The Price

This is one of my first and thus probably not the best tries at alternate history maps, thus I hope the experts in that field can excuse mistakes that may have been made.

As of this timeline, well, I got the idea from a report of a 19th century journalist (also known as founder of marxism), writing about the Crimean War and mentioning how well the Russian and British Empire went along in previous times, in fact the British tried to get the Russians into an Alliance, against France, Spain and later also the rebellious colonies in North America.

The Mediterranean island of Minorca was considered a gift to motivate the Russian Empire, here is what could have happened...