Posted by:
Lot's Wife
(
)
Date: March 06, 2019 11:47PM
Panther Wrote:
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> The American separatists led a violent rebellion
> that led to the deaths of not only British troops
> but a number of the other colonists of all
> political colors. Other colonists had to flee
> northward to Canada or went elsewhere to get away
> from the violence. The African Canadian community
> arose as a result of this.
That Americans moved to Canada or elsewhere is irrelevant.
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> The armed rebels
> largely won because an enemy of Britain stepped in
> - France - and if that hadn't happened that the
> USA may have remained like Canada or Australia and
> evolved towards constitutional monarchy within the
> Commonwealth.
True. On the other hand, America may have gone the way of other British colonies like India, Malaya, Ireland, Egypt, the Sudan, Israel, and other countries that used violence to achieve control over their own destinies. The fact is that the overwhelming majority of British colonies overthrew British power. Whether scantly populated places like Australia and Canada decided to stay in the UK is hardly applicable.
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> Americans are so used to seeing romanticized
> portrayals of their War of Independence that they
> forget there are other accounts or understandings
> of it.
You keep acting like Americans fit your stereotype of ignorant rubes. That may make you feel superior, but it is false.
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> It was noted at the time by Samuel Johnson
> and others that the USA was a slave owning society
> so its ideas of liberty did not apply to
> everyone.
Doctor Johnson's denunciation of American slavery is ironic given that English slavery continued until well after his death. And British traders played perhaps the dominant role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade until after 1807. So I'm not sure what relevance his comments have to our conversation.
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> You say taxation was irrelevant. You brought it
> up. I maintain it was one of the things used as an
> excuse for violence snd even the destruction of
> opponents' property like the "Tea Party"
Actually, you brought it up--and you added that current taxes are more onerous than then. That comparison of tax burdens is what I described as irrelevant.
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> India as I say, was quite a different case. For
> one, it never had many European colonists (100,000
> or so at its height) and they suffered far far
> worse than anything the 13 Colonies had. Not
> comparable at all.
Really? It isn't significant that both were countries dominated by a distant English power that treated them as resources to be exploited? That both decided to employ violence to get the British out? What about Israel and the use of terrorism to expel the British, or the Malayan insurrection? What about Egypt. Those are all peoples/countries that wanted to control their own affairs and did something about it. Hence immediately comparable--and a solid refutation of your insinuation that the US acted extremely.
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> "Did the American colonies ever produce a head of
> state for England? Did an American ever serve as
> King? As Prime Minister?"
>
> That's not how monarchy works.
Actually, it is precisely how monarchies work. They have prime ministers, and those prime ministers arise from their citizenries. So my question stands: if the Americans were equal subjects, why did they not have parliamentary representation and why were none ever admitted to any ministry or prime ministry?
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> As for PM. Most English couldn't become PM.
Irrelevant. If Americans and English had comparable political rights, Americans would have served in cabinets just as English did.
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> Given time it may well
> have happened - Churchill was eligible for
> American citizenship... Americans have married
> into the British royal family as well since
> independence. The USA would have been more like
> Canada.
That Churchill was eligible for US citizenship and hence for almost every office in the United States proves my point. The Americans never had similar opportunity in England. As for the US becoming like Canada, do you not realize that the decision to open up British parliamentary participation to Australia, Canada, and Northern Ireland was a reaction to the abject failure of a policy of exclusion? It was because of the US and other revolutions that Canada and Australia achieved their status within the commonwealth.
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> "Didn't Barrington Moore, for instance, say that
> the reason the American Revolution succeeded was
> because it was not really a revolution? "
>
> Violent overthrow of the government, popular
> uprising (although not as popular as now claimed),
> left wing rebellion (by their standards), and
> deliberate restructuring of the society. That's a
> revolution...
