Download Chapter 16 Eighteenth Century European Rivalries The mid

Chapter 16
Eighteenth Century European Rivalries
The mid eighteenth century witnessed increasing competition between European nations both for
political dominance in central Europe and in trade wars for transatlantic trade. The French and British
would compete for mercantile empires which would culminate in British worldwide economic
dominance. The Spanish and Portuguese would monopolistically and rigidly administer their empires.
The African Slave Trade and Plantation System would play a major role in transatlantic rivalries.
Prussia and Austria would be the focus point for two wars that would see Austria survive and Prussia
rise to prominence. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 would end these conflicts but the fallout would be the
American Revolution which created a society more free than any the world had ever before seen.
European worldwide expansion can be divided into four eras or stages. The First Stage began with the
voyages of discovery, The Spanish and Portuguese conquest and settlement of the New World; the
penetration of Indian and Southeast Asian markets by the Portuguese and Dutch; British and French
settlement of North America; ending in the mid eighteenth century. The Second Stage was the growth
of the Mercantilist Empires, most of which is dealt with in this chapter. It was dominated by colonial
trade rivalry between Spain, France and Great Britain. (The Dutch and Portuguese maintained more
modest colonial holdings and were minor players.) These rivalries often sparked “hot spots” and the
Anglo-French rivalry has often been compared to a second Hundred Year’s War.
A pivotal element in these first two stages was the growing use of slavery. By the eighteenth century,
the slave population of the New World consisted almost entirely of slaves that had been forcibly
imported from Africa - or their descendants. Slaves (which were cheap and easily obtainable) made
plantations which grew sugar cane, rice, indigo and tobacco immensely profitable. Towards the end of
the second era (from the 1780s to the 1820s), the British colonies along the North American Seaboard,
Portuguese Brazil and the Spanish colonies of Mexico, Central America and South America won their
freedom from their mother countries. The reasons for seeking independence and the societal
consequences would be very different and leave a mixed legacy to our present day.
Looking beyond this chapter, the Third Stage would occur in the nineteenth century when European
governments carved out empires world-wide as they outright annexed most of Africa and India, settled
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Algeria; and economically penetrated the Ottoman Empire,
Persia, China and Japan. This worldwide empire building was fueled by a combination of trade (spell
that profit and $$$), national honor, Christian missionary zeal and military strategic considerations (such
a coaling stations). Of all these European political and economic conquests, only tiny Japan would free
itself before the twentieth century. World War I would bring an end to Stage Three and slowly – during
the interwar period - open the door for the last stage which would occur after World War II. This
Fourth Stage was the Period of Decolonization, in which almost all the peoples and nations
dominated by the Europeans freed themselves from colonial rule.
No analysis of the modern world in which we live would be complete without taking note of the fact
that during the four hundred and fifty years of European exploitation of most of the rest of the world,
Europeans exerted a political and economic control that was disproportionate to their size and
population. Euro-Americans used the rest of the world to their own economic and political benefit most often with little regard for the best interests of those whom they dominated or conquered.
Moreover, their superior technology usually gave the Euro-Ameriams a sense of cultural and religious
superiority which caused them to treat other peoples and cultures as inferiors.
1
Mercantile Empires
In 1713-1714, the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastatt ended the War of the Spanish Succession and allowed
Philip V of Spain to keep his throne, blunted the territorial dreams of Louis XIV and preserved the
Balance of Power in Europe by establishing boundaries for the various European states. Tiny (resource
poor) Portugal, which began the European Age of Exploration under Prince Henry the Navigator, had
the smallest of the Mercantilist Empires consisting of Brazil and parts of both African coasts. Except
for Brazil and Dutch Guiana, Spain controlled the rest of South America, along with Mexico and
Central America, the American Southwest and Florida; much of the Caribbean and the Philippines.
The British Empire consisted of the colonies along the North Atlantic seaboard, Nova Scotia,
Newfoundland, Bermuda, Jamaica and Barbados along with trading stations in India which would
expand greatly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the British Raj (or empire in India).
The French also had trading stations in India and along the west coast of Africa. In North America, the
French controlled three great river valleys: the Saint Lawrence, the Ohio and the Mississippi. In the
Caribbean, they held the islands of Saint Dominique (the western part of Hispaniola), Guadeloupe and
Martinique. The Dutch controlled Surinam (or Dutch Guiana), the south tip of southern Africa (the Cape
Colony), trading stations in West Africa, Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka) and Bengal in India. The richest
Dutch colonies were in the Dutch East Indies where they dominated the spice trade. Finally, Denmark
controlled a few small islands in the Caribbean.
Capitalism: the Foundation of Mercantilism
Capitalism is the economic system in which private parties make their goods and services
available on a free market and seek to take advantage of market conditions to profit from their
activities. Whether they are single individuals or large companies, these private parties own the land,
machinery, tools, equipment, buildings, workshops and raw materials needed for production. In
Capitalism, private parties also pursue their own economic interests, hire workers and decide for
themselves what to produce and make the economic decisions necessary for production – and the
government either stays out of the way or benignly [kindly] gives its support.
The center of a capitalist system is the Free Market in which businessmen are free to compete with
each other and the forces of supply and demand to determine the prices received for goods and services.
During Early Modern Times, Europeans - unlike the rest of the world - transformed their society in a
way that no society had ever before accomplished. Europeans learned to take advantage of market
variables (changeable conditions) to their profit. For example, they might buy cheap grain in Russia and
store it until there was a famine in France and then sell the grain at a handsome profit.
