REPUBLIC AND EMPIRE

Their revolution preoccupies Americans but was only one of many problems facing Britain, says this history.

O’Shaughnessy is professor of history at the University of Virginia; Burnard was professor of slavery and emancipation at the University of Hull, England. In their insightful history, they point out that Britain possessed more than twice as many Atlantic colonies as the 13 that would become the United States. Focusing on world affairs, they view the American Revolution as an imperial event during a clash of imperial powers after which the independent United States embraced British-style imperialism, racing west to conquer their own empire at the expense of Spain, Mexico, and Indigenous people. Unlike traditional U.S.-centric accounts, the book maintains that the 1756-1763 Seven Years’ War dominated the century. Britain won a smashing victory over rival powers (mostly France, Spain, and Austria), acquiring Canada, many West Indian islands, and dominance in India, but it was crushingly expensive. Ironically, the losers’ primitive bureaucracy enabled them to repudiate debts, but Britain’s advanced banking system permitted no such option. The authors describe Britain’s efforts to govern and defend a burgeoning empire while paying off the cost of acquiring it. Irish and West Indian gentry relied on Britain’s army for protection against their tenants and enslaved people and willingly paid more taxes. India’s wealth, till then enriching the private East India Company, was reclaimed for the empire. American colonists, having driven most Indigenous tribes beyond the Appalachians, felt little threat, detested British soldiers, and believed that their unpaid militia was all they needed. The authors remind readers that when France and Spain declared war after 1778, Britain withdrew much of its army from the colonies to fend off its major rivals, which it accomplished so successfully that the loss of the colonies turned out to be a temporary glitch in an expanding empire that did not peak until the following century.

A convincing argument that the 13 colonies were part of a vast imperial system—but not the most important part.