The American Revolution: A Waste of Time?
| June 18th, 2003Will Shetterly is thinking heretical thoughts:
So, what did we get from being born in revolution, besides the feeling that it’s good to fight, so long as we can claim we’re fighting for a good cause? How was the average American’s life made better by the Revolution? What great and noble thing did we win?
The British ended slavery long before 1865. There’s no reason to think that would have changed significantly if the US had not seceded. America’s native peoples did much better under Britain and Canada than under the US. Women would have gotten the vote at about the same time; suffrage was hardly a uniquely US idea.
One could argue, I suppose, that the US has been essential to fighting Evil, in World War 2 and again in the Cold War. This is true, as far as it goes, but it’s also very speculative; there’s no way of knowing if those threats would even have risen in a world history in which America remained British.
More to the point, the US wasn’t founded to be a global superhero; it was founded to enable us to enjoy “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It’s unclear that these things are any more enjoyable under American rule than they would have been under British rule.
June 18th, 2003 at 6:37 am
I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that Canada, Australia, et. al. would be in the position they’re in today were it not for the American revolution. It’s not just that we broke away from England, something that almost no one had accomplished before. We set up a country based on the principles that all people should be equal and respected before the law. That was unheard of at the time. It was always assumed that the masses needed leaders to tell them what to do, and that without a king or some similar leadership, no nation could survive. We proved that it could, and our example is what encouraged nations like England to allow democracy to flourish in their kingdoms.
This comment was written by Amy Phillips.That said, I much prefer to live in the US than in Canada, and I’d be mighty angry if we turned into Canada. There’s already a Canada, and if you like it there, I’m sure they’d be glad to have you. Me–I like living in a place where I can choose my own healthcare, where I can donate my money to those charities and causes I find worthy rather than those politicians can agree on, and where I can dream of becoming a rich CEO. I agree with you on the military thing, I think we should pull out. But that’s not a result of our revolution so much as it is of our historical military and technological superiority. We went into most of those nations because they needed what we had to offer, and most of them asked us to, or would have if their leaders had allowed them to. But now that we’re not needed, you’re right, we should bring them home.
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June 18th, 2003 at 9:14 am
Damn. Amy beat me to it. I’ll just say, “ditto.”
Although I should add—good post! Heretical thoughts are good and necessary.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 9:45 am
Wow, Amy Phillips and Kevin Moore agreed on something. There’s a snowball fight in hell today!
Seriously, I disagree with ya both, but I’m too busy drawing to go into why right now. More later, I hope.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 9:50 am
(Actually, I’m sure that you two would agree on a lot - disliking the national security state, liking freedom, etc. There’s that entire crossover area between leftists and libertarians which never seems to translate into actual alliances which we all have in common….)
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 10:15 am
I wouldn’t say it was a waste of time — think of it this way. We’re the beta release: Democracy 1.0. We tried it first, and of course the first time you do something, you’re going to fuck up in some ways.
The rest of the world was able to take the best of the first attempt at a democratic republic, and build on it without letting their own systems self-desctruct. What Amy said is true: the American attempt to build a democratic republic was the first modern attempt to put through a government where there was no inherent ruling class. Don’t overestimate the impact of an aristocracy.
The plain fact is that, when it came to a government that empowered the ordinary people, we tried it first. Other nations could watch, get an idea in their heads, and give it a shot within their own systems. I think that without the example of the American system, other systems might not have even bothered to enfranchise all those unwashed commoners.
We were the beta release. Everyone else has been able to install the bug patches before implementation. That’s why they’re better at it than we are.
This comment was written by Janis.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 10:18 am
Think of it this way — the Russian revolution simply did not work. They tried to implement a communist system, and it simply did not work well.
By example, THEIR revolution compelled US to implement a smaller, more watered-down version of communism in our own system (the worker’s rights movements of the 1930s). Without the example of a country where a full-scale communist revolution had taken place, there would have been no such worker’s rights revolution here … but the original system still didn’t work well.
This is the same. We tried it first, and it’s wonky as hell. Others saw the example and picked and chose what they wanted from it, implementing them within already established systems. Of COURSE that would work more smoothly.
This comment was written by Janis.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 10:22 am
It’s important that the ideals of the American Revolution, those words we regularly fail to live up to, inspired people all over the world. It’s not as important as some would make it that many of the founders were hypocrites: slave-owners who talked about freedom. As Matthew Arnold said, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, and if a hypocrite’s words are inspirational enough, then people will be inspired to make those words come true.