As Europeans learned to build efficient networks of transportation and communication, they continued
to organize banks, insurance companies and stock exchanges. In 1571, the London Stock Exchange
opened and (as we saw in Chapter 13) the Dutch opened the first full-time stock exchange in1602 in
Amsterdam. Europeans produced economic journals, the forerunners of our Wall Street Journal. And
most importantly, European nations continued to perfect the role of the Joint-stock company - like the
French East India Company (La Compagnie française des Indes orientales), the English East India
Company (EEIC) and the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie ),which spread
risk and made large profits possible. These companies and others were the principal foundations of the
global economy that emerged in Early Modern Times.
It is important to understand that European governments played an important role in promoting
capitalism and Joint Stock Companies. They protected individual rights to possess private
property, enforce contracts, and settle disputes between parties in business transactions.
2
The Goals of Mercantilism
It is important to understand that Capitalism spawned Mercantilism (also called Bullionism or the
Mercantile System). Mercantilism is the economic philosophy that tries to increase the power of a nation
by increasing its monetary wealth through policies designed to secure an accumulation of bullion (gold
and silver), a favorable balance of trade, the development of agriculture and manufacturing, and the
establishment of foreign trading monopolies. European merchants and entrepreneurs would often
advocate aggressive imperialism, because it protected their wealth and investments.
Mercantilists thought of the world as an arena of limited resources and economic limitations; an
arena which had to be contested vigorously if a nation was to grow richer.
Before the Industrial Revolution and its boon (benefit) of sustained economic growth, mercantilists felt
that the only way for a state to expand its wealth was at the expense of another state. And that could
only be achieved if a state’s army/navy could conquer other states, either in Europe or across the seas in
largely undeveloped countries.
In the same manner as Capitalist entrepreneurs worked for their own economic gain, mercantilists were
primarily driven by economic gain for their own country. Thus colonies existed to provide markets for
the mother country’s goods and sources of natural resources which the mother country used for the
benefit her own industries. In theory, the Europeans, who felt themselves culturally superior, were
supposed to protect and care for their colonies but in real life the colonies were the inferior partners
subject to the laws, tariffs and prohibitions of the technologically superior mother country. The bottom
line was that European mother countries had a monopoly just about wherever they desired. Moreover,
colonial and mother country markets did not mesh. Spain, for example, could not produce enough
goods for South America and economic production in British North America grew so fast that it
became an economic challenge to British industry.
Problems also arose when colonists of different countries wished to trade with each other. English
colonists, for example, wanted to buy sugar and molasses more cheaply from the French colonists in
Saint Dominique and Martinique in the Caribbean than from English suppliers. Traders and merchants
always wanted to avoid the national monopolies of mother counties; and buy and sell more profitably.
For all these reasons the eighteenth century became known to many historians as The Golden Age of
Smuggling. The result was that European governments could not control their colonists’ economic
activities and inevitable conflicts arose.
Anglo-French Rivalries
The British and French would clash in North America, the West Indies (Caribbean) and the Indian SubContinent. In North America both British and French colonists quarreled over fishing rights, the fur
trade and relations with Native Americans in the lower Saint Lawrence River Valley, upper New
England and (later) the Ohio River Valley. The greatest rivalry lay in the West Indies, where they
competed for the lucrative plantation crops of sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo and coffee. These
commodities were in great demand in Europe as they were all changing the way Europeans lived their
lives. Sugar in particular, although it had first been introduced to Europe by the Crusaders, had by 1700
become a staple and was used in coffee, and cocoa; and for making candy, preserving fruits and in
brewing beer. Sugar had become ubiquitous (found everywhere) and consumers and manufacturers put
heavy demand on the market – all of which made the slave-operated sugar plantations of the West
Indies hugely profitable – and thus the heart of Anglo-French rivalry in the New World.
3
India was also a flashpoint for Anglo-French competition. India was a huge emporium of spices, tea,
silk and other commodities desired by the consumers of Europe. In India, both Britain and France
traded through privileged chartered companies (joint stock companies chartered by the government) that were
legal monopolies. We have already met the English East India Company and its French counterpart,
the French East India Company, both of which established trading posts in India called factories and
hoped to expand to potential markets in China. Both the English and the French did not interfere with
the Dutch holdings in Southeast Asia. Nevertheless as the Mughal Empire (The Islamic-Mongol Empire
which controlled most of Northern India) and many of its dependent states weakened, the French under
Joseph Dupleix (1697-1763) and the British under Sir Robert Clive (1725-1774) both sought to expand
their footholds in India.
The Spanish Colonial System
It is important to understand that in building their empire, the Spanish crown operated in the same way
it had in the Reconquista (i.e., the reconquering of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslims). Just as Ferdinand
and Isabella had militantly imposed their religion and culture upon the conquered Muslims, so in like
manner the Spanish Crown imposed the Catholic religion and Spanish culture on conquered native
peoples. As the Spanish colonies grew in the 16th century, two principal centers of authority arose:
Mexico and Peru. The king appointed administrators called Viceroys (meaning, in place of the king) who
were responsible to the king and made policy in the king’s name. This Viceroy system eventually
expanded into four areas: New Spain (1521 - Mexico and Central America); New Castile (1542 - Peru,
Ecuador and Northern Chile); New Granada (1717 - Panama, Colombia and Venezuela); and Rio de la Plata
(1776 - Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and much of modern Argentina).