Your are laboring under a misconception. The Moore argument, and those of Charles Beard and Samuel Huntington and de Toqueville, was that the American Revolution was a marginal affair. The Americans severed their political ties to the English throne but the social structure and the economic system were virtually untouched. There was no "deliberate restructuring of" American society--and you can't demonstrate that there was.
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> The new America got a
> new upper class, new taxation, new centralization,
> new colonial efforts to the west and south etc
> etc.
A curious statement. America kept the same ruling class. It got not "new taxation" but the right to keep the taxes it paid. The "new centralization" was the only thing that changed: the political system. And no, the effort to colonize the west and south was not new. Like the socioeconomic system, it continued as it had during the colonial period.
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> Not all parts of the south existed at
> independence. Like the 13 Colonies, Washington
> helped expand into new lands, settle them with new
> Anglos and expand towns and cities there. Most of
> the area beyond the Appalachians for example.
The North American colonies were spreading already. The Revolution did not change that pattern. As for Washington accelerating the expansion, I'm not sure what you mean. He was only in office till 1784, and under the articles of confederation that were the de facto constitution until 1789 he had virtually no power. Other than getting the English in 1783 to sign a treaty recognizing that the old English lands had passed into American hands in 1776, Washington did nothing. Colonization continued apace until 1803, 1818, 1819, when the major accretions occurred. But by then Washington was long gone. Right?
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> If the present US government encountered a
> situation similar to the 13 Colonies in an allied
> country, they would not support it, unless it was
> of economic benefit.
Surely no government is obligated to support an insurrection unless it considers it advantageous to do so. Or is it your contention that the US should support all uprisings regardless of location, nature and consequences?
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> They would not tolerate destruction of US exports.
Really? Did the US "not tolerate" the Russian revolution and the loss of trade it entailed? How about the Chinese revolution? The Nazi imposition of a European trade block? What are we to make of the OPEC nationalization of US oil resources in 1969-1973, which went uncontested, and of the even bigger disruption brought by the equally uncontested Iranian Revolution? All of these things angered the US government and elicited some sort of response, but ultimately the US tolerated "the destruction of US exports" on many occasions. Once again you are asserting a generalization that breaks down quickly as soon as one starts looking at actual evidence.
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> Imagine if Scotland, or Quebec, or
> Catalonia in Spain did the same kind of thing.
> They'd be all over it. Probably try and blame the
> Russians.
We can actually test that hypothesis. Did the US get "all over it" when terrorism almost separated Quebec from Canada or the Basque region from Spain? No. Will the United States intervene now that Scottish secession is a real possibility? No. So your generalization is untenable.
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> Yet all of these have greater support
> for independence than the pre-war 13 Colonies
> did.
You cannot possibly know that for the reason you adduced above: the vast majority of Americans in 1776 were powerless and not subject to opinion research. Can you cite a single poll in support of your position?
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> When that situation happens with an enemy e.g. the
> USSR, or Yugoslavia, they will help that movement
> along.
Again, an incorrect statement. When the USSR collapsed, the United States chose not to accelerate that effort lest it trigger a world war. The brilliance of US policy particularly under Bush was that Washington sought to ease the transition and minimize the adverse consequences.
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Back to the original question.
The American revolutionaries were an elite that simply wanted to decide its own fate, so it pushed the English elite aside while maintaining its own social status and perpetuating the existing economic system. The revolution succeeded, and did not produce a devastating reaction, because it was literally superficial. Life went on very much like before.
The Confederacy was an insurrection against a state to which the southern states had willingly acceded. It threatened to rip apart trade patterns, necessitate a permanent military establishment (that would not come otherwise for many decades) and involve foreign countries in an unstable geostrategic balance. There was no reason that the Union should ever have tolerated that.
States aren't play things that people rip up at will. They are entities that survive if they are reasonably compatible with the underlying societies. If they are not--as King George's America was not--then they break. If they are compatible with the underlying realities, as was Lincoln's US, then they tend to survive. And in many cases they should survive.