s which unilaterally disarms and junks the navy and airforce); or an ASB event (meteor strike frex).
It actually gets...
Messages could be sent round the world in near real time by short wave radio. Voice messages, transcontinental. Most English families had a wireless set able to receive short wave and listening to foreign broadcasts was common.
Transmitting pictures, though, could only be done by telegraph.
London wasn't always the capital of England. One reason it is, is that it has good connections to Normandy, which was , obviously, important to the Norman kings.
Absent William pulling off Hastings, London might not have been the capital. It's nowhere near as good for connections to...