However, as in any empire, there was a danger that the viceroy might try to build his own personal
power base. So viceroys were kept in check by a unique institution called Audiencias, which were
review courts (subordinate judicial councils). These courts heard legal cases which were really petitions
to the king in Spain who could affirm the viceroy’s decisions or change them. These courts even
reviewed a viceroy’s conduct of office at the end of his term - and a negative review by an Audiencias
could lead to severe punishment. There were also many local officials, the most important of which
were Corregidores, who presided over municipal councils. It is important to note the Viceroys,
Audiencias and Corregidores all represented the power, authority and prestige of the Spanish Crown
and (this will be very important as time goes by) all authority would be top down, that is local initiative
and self-government scarcely existed.
Thus for the Spanish Crown, political administration and economic self-interest were one and the same.
The Casa de Contratación (House of Trade) or the Casa in Seville regulated all trade with the New
World. Cádiz was the only port authorized for use in trading with the Americas. The Casa became the
most influential institution in the Spanish Empire and its members worked in conjunction with the
Merchant Guild (Consulado) of Seville and other groups involved with trade to the Americas based in
Seville. The Casa used the Flota System, which consisted of fleets of merchant ships (guarded by
warships), to carry merchandise from Spain to three authorized ports on the Atlantic coast of Spain’s
American empire: Portobello (in Panama), Veracruz (in Mexico) and Cartagena (in Colombia). The ships
would then be loaded with gold and silver bullion and sail back to Cádiz.
This tightly controlled monopoly allowed no other authorized ports in the Atlantic or the Pacific. And
other ports in the New World could receive goods only after they had been offloaded at the three
authorized ports. This awkward and imperfect system also prohibited Spanish colonists from trading
with each other and building their own ships, developing commercial industries or allowing foreign
merchants to break this Casa monopoly.
4
The Casa System did not work well and was unable to control the growing colonies from both English
privateers and smugglers. This decline in authority became worse when gold and silver became harder
to mine and the last Hapsburg king of Spain, Charles II (1661-1700) was unable to overcome his
physical, emotional and intellectual disabilities. As we have seen, Charles died childless and named
Philip of Anjou, the 16-year old grandson of his half-sister Maria Theresa and Louis, the son of Louis
XIV, as his successor. Philip was thus from the House of Bourbon and his nomination began the War
of the Spanish Succession. When the war ended, Philip (now Philip V) and his successors tried to use
French administrative skills to reassert the imperial trade monopoly and revive Spanish power.
The Spanish used coastal patrol boats to suppress smuggling in their colonial waters. We shall see later
in this chapter how an incident in which Spanish sailors boarded an English ship and cut off the ear of
the captain, Robert Jenkins, led to the War of Jenkins Ear (1739-1748). This war also led to the
establishment of the third of the Viceroyalties, that of New Granada as an organizational strategy to
strengthen royal authority. But in spite of Philip’s efforts, it became obvious to all the powers of
Europe that Spain’s colonies were becoming increasingly vulnerable to naval attack and economic
penetration. When Spain, which was allied with France, came out on the losing side in the Seven
Year’s War (1756-1763), - even though France was forced to cede [turn over] Louisiana to Spain – the
Spanish government and the new king, Charles III (1759-1788), became convinced that the colonial
system had to be reformed.
Charles III (1759-1788) of Spain was the eldest son of Philip V and determined to reform the Spanish
colonial system. Charles used royal ministers rather than councils and so he greatly reduced the role of
the Casa de Contratación and opened more South American and Caribbean ports to trade allowing
trading between Spanish ports in the Americas. In 1776, he organized the fourth viceroyalty, the Rio de
la Plata. Finally, to make tax collection more efficient he used his own royal tax collectors (called
Intendants). Although his reforms did stimulate the imperial economy, nevertheless the increased
control did not bring reforms that withstood the test of time and revolutionary ideas.
As we have seen, Spanish colonial society was a rigid caste system divided into six classes:
I.
The Peninsulares or those born in Spain stood at the top of the social hierarchy. They came
to the New World to fill the most important administrative posts such as Viceroys,
Corregidores and Intendants (tax collectors) and whose monetary rewards were the highest.
II.
Second came the Creoles, who were individuals born of European ancestry in the Americas.
They were slightly lower in the social hierarchy and over time came to resent the
Peninsulares and felt that they were second class citizens. In time, their resentment would
fuel the independence movements of the early nineteenth century, in which they would drive
the Peninsulares out of Latin America.
III.
Third were the Mestizos, who were born of mixed European and Indian parentage. At first,
they lived on the fringes of society until their numbers became so great that they integrated
into all but the uppermost levels of society. It is important to understand that, as they
integrated upwards into society, they were often blurred with the Creoles. Since most
Spanish migrants were men, mixed marriages were inevitable and many Creoles were
classified Creoles because of one Spanish Parent and one Mestizo parent. As the Mestizos
grew in wealth, economic alliances also helped blur Mestizo/Creole distinctions.
IV.
Fourth came Zambos (or as called in other countries Mulattos), persons of African and White
parents.
V. Fifth, were the Amerindians (indigenous conquered peoples) who were pushed onto useless
lands and used for little better than slave [Encomienda] labor.
VI.
And at the very bottom were the imported African slaves.
5
In some ways a comparison can be drawn between the reforms of Charles III and George III of England
(whom we will meet at the end of the chapter) both of whom wanted to reassert royal authority and whose
policies eventually lost them important parts of their empires (save Canada and Cuba) in the New World.
Spanish Management of New World Inhabitants
When Christopher Columbus first discovered Hispaniola, he thought he had found Asia and hoped to
set up trading posts like the Portuguese and Dutch had done along the African and Indian coasts. When
it was realized that a new world had been discovered, the Spanish went hunting for valuables, that is,
gold and silver. When easily procured valuables (some them priceless art objects of gold and silver) were
exhausted, the Spanish began to look for other ways to turn a profit.