This comment was written by Joe Buck.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 10:28 am
Oh, by the way, Amy, Canadians have more choice about their health care providers than many Americans (those in HMOs, for example. not to mention those without insurance), do; are free to give to charities and causes, and have much the same opportunities to start businesses and try to get rich as Americans do (though the level of difficulty can be somewhat greater, many succeed). Certainly in many places Canada is way too dependent on resource extraction industries and it’s tough to start other businesses, but the same is true in many parts of the US (say, Montana or Idaho).
This comment was written by Joe Buck.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 10:59 am
Personally, I’d forgo dreams of being a rich CEO for a culture that honors gay relationships as much as straight any ol’ day of the week. But I’m funny that way, and hey, Canada doesn’t force that choice–you can have your gay marriage and your feelthy lucre, too!
Yay, Canada!
This comment was written by --k..Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 11:02 am
I’m sure many Canadians will be surprised to hear that they can’t choose their health care, that they can’t choose to donate to charity, and that they can’t dream of becoming (or even actually become) wealthy CEOs.
This comment was written by Avram.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 11:49 am
Perhaps the nations of Latin America might have remained colonies much longer had it not been for the American Revolution and the Monroe Doctrine.
This comment was written by Tom T..Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 12:28 pm
I don’t know if the American example was necessary, but I do know that it inspired the French revolution, which I think didn’t turn out so well. In fact, it seems to me that the number of violent revolutions that have turned out well is rather small, whereas the number of countries that have become freer fairly peacefully is rather long.
This comment was written by David.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 12:31 pm
change “long” to “large,” I guess.
This comment was written by David.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 1:26 pm
>Will’s assertion that “we get dead people in
>distant countries,” seems remarkably insulting
>to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Those
>countries suffered heavy casualties “in distant
>countries” in the World Wars, of course. More
>recently, Canadians have died in service in
>Afghanistan, and Australia participated in the
>recent war in Iraq.
Well, it doesn’t really seem so insulting to me. Will is only trying to come up with a colorful way to say that the United States spends too much on the military, compared to the other countries, which are able to spend taxes on social programs. Of course, I happen to agree, and happen to not be Canadian, Australian or a New Zealander, so that might be coloring my reaction.
>They get universal health care for their
>taxes, while we get dead people in distant
>countries.
I am unable to read into that anything denigrating the martial prowess of the Canadians etc. Just an argument that too large a proportion of American taxes are dedicated to the goal of dead people in distant countries (who don’t have to be American), as opposed to other countries, where tax money goes to (for instance) universal health care and less is spent on the military.
Which doesn’t seem so bad to me.
In terms of the central issue of the American Revolution, I like Janis’s Democracy 1.0 (Beta) idea. The American Revolution did play in influence in encouraging other revolutions (most clearly in Latin America and France, though those didn’t turn out too well, in the short run) and more generally (and in my view more importantly) advancing general principles of representative government, equality before the law, etc. throughout the world.
One last note - American troops are stationed in about 140 countries. In case you were wondering.
(No relation to the previous David)
This comment was written by David Schaich.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 3:56 pm
It might also be considered a mistake to view the revolution as over. I know it’s kinda hotsy-Trotsky of me to say it, but the struggle keeps on keepin’ on. When the Revolutionary War ended, we were still years away from forming the Constitution and decades away from enfranchising men without property, freeing slaves and over a century from enfranchising women. Along the way Jim Crow reared its ugly head and I think we’re still trying to kill the beast.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 4:35 pm
Kevin, your comments remind me of something I once heard about the constitutional government being something that each succeeding generation of Americans bears the responsibility for completing. Even the founding fathers couldn’t form the thing as they envisioned it, and each generation of Americans gets closer and closer.
Lately, though, we seem to be getting further and further away. :-P
This comment was written by Janis.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 5:27 pm
Actually, England at the time of the American Revolution was well on the road to democracy; one of the major problems was that they weren’t extending the same rights to colonists as they allowed to Englishmen.
This comment was written by Al-Muhajabah.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 6:06 pm
I’d swap on the “dream” of being a rich CEO for the “dream” of having guaranteed healthcare. Someone whip out the appropriate contract and my signature is yours…
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 6:08 pm
“…Along the way Jim Crow reared its ugly head and I think we’re still trying to kill the beast…”
Hell, I’m still trying to get the apathetic, shopaholic fuckwits I work with to tear themselves away from the freakin’ boob tube and come to a damn Union meeting once a month. Bleah.
