New Reality Seeds

[Astromancer]

Here's a question for alternative historians. Britain was in many ways isolated from the continent of Europe for most of the 1789-1815 period. This both accelerated the growth of the British Empire, mainly because Britain needed to replace European trade with anything else, and it meant that the embryonic industrial revolution was largely unobserved by Europeans for more than a quarter of a century. Further, the cheap mass produced goods, cloth and thread especially, the British sold the world beyond Europe had few European competitors and a vital unassalible role in financing the government and the war effort. A world with a less violent French Revolution, or more to the point a less violent European response to the French Revolution might be a world were Britain was never as powerful as in our history. True or false?

What do you guys think about that analysis? Are Robbespierre and Napoleon two of the greatest forces promoting the Victorian British Empire? Would Centrum understand that kind of paradox?