So the Spanish forcibly recruited the Native Americans for mining gold and silver; and for agricultural
labor. Recruitment of labor came through an institution known as the Encomienda, which was first
established on Hispaniola in the mid-1490s while Columbus was still exploring. Encomienda gave the
Spanish settlers the right to compel the Native Americans to work in their mines (or in fields and
plantations). In theory, the Spanish assumed responsibility to look after the workers’ health and welfare
and to encourage their conversion to Christianity. In reality, the Encomienda system was forced labor
(almost if not slavery); that is, a forced conscription of brutal proportions. The Indians were severely
treated. If they refused or rebelled, they were crushed by superior Spanish technology.
When the Spanish overthrew the Aztec and Incan nations, they simply melted down all gold (including art
works) into ingots to be sent to Spain. When that was exhausted, mining for precious minerals began in
earnest. Gold was highly prized but silver was much more plentiful. Using Encomienda, the Spanish
drafted the Incan and Aztecs to work the mines for almost nothing. The Spanish monarchy encouraged
mining silver because it received a fifth (or Quinto) of all the silver mined which helped them to finance
their army and bureaucracy in Spain. Silver production was concentrated at two major sites: in Mexico,
especially around the region of Zacatecas and the fabulously wealthy mines at Potosi in Peru, high in
the Andes Mountains.
The Atlantic Slave Trade
Of all the processes that linked Africa to the larger Atlantic world in early modern times, the most
important (and terrible) was the Atlantic Slave Trade. From the 15th to the 19th centuries, many
European peoples looked to Africa as a source of cheap labor for massive, profit driven plantations in
the New World. The institution of slavery appeared as early as Neolithic times and until the 19th
century, many agricultural cultures made some place for slaves in their societies.
Thus, both in Africa and in Europe, slavery was a well-established institution, which little or no moral
stigma attached to it. Many slaves came from war captives taken in battle and we have seen how
Muslim pirates and Vikings raiders made much money from capturing slaves for sale in great slave
markets. But much changed after 1453 and the fall of Constantinople, when growing sugar plantations
in the Canary Islands and then the New World needed slave power and the Ottoman Empire forbade the
export of white slaves from areas under its control.
So the Portuguese began to import African slaves. The Muslim world also imported African slaves
from along the shores of East Africa but the Portuguese found that it was cheaper and easier to
purchase African slaves directly from African peoples along with West Coast of Africa. Most were
used for plantation work but some slaves found their way into domestic service in the wealthy homes or
royal courts of Europe where they were a novelty because of the color of their skin.
6
In 1441, the Portuguese began to deliver about 500 slaves a year to Portugal and Spain. As their New
World empires grew, they soon shipped slaves to plantations on islands in the Atlantic and then to
Brazil and the Spanish colonies. The English began to ship slaves to North America in the early 17th
century. This led to an unprecedented interaction between the peoples of Europe and Africa and
between European settles in the Americas and Africa.
Although the Encomienda system allowed the Spanish to virtually enslave the Native Americans, they
soon discovered that European diseases such as smallpox decimated the local populations and that
African laborers were stronger and could withstand more physical strain of plantation life than Native
American laborers. In order to maximize profits, Europeans made use of Triangular Trade. The
commodities involved were several, but principally they were manufactured goods, sugar, rum, and
slaves. The idea was to make three trips across long distances of ocean instead of four. For example, an
English ship might leave England for Africa with clothing, firearms and tools. In Africa these would be
traded for slaves who would be transported to plantations in the West Indies. There, the slaves would
be traded for sugar which would be taken back to England and sold for a handsome profit. Sometimes
New England was a one of the points, but the important concept is that by using a triangle method of
sailing, one trip out of four was avoided so that profits were maximized.
Slaves were brought to the Americas by the Middle Passage (because it formed the middle leg of
Triangular Trade). The entire process is a blot on the human race: violent capture; forced march to coast;
the dreadful passage aboard ship in which 25% of slaves died; and finally sale and life as a slave in a
strange land. The impact of the slave trade from Africa resulted in about 2,000 slaves shipped to the
Americas per year in the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 1780s, about 88,000 slaves were shipped to
the Americas annually. From beginning to end, the Atlantic Slave Trade transported about 12,000,000
slaves to the Americas, not counting another 4,000,000 who died along the way.
In the New World, some slaves worked as urban laborers or domestic servants and, in Mexico and
Peru, many worked as miners, especially in the great silver mines at Potosi and Zacatecas. The vast
majority, however, provided agricultural labor on plantations, where they cultivated cash crops: sugar,
tobacco, indigo, rice, cotton and coffee. Plantations also grew agricultural crops for local communities,
but their main purpose was to make $$$ for their owners. The typical plantation community usually had
a ratio of about a hundred slaves overseen (directed) by a handful of European or mestizo supervisors. In
the Caribbean and Brazil, the high death rate from maltreatment and disease coupled with a low
reproduction rate (because female slaves were rarely imported) created a constant demand for the
importation of new slaves. Moreover, slaves in Portuguese Brazil (on plantations called Engenhos)
suffered unspeakably and were afforded the fewest legal protections.
A curious and important contrast between North America and Central/South America is that North
America received only 5% of all slaves shipped and that the English colonists/plantation owners were
(relatively) gentler and less severe to their slaves; and the cooler climate caused fewer deaths from
disease. Moreover, North American slave owners imported female slaves and encouraged family life
and children, which created far more (relative) happiness than in Iberian plantations.
