Rule Brittania
(posted by Daniel Koffler)
Downblog, TGGP asks if my distinction between libertarian and conservative conceptions of freedom, and how the former undermine a justification of the Confederate rebellion, commit me to the conclusion that the American revolution was unjustified. Well, at the risk of provoking my friend Jamie to declare that questioning my patriotism is fair game, I’m completely prepared to bite that bullet. For the record, I’m not sure that the theory I lay out does commit me to saying that the American revolution was unjustified. The slave trade wasn’t outlawed in the British Empire until 1807, and slavery itself wasn’t abolished in the Empire until 1833; so there are some relevant distinctions between the American revolutionary cause and the Confederate secessionist cause that may license different evaluations of their justificatory status within my framework.
But more broadly speaking, aside from “rah-rah America, by jingo!”, “[insert Lee Greenwood verse],” and “whaddarya, a pinko commie?”, I’m unaware of any argument that the American revolution was an unalloyed good and/or a clearly justified cause. To be sure, there was commendable ideology on the Patriot side, especially in Thomas Paine’s pamphlets, and a very commendable (if imperfect) republican philosophy that would emerge in the Federalist Papers, whereas the principles of the Tory side ranged from “this isn’t a good idea” to “dieu et mon droit.” At its best, the American revolution was about some pretty great ideals. It’s just very hard to see how the war could have been fought over those ideals, because there’s no obvious sense in which the early American republic realized those ideals better than Hanoverian Britain — nor any obvious sense in which the United States was ever meant to realize them better than Britain.
None of which is surprising, considering that the United States is a fundamentally British polity, and our closest allies since we started having allies have been Britain and what remained of British North America. Nor is it any reason to be down on America. The UK is a damn good country. If you die and have the choice of being reincarnated in a country that was ever ruled from Westminster, or a country that wasn’t, you should clearly choose the former.† If the US is as good a country as Britain (or marginally a little better or worse) — and I think it is — it’s a damn good country too, so by all means fire up the brats on the Fourth. However, the Hannityite idea that America is “the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth” is the sort of idiocy that gets people killed.
†Especially if you count France or the big chunks of Germany over which English and British monarchs have claimed (and occasionally exercised) sovereignty.
Tags: 4th of july, britain
July 7th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Don’t tell me you’re really friends with Jamie Kirchick!
I think I lean towards Bryan Caplan’s position. It was a bad idea for the Americans to provoke a war and a bad idea for the English to oblige them one. I’d give thumbs up to a peaceful secession of either the thirteen colonies or the southern states (which may not have included the entire Confederacy had Lincoln not invaded).
Also, permit me to be horribly impolite, but judging a revolution by the ideals some spouted sounds like a really, really, really bad idea to me. The results are what counts, and on that matter the Federalists were proven wrong and the Anti-Federalists right.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:18 am
The colonial arguments for secession are interesting in their own right, as a side note. One of John Adams best writings is Novanglis, where he made his legal case. He argued that the loyalty of each colony was not to the King of Great Britain, or to any other part of the British polity, but to the natural person of George III, upon whose rather inadequate head the crowns of all thirteen American colonies rested. And his kingship was of each colony, severally, as defined under its own charter or fundamental laws. So the sovereign authority in, say, Massachusetts, was HM King George III of Plymouth Plantation and Massachusetts Bay, sitting in General Court.
Apologists for Parliamentary authority argued that the king’s authority in the colonies was pursuant to British law. Else why did the colonies recognize William and Mary and the Hannoverians, whose authority derived entirely from act of Parliament? Adams argued, in response, that the people of Massachusetts had overthrown Gov. Andros and recognized Wm and Mary as sovereigns, on their own authority, before word of the success of William’s invasion ever reached the colony.
So the historical argument in the Curtiss Wright decision, that the sovereignty of the crown devolved at independence on the Continental Congress, is historical nonsense. According to the legal theorists of the Revolution, there was no single “crown.”
July 8th, 2008 at 7:01 am
The American Revolution was a war for decentralization. Followed very shortly after by a counter-revolution for re-centralization in the hands of a different group. The lofty rhetoric of “inalienable rights, yadda yadda” that we learn in civics class is so much BS that obscures how little the Constitution changed the legal rights of the colonists.
In other words, you’re right that the political facts on the ground in 1804 were very much the same as they were in 1774. The only substantial difference was who wielded the power.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:39 am
The slave trade wasn’t outlawed in the British Empire until 1807, and slavery itself wasn’t abolished in the Empire until 1833
However, slavery was abolished in England in 1772, four years before the Declaration. (Somersett’s Case).
I think that the main arguments against the Revolution are 1) it got a lot of people killed for no immediate significant improvement and 2) indirectly and unintentionally it extended the horrible tradition of human slavery in America for thirty years after it had been abolished in the Empire.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
quasibill,
Right on. The domestic politics of the colonies was a microcosm of the politics around the English-speaking world. The colonies were divided between a court party (Walpolean finance, Mansfieldian jurisprudence, and a centralized state promoting plutocratic interests), and a republican party of small farmers and mechanics.
Both parties made common cause with their counterparts in the Old Country (witness the lionization of John Wilkes). The court party only reluctantly shifted its support to independence, and became the right wing of the patriot movement; after independence, it immediately began agitating for the same kind of Walpolean commercial and financial center that would serve the same imperial function previously served by Parliament, attempting to recreate the Empire without Britain. They succeeded at this in 1788.
For excellent class-based analyses of the period’s history, I recommend Merrill Jensen’s work and that of Forrest McDonald.
July 8th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
It’s true, Jamie Kirchick is a pretty good friend of mine. Has been for years. It’s probably for the best that he and I not talk about politics. Some friendships I’ve had with people in Jamie’s orbit that were not so well-established seem to have ended over the last few months.
July 14th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
[...] Downblog, Daniel Koffler wrote: [...]
July 17th, 2008 at 1:48 am
[...] “Rule Brittania,” Daniel wrote: At its best, the American revolution was about some pretty great ideals. [...]
August 12th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
[...] a similar dispute comparing the 13 colonies to the Confederate States at the Art of the Possible here. Look near the bottom of the comments in that TAOTP thread for response [...]