"What If...?: Reexamining the American Revolution" Topic

"What would have happened if the Patriots had been defeated in the War of Independence?

It is fascinating to consider what might have happened had the American patriots lost their war against Great Britain. Certainly British victory in the conflict was entirely plausible. Indeed, given the significant disparities in resources between the British and the colonists, such an outcome seemed not just possible but likely early on, and at numerous points during the conflict. The Patriots lacked a professional army, a central government, and a navy; the 13 colonies were geographically dispersed and lacked Britain's political unity. The Patriots waged their war for independence against the world's premier military and its most powerful empire, only a decade and a half removed from its great triumph over France in the Seven Years' War.

It is impossible to know with certainty what would have happened if the colonies had lost the War of Independence. Historians refer to such "what if?" as counterfactuals—because they occur in an imagined world where a different sequence of events took place, there is by definition no factual evidence on which to base historical analysis. Without documentary sources to work with, answers to these questions are speculative by nature. Nevertheless, it is possible to make some educated guesses about the nature and probability of different outcomes…"
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Amicalement
Armand

No one seems to have attached a name to that essay. I certainly wouldn't have.

I am intrigued to note that the author has the interesting notion that the "timing" which matters is whether HM government was threatening or pleading at the time. News for the author: what the politician promises or threatens to do sometimes bears very little resemblance to what the politician subsequently does.

And it's another example of the Great Counter-American Myth: that you can completely reverse US history, but Canadian history will be the same. In 1867, British politicians knew in their bones the results of pushing coercive policies in North America, and acted in accordance with their experience. If, in 1775, they'd fired two or three volleys into the militia at Lexington, the Americans had run for home and Congress had plead for mercy, what lesson would Britain have learned from that experience?

It's not how Canadians prefer to look at the matter--understandably so--but Canada as a nation is also a result of Saratoga and Yorktown. No good pretending otherwise.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand