Living as I do in Williamsburg, Virginia, I am surrounded by the American Revolution. Here are the buildings where the Revolution was to some considerable extent conceived and here through the programs of Colonial Williamsburg it is reenacted every day. This may explain why I found myself wondering about a world without an American Revolution and why I took it upon myself to read alternate histories (or counterfactuals, as historians tend to call them) in which that was the case.
This was not nearly as formidable as taking on alternate histories in which the South won the Civil War. Those fill many more shelves, and it's easy to see why. There are still plenty of people who find the Confederacy's Lost Cause a romantic one and who relish the idea of a triumphant Robert E. Lee. Alternate histories of World War II also abound, presumably not because a Nazi-ruled America is appealing but because it's irresistibly scary. A British America, in contrast, conjures up little more than a visit from Queen Elizabeth II: a bit of pomp, comfortably familiar and not very exciting.
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