Could the British Empire have Remained to the Modern Day?

[Alkaloid]

I'd wonder if a more authoritarian British government taking more of a role in the colonies economies and looking to break unions and force military production at the expense of quality of life for the populace would change that much. I wouldn't expect anything like entire fleets being built in Australia or Canada or anything like that, but they might provide enough to push the balance back into the UKs favour, at least for a while, although not in a manner that would be sustainable long term.

[Sea Skimmer]

The more products Australia and Canada produce, the weaker the British economic and political hold would become. In fact economic development is bound to create resentment, because a closed Imperial economic system means they cannot export these products favorably. The British Empire was at its peak when its colonies were developed enough to output raw materials and demand imports, but not able to meet this need locally. This gets all the worse when the job of defending the empire is also more and more decentralized. You can't expect to maintain an Empire that doesn't need its center. In a lot of ways steam was the downfall of the Empire.

[Thanas]

Then again, it also allowed the Empire dominance on a scale not seen since the day of the Roman Empire.

[Sea Skimmer]

Only because nobody even tried to stop them and test it. Whenever war came up as a real threat the British downright panicked militarily and politically, and for good reasons because they repeatedly faced bouts of real vulnerability once steam took over. If you read about the state of the Royal Navy in 1854 when the Crimean War broke out, its kind of absurd just how badly prepared they were, well not kind of, it was just absurd. As in so bad, the judgment of Admiral Napier, commander of the hastily formed Baltic Fleet was that the Russians would have certainly seized control of the Baltic had they attacked him, and probably could have invaded England had they had a force assembled to do so in the early months of the war. He actually wanted to conscript all the crews of all the private yachts in England to man the fleet, but was prevented from doing so while the navy slowly hired untrained men from the streets of London. Even allowing for some exaggeration aimed at improving the Royal Navy budget, the situation was really bad. The Russian Baltic fleet in any event, never once left its moorings. Very convenient.

Heck even in the 1890s, the heart of supposed Pax Britannia, in actuality the French built fairly close to parity in modern warships, while the RN was bloated with worthless vessels. Parliament just didn’t grasp how quickly ships would become not just outdated, but complete deathtraps for the crews in action. HMS Warrior was still being counted as a warship until the mid 1880s, and in fact many of the ~200 ships Fisher famously had scrapped in 1905 one of his predecessors had tried to rid the navy of in 1890! British superiority was as much if not much more one of prestige and respect as hard military fact. That can work for an Empire, but only for a limited period. The British stretched it out much further then might otherwise have happened. It wasn’t going to go on forever.

[Thanas]

Sure, but that seems more like a complete lack of planning and self-inflicted than a real challenge iin general.

As to Napier and the Baltic Fleet invading England? From what I know of their numbers that is an impossibility.

[Sea Skimmer]

The cost of maintaining a much larger military throughout the entire 19th century would have had a serious effect on British finances. Remember it costs more to operate big ships then to build them.

As for the Baltic Fleet, they would have been opposed by less then a half dozen operational British warships of any size. More existed, but they were completely demobilized and had no crews what so ever, the British in this era did not maintain any kind of effective reserves. Only the Mediterranean Fleet was effective, and already committed in the Black Sea. It was typical for fleets to heavily demobilize back then, but the British went stupidly far on several occasions. This is one of the reasons why invasion scare after invasion scare could take place. People knew the fleet was just stuck at anchor waiting to be burned by a major attack.

[Thanas]

The cost of maintaining a much larger military throughout the entire 19th century would have had a serious effect on British finances. Remember it costs more to operate big ships then to build them.

As for the Baltic Fleet, they would have been opposed by less then a half dozen operational British warships of any size.

IIRC the Baltic Fleet of Russia consisted off little more than 12 ships of the line, who were completely undermanned and in pretty ill repair. I am not seeing the huge threat there.

[Sea Skimmer]

I checked, four ships of the line could be sent out, plus four frigates. The force also had four blockships previously rated as fit only for harbor defense and three paddle steamers as dispatch vessels. All were undermanned, and one of the ships of the line was only able to sortie by taking most of the men off another unit that was left behind. Yeah, that's a bad situation when the Russian fleet had about thirty comparable vessels, even if not in good shape. The particular issue was the British force had to anchor off Denmark for lack of any other possible base, and yet Denmark was strongly pro Russian at the time was expected to turn on the British should Russia put in an appearance, After all, Copenhagen was not a far distant memory. In any event, only one of many threats, and Russia never really tried to wage a commerce war against Britain. Nor did anyone else before 1914. Had this occurred the frailty of Imperial defenses would have been much more obvious, and the long term damage of shipping fleeing the British flag and general disruption would have been considerable even in victory. Defense of such a far flung empire was predicated on everything moving balls slow under sail.