This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
“When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.” The complaint in October 2024 by Donald Trump’s team against Labour Party members, travelling to America to volunteer for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, was a sign of the continued resonance of the American Revolution.
Susie Wiles, Trump’s campaign manager, drew another parallel: “In two weeks, Americans will once again reject the oppression of big government that we rejected in 1776.” This was a reprise of the reference by Sarah Palin when speaking in Boston:
You’re sounding the warning bell just like what happened in that midnight run and just like with that original Tea Party back in 1773. I want to tell him [President Obama], Nah, you know, we’ll keep clinging to our Constitution and our guns and religion and you can keep the change.
Visiting Liberty Hall in Philadelphia, repeatedly a moving sight even for a Brit, I was greatly struck to hear King George III referred to by a guide as a tyrant. This description is wrong but very much reflects the standard American response to the Declaration of Independence and its role in American public history.
In criticising George, the Americans drew, and continue to draw, not only on the sense that monarchy — in contrast to an elected president — is an anachronism, but also on British criticism of George, notably the contemporary (and misleading) Whig myth about his subverting the British constitution. Moreover, the history of countries under republican governments, such as Classical Athens, republican Rome, and the Netherlands in the early-modern period, was scrutinised in order to provide constitutional guidance and political ammunition for use against Britain and the monarchy.
The hostile portrayal of George endures to this day, as in the musical Hamilton, and it is reiterated in popular academic works. Thus, in 1982, Robert Middlekauff found virtue essentially an American prerogative in his The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution 1763–1789. Such a presentation was necessary, he and others argued, to the process of unbecoming British.
The situation was made more complex in the Gilded Era and then in the 20th century by a marked degree of Anglophilia among part of the American élite. The Anglo-American alliance created in 1941 became the key plank of foreign policy for both powers. Moreover, in what can be seen as a reaction within the United States in the 1920s, and notably by the Republican governments of the period, against “Bolshevism,” progressivism and immigration, there was an emphasis on an early America that was under the British Crown. This was given visual form in the 1920s in John D. Rockefeller’s sponsorship of restoring Colonial Williamsburg. It recurred in the Eisenhower Cold War years of the 1950s.
“Culture wars” changed the perspective in the United States. The rise of a new historical consciousness reflected a more radical stance from the 1960s. In part, this radical stance involved a foreshortening and misunderstanding of American history, with a stress on the period from the Civil War providing a backdrop to an engagement with Civil Rights and other contemporary issues. As a result, earlier American history, and certainly the Colonial Period, and that of the Early Republic, dropped from attention. A similar situation characterised the teaching of American history in Britain, which came to focus on the New Deal and, later, Civil Rights.
A contrast between the treatment of the conflict in America and Britain is instructive for the significance of origin accounts, for that is important for America but not Britain. Moreover, the continued importance of the founding constitution for America today understandably further directs attention to the politics of the period. The American Revolution is also far less contentious than the Civil War or, indeed, the foundation of the original colonies; although the accommodating attitude of the Founding Fathers, especially Washington and Jefferson, to slavery has attracted greater attention this century. The consequences can be seen in memorial sites, notably at Philadelphia and Monticello, both in what is written on displays and what is shown to visitors.
The heritage, nevertheless, is largely a positive one, and so also for the conflict itself. A sense of superior American morality, but also of the challenges it faced, was captured by Thomas Sully’s painting The Capture of Major Andre (1812) which depicted the three young militiamen who captured the British agent André in September 1780 refusing a bribe, thus thwarting Benedict Arnold’s plan to betray West Point. This refusal, and the contrast with the (unsuccessful) treason of Arnold, was a symbol of the moral strength of ordinary American citizens, a theme of some battlefield commemoration, notably at Bunker Hill. This strength was seen as the basis for the republic but also of the need for vigilance against the British threat and its alleged American counterpart, which was found in the Federalists by their Democratic-Republican rivals.
This sense of superior American morality remains culturally important to the present, being seen for example in the film The Patriot (2000). Superior morality was in part expressed through the idea that Patriot soldiers were of higher moral calibre and more dedicated than “German mercenaries” and British automated dregs, which is an account that bears little relationship to the truth of a relatively paternalistic British army.
