• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

A better world without American Revolution

@Nickyjo, so now that you’ve given your thumbnail history lesson on Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Chile, tell us all about the atrocities the US committed in West Germany, South Korea, and Japan—or alternatively, tell us about the countries where the USSR was the benevolent supporter (of a government that wasn’t as evil as it was—Cuba doesn’t count). After all, if you are going to argue that the US is no better than the USSR (“country by country,” you said), then you have to consider the totality of the record.
I do consider the totality of the record. My point, which I will repeat, is that irrespective of our liberation of Europe, our righteous defense of South Korea, or our generosity towards a defeated Japan, in our hemisphere the US installed, financed and supported tyrannical governments or governments to our liking (cf. our support for Panama's independence, which Colombians grumble about to this day) due to our relative strength, imperialism, and our fear of communism as a form of eternal damnation in a hell that no country could escape once infected. It was like the Inquisition's use of torture to get heretics to confess and be saved, for what is a few hours of pain compared to eternal damnation.

But FDR put it well when he said of the first Anastasio Somoza, "he's a son of a bitch, but he's OUR son of a bitch." That does not discount or ignore the generosity of our people and government or other extraordinary efforts in the region to support democracy. The Soviets used to hypocritically claim that - aside from whatever Marxist visions they also preached - their dominance of Eastern Europe was due to their great losses in WWII at Germany's hands and the need of buffers. The US in a way "countered" that, using the Iron Curtain as our excuse for interference in our "backyard." When we overthrew the Government of Guatemala, the Readers Digest article was "How the Kremlin Failed in Guatemala." No mention of the Dulles Brothers' (one Secy of State, one CIA chief) connection to the United Fruit Company, whose troubles with the Arbenz government precipitated the US coup. Communism was the only lense we used to see the world. But our support of the first Somoza and our actions in Panama occurred before the Soviets capture of Eastern Europe. Then communism sealed the deal. We pushed Central American nations to be part of a treaty that insured that we and they would not interfere with each other's govenments. Then Reagan, because some how destitute and shattered Nicaragua's 3 million people dared to install a leftist government and posed a vital threat to us, suspended the US commitment to that treaty. After all, we were supporting Contras and mining their harbor, acts of war. Again, this is not unnatural. Our quarrels with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua in the 1980s were no different than Julius Caesar's with Vercingetorix in Gaul in the first century B.C. It's what big/powerful countries have done to small/weaker ones for thousands of years. What makes the US exceptional and admirable (as well as normal and vulnerable to criticism) has been the better angels of our nature that surface in stuff like Carter's even handed human rights policies and our recent leadership against Putin.

I believe that it was Robert Burns who wrote --cue the Scottish accent -- "God grant the giftie gee us, to see ourselves as others see us." The US has needed a bit more of that with respect to Latin Americe. I close this screed with thanks if you read this far, and with a quote from a Cuban exile I worked with at a restaurant in 1961, ironically named Fidel. "I hate Castro," he said bitterly. "But the US got what it deserved in Cuba." A bit of an overstatement, but he knew the history of his country as practically our 51st state. (See the Platt Amendment.)
 
Last edited:
I do consider the totality of the record. My point, which I will repeat, is that irrespective of our liberation of Europe, our righteous defense of South Korea, or our generosity towards a defeated Japan, in our hemisphere the US installed, financed and supported tyrannical governments or governments to our liking....
So basically, when it comes to comparing our record to the USSR, none of our positive actions count, only the negative ones. I've heard of looking through the world with rose-colored glasses, but yours must be so black it's amazing you can see anything at all.
 
So basically, when it comes to comparing our record to the USSR, none of our positive actions count, only the negative ones. I've heard of looking through the world with rose-colored glasses, but yours must be so black it's amazing you can see anything at all.
Let me repeat again, the US has been a positive force for good in the world, unlike the USSR. My only beef has (actually, "had") been our unwillingness to acknowledge the errors and the outright bad things. What we have been often taught may acknowledge say, our sorry treatment of Indians, but that's about it. That lack of a critical consciousness of our history, especially with respect to Latin America, made us vulnerable to mistakes like Vietnam and Iraq. Those sad events have indeed changed things, and we now have a view more akin to what our allies, e.g., Britain and France, may have about their imperial-like adventures. Donald Trump could claim that he opposed the Iraq war, and no one said "America Love it or Leave it" to him in response, as was the attitude in the early days of Vietnam protests.