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 6:17 pm
The problems between Britain and her colonies were a little strange, and not just a matter of extending rights, though. Partly, the American revolution was the product of the jitters that come with a guilty conscience. The language that’s used by the colonists to describe what they fear from England uses the word “slavery” a lot. When you are surrounded by it and are doing it to other people, the first thing you fear is that it will be done to you. We saw slavery around us every day, so when we feared it was going to happen to us, we freaked. A guilty conscience makes you jittery and defensive.
Also, the colonies were in a strange relationship to Britain. We weren’t really British soil; we were more of a … factory, as far as they were concerned. A place that turned out lots of yummy raw materials. This made the people who lived there seem almost like factory staff instead of actual Britons who believed themselves to live on British soil. The state that the colonies were in relative to Britain was not a stable equilibrium. They were in a strange limbo-land in terms of definition (were they British soil or a British possession, and what were the people?), and sooner or later this grey area was going to have to be nailed down. It got nailed down in our favor pretty much because colonial warfare is notoriously unwinnable. Even Washington realized that, along with some of his best generals; as long as they could stretch the war out, they knew they were going to win.
This comment was written by Janis.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 6:23 pm
Sorry for so much babble:
Another issue to hand is that the Americans were never, ever, ever going to be on the inside of the power structure. Maybe your typical Englishman wasn’t going to be either, but at least someone who was of his “group,” however you define that, might be. He had an Earl or a Duke of whatever that represented his interests. The Americans had no native aristocracy that was ever ever going to get into the power structure.
It’s like the papacy is today. Most men will never be pope. But NO WOMAN WILL EVER BE, right out of the gate, and at least the men can have the vicarious thrill of thinking that they aren’t barred entirely, and take mean-spirited delight that someone else is. Americans were barred completely from any position of power or aristocratic influence.
The most influential and best-known American at the time was the tenth son of a candlemaker (Ben Franklin) and had ZERO influence in the halls of power. OTOH, the Americans themselves felt that they were men of learning and influence, and the disconnect between how they viewed themselves and how they were treated grated on them like nails on a blackboard.
This comment was written by Janis.Report this comment to the moderators
June 18th, 2003 at 11:27 pm
Amy Phillips says:
We went into most of those nations because they needed what we had to offer, and most of them asked us to, or would have if their leaders had allowed them to.
There are a few things to say about this. The only countries where the US has intervened that I know much about are in Latin America, where US intervention is rampant, usually works to overthrow democratically elected governments, and has fostered enormous suspicion of and cynicism about the United States. If people want examples, I can start with Guatemala in 1954 (CIA overthrow of the second democratically elected president in that country’s history because he created a phenomenally clever and successful land reform that both undermined US economic interests and collaborated with Guatemala’s Communist Party because it was the only honest party in Guatemalan politics) and move on through Allende in Chile in 1973, Cuba (and I’m absolutely not a Castro apologist), more Guatemala, various Caribbean nations, and some very intense economic pressure on a number of countries combined with some really awful military training to very brutal regimes. My detailed knowledge ends with Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s, in which the US messed up, and messed up, and excused the rape and murder of American nuns, and funded a horrifically destructive insurgency against a fairly moderate but definitely leftist Nicaraguan government. In any case, the point is that these are not success stories for US intervention, that by and large they pit the US against the demonstrated will of the people as expressed in reasonably fair elections, and that civil liberties have almost always declined after US intervention in Latin America.
some disclaimers: mostly I just know about Latin America, so it might be different in other places, though I have my doubts. also, I think there are amazing things about the US, and that everyone who’s talked about the US being the prototype (and that being a partial explanation for our problems) is dead on. as is everyone who’d be willing to trade the dream of being a super-wealthy CEO for the reality of universal health care. though since chances of me ever being a super-wealthy CEO are somewhere between slim and none, perhaps I just don’t understand.
to continue:
But now that we’re not needed, you’re right, we should bring them home.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re talking about, but I immediately think of Iraq, and secondarily Afghanistan, in both of which the US (or some force to keep order) is desperately needed. I opposed US military action in both places, and I’d much rather see the UN handle it multilaterally and credibly than the US take hits to its credibility and its moral stance by insisting on running the scene; but someone has to be there. Given that the US is the reason that either nation might fall apart and precipitate a regional crisis at any moment, I think we have a greater responsibility than, say, France; so I think we should contribute more resources. On the other hand, the fact that the US created this need doesn’t mean that we have any special right to whatever spoils might come of it; so I don’t think we should have any more say in decisions than anyone else. But either way, pulling out would be a terrible idea: both Iraq and Afghanistan need more attention and resources, not less. It’s even in the New York Times.
ok, those are my thoughts. Amp, thanks for all your work that goes into this.
