What if American revolution didn�t succeed?

Many say Britain could have held on to her American colonies at a cost if she was willing to.

Britian retreated from America primarily because of the high expense of wars being fought on the continent and oppositions coming from home thinking that it wasn't worth sacraficing many for the thirteen colonies.

Yet, Birtish troops actually stationed in Boston until the 18th century.

If Britain did not lose the war, what would the war be like today?

The main cause of the rebellion was the fact Britain had signed treaties with all the Indian tribes and forbidden the colonies any westward expansion for over 40 years.

One possibility is the 13 colonies today would be a province of Canada or a small country akin to New Zealand. To the west of them would either be one huge or many smaller Indian countries.

If the revolution had failed, two things might have happened.

- Britain goes bankrupt fighting her colonies and France. More taxes are brought on the colonies and more revolutions occur.

- Britain gives in to the colonists' demands, giving them seats in Parliament. Britain's industrial capacity would increase a hundred fold during the industrial revolution. By age of imperialism, Britain would be so wealthy and industrialized that the British Empire would have conquered more than a quarter of the world. It would have crushed the Central Powers in WWI because of the large population source for the trenches. It would have also crushed the Axis powers in WWII with its greater industrial capacity.

Anyway, just speculating.

I need to think more about this, but a few observations:

Actually I don't think the thirteen colonies would have merged into one. I think you would have ended up with three (at least) British dominions - Canada including the northern tier of states, a middle one based around Boston, New York and Philadephia, and a southern one.

No, but substantial parts of it might well have been annexed in 1815. Or returned to Spain.

I don't think that follows at all. The revolutionary tides in late eighteenth century France were much too strong to be resisted. There might have been minor differences in the history of 1789-1815 (there would have been no war of 1812), but no major ones I think. The doctrines on which the American Revolution was based weren't invented in America, and certainly not unique to it.

Same comment, mutatis mutandis.

Simply not true. Even ignoring the ancient world, you had the examples of Switzerland and the Netherlands. Look at the Oath of Abjuration, the United Provinces' declaration of independence from Spain and rejection of the rule of Philip II in 1581.

It very closely foreshadows the American Declaration of Independence.

Well, I said 'ignoring the ancient world' for much the same reasons. But I think you severely underplay the role of the Swiss and especially the Dutch. In particular Spain in the late 16th century was just as much a world power as Britain in 1776 - in fact much more of one.

I'm actually hard put to it to think of a modern nation with a constitution based on the US one. Care to give some examples?

France isn't. Germany isn't. Russia isn't. Japan of course isn't. I don't think any of the Commonwealth countries are.

I would have thought the most common model was the British one[1] of a separate Head of State with a Head of Government responsible to Parliament, whether the Head of State is hereditary as in Britain or elected as in Israel or Germany.

France and Russia have heads of State (Presidents) who have considerable power, but the executive responsibility is still shared by the prime minister. And there is effectively no separation of executive and legislature.

[1] I don't mean the countries copied Britain, but that they evolved the same way.