I recently finished reading Eric Metaxas book Revolution. Based on what he wrote and what I know the British had become very secular and corrupt and immoral by 1776, while at the same time, the colonies had become very Christian and moral. They saw it as their destiny to create in the United States, a new covenant nation dedicated to living under God‘s law.
Inevitable is a bit strong, but perhaps highly likely. BTW, Eric's book is sitting right here beside me, and his imprint is about to publish my new book too!
The colonies demanded the rights of Englishmen, no different than if they were physically in England. It was not an unreasonable request, considering that they had never consented to a reduction in those rights simply by virtue of relocation.
The problem from Lord North's point of view was that they were articulating a Jacobite (not Jacobin) political theory, that different parliaments could rule within the same empire under the same king and that no parliament was legitimate apart from the sanction of the electorate. This posed a problem: if you grant the argument in North America, how can you not grant it to an only recently-suppressed Scotland? An imperial parliament representing everyone, with local parliaments in the various constituent areas, was a perfectly good solution to this and was debated extensively in the decades leading up to the Statute of Westminster in 1931. But the English rejected that in 1931 too, however foolish that rejection may have been.
In any case, as you know, the colonies' idea of governance was rejected by Lord North, and then implemented across the empire beginning with Canada in 1867.
If the English had possessed just a tad more flexibility, the relationship might have changed somewhat but complete severance would have been unnecessary. Either William Pitt might have gotten there, but North was never going to.
But the divergence in faith you (and Eric) describe was very real. The founders were the children of the Great Awakening even more than the Enlightenment, and that's a fact that has been downplayed or denied by the academic/Enemedia consensus since shortly after World War II.
Interesting, though of course one must add the requisite caveat that there are no correct alternate histories, only plausible ones.
Left unaddressed is the vexing question of democratization: in the absence of a successful popularly-based independence in "the colonies," how long and to what extent would it have taken for the British Empire have relinquished its oligarchical, soft-authoritarian mode of government?
Additional thought: I took Warner Schilling's class in American foreign relations when I was at Columbia, and his argument was that the Revolution was a product of the British success in eliminating the French threat in North America. Once the colonies were no longer needful of the British defensive umbrella, it changed from being a necessity to a burden.
Of course this was not helped by the bizarre British policies of forcing the colonies to pay for their defense after the war was over, without giving them much of a say in how such policies were to be executed.
That is certainly the British view (reflected in the article), that the colonies were ungrateful after the enormous British exertion to secure their hinterland, and freed up from that threat were able to bit the hand that fed it.
The American view of the post-war taxation, of course, was rather different. And let's be real, the amount wasn't the point. If local parliaments could be bypassed at will by Lord North's government, then the colonists had unknowingly surrendered their rights as Englishmen simply by moving to another part of the same country, separated by an ocean but theretofore not by legal status. Moreover, given the French alliance, it is more likely the colonies would have revolted, with greater success sooner, had the French retained their North American territories (though American expansion might have been more restricted in that case).
As I mentioned in another comment, Lord North saw this as an inherently Jacobite (not Jacobin) argument, which in point of fact it was.
I studied all this at Cambridge so I'm well aware of the British view, but I have to disagree. This was not at all about ingratitude, although the colonies remembered very well the degree to which they had carried their weight during the war and tended to marvel that the British treated that as nothing. This was actually about what the founders said it was: an ever-increasing encroachment on these British subjects' rights, secured in 1688, simply due to geography. That made sense to Lord North. It did not make sense to George Washington.
My guess is, it likely would have also made sense to Pitt the Younger. But alas, the Whigs didn't win until the war had already been decided.
Well, Warner Schilling was no Brit, and he didn’t frame this as “ingratitude,” he framed it as realpolitik. So he arrives at a similar conclusion using the tools of political science and international relations, rather than the far more slender reed of emotional attitudes.
Not do I disagree that there were other factors. In fact there are so many theories that one can hardly argue—and Schilling certainly did not—that there can be a single, all-encompassing theory of the Revolution’s causes.
Schilling merely provided an additional—not an alternate—set of factors that he evidently believed—as a political scientist and international-relations expert—might add to our understanding.
