The British were entirely correct, from their point of view. That was the American point of view, too, until, say, 1772 or so.

OJ:

Haven't you previously described the Revolution as a mistake? Or do I have you confused with someone else?

Mr. Judd;

The key difference being that when the insurgents in Iraq started playing dirty, we changed tactics and crushed them anyway.

Of all the things Americans don't know about the American Revolution, IMHO the biggest misunderstanding is that the American colonies were somehow of great important to England. Rather, it seems that it was a dumping ground for incompetents who might otherwise screw up something that mattered.

AOG:

Isn't the difference that we have no intention of keeping Iraq as a colony?

Had the British been wiser they'd have offered us nationhood under the Crown, a deal we'd have taken, and both parties would have been much better off.

Matt:

It was a mistake, on both sides:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1183

"nationhood under the Crown"-- or better yet, representation in Parliament as loyal subjects.

Subjects of the King, not of Parliament.

The misguided mercantilistic economics of the time precluded representation in parliament. The revolution was the only alternative to British short-sightedness. History unfolds slowly while the ultimate effect of our revolution is yet to be seen although I suspect it will be very positive in the long-term. Without the American counterbalance to the utopian schemes of the 20th century, to which Britain showed herself to be somewhat susceptible, the world would be a poorer place.

Tom:

Yes, but a British America would have strengthened the Crown and acted as a brake on utopianism here and there, as well as easing our way to ending slavery, and prevented a Hitler, for instance, from dreaming of attacking Britain.

The Crown would not have let us conquer the entire continent. Imagine a 20th Century with Soviet Russia in Alaska and the West Coast (outside of Berkley).

AML:

Which is why the Crown would have been eager for us to take the whole continent. What was ours would be its.

If we had had the crown, we would have had a parliment, and that would have been disastrous.

Why? They could have written a constitution, not to dissimilar to ours, but with a final check and balance--a Crown veto.

You'd trade Washington, Adams and Jefferson for George III, the Prince Regent and the Duke of Clarence. To state it is to refute it.

The American Revolution happened because the English Civil War, the Protectorate, the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution happened. By the time the English got all that sorted out, the colonies were one nation and independent, though they still needed a push to realize that fact.

The resumption of Imperial power, once Parliment had consolidated its sovereignty under the Hanovers, was unavoidable. That Puritan New England, Quaker/German Pennsylvania and Catholic Maryland resented it was unsurprising. That the commercial mid-atlantic and aristocratic south resented it as much surprised everyone. The British and the Americans were astonished by the extent to which Lexington and Concord enraged all the colonies. No one would have predicted, and few would even have hoped, that Congress would raise an army, put a Virginian in charge and take arms against the King. Although the colonists still told themselves that they would be able to find a way to remain Englishmen, the die was cast.

First, there was no Englishman in America who was going to come to terms with the rebels, short of executing the ring leaders and putting down the rebellion.

Second, neither King nor parliment had any interest in a diminution of their power. If Burke couldn't convince them, they weren't going to be convinced.

Third, the British thought that the American arguments were nuts. "No taxation without representation" sounds convincing to us, but Englishmen didn't have representation either. The rotten borough system was still in existence, so you had wealthy propertied men in the new big industrial cities with no representation, and rotten boroughs, owned by one man or populated by a handfull of farmers, with their own seats. Even for themselves, the English believed in virtual representation.

Fourth, the English, assuming they had agreed to actual, proportional representation, could figure out as well as the Americans what would happen. The colonies would continue to grow and the Imperial power would be pulled west, making England a backwater in its own Empire. The English just weren't going to do it.

Fifth, just be virtue of having the Crown, you don't have America. You don't have the bill of rights -- the point of which was to ensure against the perceived abuses of the Crown. You have a state supported church. You don't have an upper house that means anything, or you have patents of nobility in the US.

It is possible that slavery would have been better dealt with if we had stayed with the Empire, but it is more likely that the greater cost of emancipation if the South was effected, along with the growing political power of the Southern gentry, would have resulted in a situation at least as bad as what actually happened.

