"What If The British Had Won?" Topic

" Historians have long grappled with the contradiction of a revolution under the banner of "all men are created equal" being largely led by slave owners. Once free of England, the US grew over the next 89 years to be the largest slave-owning republic in history. But the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence was in itself a revolutionary document. Never before in history had people asserted the right of revolution–not just to overthrow a specific government that no longer met the needs of the people, but as a general principle for the relationship between the rulers and the ruled: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.–That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…"

And yes, " all men are created equal" excluded women, black people and the indigenous populations of the continent, and was written by slave owner Thomas Jefferson with all his personal hypocrisies. But the words themselves have been used many times since to challenge racism and other forms of domination and inequality. Both the 1789 French Revolution and the 1804 Haitian revolution–the only successful slave revolt in human history–drew inspiration from this clarion call. In 1829 black abolitionist David Walker threw the words of the Declaration back in the face of the slave republic : "See your declarations Americans !!! Do you understand your own language ?" The 1848 Seneca Falls women's rights convention issued a Declaration of Sentiments proclaiming that "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal". Vietnam used these very words in declaring independence from France in 1946. And as ML King stated in his 1963 I have a Dream Speech, it was "a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

We'd just have this:
youtu.be/e4FMMgTGHPw

Instead of this:
youtu.be/LBIgXhiOpeQ

Fun-nee

The federal system is a key reason for American progress and freedom. Ditto the natural rights philosophy which the Bill of Rights is based on. Britain is, or has been, a free society, yes, but not AS free, with an all powerful Commons and significant restraints on freedom of expression. Also, we might well have an undeveloped west, including California; not sure the British empire would have pushed west as the US did.

Mexico, they say, is poor because the US stole all their best land ; "the part with all the roads."

If the British had won, we would all be speaking English today.
Seriously though…
That's about all we can definitively say. Speculation about the state of slavery is just that. Speculation.
The War of 1812 might have a different cause, though. It might have been a second round of the American War of Independence, this time with the British definitely pinned down by the French. No Hortalez et cie, though. The French would be busy too.

@jeffers.

Lol. Bristle at its very best!

If the British had won you Seppos would be spelling harbour, colour and valour correctly.

And it should be noted, that in the original draft of the Declaration, slavery in the US was to be abolished. That paragraph alienated Georgia and the two Carolinas.

And since the vote for independence had to be unanimous, those three states had to be accomodated.

The issue was independence. Slavery was dealt with later at the cost of 630,000 dead.

And it should also be noted that the new United States was not a democracy, any more than Great Britain was at the time. The new nation was a constitutional republic.

Kevin, yes, we became a democratic rather than a deferential society gradually, but have never been a political democracy -- nor should want to be. The democratic element (the House of Representatives) was only about a fourth of the constitutional system.

If the U.S. had lost it is safe to say that a number of people would have been hung. Nowhere near the level of executions that occurred in the French Revolution but enough to make a point. There would likely have been a certain amount of property reallocated from rebels to supporters of the crown. Almost certainly the western expansion of the North American colonies would have been slowed in the period from 1780-1810.

I don't see immediate universal emancipation of the slaves in the North American colonies as a likely result, regardless of who won. A British victory freeing the slaves in North America would have put pressure on Britain to also free the slaves in the West Indies at a time when the West Indies sugar lobby still held sway. Plus immediate and universal emacipation of North American slaves would have adversely affected tobacco and rice production in the Chesapeake colonies and South Carolina.

Beyond that there are too many variables.

I would have to care more about the Royal family than I do, which now is 0

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

The Brits have already afflicted us with Meghan and Harry.
And through her American citizenship, little Harry can be elected President. If that's not worth a Harrumph, I don't know what is.

If the British had won you Seppos would be spelling harbour, colour and valour correctly.

And that would be a great shame… ;-)

If the British government hadn't been so high-handed and haughty and treated the Americans as second-class citizens, there might not have been a Revolution in the first place.

From Napoleon and the British by Stuart Semmel, xiii, A Note on Spelling and Punctuation:

'Unless otherwise indicated, italics in quotations are original to the sources. Spelling mistakes and typographical errors in quotations have generally been preserved and indicated. Certain spellings that depart from twenty-first century British practics, and which might appear to be the work of an American transcriber-for example, 'honor' and 'center'- were in fact the spellings employed by late Hanoverians, before a desire to Frenchify British spelling exerted itself later in the nineteenth century. In this sense…modern American usage remains closer than modern British usage to 'the king's English'-if the king in question is George III.'

Now isn't that both revealing and a surprise. ;-)

Well, isn't THAT interesting.

Meghan's yours, sunshine! We have an SOP for American divorcees that upset the Family Firm.
Still, I feel sorry for y'all. 🙂
No really I do. 😁
Seriously, I do. 😆
I do. Honest…🤣
And if that doesn't get me doghoused (naughty words warning)…
youtu.be/V7_9rshRflE

I thought he already had a job, quarterback of the Eagles.

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Wow! James Hewitt sure gets around.

@Brechtel198

Also, if the British hadn't treated all the colonial Tory enthusiasm in the colonies with contempt, they would not have had the manpower shortages they suffered from.

If the British had won though, maybe expansion westward would not have been as vigorously pursued and immigration might've been more tightly controlled. When Britain did eventually ban slavery it might have been a unilateral and uncontested freeing of slaves OR a civil war of the slave states vs the British government in the 1860s! (or earlier).

Sounds like a nice conflict to game.
Perry makes British. Use Union figures as Loyalists.