Slave resistance was far more common than once thought and resistance took many forms. Slow
work and sabotage were the most common forms of resistance. Many slaves ran away and, if not
caught, these runaways formed communities in mountains, forests or jungles. These escapees were
called Maroons and they established many communities in the New World. Some even raided their
former plantations for weapons, tools, and provisions - and even to free and recruit other slaves to
strengthen their communities. In present day Suriname, for example, the Saramaka people maintain an
elaborate oral tradition that traces their descent from 18th century maroons.
7
But the most dramatic form of resistance to slavery was revolt, which caused terror when both vengeful
slaves lashed out and from the brutal reprisals when rebellions were suppressed. In a later chapter we
will study the only successful slave revolt in world history, when, in 1793 in the French sugar colony of
Saint-Dominique, a slave rebellion was successful and by 1803 became the Republic of Haiti.
Language and Cultural Interaction:
Enslaved Africans found it very difficult to maintain their inherited cultural traditions in the New
World. They were thrust into a harsh life where European languages were spoken. Nevertheless, some
were able to preserve their languages and religions. Many others lost their languages, but most began to
speak Creole languages, which drew from African and European languages. Many became Christians,
but, as in Africa, it was a syncretized (combined or mixed) Christianity. Sometimes, as in the Voodoo
Cult in Haiti or the Santeria in Cuba, their new, mixed religions developed an institutional structure.
Culturally, the slaves introduced African foods to the Caribbean and American societies. They used
African okra with European vegetables and American shellfish to produce magnificent gumbos. Okra
and gumbo are both African words. African slaves and their descendants also built houses, fashioned
clay pots and wove grass baskets in African style. Their musical melodies brought a powerful
dimension to Christian music.
Many slaves and Native Americans became Roman Catholics in Spanish and Portuguese countries and
many salves became Protestants in North America. It is said that in 1531, a fifty-year old Aztec
peasant, Juan Diego, saw an apparition of a beautiful lady who communicated messages for him to
take to the bishop. The bishop dismissed him but the lady told him to pick some roses (in the winter –
Castilian roses not native to Mexico) and take them to the bishop. When Juan Diego opened his tilma
(outer garment for men) and let the roses fall before the bishop, the bishop knelt because an image of the
lady (Our Lady of Guadalupe) was imprinted on the tilma. Whether the story is true or not, six million
Aztecs believed it was true and almost all became Roman Catholics.
The End of the Slave Trade and Slavery
The Portuguese and other European merchants and entrepreneurs have been painted in a harsh light, but
it is very important to understand that many Europeans called Abolitionists - from the very beginning denounced both slavery and the slave trade. The American and French revolutions would stimulate the
Abolitionists’ conviction that slavery was a violation of the universal human right to freedom.
Economically, slavery became less desirable as slave labor became more expensive to maintain and
sugar prices began to decline in the late 18th century - and entrepreneurs began to turn to more
profitable manufacturing industries. So, as cynical as it sounds, decreased profitability was the principal
reason why many Europeans found their moral consciences. Thus, it is very important to understand
that the rise of the Industrial Revolution parallels the decline of the profitability of slavery. The
slave trade ended in the 19th century. Denmark was first to abolish the slave trade in 1803. Great
Britain followed in 1807, the United States in 1808, France in 1814, the Netherlands in 1817 and Spain
in 1845. British naval squadrons began to patrol the Atlantic to put a stop to illegal slave trading
Perhaps the best known abolitionist internationally was the British politician William Wilberforce.
Born in 1759 in Hull, he was the son of a wealthy merchant who with his parents had made a fortune in
the Baltic Sea Trade. Wilberforce became a Member of Parliament in 1780 and from 1788 repeatedly
pushed the British government to abandon the slave trade and slavery. Wilberforce was hailed as the
Renewer of Society, and until his death in 1833 was known as the Conscience of Parliament. He
lived to see the abolition of slavery in Great Britain in the year of his death. Great Britain’s example
would soon be followed by France in 1848 and the United States in 1865.
8
It is also important to understand that the abolition of slavery was a long and more drawn out process.
Cuba did not abolish slavery until 1886 and Brazil until 1888. Some nations kept slavery till the mid20th century. Saudi Arabia and Angola did not abolish slavery until 1960. Although slavery is
technically illegal almost everywhere in the world, the legacy of slavery remains a source of problems
and frustrations to our very hour. Many forms of servitude such as debt bondage, debt marriages and
“white” slaving thrive in many parts of the world.
European Conflicts: 1739 to 1783
The War of Jenkins’ Ear
The Treaty of Utrecht gave the British a thirty year Asiento or contract to supply slaves and goods to
Spanish colonies in the New World and this made it easier for British privateers and smugglers to
penetrate the closed markets of Spanish America. The British, however, resented the Spanish
government’s serious enforcement of its monopoly and tension between the nations grew.
Then in 1731, the British brig Rebecca was boarded by the Spanish warship La Isabela, commanded
by Julio Fandiño. After boarding, the Spanish captain cut off the left ear of the Rebecca's captain,
Robert Jenkins, whom Fandiño accused of piracy. Fandiño told Jenkins, "Go, and tell your King that
I will do the same, if he dares to do the same." Jenkins kept his severed ear in a bottle of brandy until
1738 when he produced his ear in Parliament as evidence of Spanish atrocities. British merchants and
West Indian planters pressured the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, to fight. Walpole gave in and
Britain fought the War of Jenkins’ Ear with Spain. The war was a trade war marked by a series of
skirmishes and much privateering finally concluded as a result of the War of the Austrian Succession.