Finally, I know you like a monarchy, I assume because it acts as a conservative brake on legislation. But how is that different from the Supreme Court or the Senate -- and we know how they've worked out. Not to mention that I'd match the last 200 years of American history against the experience of any monarchy going.

By the way, none of this changes the fact that I hate "what if" history.

Why trade? They'd have led America.

It's not easy to imagine Napoleon selling Louisiana to a British North America, Russia selling Alaska, or London permitting war with Spain or Mexico.

The point about the 1763 Proclamation and the protection of Indians is an interesting one, although his attempt to take moral credit for the Brits is silly. The rich London merchants that controlled the Hudson's Bay Company kept the settlement drive in Canada in check much more effectively than any English popular concern over aboriginal rights. Nevertheless, there is a pretty good argument that aboriginal peoples, and maybe conquered peoples generally, tend to be protected better and viewed with greater, if more naive and romantic, respect in direct proportion to their geographical remoteness from the government doing the protecting. It has nothing to do with who is nobler (as the Irish will attest), but with immediate self-interest and both the realism and antipathies that can surround direct cross-cultural contacts. Assuming large scale immigration in the early 19th century, you might have inevitably had a revolution over expansion within a few decades.

I have to wonder whether a lot of the extreme emotional molly-coddling of Iraqi and Islamic sensibilities in the domestic and international criticism being heaped on the U.S. these days can be attrbuted solely to the fact that they are just so darn far way.

Peter:

But you can imagine us paying for LA if the nation was at war with Napoleon?

OJ:

Well, are you sure Napoleon would've sold us the Louisiana Purchase if we had been subjects of Britain and not an independent country?

Whoops, silly me! This is France we're talking about -- we'd have taken it. :-)

Matt:

Exactly. How would he have defended it if we told him it was ours?

I'm with David on what-if history, although some things are less uncertain than others.

Orrin's fantasies about making common cause among the dependencies of the Crown are contradicted by the actual history of the actual dependencies, which didn't often make common cause.

I think it is generally accepted (except, maybe, here) that the No. American colonies could not have had meaningful representation in Parliament at the time, just because of the communications problems.

Certainly, no other dependencies had a voice in Imperial governance. The Dominions conferences of the 1920s ought to tell us something.

Orrin:

What nation?

I can't imagine you (pl.) taking on France in those circumstances. But I can imagine you(sing.) as a Quebecer.

? Canada, Australia, South Africam, even Ghandi, were still fighting along with Britain against its enemies up to WWII.

Peter:

British America

Orrin:

True, but the world was a very different place by then and we were all de facto nations with independent capacities far beyond the trusty musket. There was no great movement to go fight Napoleon or Russia in the Crimean War.

Colonies aren't nations and don't behave as if they were.

No, but nations do.

I think Thomas Paine was right.

Chris:

He seldom was.

I suspect France would have lost the Louisiana Territory at the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, if nothing else. Furthermore, simple demographic pressure from the eastern seaboard would mean that most of it would end up being populated, as it is now, by English speakers. As for the US, wouldn't staying within the British Empire mean that Canada and the US would not today exist as separate countries, but rather be unified into a single, massive North-American superstate with an annoying French province?

Cyrus:

More likely America would have served as a viable model for the Canadians, Australians, Indians, Kenyans, etc.--you might have a series of constitutional monarchical republics.

Orrin, Gandhi did not make common cause. Ever hear of 'Quit India.' He sided with the Nazis and Japanese.

The rest on your list joined in the war with greater or lesser enthusiasm. They certainly didn't make common cause with the UK in the '20s and '30s, when it might have helped avert the need to go to war in the '40s.

An empire of democracies is probably self-contradictory. Didn't work for Britain, anyway, and nobody else ever tried it.

He set up an Indian Ambulance Corps to help the British in WWI.

They did make common cause with Britain in the 30s while it frantically tried to suck up to Hitler

By the '40s, he'd turrned Nazi.

He was Aryan.