My comparisons to the USSR were based on imagining the views of their victims (Hungary '56/Czecholslovakia '68) and our victims (Guatemala '54/Chile '73) as somewhat similar with respect to how they looked at each great power's mistakes, irrespective of those powers' other policies. I remember a Chilean woman speaking of her country's different awareness of the 9/11 date, as that was the date of the 1973 coup. Ironically both events - obviously apples and oranges - cost roughly the same number of lives.
 
@Nickyjo, sorry if I seemed ... I'm not sure how to put it. I've encountered more than a few people that focus on the worst of US history, cast it in the worst possible light, ignore everything else, then claim we're no better than the fascists or communists.

Getting back to something at least somewhat related to the thread's subject, there's an extended "What If" I've enjoyed, from of all things a roleplaying game supplement with alternate history settings for adventuring in--"Cornwallis" in GURPS Alternate Earths 2:

Anne-Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de l'Aulne, a gifted student of economics and administration appointed Comptroller-General of France in 1774 to set the country's financial house in order, ended up fighting a war on two fronts--opposing support of the American rebellion and the Queen's extravagant court. The Queen was an enemy he couldn't beat, and her supporters forced him to resign in May 1776 and he died a broken man only five years later. In the Cornwallis setting he had the sense not to fight a war on two fronts, let the Queen and her court go their merry way, and convinced King Louis not to support the American rebellion. Turgot's administrative and taxation reforms lessen revolutionary pressures in France, and dooms the revolution in America. With that defeat, Charles III and the Tories supporting him in Parliament move to strengthen the monarchy in the Second Restoration of royal power.

With France's financial house again in order, it sets out to restore its position internationally, forming a Quadruple Alliance with Austria, Spain, and Russia against Britain and her long-time continental supporter Prussia. The initial advantage goes to the Alliance, thanks to their larger population, but military reforms in Prussia turn the tables--by 1820 they've fought three wars to a stalemate and agree to keep the status quo in a treaty negotiated by Metternich. By now all six powers have centralized, bureaucratic monarchies built to govern the mass armies they've been throwing at each other. Industrial progress was already chancy thanks to the wars, and now it slows to a crawl as entrenched interests lobby hard against changes that might threaten their dominance. The result is a series of depressions, and scattered urban and peasant risings caused by harsh times keep the monarchs harsh as well.

With economic growth stalled, dominance in Europe will naturally shift to the empire with the most men and resources, and that's Russia. That dominance becomes clear when Russia conquers European Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War, and holds off Austria, Prussia, and France in the Constantinopolitan War that follows. Soon Russia annexes Manchuria, Korea, and Japan. Bismark manages to add Austria to the Anglo-Prussian alliance and expand Prussian interests into the wreck of Turkey, and rebellions in Poland and Japan slow Russia down a little, but Russia again fights the rest of Europe to a draw in the Levant War over (and throughout) the Middle East. The result is the Sevastopol Accords, dividing the Asiatic Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence.

That all breaks down again in 1944 when the Mesopotamian oil fields are discovered. As Austria desperately modernizes and Prussia falls victim to oil-driven inflation, the Czar invades and annexes Persia, and everyone competes for influence with the local chieftains in the rest of the Middle East. That competition blows up into war between Russia and the Quintuple Alliance (read: everybody else) in 1962. This time the war spreads into Europe as well, and into India and America in the first truly global war with all the trimmings--poison gas, airplanes, napalm, tanks, liquid-fueled rockets.... By 1974 the Russians have been driven back across their own borders, and the Allies are slogging painfully across Ukraine and the Caucasus. Cities throughout Russia are torn apart by riots. There's an abortive military coup, the Romanovs flee to Prussia, the Russian army collapses in mutinies and infighting, resulting in the Allies declaring victory and going home as behind them a self-declared Republic spends the next six years stitching most of Russia back together. The Five Thrones are too exhausted themselves to do anything about it, so they go with a "quarantine" policy as they struggle to save their own economies.
 
As a believer in the Multiverse, I suspect Roberts’ alternative timeline exists somewhere.

9780312859695-us.jpg
 
The world might have been a better place if the American Revolution had never happened, according to Andrew Roberts, author of The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III.