The War of Independence was very much a civil war, especially in the Southern colonies
At the same time, the social context has attracted attention. In so far as the Colonial and Early Republic periods now receive public (and even educational) attention, it is in large part in terms that would have made sense from the 1960s. Thus, signs of social radicalism have attracted more attention. From this perspective, the British and the Loyalists can appear anachronistic and reactionary, opponents not only of the new America fought for from 1775, but also, more relevantly, of its fruition being contested from the 1960s. The War of Independence becomes the American Revolution, and, therefore, offers a different “lesson” for today. This presentist approach underrates the complexities of the conflict.
Reconsidering the War of Independence in terms of later values certainly leads to a major misunderstanding of empire. This was especially so from the 1960s when the war was compared with the Vietnam War, a comparison, notably of British forces in 1775–83 with American forces in the later war, that was seriously misleading as well as conveniently arresting for its progenitors. In particular, this approach underrated the extent to which the War of Independence was very much a civil war, especially, but not only, in the Southern colonies.
Very different contexts continue to be offered when presenting the War of Independence. The Tea Party movement of the 2000s and 2010s drew on a key moment that was part of the foundation account. The drama of the Boston Tea Party, however, is a very poor model for politics within a modern civil society, let alone the rule of law-and-order. Moreover, the events of 1773 scarcely describe modern America, not least given the role of colonial Boston as a slaving port. Furthermore, the treatment of Loyalists in Boston was to be extremely harsh, but so earlier with those of different religious views. Indeed, in 1732, Thomas Sherlock, an influential Church of England bishop, argued that it was ironic that those Puritans who had claimed religious freedom in England left for North America where they had turned persecutors of those who wanted freedom there.
Relations with Native and African Americans put the War of Independence in an instructive context. Ironically, possibly (although looking ahead to tensions in Australia and Canada), the British were more mindful of the interests of the former than were the exponents of the new state, and this helped alienate colonial opinion. Indeed, for the Native Americans, the war was more traumatic than it was for the colonial population, whether Loyalist or Patriot. There was a major attempt to clear territory for land speculation, and many Native Americans were killed.
The British recruitment of a few Black soldiers was also controversial, notably in Virginia where freedom was certainly not colour blind. Moreover, numbers of Black slaves escaped their masters and fled to the British during both the War of Independence and the War of 1812. This flight offered and offers a complication that was and is not really wanted by commentators, and it remains generally ignored.
In The Hornet’s Nest: A Novel of the Revolutionary War (2003), former President Jimmy Carter observed:
The revolution in the southern states was initiated by wealthy and influential political leaders along the coast, but the responsibilities for combat were shifting to those backwoodsmen, some of whom would never yield even when their plight seemed hopeless.
Heroism under pressure provides the tone of Bunker Hill, and indeed discussion of much of the war, while Trenton and Valley Forge provide images of resolution, Saratoga is proclaimed as a triumph of American fighting methods, and for Yorktown the Marquis de Lafayette is treated as an honorary American. Failures are elided or overlooked. That the supposedly decadent Brits won at Long Island or Brandywine, the clearing of Canada or Camden, Fort Washington or Charleston, is put down to greater resources. The idea of inherent American military superiority, one burnished by Andrew Jackson’s spectacular victory over the British at New Orleans in 1815, and by the Americans “saving” the Western Allies in both world wars, is then read back into the War of Independence. The idea of the Patriots as an effective “people under arms” confirms this account and is very much applied to the Continental Army, even though, in reality, it could entail struggle between two such forces as at King’s Mountain in 1780: the Loyalists were also “people under arms”.
There is no rival British account because the British simply lack this interest, even though this was a key episode in British imperial history. In addition, the subsequent political crisis in Britain in 1782–84 suggested that the political system had failed. A lack of interest, however, is unsurprising as the subsequent war with France that began in 1793 was more urgent and sustained, not only compared with the American Revolution but also with the war with France in 1778–83.
Far from this lack of interest being a matter of the British being embarrassed about the American Revolution, the successes of that war against the Bourbons, notably the defence of Gibraltar and victory at the Saintes in 1782, also now attract scant attention. In contrast, both were treated very differently at the time and widely celebrated.