This comment was written by Laurel.Report this comment to the moderators
June 19th, 2003 at 11:07 am
Well, at least no one’s been too scathing of us Brits here. The fact is that originally the British Empire was altruistic in it’s nature. The intention was to bring civilization to the world and it did in fact do that. The intention was to lead them to self rule through democratic government. That ethos changed because of early capitalism and there was a battle royal between the Whigs (liberal) and Tories (conservatives)the latter winning the day and the age of exploitation and capitalism as we know it began.
I think America was a different case. Remember that the settlers were originally from here and they were hardly exploited. There was in fact a majority of the ‘American Aristocracy’ who wanted to remain loyal to the king. The revolution was started by a few hotheads who stood to lose from the ‘lowering’ of taxes. Yes folks, you’re history is a myth.They were smuggling in tea and other contraband and when taxes were lowered they lost out.
America ‘won’ the war but it is true to say that the British didn’t have the heart to fight their own kith and kin.
This comment was written by Roy McCoy.Report this comment to the moderators
June 19th, 2003 at 1:29 pm
Roy, I think that anytime someone says that they were pure and altruistic, and the other guy’s theory of origin is mere myth, they are kidding themselves. No nation has ever expanded altruistically. Britain is no different. Grow up.
And without the preeminence of a mass media, there was no way for the “American Aristocracy” (cute turn of phrase there, BTW) to influence illiterate farmers toward their way of thinking. Many of the most influential polemicists were hardly rich or aristocratic, by any definition of the word. Thomas Paine was not the sort of person you’d have at the table. Franklin was a nobody of extremely humble birth. And these are the influential marketers, not Washington or Jefferson. The speechmakers and writers who whipped up popular opinion were hardly the rich guys.
Methinks you also have a little learning to do instead of immediately sailing in here, being incredibly condescending about “hey there, you silly folks, so sorry to bust your party but your history is a complete fabrication,” and clearly knowing very little about the actual lives of the people involved in the Revolution. You addressed nothing that anyone else stated, but merely implied that we were all naive, gullible believers in myth, adn moreover that Glorious Roy was the perfect person to come in here and hand us The Real Deal on a silver plate. Did you even read what we were saying about the mechanics of the Revolution at all, or just vet everyone’s comments for whether or not we said anything nasty about Britain?
(Welcome to the 20th century, honey. Britain and the US have been friends for some time now, and aside from some good-natured ribbing should you attend a 4th of July barbecue in the United States, you will face no animosity here. I’m sure this disappoints you. So sorry.)
And don’t start in “the heart to fight their kith and kin” garbage, either. The British simply learned in America what we learned in Viet Nam, that you cannot subdue a population in open revolt, particularly when that population is armed. That’s all they learned. Their coffers were drained dry by the time the war was over, it exploded into a world war in effect and had dragged their traditional enemy France into the mix, and it upended all of Parliament, bringing about the downfall of the entire Georgian government in the process. It seems that you are the one without any real historical education. If you honestly believe that any nation anywhere stops fighting a war uot of remorse for what they’ve done to their enemy, you are a hell of a lot more naive than you accuse us of being.
Besides, face it — they weren’t fighting their kith and kin. After Saratoga, they were fighting France. And both nations were stopped from continuing the fight only because they ran out of money.
I imagine you read a sentence of two or saw an interview on television where someone speculated about a smuggling-based motivation for the Revolution, and sat there nodding smugly and telling yourself that You Knew It All Along. I suggest you learn more about the individuals involved in the thing before you boil an entire war and political movement down to one motivation that you probably got off of a two-minute news interview.
This comment was written by Janis.Report this comment to the moderators
June 19th, 2003 at 9:47 pm
I don’t think that lowering the tea tax was the sole motivation for the American Revolution, but it is true that the Boston Tea Party was a protest set off by Britain lowering tea taxes.
As for the rest, I really love reading these conversations - but please remember to stay polite, folks. Thanks.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
June 20th, 2003 at 12:13 am
Goodness me Janis, that was a particularly nasty piece wasn’t it? I wonder if you know how to be polite.
As you seem to have trashed everything I said I wonder if it is you that should take history lessons. I suggest you read two excellent books:
“Empire: How Britain made the modern world” by Niall Ferguson.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0713996153/qid=1056092039/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_3_1/026-9231336-1224457#product-details
“History of Britain” Empire, by Simon Schama
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0563534575/qid=1056092039/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_3_2/026-9231336-1224457#product-details
Both by British Historians, NOT revisionist but more likely a more balanced and honest view than you will have come across in your jaundiced little world.