In a review of the book in the February 7, 2022, edition of National Review, Roberts is quoted: “a world in which the American Revolution never took place could have been one in which a united British-American global empire would have been far too powerful for Kaiser Wilhelm II to threaten war in 1914, so no Bolshevik Revolution, no Adolf Hitler, no Cold War.” He also suggested, “British and Canadian liberals joining with Northern abolitionists might have voted to abolish slavery in the 1830s or 1840s, sparing the United States its Civil War.”

As a believer in the Multiverse, I suspect Roberts’ alternative timeline exists somewhere.
That's supposition. It's just a probable that without the independent US army added to the war effort in WWI that the Germans may well have won. The enormous manufacturing might of the U.S. may not have existed. Same is true in WWII. The entry of the US into that conflict was the difference maker. There is nothing to guarantee the Brits would have handled the colonies well enough to turn them into the power they became. Keep in mind Neveille Chamberlains terrible mishandling of Adolf Hitler and "peace in our time'.
 
There is nothing to guarantee the Brits would have handled the colonies well enough to turn them into the power they became.

I read an article about 20 years ago that actually discussed that very thing.

It was by a British historian, and he stated that the UK losing the American Revolution led to a lot of changes that filtered through the rest of the Empire. Especially in Canada and Australia, allowing them greater freedom and more control to their local legislative bodies. They learned from their American Colonies that among "British Colonists" that considered themselves "British Citizens", such heavy-handed measures as what Parliament tried was reacted to very negatively. This of course would not apply to colonies that were more "local" than "British" in population, but it did lead to the governments we see today in Canada and Australia.

And at the end, it even speculated what might have happened if they had not tried to repeatedly abolish Colonial Representation. However, he also pointed out that it was Parliament far more than the King that created the Revolution. Then as now, the King was more a figurehead and Parliament had most of the power. But without a Revolution, then the next century of wars with the UK, Spain, and a "Quasi War" with France (as well as 2 with Mexico), even a "British America" would likely not have developed as far or as fast as it had. With much of the current footprint of the US still occupied by France, Spain, even Russia.
 
The world might have been a better place if the American Revolution had never happened, according to Andrew Roberts, author of The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III.

In a review of the book in the February 7, 2022, edition of National Review, Roberts is quoted: “a world in which the American Revolution never took place could have been one in which a united British-American global empire would have been far too powerful for Kaiser Wilhelm II to threaten war in 1914, so no Bolshevik Revolution, no Adolf Hitler, no Cold War.” He also suggested, “British and Canadian liberals joining with Northern abolitionists might have voted to abolish slavery in the 1830s or 1840s, sparing the United States its Civil War.”

As a believer in the Multiverse, I suspect Roberts’ alternative timeline exists somewhere.
I am a big believer in this.

The American Revolution is SO misunderstood. The common belief was that colonists beat the greatest empire overseas and established a new, liberal government for the first time since the classical ages.

But in reality, two glaring facts present themselves

  1. The American Revolution was also a civil war. They were at least 300-400 thousand loyalists and a further 1 million revolutionary skeptics in the 13 colonies, and Canada was chock-full of them. There are plenty of incidents between colonists themselves. Notably-the failed invasion of Canada, which is why it remained under the King.
  2. The original colonists didn't want to breakaway. They were plenty of colonial grievances before the Declaration of Independence. And yet, none of them even considered the possibility of independence until Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense. So, the revolution was "hijacked" by the liberal, anti-Christian Paine
 
No one seems interested in the treatment of the "colonies of the New World" by King George, I guess.
Surprising the number of monarchists in this forum.
the treatment was perfectly fine. There were just as many loyalists as there were patriots
 
No one seems interested in the treatment of the "colonies of the New World" by King George, I guess.
Surprising the number of monarchists in this forum.
It was actually the British parliament, not the king, who initiated punitive actions against the colonies.
 
I am a big believer in this.

The American Revolution is SO misunderstood. The common belief was that colonists beat the greatest empire overseas and established a new, liberal government for the first time since the classical ages.

But in reality, two glaring facts present themselves

  1. The American Revolution was also a civil war. They were at least 300-400 thousand loyalists and a further 1 million revolutionary skeptics in the 13 colonies, and Canada was chock-full of them. There are plenty of incidents between colonists themselves. Notably-the failed invasion of Canada, which is why it remained under the King.
  2. The original colonists didn't want to breakaway. They were plenty of colonial grievances before the Declaration of Independence. And yet, none of them even considered the possibility of independence until Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense. So, the revolution was "hijacked" by the liberal, anti-Christian Paine
What is relevant about Paine's liberalism or anti-Christian beliefs?
 
