Asymmetrical Information

Without the American Revolution, I doubt the British would have had their long drawn out series of reforms. Recall that at the time of the US Civil war there was no significant universal male sufferage in England.

It's very common for Europeans (and I include the British in this) to conveniently forget the timeline of events when the US is involved. I had a well educated French engineer insist that the US took inspiration from the preceeding French Revolution!

"...the South had a tendency to revolt when threatened with a slavery ban; we might simply have had the civil war 30 years earlier."

True...and indeed that almost happened in our own universe (over nullification and the "Tariff of Abominations"). But could the South--which could not prevail against the North--have prevailed against the entire Empire? I think not.

An interesting speculation nevertheless, and one that almost begs for an alt-hist treatment! :-)

Is it important to note that the British abolition involved buying out slaveholders, and that absent US independence, this would have been a lot more difficult (and that American slaveholders seemed less conducive to such a trade)?

Playing this out, Germany could not have dreamed of challenging a British Empire that contained a goodly section of North America, so there would have been no World Wars. Of course, the Germans would not have accepted second class status gracefully, so we would probably be afflicted by German terrorism today. Though it would be focused on the capital of the World Empire, London, not the peripheral trading city of New York.

Sounds like we need Newt Gingrich to write a novel describing what happens to the Colonies if George Washington had been killed when he came under British fire at Kips Bay, NY.

I don't understand Caplan's post. Was the slogan "no taxation"? I don't think so. I was taught it was "no taxation without representation". The colonists weren't just protesting the tax levels, they were protesting that they had no say in setting the tax levels. The reason for, and the benefit of, the Revolutionary War was self-determination. Whether the tax levels actually went down is irrelevant to that point.

Dave Moelling

"Recall that at the time of the US Civil war there was no significant universal male sufferage in England."

You are making the same mistake (ignorance of history) that you accuse us of!!!

The Great Reform Act was 1834.

(another small mistake: suffrage, not sufferage. Sufferage is what your slaves were doing ;-).

What might have eventuated if the North American rebellion had succeeded? Such science-fiction speculation may be entertaining, but surely there's enough controversy among historians about real-world events such as the causes of the Rocky Mountain War, the rise of the Libertarian Party in the USM, or the role played by the abolition of slavery in the Second Britannic Design in the 1840s. Despite needing to be brought up to date, Dr. Sobel's textbook remains the definitive overview for the undergraduate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_in_For_Want_of_a_Nail
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_want_of_a_nail

Jane

Plenty of Irish catholics went to Montreal. And lots of Irish protestants to Ontario. And lots of others to Australia. And many indeed to Liverpool.

The Irish would have emigrated, whether to a British colony or not-- they went where someone would have them.

Hence Banco O'Higgins, a leading bank in Chile.

If there had not been an American Revolution would there have been a French Revolution?

You are trying to evaluate the question way too narrowly.

Valuethinker --

Actually, the Great Reform Act was 1832. And said act did not establish universal manhood suffrage; it merely eliminated the rotten boroughs and expanded the property requirements beyond freeholders. Universal manhood suffrage did not reach Britain until the Second Reform Act was passed in 1867 -- after the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

More generally --

The basic question of the American Revolution was, were the rights of Parliament as established in British law, especially as stated in the English Bill of Rights and the Scottish Claim of Right, rights of Parliament as an institution of itself, or rights of Parliament insofar as it was the representative of the subjects of the King? And if the latter, could Parliament claim to represent subjects of the King who did not live in places allowed to elect representatives to Parliament?

The American answers were that Parliament held these rights only because it represented the subjects of the King, and that Parliament could not represent Americans because there were no American electors, even though many Americans met the forty schilling freeholder and Protestant religious requirements for electors. Accordingly, the rights of Parliament belonged, in the Americas, to the American-representing colonial legislatures. In which case, the imposition of taxes, the presence of a standing army in peacetime, the quartering of soldiers in private residences, and a host of other acts which in the Bill of Rights and/or Claim of Right required Parliamentary approval, were illegal without approval of the colonial legislatures.

The British answers were that either the powers vested in Parliament as an institution, or that Parliament could properly be said to represent the people even in places not permitted to elect MPs.

Now, imagine if the American Revolution had been defeated, and for fifty years the British governing classes had been using military force to repress American demands for representation, and the argument that a nonrepresentative Parliament is legitimate, and that claims otherwise are treason. When the reformers in England come along, how would such a habituated ruling class react to demands by English agitators making the same claims about Parliamentary authority as the Americans had?