I dismiss your comments with the contemp you dismissed mine but I will restrain myself and remain polite.
This comment was written by Anonymous.Report this comment to the moderators
June 20th, 2003 at 12:18 am
Sorry, forgot to sign the above.
By the way, the fact that I put quotation marks around ‘American Aristocracy’ should I would have though made my intention quite clear.
They were from humble beginnings put they prospered and that’s how they could be described just as America could be said to have their own version of ‘aristocracy’ in modern times.
This comment was written by Roy McCoy.Report this comment to the moderators
June 20th, 2003 at 9:06 am
The forces that brought about the American Revolution were diverse, complex and contradictory yet managed to unite around one goal—kicking out Royal British rule—and then took several years to hash out some sort of compromise among them, embodied in our Constitution (not bad for a compromise, eh?). It was tea, it was taxes, but it was also slavery, indentured servitude, westward expansion, shipping, and a few Enlightenment ideas Madison, Jefferson et al. received from Locke, Hume, et al.
Roy is quite right that there was (and remains) an American Aristocracy, who promoted the idea of a Natural Aristocracy (”How nice of nature to annoint me king!” Born of Calvinism, gave way to Social Darwinism.) But the ideals they promoted had historical reverberations that carried around the world. Ho Chi Minh nearly plagiarized The Declaration of Independence to announce the start of the Vietnamese indepence movement (the irony is, of course, that our ruling elites fought him tooth and nail until humiliating yet necessary defeat). Which is why I think the revolution continues in slow, stop-start, two steps forward/one step back fashion. We are currently in a counter-revolutionary phase that started with Reagan and, I would argue, continues through Clinton unto the present day. But those of us who take seriously the anti-authoritarian, liberationist words of Paine, Jefferson—and further down the road, Garrison, Douglas, Dubois, King, X, Stanton, Friedan, to drop a few more important names—the day-to-day struggle continues.
Does any of the above argue that the Revolution was necessary? I would say so. For anyone under imperial rule, the example of the colonized ousting their colonizers is empowering. As horrible as events have been in post-colonial Africa, would one seriously argue that the Belgians to retake the Congo or the French retake West Africa? History moves forward, stumbles, falls, gets mud on its faces, gets back up and moves on. Twenty years from now we might be clucking the excesses of the American Empire that lead to its fall. Citizens the world over, Americans included, can only hope.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 20th, 2003 at 9:42 am
Freedom and our Revolution
This comment was written by Surfing the Tsunami (Kaiko'o).Will Shetterly has a blog, wherein he writes the following (link). I myself have been thinking along these lines, and I have to say that just maybe Will has something. Why are we so warlike and non-free? Maybe the very basis for this country, the revol…
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June 20th, 2003 at 6:02 pm
One point Roy made that’s gone unnoticed is the fact that most of the colonists were English in birth or origin. I can’t help but think that this explains much of the difference between our fate and those of other British colonies. It’s one thing to suppress dissent (i.e., attack people) in a country whose inhabitants are clearly the “other” (they don’t look like you, you can’t understand what they say) and quite another thing to attack people who are disturbingly similar to you.
Of course, I eagerly await corrections and notifications of my egregious stupidity.
This comment was written by Jupiter.Report this comment to the moderators
June 20th, 2003 at 10:33 pm
My understanding is that the British Empire treated its colonies less brutally than any other empire (not saying much, granted).
I just read Landes’s Wealth and Poverty of Nations, and he argues that the problems many British colonies (e.g. India) predate colonization (in India’s case, the pre-colonization rulers were quite horrible, nor was pre-colonial India anywhere near developing a healthy economy on its own) and these countries are, in the long run, better off for their colonization.
Landes even goes so far as to single out Japan as the country which, for all its brutality, has had the most beneficial long-term economic effect on its colonies (I’m pretty certain that this is true at least of Taiwan, where I did the slacker English teacher thing rather longer than I really should have). He doesn’t grapple with the question of what would have happened if Japan had won WWII, though.
Regarding Franklin - although he didn’t start out rich, he certainly ended up that way, which I guess wouldn’t qualify him as aristocracy according to the British class system. Maybe this was partly what the revolution was about, as I think that Janis implies (a thousand pardons if I misunderstand) but the system of government that was originally enacted was pretty unegalitarian (inegalitarian?) - as we all know, voting was limited to white male property owners - and was the creation of people who were uniformly rich. The relatively egalitarian society we have now is the result of continuing class struggle (this sort of term embarrasses me for some reason, but there it is).
