One of the only nice things to ever result from America’s propensity for insane, seemingly pointless acts of defiance is that we wriggled free from the grasp of the British royal family. This glorious emancipation from the Commonwealth is perhaps more an aesthetic than a substantive concern. The American Revolution is surely the only revolt against British colonial rule in which the rebelling force comes across in any world history textbook as far more unreasonable and churlish than the redcoats ranged against them. And having gone to war to avoid paying taxes for the defense of their own nation, it is our founding fathers who are stained by the great shame of slaveholding, while the British were emancipating those black soldiers who joined them. [my emphasis]Yes, conservatives use Churchill, often along with bad "Munich" analogies, as stock symbolism, particularly when arguing for new wars. That not exactly news, but it's always good to revisit the phenomenon.
But let's think about this. The American Revolution and War of Independence from Britain was "unreasonable and churlish." What, the American revolutionaries were, uh, uncivil? Shame on them!
And the American colonies were fighting for slavery while the British were devout Abolitionists? Okay. Wait, unitl they became independent, they were slaveholding British colonies, right? So, what happened? Paul Revere made his legendary ride and King George III suddently decided, boy hidee, we should abolish slavery?
It seems like for a lot of the American left and center-left, the American Revolution has faded far enough into history that it's gotten easier than it was not so long ago to just make up stuff or apply frivolous interpretations without catching too much flak for it. Although, as I said, this doesn't apply to actual historical scholarship.
Speaking of real history, yes, the British did offer freedom to slaves that would defect to the British side and become cannon fodder in fighting the Continental Army. They also recruited Indian tribes to fight against the rebel colonies. But it wasn't because they had repented of having slavery in their colonies, or of making money off the slave trade, or of having conquered Indian lands on both sides of the Appalachians and in Canada, with the usual results for native populations. These were practical, "realist" measures to defeat the rebels so that Britain could expand the presence of slaveowning colonies by conquering more Indian land using colonies they controlled. This isn't some exotic reading of the history of the American Revolution. It's a straightforward reading of the actual events.
Can we pause for just a moment to reflect that it's generally recognized that the first martyr in the run-up to the American Revolution was the escaped black slave and sailor Crispu Attucks, who fell in the Boston Massacre of 1770? And he wasn't a passive by-stander, he was actively protesting against oppressive British policies.
Yes, in 2018 we are very aware that the political community in both the British homeland and its American colonies in 1776 was effectively restricted to property-owning white men in a monarchical system in which the king was much more than a ceremonial head of state.
And in the world of 1776, the American Revolution was understood as a radical step forward for the cause of democracy, republican (non-monarchical) government, and what we later came to call anti-colonial national liberation movements. When the then-obscure (to Americans) leader Nguyen Sinh Cung - who became better known as Ho Chi Minh - borrowed from the text of the Declaration of Independence in his own post-World War II declaration of the independence of Vietnam from colonial rule in 1945, it wasn't because he assumed that the world would understand it as a declaration for chattel slavery and stealing land from native peoples. (Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh forces were American allies at the time.)
I guess it hadn't dawned on people in 1945 that the War of Independence in the 18th century was over "more an aesthetic than a substantive concern."
The cover story for the current (13.10.2018) issue of the German weekly Der Spiegel is on the European revolutions of 1848, 1819, and 1989, with 1968 tossed into the mix just because. The story features photos of mutinous German sailors in Kiel in 1918 demonstrating against the Emperor and for a republic; a dramatic painting of Berlin democrats fighting Prussian troops at barricades on the street surrounded by burning buildings in 1848; and, a huge crowd in Leipzig marching against the East German government in 1989. Plus, the famous Emanuel Leutze painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware to ambush German mercenaries fighting for the British.
Why? Because the (somewhat shaky) theme of the piece by Kirk Kurbjuweit ("Wir Zahmen") is to question why those German revolutions was only partially successful. I say "somewhat shaky" because we could say the 1848 revolution was straightforwardly defeated, but the ones in 1918 and 1989 wound up with the governments being completely replaced.
By contrast, "Hardly any revolution was so successful as the American one." (All translations mine.) Kurbjuweit lists four advantages of the revolutionary cause in 1776-83. First, "They were neither timid nor tame." ("Sie waren weder zaghaft noch zahm.") They were ready to confront their enemy, in other words. And, as a second advantage, they had a "will to freedom." You don't go up against the mightiest army in the world without wanting something important.
On the third advantage, he quotes Hannah Arendt - whose name shows up a lot these days in discussion of authoritarian governments - saying, "The men [sic] of the [American] Revolution absolutely did not feel bound by tradition." That also means they didn't frame their arguments for a democratic republic in terms of how to make an improved British monarchy and empire. Today's Democratic Party really needs to take a hint from that!
The fourth advantage was George Washington himself. He was very effective as a political and military leader during the Revolutionary War. And as the only likely candidate for an American king, Washington supported republican government and made a point of stepping down as President after two terms.
Those points are all valid ones. And they constitute reasonable evaluations of the American Revolution. The reason that it failed to produce a model democracy by the standards of the United States of 2018, or one that could meet the admissions criteria of today's European Union, is the same basic reason why the German revolutions Kurbjuweit writes about were less than 100% successful. They were all made by human beings, and human being tend to have serious flaws. The flaws just look a little different in 2018 than they did in 1776.
I'm hopeful that someday, Skynet and the androids will do a better job.
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