The War of the Austrian Succession
As we saw in Chapter 13, shortly after Frederick II became King of Prussia in 1740, he ignored the
Pragmatic Sanction and seized the Austrian province of Silesia. More troubling to Europe’s monarchs
than the violation of Charles VI’s edict that his daughter be allowed to inherit the Austrian throne was
that Frederick upset the Balance of Power. Thus new alliances were formed and two major wars were
precipitated. Maria Theresa herself wisely won the loyalty and support of her subjects both by her
personal heroism and by granting new privileges to the nobility, especially in recognizing Hungary as
the more important of her crowns and her promise to the Magyar nobility of local autonomy. Thus she
preserved her authority in her empire, but what she wanted more was the return of Silesia.
Now all these events happened as the War of Jenkins’ Ear between Spain and Britain was being fought
and the two conflicts could have remained separate events. But it would be France which would unite
the two them. Just as Sir Robert Walpole had been pressured into the War of Jenkins’ Ear to protect
British commercial interests, so Cardinal Fleury, the first minister of Louis XV, was forced to give up
his planned naval assault on British trading interests in order to support the Prussians and Frederick II
against Austria, which was France’s traditional enemy.
This decision had profound consequences. First, France’s support of Frederick the Great helped
Frederick to consolidate Prussia as a powerful German state. Second, it brought Great Britain into the
continental conflict because Britain wanted to make sure that the Netherlands, which was an Austrian
possession, remained in the friendly hands of Austria, not France. The British-French conflict escalated
in 1744, when the French supported Spain against Britain in the War of Jenkins’ Ear. Third, France
was weakened in this two-front conflict because she lacked resources to fight Great Britain in the New
World and Austria in the old. So the war ended in a stalemate – Prussia retaining Silesia and Britain
keeping her Asiento – by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. (So Spain, France and Prussia
stalemated with Britain and Austria)
9
The Diplomatic Revolution of 1756
Even though the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle brought temporary peace in Europe, Britain and France
continued unofficially to struggle for control in the Ohio River Valley and upper New England. This
contest would resume in 1755 and be known as The French and Indian War. In broader terms,
however, the period after Aix-la-Chapelle was a resting period - one which would witness a dramatic
shift in alliances known as the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756.
The British king, George II, who was also the king of Hanover in Germany, was afraid that the French
might also attack Hanover in response to the conflict in North America. So in January 1756, Great
Britain and Prussia signed the Convention of Westminster, which was a defensive alliance that sought
to prevent French troops from invading Germany. Frederick II also embraced the Convention of
Westminster because he feared an alliance between Russia and Austria against him. It also stunned
Maria Theresa and the Austrians because Britain had been an ally of Austria ever since the wars of
Louis XIV; and this led to an even more stunning political realignment.
Maria Theresa herself was despondent over this turn of events but the Austrial foreign minister, Prince
Wenzel Kaunitz (1711-1794), saw the Convention of Westminster as an opportunity to form an alliance
with France in order not just to regain Silesia but to dismember or crush Prussia. Moreover, suspecting
that Prussia was about to launch an invasion of Bohemia - and fearing that the British would do nothing
to help them (since Britain was heavily involved in its dispute with France over the Ohio River Valley), Kaunitz was
able to conclude an alliance with Austria’s traditional enemy, France. This diplomatic triumph for the
Austrian foreign minister completely reversed over two hundred years of French foreign policy as
France would now help Austria to restore Austrian hegemony in central Europe.
The Seven Years’ War
The Seven Years’ War was a global military conflict driven by Austrian determination to reclaim
Silesia (and its former glory) as well as the antagonism between Great Britain and the Bourbons of
France and Spain in their colonial empires. It was Frederick who opened hostilities and precipitated a
worldwide war that would earn him the title of “the great.” In August, 1756, he invaded Saxony, a
small German state allied with Austria. He intended it as a pre-emptive strike before the Austrians and
French could invade Silesia. The Saxon and Austrian armies were unprepared, and their forces
scattered. Frederick was successful but the unintended consequence was that Russia, Sweden and some
smaller German states joined Austria and France against Frederick, who had only British money and
his own daring and fortitude to stave off the alliance against him.
Frederick faced an almost impossible challenge because he was outnumbered and surrounded by his
enemies. He seemed oblivious to the odds against him; he seemed to attack in every direction and won
some battles but lost more, especially The Battle of Kunersdorf in 1759 when the Russians and
Austrians almost destroyed his entire army. Nevertheless, with his brilliance and sheer force of will,
Frederick managed to keep Prussia in the war despite having his territories frequently invaded.
Frederick’s tactics paid off. In 1763, the Empress Elizabeth (r. 1741-1762) of Russia died and her
successor and short lived husband of Catherine the Great, Peter III, who admired the Prussians and
Frederick in particular, recalled the Russian armies and made peace with Prussia. The Treaty of
Hubertusburg ended the war on the continent in February 1763. Frederick kept Silesia, Prussia gained
enormously in influence at the expense of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria became more
dependent than ever on its Hungarian territories. But Frederick the Great’s triumphs in Europe were
only half of the drama of the Seven Year’s War and less impressive (at the time) to the rest of Europe
than the worldwide triumph of Great Britain.
10
The mastermind of Great Britain’s victories was William Pitt the Elder (1st Earl of Chatham, 1708-1778),
who became the de facto leader of the British government in 1757 and sent great sums of money to
Frederick the Great as a way to divert French resources and money away from the colonial struggle in
North America, which was Pitt’s real goal. Pitt sent 40,000 regular British soldiers along with colonial
troops to attack French Canada. The number of troops was unprecedented in colonial struggles and the
American colonists gave strong support because they wanted to defeat their French neighbors. France
was both unwilling and unable to commit such resources not just because of the struggles against
Prussia but because there were far fewer French settlers in North America than British. So it was no
surprise that in September 1759, on the Plains of Abraham overlooking the Saint Lawrence River at
Quebec City, the British army under James Wolfe defeated the French under Louis Joseph de
Montcalm. Pitt would later boast that America was won on the plains of Germany.