Regarding the Boston Tea Party thingy, you might want to make clear that this ties into the smuggling whatchamabob; lowering taxes on East India Company exports would have made it harder for American smugglers to compete.
None of which really “goes to” (as the TV lawyers say) whether the revolution was necessary. I feel that it wasn’t.
This comment was written by David.Report this comment to the moderators
June 21st, 2003 at 1:53 am
The debate has become more civilzed now so I would just like to make this point to David’s comment:
“as we all know, voting was limited to white male property owners - and was the creation of people who were uniformly rich. The relatively egalitarian society we have now is the result of continuing class struggle”
Yes, but what we need to remember is that the same applied to England in those days too. it would have been beyond their comprehension to bring in one man one vote. I suppose you could say it hadn’t been thought of in those times.
Indeed I wonder if there was voting for all anywhere in the world at the time. Maybe the colonists set the trend and the rest followed. As you will know there were many years of struggle before women were granted the vote.
Different times, different mindsets.
This comment was written by Roy McCoy.Report this comment to the moderators
June 21st, 2003 at 4:22 pm
What I can’t figure out is why America’s white male property owners didn’t simply buy themselves seats in Parliament the way Britain’s did. The going rate in the late 1700s was in the neighborhood of 5000 guineas — a sizeable chunk of money, but probably not more in contemporary terms than a US congressional campaign costs today. (And in those days they got better value for money — that was 5000 guineas for a guaranteed, perpetual seat, not for a chance of winning a seat that you’d have to gamble again two years later.) Of course, if you had the right sort of property in England, the parliamentary seats would come with it — a 30,000-pound country estate might include two or three seats. Perhaps the founders’ real problem was that estates in, say, Virginia, didn’t have the same privileges.
This comment was written by David Moles.Report this comment to the moderators
June 21st, 2003 at 4:24 pm
By the way, the question of what direction pre-colonial India’s economy was going is very much open for debate — or, was, at least, three years ago when I was studying it in England.
This comment was written by David Moles.Report this comment to the moderators
June 23rd, 2003 at 11:34 am
Now I know what has been bothering me about this discussion of American exceptionalism as regards the use of bloody revolution to achieve independence and political change.
1688. Roy and other commentors from Britain should recognize the significance of this date. Were it not for the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the attendent Lockean ideas folks like Isaac Newton promoted, the American Revolution may have been unthinkable. And though monarchy was relatively quickly restored (because Cromwell turned out to be a real git), it was never the same again; more room for British democracy was opened up. I point all this out to indicate that, in the Modern Era, bloody revolution—from Britain to America to several in France to Russia to the rest of the formerly colonized world—has been a constant companion to political change. Not saying it’s a good thing, but there you have it.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 23rd, 2003 at 8:04 pm
Would you seriously like America (Canada, etc.) to still be embedded in the British class system? I’m not sure that fossilized reverence for Lord this and Earl that and aristocratic officials with long strings of honorific letters after their names, and equally entrenched contempt for Cockneys and Liverpudlians and the Irish, are all a fair exchange for the more socialistic governance that exists today in the UK; in fact you could argue that said governance would not have arisen without decolonization, begun by the United States.
Niall Ferguson is a reactionary and one of a number of “revisionist” right-wing British historians whose goal seems to be to sentimentalize the British past (among these is David Cannadine, of _Ornamentalism_, who at least is more honest and does not hitch his academic wagon to American Empire).
P.S. I’m American, not British. But I think it is excessive to say “the American Revolution was a mistake” because right-wing Americans today are wrapping themselves in the flag and in militaristic nostalgia. This tasteless flag-wrapping is a deliberate strategy of the freepers to make the left seem unpatriotic and “un-American,” and we shouldn’t rise to the bait.
This comment was written by sara.Report this comment to the moderators
June 24th, 2003 at 9:39 am
Would you seriously like America (Canada, etc.) to still be embedded in the British class system?
I think the question is more, was armed revolution necessary or even effective? The class system in America now is to my mind no great improvement on titled aristocracy. The ideal of a classless society is worth working toward, but the reality has never been seen on these shores.
The American revolutionaries traded long-range governance for short-range, and in the process set an example for other colonies which, if the record of US involvement in Latin America is any standard, they’ve regretted ever since.
This comment was written by pericat.Report this comment to the moderators
June 24th, 2003 at 11:22 am
I think the question is more, was armed revolution necessary or even effective?