The Loyalist diaspora was one focus of British imperial memory about the American Revolution. Linked to their experience, the Loyalists helped to take the empire in a more conservative direction. However, because Loyalism as an identity was greatly transformed by the challenging conditions of migration and exile, no single monolithic Loyalist tradition could be passed on to subsequent generations, even in Canada. The Loyalists were to have more invested in the successful defence of Canada during the War of 1812 than in their more diffuse and unsuccessful struggle in the American Revolution. More generally, there was a broader period of adjustment in the Anglo-American relationship with links and assumptions reknitted or adapting.
Writing from Paris in 1786, William Eden, who was negotiating a trade treaty and seeking to develop closer Anglo-French links, noted a sense of a geopolitical transformation of menace: “many of the most considerable and efficient people talk with little reserve of the dangers to be apprehended from the revolted colonies, if they should be encouraged to gain commercial strength and consistency of government.”
Napoleon in 1816 was to follow suit, telling, in the aftermath of the Anglo-American War of 1812, Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Wilks, Governor of St Helena, where he was being held prisoner:
… your [British] coal gives you an advantage we cannot possess in France. But the high price of all articles of prime necessity is a great disadvantage in the export of your manufactures … your manufacturers are emigrating fast to America…. In a century or perhaps half a century more, it will give a new character to the affairs of the world. It has thriven upon our follies.
As for the Revolution’s aftermath, far from propounding a universal creed for change that it then sought to implement, the new American state did not prefigure, not face the challenges of its French Revolutionary counterpart in the 1790s as a result of doing so (other than failing in Canada). There was no earlier counterpart to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, nor was America in a position to give force to one. A renewed attack on Canada was not launched until 1812, and such an attack was certainly not the policy of the Federalists who dominated the new state until the 1800 presidential election brought Thomas Jefferson to power. Thus, the pieces apparently shattered by the American Revolution had in many respects been less damaged than might have been anticipated. This was true both of European control in the New World, and of Britain’s overseas power.
In 1783–87, British geopolitical anxieties were greatly eased by the success of the 1783 peace settlement in splitting the opposing alliance. This meant that American expansionism, had it resumed against Canada or began in the Caribbean, would not be a great threat, and also permitted the emphasis on relations with France that was further assisted by British peace with Mysore in 1784.
Once independent, moreover, the Americans did not match the Europeans in developing a large fleet. Indeed, the initial absence of a federal revenue base helped ensure that there was no navy, for, once independence was won, the Continental Navy, itself weak, was disbanded, its last ship being sold in 1785. The lack of the necessary infrastructure of bureaucracy and naval dockyards was a key problem and contrasted with the situation in Europe. The situation was not to change until a combination of Federalist government and the Quasi War with France led to the buildup of a navy from 1794 and, even more, 1797.
The American war led to new constitutional arrangements with Ireland and was followed by major attempts to reorganise the government of British India, unsuccessful pressure for parliamentary reform, and William Pitt the Younger’s wide-ranging policies for fiscal regeneration and commercial strength. The consequences of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic War brought far greater changes in Britain and the British world.
Legacies and lessons overlapped, with morality much to the fore on the American side. However, general military historians prefer to emphasise the French rather than the American Revolution, and so also with contemporaries. The American Revolution could be used as a way to comment on the French one, as in Charlotte Smith’s novel The Old Manor House (1793), and in America the two revolutions were contrasted to the favour of the Americans, notably by the Federalists. The French Revolution was rejected for its atheism, its social radicalism, and the violence of the Terror. In contrast, for the British, the standard contrast with the French Revolution was not the American one but, rather, the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688–89. Contexts and comparisons therefore provided the basis for assumptions and assessments, and they continue to explain how these could be very different.
This point is also true for military matters. The war was transitional in the sense of prefiguring aspects of the “modern” revolutionary warfare beginning in 1792 but being waged in large part in traditional ways. This was particularly so in looking toward the Latin American wars of independence. Indeed, rather than regarding the American War of Independence as an outlier of European developments, a partial precursor to the French Revolutionary Wars, it is more appropriate to think of the war as the first struggle between European settler populations in the New World and their governments, both “mother country” governments and, subsequently, New World ones, most famously with the American Civil War. This provides a way to grasp a crucial significance of the War of Independence. It might have little to offer Napoleon, but it was more significant for Simon Bolivar and the Confederate states’ Jefferson Davis.