Pitt also sent British ships to the West Indies where they captured the major French islands including
Martinique and Guadeloupe whose sugar production helped the British finance the war and drained
much needed revenue from France. Between 1755 and 1760, the value of French foreign trade fell by
more than eighty percent and the French lost most of their slave trade to the British as well. The British
were also successful in India where British forces under Robert Clive defeated France’s Indian ally,
the Mughal Raja (ruler) of Bengal, at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Plassey is important because it
laid the basis for the English East India Company’s conquest of all India (which came to be known as
the British Raj). Pitt would soon quarrel with King George III and be replaced by the John Stuart, 3rd
Earl of Bute (1713 –1792) who would negotiate the Treaty of Paris of 1763, but Pitt’s place in history
was secured with the leadership he showed during the Seven Year’s War.
The Anglo-French hostilities were ended by a complex series of land exchanges, the most important
being France's cession to Spain of Louisiana, and to Great Britain the rest of New France (Canada)
except for the “fishing” islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon off the southern coast of Newfoundland.
France also had the choice of retrieving either New France or its Caribbean island colonies of
Guadalupe and Martinique, and chose the latter because they were lucrative sources of sugar
production. Spain lost control of Florida to Great Britain, but received New Orleans and the Louisiana
Territory west of the Mississippi River from the French. The exchanges suited the British as well, as
their own Caribbean islands already supplied ample sugar, and with the acquisition of New France and
Florida, they now controlled all of North America east of the Mississippi.
In India, the British retained the French territory around Madras, but returned all the French trading
ports (the fortifications of which had be destroyed and never rebuilt) with minimal garrisons rendering them
worthless as military bases. Combined with the loss of France's ally in Bengal and the defection of
Hyderabad to the British side as a result of the war, this effectively brought French power in India to an
end, making way for British hegemony and eventual control of the subcontinent.
The American Revolution
As we have seen, 1763 was a watershed year because it catapulted Great Britain into world prominence
and gave her control of almost all of North America. Yet, in less than 20 years, she would lose
control of the richest of all her North American colonies and not only grant them independence
but cede to them all the land west to the Mississippi River. The root of this dramatic reversal of
fortune began when the British government had trouble paying for the Seven Year’s War and
maintaining her now enormous empire. Parliament expected that the North American colonies should
pay their fair share since they were the chief beneficiaries of the war but the colonists resented the
British drive for revenue, especially since it was done without their consent.
11
In 1764, George Grenville became Prime Minister and presided over the passage of the Sugar Act,
which attempted to produce more revenue from imports (especially from sugar and molasses from British
islands in the West Indies) into the colonies by more rigorously enforcing existing laws. Importation
duties were not new but colonists had become used to smuggling and evading paying importation
duties on imported sugar; and so they resented the Sugar Act, especially its provision that smugglers
would be tried in admiralty (not colonial) courts - without juries. Grenville and Parliament then passed
the Stamp Act of 1765 which required expensive stamps to be placed on publications and legal
documents. The British considered this tax legal because it was passed by Parliament and fair because
the money was to be spent (so they said) in and for the colonies.
Many (not all) American colonists angrily responded that they had the right to tax themselves and, since
they were not represented in Parliament, Parliament had no right to levy taxes on them. In October
1765, a Stamp Act Congress met in New York City and made a formal protestation to the king and
Parliament that (1) only colonial assemblies had a right to tax the colonies; (2) trial by jury was a right
granted to all English citizens, and that the use of Admiralty Courts was an abuse of that right; (3)
colonists possessed all the rights of Englishmen and without voting rights, Parliament could not
represent the colonists. There was much anger and indignation in Great Britain as well; and much more
uproar in the colonies, especially in Massachusetts where a quasi-political group, the Sons of Liberty,
led vociferous protests which sometimes became violent demonstrations.
The colonists then did something unexpected; they united and agreed to refuse to import British goods.
This had a profound impact in Britain – hit them in the wallet – and in 1766 Parliament repealed the
Stamp Act but also passed the Declaratory Act which asserted its power to legislate for the colonies.
Note that the Stamp Act crisis set a pattern in British-Colonial relations that would last for ten years.
Parliament, under the leadership of a royal minister, would approve new taxes or legislation and the
Americans would then resist by reasoned argument, economic pressure (boycotting British goods) and
civil demonstrations often with violence. Then the British would back down and the cycle would begin
again. But each time tempers became more frayed and attitudes more hardened as more and more
colonists gradually evolved from Englishmen into Americans.
The next round came in 1767 when Charles Townshend, the British Finance Minister, led Parliament
to pass the Townshend Acts which taxed many imports, such as glass, paint, paper and tea. The
colonists again resisted and the British government sent its own enforcement agents to oversee the new
regulations - along with soldiers to protect them. The resulting stress and confusion led to sometimes
violent demonstrations, including the Boston Massacre in which British soldiers, who were ironically
justified in shooting into a crowd of violent demonstrators, since they were attacked by the
demonstrators. Parliament quickly repealed the Townshend Acts.