Short term? Yes. The British troops were not going to leave voluntarily and the British Crown & Parliament were not simply going to hand over independence (although a significant faction of Parliament was ready to grant a wide degree of latitude in self-governance) given the precedent it would have set to other colonies.
Long term? That’s more complicated, but I’d have to say yes. At least insofar as it was unavoidable. I’d even argue that the Civil War and the bloodiness of labor struggles was unavoidable for the same reasons as above: the benefactors of exploitation do not give up their position atop the exploitative system without first trying to preserve it through repression, violence and the spilling of blood. The Civil Rights movement, it should be noted, was not revolutionary; rather, it was profoundly transformative, and certain aspects, certain ideals threatened America’s class systems (hence the assassinations), yet it remains squarely within the sphere of intrasystemic reformation. Ralph Nader has no great love for America’s class system, but even his broad sweeping reforms do not fundamentally threaten the exploitative relationship between employer and employee that inevitably privileges the former.
In the end, the American revolutionaries did not fail us. We stand the risk of failing their ideals, and the ideals of reformers and revolutionaries since.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 24th, 2003 at 11:24 am
Oh, to clarify: I did not intend to trivialize the blood spilt by the police and certain hate groups during the Civil Rights movement. Rather, I was alluding to the generally bloodless, nonviolent strategy engaged by the reformers themselves.
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 24th, 2003 at 7:19 pm
Short term? Yes. The British troops were not going to leave voluntarily
I’m sorry, I think I got lost somewhere. We’re talking about British troops assigned to British colonies in time of war (with France), aren’t we? What was so onerous about their presence that was worth instigating a revolution over?
the British Crown & Parliament were not simply going to hand over independence (although a significant faction of Parliament was ready to grant a wide degree of latitude in self-governance) given the precedent it would have set to other colonies.
This statement assumes that a large majority of the colonists desired independence from GB, to the point of being willing to fight over it. My understanding is that while many of the colonists wanted things run differently, which things varied from colony to colony. Being completely cut off from England was not a universal or even majority goal.
I will certainly agree that the labour movement worldwide had to be willing to engage in physical struggle as well as political– the bosses had no compunctions in using force to keep workers in line. I just don’t see the parallels with the relationship of the American colonies to England. There were political avenues available to redress specific concerns which were set aside in favour of fighting a war.
This comment was written by pericat.Report this comment to the moderators
June 25th, 2003 at 9:46 am
I think anyone who has romantic illusions about the British Empire read the book by Mike Davis called Late Victorian Holocausts.
Schama (mentioned above) grudgingly admitted in a recent New Yorker that Late Victorian Holocausts demonstrates that the British approach to famine relief in India was extraordinarily callous and led to millions of deaths. This is in sharp contrast to claims that the British handled famine relief well. (Schama’s mention of Late Victorian Holocausts came in a review devoted of a biography of Curzon, if someone wants to look this up.)
I haven’t read Ferguson’s book, but I looked at the index to see what he said on famines in India under the British and he had very little to say about the massive ones that occurred in the late 1800’s. He has a footnote arguing that contrary to popular belief, the British weren’t indifferent to famine. But Davis doesn’t say that all the British officials were equally callous–some did a decent job saving lives when they were allowed to do so.
My impression is that Ferguson is a historian in danger of turning into a propagandist for the British Empire. Imagine what we would say about an historian who extolled the increase in life expectancy in China under Mao and barely said a word about the tens of millions who died in the famine of the Great Leap Forward. The British record in India is similar, except that I don’t know if life expectancy in India increased under their rule. T
This comment was written by Donald Johnson.Report this comment to the moderators
June 25th, 2003 at 11:18 am
We’re talking about British troops assigned to British colonies in time of war (with France), aren’t we? What was so onerous about their presence that was worth instigating a revolution over?
What’s so onerous about the presence of American and British troops in Iraq right now? Simply put, no one likes living under military rule. The British troops were not there simply to fight France; they stayed far longer than necessary for that assignment so as to quell independence ambitions that were already brewing. Their tactics—kicking down doors of people’s homes, shooting protesters in the street, that sort of thing—inflamed colonists passions enough that they were remembered at the time of the drafting of the Bill of Rights. But the behavior of British troops is only one factor among many that drove the revolution. Like I mentioned earlier: taxation, expansion, Enlightenment ideals of self-governance & democracy, regulation of trade, shaking off mercantilism that favored the “Motherland” and so on.
