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Alternate history point of divergence- William Lloyd Garrison in 1839 agreed to a compromise keeping the American Anti-Slavery Society intact. The Liberty party is never formed; the lack of third party competition in the 1844 election allows Henry Clay to win New York, and the electoral college. The American turn against Texas annexation drives the republic of Texas into the arms of France and Britain, and drives a realignment of the slaveholding east against annexation and into alignment with the nationalist faction, which supports expansion to the Pacific, the defeat of Mexico militarily, and white settlement across the southwest. In this world, dispute between the Virginia militia and the Whig federal government over the treatment of captured Harper's Ferry raiders triggers the civil war, and with the US distracted France, Britain and the republic of Texas invade Mexico, theoretically over debt defaults but in reality over French and Texan territorial ambitions. The treaty of Versailles(1860) installs a French puppet government in Mexico and cedes vast northern territories to Texas, the entire Mexican cessation plus Baja California and an access corridor around the Colorado river.
The second Mexican empire doesn't go particularly well, but the US civil war dragged on and on, the Whig establishment proving less zealous about prosecuting the war than Lincoln, and Britain was able to use the relatively free new world hand to demand, and get, concessions. The republic of Texas agreed not to expand slavery to counties that didn't already have it, in exchange for Britain agreeing not to pressure it to abolish the practice east of the trinity, and to give Britain a set of pacific navy bases, most notably San Francisco, and in return Britain gave technical assistance and forced the post-French Mexican government to recognize the greatly expanded Texan borders- along with a few other breakaway republics in the far south. Eventually the US civil war ended with the final capture of the temporary confederate capital of Atlanta. The commodore Perry expedition never happened, obviously, but the British navy opened Japan for trade by force- and Japan successfully pulled a Meiji restoration in the aftermath.
British and sometimes French assistance led to Texas establishing immigration-driven colonies in the southwest- in this world Pheonix is a German speaking city and major rail hub for reaching the gulf of California- but the Deseret war over control of the old Spanish trail was the first conflict the republic prosecuted without favorable outside intervention, beginning in 1883 and ending by 1887. The republic of Deseret was forced to capitulate, but Texas lacked the ability to dominate the region as thoroughly as the USA had in our world, which is still stuck dealing with plains indians, not having a good transcontintental rail route. In this world mormons are an impoverished minority which does a lot of terrorism and organized crime, when you can tell the difference between the two, and still practices polygamy and- when they can get away with it- religious communism. Their lost boys make up a big chunk of the 21st century republic of Texas' cannon fodder, and Deseret is the poorest and worst managed subdivision in North America.
The republic of Texas abolishes slavery in 1910, with a final phaseout in the thirties. Today the black population is often discriminated against, but never officially- blacks in the army receive equal pay and promotions to equivalent whites. While known for oil, the 21st century republic of Texas' largest industries are arms, chemicals, and shipping, with oil and agriculture being relatively distant. Texas is a major power, but has a drastically lower population than the equivalent territories in our world- and different regions can be, and are, managed drastically differently, with enormously different levels of independence given to regional governments. The world is multipolar, with rather open vassalage relationships between impoverished third world countries and both middle and major powers. France, Britain, and Japan retain large parts of their old colonial empires. Militaries are far more influential than in our world, because major wars happen more regularly- while most of the major and middle powers are theoretically democracies, senior generals and admirals have far more influence over governments, and large economic interests have a much stronger hand negotiating with elected governments.
International commissions exist, but there is no such thing as a united nations. There is no undisputed most powerful country in the world; Japan has the largest navy and Russia has the largest army. The US is very rich but has limited Pacific influence, and peopling the west took far longer than in our world, with plains indian independence lasting into the 1890s in some cases and Mormon raiders preventing regular resupply across the northern Rockies into the 1920s. Oregon territory grew, though, after the highway links in the fifties.
Canada maintains closer ties to Britain than in our world; ditto Australia. How commonwealth foreign policy should be decided is a live issue in all three countries, although the CANZUK countries maintain their own domestic policies they share a currency. The Latin monetary union is alive and well, with franc-based currency the international standard- although it has dropped official bimetallism and the gold standard is more of a theoretical basis than a practical one. One of the bright spots in this world is Russia, which is more like a normal, although oppressive, developed country with a GDP per capita at Western European standards, albeit not the nicer parts of Western Europe. One of the dark spots is China, which was never decolonized, and large parts of which are as bad as sub-saharan Africa. The port cities ruled by Japan, Russia, Britain, Germany etc are fine, but the interior is ruled by warlords as often as by the government.
I'll be damned. I figured Napoleon III was too busy worrying about the Prussians to go after the colonies. That alone makes this more plausible.
Speaking of Prussia, what happened to Wilhelms I and II? Did Germany unify and end France's continental ambitions? Did we get any world wars?
I think those determine the fate of British and French colonies more than anything else. Depending on how the late 1800s go, you might even manage to dodge macro-scale communism, too.
Yes it’s an often unremarked upon hilarious factoid of history that Mexico briefly had a Hapsburg Emperor
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