Since today is Independence Day in the US, I thought it an interesting opportunity for a little historical musing.

A few years back, BBC Radio 4 used to broadcast a programme called "What if?" - a counter-factual look at the outcomes if history had taken a different track. It was a great idea, but unfortunately it was poorly executed in that it focused far too much on trivial detail and not enough on the bigger picture. So, for example, had it asked what if Hitler had won the Second World War it would have been more interested in discussing the look of a Nazi victory parade than it was in looking at the historical outcomes of such a change.

Looking at this broader aspect of counter-factual history is something of a fascination to me, because so often you find tiny events acting like pivots on which countries turn. And not just countries either: the fate of the world can be directed by events in the right country at the right time. Think Franz Ferdinand's assassination in Serbia.

But World War I was probably inevitable and Franz Ferdinand was merely the trigger, which makes that particular instance somewhat less interesting than others. For me, the most interesting is the English Civil War, an ideological conflict about the extents of monarchy which changed the world and without which Americans might not be celebrating today.

Far-fetched? Let me explain.

Part of the interest of the English Civil War for me is the melting pot of ideas it produced. Writers like Hobbes, Paine and Milton thrashed out views about the world as it was and how they thought it should be. Soldiers, taken far from home and placed in unfamiliar company, discussed political theory and early forms of socialism. Even Cromwell's Protectorate was a series of experiments in government. None of it worked - probably because it was too much of a shift to go from monarchy to democracy in one step - but it profoundly altered the relationship between Crown and State and set the path toward public participation that would be followed over the next two hundred years and more.

It is arguable that it also - perhaps ironically - preserved the British monarchy. Had Charles I triumphed over Parliament then the remainder of his reign would have been as an absolutist. His sons, likewise, were clearly cut from the same cloth. This means that over the next generation there would have been further uprisings, but there's little doubt these would have been brutally put down by a regime fearful of its own security. But repression only lasts so long: eventually one of these uprisings would have succeeded and because of the tyranny that preceded it, this time - as in the French Revolution - there would have been efforts made to ensure the displaced ruling class could not return to power. This time there would be no King over the water to restore the government after an interregnum. It's a pattern that is repeated throughout history, from Ancient Rome to the Arab Spring.

But the common factor in most of these uprisings is that they are more about factionalism than ideological dispute. The ousting of another Egyptian president this week is not based on the desire for a different system of government, merely the desire for a ruling class which represents a different portion of the electorate. Likewise Rome's Emperors may not have borne the name of King, but to the masses they appeared much the same. Cromwell's regime was different in that it attempted to redraw the system of government. It may have failed in its own time, but its ideas lasted such that it was not the Protectorate that was the temporary aberration, but the Restoration. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Cromwellian settlement became a fact of life.

This had two effects: firstly it meant that the ideas of prominent republicans were not repressed and lost. Whilst those seen as tyrannicides were harshly dealt with, only the most dangerous radical thinkers were seen as a threat to order. Even some of these managed to cross the Atlantic to the colonies; there they found an audience already open to the republican ideas the wars had propagated. Secondly, the settlement gave people the impression - if not the fact - of representative government. Nobody in 1642 was calling for no taxation without representation, they were simply calling for Parliament to be the arbiter of taxation policy. It was Parliament's need to establish its legitimacy as the representative of the people in war that gave the impression it had to listen to the people in peace.

Had Charles triumphed, then, what would have been the result? Some firebrands would no doubt still have fled to the colonies, but had they then operated openly as agitants it's likely that loyalist repression would have destroyed many of them. There were, after all, many sympathisers for the old ways in America, and a paranoid state would have advanced these people to positions of power. And the idea that tax payments bought a voice in government would have rung hollow - after all, it wouldn't have been the case in England either. Had the Americans, for whatever reason, become antagonistic to tax, their protest would have taken a similar line to the original views in England, that the King was at fault and Parliament in the right - more or less the opposite position taken in the Eighteenth century. They would also have been in the same boat as the English, meaning the outcome of any uprising would have been less about independence and more about reform.

And it's far from certain that the dispute would even have arisen. The American issue came about through taxes on trade as well as issues of governance. England's success as a trading nation came directly from the Glorious Revolution: the alignment with the Dutch brought banking and a national debt, the looser government allowed free enterprise to flourish. Other countries did subsequently try to follow the model, but where the role of the monarch was stronger this was invariably less successful. It was also the combination of British naval power - something that was in decline in the 1640's, but was boosted by Cromwell and then by trading companies - and free enterprise which allowed Britain to acquire the world's largest empire. None of this would have happened had Charles remained on the throne. Without this, there would have been no British tea ships in Boston, the very triggers of the dispute would have been absent.

Finally, the last consideration is our relationship with the French. 1688 put an end to any chance of England being a Catholic country. The Stuarts had been at least sympathetic to Rome, possibly even converts to the faith, and there's no doubt had the Stuart line continued, our relationship with Catholic France would have been less aggressive. Our poorer success rate in colonising the rest of the world would also have put us less in competition with our neighbour, perhaps even resulting in an alliance against the Dutch. The result of this would be to redraw the battle-lines of the whole period, with no battle of Blenheim, no seizure of Canada - and no French support for any uprising in the colonies. Without the French, any American uprising would have been much shorter-lived. And, significantly, without the French bankrolling a revolution in America, Louis XVI would not have gone bankrupt and the French revolution may never have arisen. The Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries could have looked very different.

So, as you celebrate your independence today, perhaps it's an opportunity to reflect on the chains of consequence that have led to your present state. Although, of course, if this were an episode of "What If?" it would no doubt be far more interested in whether in an alternate history you'd still be letting off fireworks.