There were political avenues available to redress specific concerns which were set aside in favour of fighting a war.
Er, that’s a bit too simplified. In fact, it glosses over the enormous power inequity between Parliament and the colonists seeking redress. I highly recommend reading The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman. She devotes a whole quarter of the book relating the various ways British Parliament dug in its heels, rejecting compromise proposals from the colonists and sympathetic factions within Parliament. In her account, the colonists got fed up with continued rebuffs, said “Screw it. We’ll form our own country.”
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Report this comment to the moderators
June 25th, 2003 at 8:58 pm
What’s so onerous about the presence of American and British troops in Iraq right now? Simply put, no one likes living under military rule.
The situations are not equivalent. Iraqis are not British citizens, and the armies in Iraq are those of foreign conquerers.
But the behavior of British troops is only one factor among many that drove the revolution.
Now, they only shot a few protesters, and they did go on trial for it. :) And John Adams and Josiah Quincy got them off. However, British history is filled with like examples where the citizenry got a bit rowdy and soldiers were sent in to put a stop to it. My point is not that this was a Good Thing, only that it wasn’t out of the ordinary.
Like I mentioned earlier: taxation, expansion, Enlightenment ideals of self-governance & democracy, regulation of trade, shaking off mercantilism that favored the “Motherland” and so on.
Indeed, several Parliamentary acts of the time were cloth-headed in conception and execution. But civil disobedience and appeals to Parliament were not wholly without success in getting them repealed within a year or so. The Quartering Acts couldn’t even be enforced, as they depended on cooperation from the colonial legislatures, and they weren’t cooperating.
Er, that’s a bit too simplified. In fact, it glosses over the enormous power inequity between Parliament and the colonists seeking redress.
The inequities cut both ways– Parliament could proclaim all it liked that it had a right to tax the colonies directly, but it had a hell of a time with enforcement, and had to deal with dissenters within its own ranks. To my mind, these are not reasons for armed revolution. Less drastic means (protests, boycotts, riots) were successfully used to redress particular grievances and no particular reason (outside of Massachusetts) to think that situation would change.
Inside Massachusetts, Gage was rather stupidly escalating tensions through one thing after another, but he was one governor in one colony– had he been more circumspect, I doubt very much the more zealous of the would-be rebels would have had a rallying cause to interest the rest of the colonies. Things simply weren’t that bad.
Now, I may well be wrong on every point, but I think I’ve taxed everyone’s patience quite enough for one thread. :)
This comment was written by pericat.Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 12:30 pm
The American Revolution was really a war against the same kind of imperial economic pressure that the U.S. is imposing on much of the third world through the World Bank and the IMF and the various “free” trade agreements. At the time of the revolution the most influential power in Great Britain was the East India Company, in which most of the upper classes were invested and from which much was expected. The East India Company set policy for the King in a very real sense. The whole tea issue was forced upon the colonies because the East India Company was determined to have a monopoly on the importation of tea. Small business couldn’t afford to compete. The East India Company was exempt from the tax.
The irony is that we have largely become what we sought to free ourselves from. We’re now a country run primarily by and for the profit of large multinational corporations. They control the media, the government, and, in a very real sense, most of the rest of our lives. We are less citizens than consumers, and we are the poorer for all that.
This comment was written by SOB.Report this comment to the moderators
June 26th, 2003 at 4:48 pm
*Would you seriously like America (Canada, etc.) to still be embedded in the British class system?*
Oh, we’ve got a class system in the U.S., all right. We have had it for some time. In fact, the whole “Only Landowners Can Vote” business established by the Founders means that the grappling over class issues was happening pretty much from Day One. Sometimes I envy the UK because it seems that people there are more honest about the class system as how it works. In the U.S., you’re more likely to switch on Cable TV and find people talking reasonably and openly about sex toys and how the prostate works than you are to find people talking reasonably and openly about class. Europeans often complain about how prudish Americans are about sex, but I’d say our skittishness about class issues is much more a seemingly unalterable aspect of our public discourse, and every bit as bad for the country’s health.
This comment was written by Amy S..Report this comment to the moderators
June 27th, 2003 at 10:37 am
Now, I may well be wrong on every point, but I think I’ve taxed everyone’s patience quite enough for one thread. :)
This comment was written by Kevin Moore.Me, too. But for the record: I don’t think you are wrong. In fact, you make several good points. The difficulty for both of us is trying to judge actions that were taken over 200 years ago in a very different historical context and by people of different mindsets, cultures, etc. But that’s what makes history so fun, ja? :)
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