What if America had lost the Revolutionary War?

I asked Turtledove what the world might have looked like in 2014 if Britain had won the Revolutionary War, or if the war had never been fought in the first place. He noted that “alternate history is often better at asking questions than answering them.” Still, he indulged me.

“If the British Empire included all of North America north of the Rio Grande as well as India, it would be incontestably the strongest state in the world,” he responded. “The French Revolution wouldn’t have happened, both for lack of example and because it began when a political crisis and a famine coincided with a government bankruptcy that sprang from the money the government paid out helping the American colonists gain their independence—and giving perfidious Albion a shot in the eye.”

“This is, essentially, the world of The Two Georges,” he continued. “Because the Empire was so strong, we might well have missed out on not only the Napoleonic Wars but also the World Wars. On the other hand, we would also have missed out on the kick in the pants wars give to technology and medicine. We might have had as many deaths that could have been prevented in our own world by medical advances as we’ve lost in our big wars.”