HOW GEORGE BLOWED IT:

How a Revolution Saved an Empire (MICHAEL ROSE, 7/05/07, NY Times)

If the Whig opposition, led by Lord Rockingham, had not had the moral courage and vision to accept defeat by the American colonists, and had not been able to persuade the king and his ministers to do likewise, Britain would likely have lost its position in the world, and today the people of the largest democracy in the world, India, would be speaking either French or Portuguese. By ending the unnecessary war in North America, Britain was able rapidly to rebuild its army and navy, eventually take on and defeat Napoleon, and become the unquestioned pre-eminent global power.

Few saw this in 1781. During the cruel years of the war, George III had followed a hopelessly flawed strategy and had failed to commit adequate resources to the mission. He had never understood the character or nature of the American people and he had greatly underestimated their determination to throw off the yoke of British rule. The War of Independence had never just been about “taxation without representation.” It had been about the freedom for Americans to develop their own society in the way that they wished.

Americans still spoke the same language and had the same respect for God as the English, but they no longer thought the same way. They wanted to engage in free trade and expand their empire to the West. The radical element of New England led by men like Samuel Adams and James Otis, in particular, had had enough of kings and bishops, the corruptions of the legal system, the vice admiralty courts and the British Navy’s press gangs. It was fortunate for the world that the American Revolution succeeded — for under British rule America would never have become the great country, the force in the world for good, that it ultimately became.

George III was oblivious to the changed mindset in the colonies, and through a combination of hubris and a conviction that as the leader of the world’s premier military power he could bear no challenge to his authority, he had determined in 1775 to teach a sharp lesson to the radicals in North America: “Blows must decide.”

Unfortunately for Britain, he attempted to fight a conventional war against insurgents, and sent far too few troops across the Atlantic to accomplish the mission. Although they initially took New York and Philadelphia, the British subsequently failed to adjust to a counterinsurgency strategy against the “war of the posts” that George Washington adopted after his defeat at Germantown, Pa., in October 1777.

No number of troops could have prevented Americans from creating their own state, however, had George sided with America against the unrepresentative Parliament that state could have remained part of the Empire.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 4, 2007 11:26 PM