I recently finished reading Eric Metaxas book Revolution. Based on what he wrote and what I know the British had become very secular and corrupt and immoral by 1776, while at the same time, the colonies had become very Christian and moral. They saw it as their destiny to create in the United States, a new covenant nation dedicated to living under God‘s law.
Therefore, the revolution was inevitable.
Inevitable is a bit strong, but perhaps highly likely. BTW, Eric's book is sitting right here beside me, and his imprint is about to publish my new book too!
The colonies demanded the rights of Englishmen, no different than if they were physically in England. It was not an unreasonable request, considering that they had never consented to a reduction in those rights simply by virtue of relocation.
The problem from Lord North's point of view was that they were articulating a Jacobite (not Jacobin) political theory, that different parliaments could rule within the same empire under the same king and that no parliament was legitimate apart from the sanction of the electorate. This posed a problem: if you grant the argument in North America, how can you not grant it to an only recently-suppressed Scotland? An imperial parliament representing everyone, with local parliaments in the various constituent areas, was a perfectly good solution to this and was debated extensively in the decades leading up to the Statute of Westminster in 1931. But the English rejected that in 1931 too, however foolish that rejection may have been.
In any case, as you know, the colonies' idea of governance was rejected by Lord North, and then implemented across the empire beginning with Canada in 1867.
If the English had possessed just a tad more flexibility, the relationship might have changed somewhat but complete severance would have been unnecessary. Either William Pitt might have gotten there, but North was never going to.
But the divergence in faith you (and Eric) describe was very real. The founders were the children of the Great Awakening even more than the Enlightenment, and that's a fact that has been downplayed or denied by the academic/Enemedia consensus since shortly after World War II.
Interesting, though of course one must add the requisite caveat that there are no correct alternate histories, only plausible ones.
Left unaddressed is the vexing question of democratization: in the absence of a successful popularly-based independence in "the colonies," how long and to what extent would it have taken for the British Empire have relinquished its oligarchical, soft-authoritarian mode of government?
Additional thought: I took Warner Schilling's class in American foreign relations when I was at Columbia, and his argument was that the Revolution was a product of the British success in eliminating the French threat in North America. Once the colonies were no longer needful of the British defensive umbrella, it changed from being a necessity to a burden.
Of course this was not helped by the bizarre British policies of forcing the colonies to pay for their defense after the war was over, without giving them much of a say in how such policies were to be executed.
That is certainly the British view (reflected in the article), that the colonies were ungrateful after the enormous British exertion to secure their hinterland, and freed up from that threat were able to bit the hand that fed it.
The American view of the post-war taxation, of course, was rather different. And let's be real, the amount wasn't the point. If local parliaments could be bypassed at will by Lord North's government, then the colonists had unknowingly surrendered their rights as Englishmen simply by moving to another part of the same country, separated by an ocean but theretofore not by legal status. Moreover, given the French alliance, it is more likely the colonies would have revolted, with greater success sooner, had the French retained their North American territories (though American expansion might have been more restricted in that case).
As I mentioned in another comment, Lord North saw this as an inherently Jacobite (not Jacobin) argument, which in point of fact it was.
I studied all this at Cambridge so I'm well aware of the British view, but I have to disagree. This was not at all about ingratitude, although the colonies remembered very well the degree to which they had carried their weight during the war and tended to marvel that the British treated that as nothing. This was actually about what the founders said it was: an ever-increasing encroachment on these British subjects' rights, secured in 1688, simply due to geography. That made sense to Lord North. It did not make sense to George Washington.
My guess is, it likely would have also made sense to Pitt the Younger. But alas, the Whigs didn't win until the war had already been decided.
Well, Warner Schilling was no Brit, and he didn’t frame this as “ingratitude,” he framed it as realpolitik. So he arrives at a similar conclusion using the tools of political science and international relations, rather than the far more slender reed of emotional attitudes.
Not do I disagree that there were other factors. In fact there are so many theories that one can hardly argue—and Schilling certainly did not—that there can be a single, all-encompassing theory of the Revolution’s causes.
Schilling merely provided an additional—not an alternate—set of factors that he evidently believed—as a political scientist and international-relations expert—might add to our understanding.
Stunning overlooked possibilities to be sure, but speculative too.
Speculation tends to be speculative. LOL
That was a perspective that I had never considered.