The world might have been a better place if the American Revolution had never happened, according to Andrew Roberts, author of The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III.

In a review of the book in the February 7, 2022, edition of National Review, Roberts is quoted: “a world in which the American Revolution never took place could have been one in which a united British-American global empire would have been far too powerful for Kaiser Wilhelm II to threaten war in 1914, so no Bolshevik Revolution, no Adolf Hitler, no Cold War.” He also suggested, “British and Canadian liberals joining with Northern abolitionists might have voted to abolish slavery in the 1830s or 1840s, sparing the United States its Civil War.”

As a believer in the Multiverse, I suspect Roberts’ alternative timeline exists somewhere.
I have no time for what if history, rather read a book based on facts not what if.

Something like this is just for entertainment. No historian of any real merit would treat it any other way.
 
the treatment was perfectly fine. There were just as many loyalists as there were patriots
The problem with that is the trouble the loyalists had maintaining control without the British army on their doorsteps. If there really were as many loyalists as there were patriots, the British would have won.

It was actually the British parliament, not the king, who initiated punitive actions against the colonies.
I've been listening to an audiobook called The Men Who Lost America, and naturally the first one covered was George III. Surprisingly, he'd thought Parliament was coming on too strong right up to the Boston Tea Party. After that, he lost he lost any sympathy for the colonists.

I have no time for what if history, rather read a book based on facts not what if.
"What If" is what changes history from a pile of facts and stories into analysis--after all, the only way to determine what events are truly important is to have some idea of what might have happened differently.
 
The problem with that is the trouble the loyalists had maintaining control without the British army on their doorsteps.

The problem with that was that the soldiers themselves quite often tended to turn loyalists into patriots.

Incidents like the occupations of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia were brutal, and the British treated all of the Colonials the same. Most now place the number of loyalists at the start of the Revolution as possibly as high as 40%. But that rapidly eroded as the war continued, with more and more turning against the British for how they were treated. All were largely seen as "Colonial scum", and by the end of the conflict that had shrunk to only around 15%.
 
The problem with that was that the soldiers themselves quite often tended to turn loyalists into patriots.

Incidents like the occupations of Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia were brutal, and the British treated all of the Colonials the same. Most now place the number of loyalists at the start of the Revolution as possibly as high as 40%. But that rapidly eroded as the war continued, with more and more turning against the British for how they were treated. All were largely seen as "Colonial scum", and by the end of the conflict that had shrunk to only around 15%.
There is that. There's also how insufficient supplies were brought to provision the troops without looting the countryside when the armies were on the move. That was typical for wars at that time, but the American Revolution wasn't a typical war. In the fall and winter of 1776 the Howe brothers were smart enough to know that and had a plan for pacifying the countryside in New York and New Jersey that might have worked, if they had had enough provisions to supply their troops without foraging.
 
There's also how insufficient supplies were brought to provision the troops without looting the countryside when the armies were on the move.

Remember, in the eyes of the British they were in their own country. And the British Army did pay for what they took, but it was in scrip and not actual currency. And at an amount valued by the British, not always at fair market value. To get paid the farmers had to take the scrip to a military outpost where it was then exchanged for money.

And when one lived 100 miles from the nearest permanent garrison, that could mean 1-2 weeks travel just to get paid. There was actually a business of traders going around and buying scrip from farmers for around 50% of the value, then collecting the money themselves. So the equivalent of $100 in supplies might see the farmer get Scrip for $75. Which then then exchanged to one of those scrip brokers for $40.

This was common practice until the 20th century actually. Both sides also did it in the US Civil War. It was only in the last century that modern transportation and logistics made the practice largely obsolete for most militaries.

But this is not even unique to the military or that era. 30 years ago California was broke, so paid their employees and contractors in scrip. And while major banks would accept it, some would not and a small closet business boomed in accepting it at a percentage of face value.
 
@Oozlefinch, Sorry, I lost track of this. Everything you say about armies using scrip to buy food is true, but it didn't endear the invading British to the American farmers forced to take the scrip--especially not when said farmers needed that food themselves to get through the winter.
 
Back
Top Bottom