If the British had put down the American Revolution, it is quite possible that a bloody revolution on the French model would have engulfed Britain in the 19th Century instead.

Correction. The Second Reform Act (Representation of the People Act 1867) didn't establish universal manhood suffrage; it only extended it to male heads-of-household. Neither did the Third Reform Act (Representation of the People Act of 1884). Instead, we have to wait for the Fourth Reform Act (Representation of the People Act of 1918) to have essentially all men allowed to vote.

So, less than a hundred years ago.

Valuethinker -

Now that your fine country has granted universal
suffrage to all males for close to 90 years(!),
how is that National Constitution and Bill of
Rights coming along?

Will you lobsterbacks have them by the third
centennial of ours? Or are mere subjects
such as yourself not allowed to speculate on
what rights your natural aristocrat betters
might grant you?

Warmonger

Thanks for the historical update which was informative and interesting.

I note we were both wrong ;-).

I agree with you there was the potential for a French style revolution in 19th century Britain, although the arrival of the Industrial Revolution may have forestalled it.

I'm not sure I buy the argument that it was the American declaration of rights that caused Britain to change-- perhaps the link to France is more clear.

Lord Acton

Americans are bad at sarcasm. You haven't added anything to the conversation by trying to introduce it, nor have you added any new information.

The US didn't get universal suffrage until 1964 in any practical sense. The shadow slavery cast on the American Republic was a long one.

Of course you are forgetting that while it was slavery that allowed the Northern industrialists to foment the War between the States, their purpose was to raise the low tariffs that prevailed in the 1840's and 1850's(after the South's near-secession in the 1830's). Note the ridiculous tariffs post 1865 which impoverished the South and all rural America and built those mansions in Newport, R.I.

Of course you are forgetting that while it was slavery that allowed the Northern industrialists to foment the War between the States, their purpose was to raise the low tariffs that prevailed in the 1840's and 1850's(after the South's near-secession in the 1830's). Note the ridiculous tariffs post 1865 which impoverished the South and all rural America and built those mansions in Newport, R.I.

Actually, I grant the French Revolution inspired the British vote-seekers, not the Americans. And I think the French Revolution would have come off even if the American had been crushed.

My point is a bit more subtle—that a British victory in the American War of Independence would have probably required a difficult and expensive occupation afterward. As a running sore within the Empire, American revolutionaries would be a current pain in the ass instead of something that happened decades ago—and, to the leaders of Britain, a "present example" as to why the advocates for representation had to be vigorously suppressed in Britain. A vigorous suppression of the reform movement in Britain, instead of gradual moderate reform, would only have stored up trouble. Perhaps resulting in a British Revolution on the French model in, oh, let's say 1848, just because the year is famous.

Which, of course, is only a possibility. But most "America stays in the Empire" scenarios assume it stays in happily, instead of a bigger, harder-to-police Ireland. Unless you postulate Parliament giving in to American demands in the 1760s, it's hard to see it happening. The plantation-holding American "gentleman" of the later 18th and early 19th Centuries is unlikely to meekly accept he's the inferior of a freeholder of a bare forty schillings' worth of land in England.

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Nice site. Thank you:-)

Nice site. Thank you:-)

I think when you look at a "what if" scenario like this, you have to look carefully at why the "what if" didn't happen. Large numbers of wealthy, powerful, people in England made money dealing with the colonies.

The suppression necessary to keep the colonies in the empire, and tax them significantly, reduced profitability to the point where it was better to lose them. That was not true of Canada where profits came largely from organizations like the Hudson Bay Company, rather than private ventures. The Hudson Bay Company was a powerful, organized agent of the Crown with a vested interest in imperial control. There was no analog to it in the lower 13. The "what if" scenario would be followed by the question: how long would the English insist on losing money?

A more viable question would be: What if the English never decided to recoup the costs of the War of Austrian Succession via direct taxation on the colonies? It was a bad policy. They were much better off under salutary neglect. If they wanted to bind the colonies more forcefully, they would have been better off creating lordships for powerful colonial leaders, and offering a few seats in their parliament. However, that would have weakened the King's hand in N. America with respect to Parliament, so it wasn't a very likely course.

Er... make that 7 yers war, not Austrian succession. It's so hard to keep them all straight.

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