Then in 1773, the Prime Minister, Lord North, led Parliament to pass a new law relating to the sale of
tea by the English East India Company. The law permitted the direct importation of tea into the
colonies and actually lowered the price of tea while retaining the tax imposed without the colonists’
consent. And lack of colonial consent led to colonial reaction! Many colonial ports boycotted the tea
and in Boston there was the Boston Tea Party in which a shipload of tea was dumped into the bay.
In 1774, Lord North – more determined than ever to enforce British authority – had Parliament pass the
Intolerable Acts which closed the port of Boston (until the value of the tea had been repaid), reorganized
the colonial government of Massachusetts, allowed troops to be quartered in private homes and moved
the trials of royal customs officials to England. Parliament also passed the Quebec Act of 1774 which
extended the boundaries of Quebec to include the Ohio River valley which was intended to block
American westward settlement (migration) beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
12
Meanwhile, the colonists began to organize collectively and set up Committees of Correspondence
which more and more led them to make common cause. In 1774, they organized a First Continental
Congress to coordinate the colonial resistance to British action. In April 1775, tensions were so high
that the inevitable clash between British troops and the colonists finally took place at the villages of
Lexington and Concord, near Boston. In June the British defeated the American forces besieging
Boston at Bunker Hill even though the American forces were still able to maintain the siege. In
August, George III declared the colonies in rebellion. The war had begun! Then in early in 1776,
Thomas Paine published a pamphlet called Common Sense, in which he challenged the authority of
the British government and was the first to formally call for American Independence.
In Great Britain, the war also had its opponents. Edmund Burke (a Whig MP and hailed by many as the
Father of Conservatism whom we will meet in Chapter eighteen when he openly condemned the French
Revolution) and Charles L. Fox (Burke’s protégée and bitter opponent of King George) both spoke in the
House of Commons against the war with the American colonists. Burke pointed out that: the people of
the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. ... They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to
liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. John Wilkes (whom we shall soon meet)
said the Commons: I call the war with our brethren in America an unjust and felonious war, because
the primary cause and confessed origin of it is to attempt to take their money from them without their
consent, contrary to the common right of all mankind, and those great fundamental principles of the
English Constitution…
In 1775 (soon after fighting began) a Second Continental Congress met to continue the work of the
first. On July 4, 1776, its members approved the Declaration of Independence, which drew upon
Enlightenment thinking and English Constitutional tradition. It asserted that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, which among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. It echoed John Locke’s contractual theory of government in
arguing that individuals established governments to secure these rights and that government
derives its power and authority from the consent of the governed. The declaration listed colonial
grievances and declared that they had the right to be free and independent states.
The war was frustrating for both sides. On one hand, the British had overwhelming military superiority,
but could not physically occupy a country so vast in size. They had the world’s strongest navy; a strong
government, a good army and a sizable portion of the colonists called Loyalists (or Tories) made up
about a third of the population. The rebels on the other hand, were fighting on their homeland for their
homes, while the British had to cross the sea with supplies and reinforcements to fight in what was now
a foreign land, even with Loyalist help. Moreover, Spain, France, the Netherlands (still resentful from
their losses in the Seven Year’s War) and several German states would in time also help the colonists.
The rebels were frustrated because they were only a third of the population. Nevertheless, in spite of
their small numbers, the rebels benefited greatly from strong political and military leadership, many of
whom are still considered American Founding Fathers. The greatest was George Washington, who, as
commander in chief, used creative, daring, hit and run tactics learned from the Indians. His character
molded the Continental Army together and effectively integrated local militias. Although the British
held many major cities, including New York and Boston and defeated Washington several times, they
could never get that elusive and decisive victory.
As he gained experience, Washington began to win more victories. In 1778, Benjamin Franklin
persuaded the French to join the war against the British; and the Spanish joined the following year.
Thus, with foreign aid, Washington was strong enough to lay a trap in 1781 for the army of Lord
Cornwallis in Yorktown, Virginia. With French naval help, he forced Cornwallis to surrender.
13
Yorktown was a terrible blow to British pride and morale, but it is important to remember that the
British nevertheless still had overwhelming military force. But the truth was that the British were tired
of a war they couldn’t win because they weren’t able to destroy the Washington’s army or hold much
land. So in 1783 both sides met in Paris and in September the Treaty of Paris was signed. The British
recognized American Independence and – interestingly ceded all land from the Appalachians to the
Mississippi River to the new republic and thus doubled the size of the newly created American nation.
American Thought and Great Britain
The American Revolution was an outgrowth of the ideals of the Glorious Revolution when rule by
Parliament triumphed. The Americans had claimed that George III and the British Parliament had
attacked the liberties guaranteed to English citizens in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and used this
to justify their protests and ultimately their revolution.
These ideas came mainly from the Whig Party, a liberal-leaning group in Parliament which contested
power with their rival, the Tory Party, from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs were supporters of
constitutional monarchy, great aristocratic families, the Hanoverian succession and toleration of nonAnglican Protestant churches.
The Tories were more conservative (some supporting the claims of James II’s heirs; but most were
supportive of a stronger monarchy) and supported the Anglican Church as the established church. The
Tories sometimes disappeared as a political party and then reorganized but in spite of many ups and
downs, they survived to become the modern Conservative Party in Britain.
The American colonists had been deeply influenced by Whig political idealism based, as we have seen,
on the philosophy of John Locke. During the eighteenth century, American colonists had become
familiar with a number of English political writers called the Commonwealthmen or the
Commonwealth Party, who were highly outspoken Protestant political and economic reformers during
the early 18th century. The Commonwealthmen were the intellectual descendants of the radical puritans
of the seventeenth century; and so they naturally promoted Republicanism or the ideology of
governing a nation as a republic, in which the head of state and a nation’s leaders are appointed
by means other than heredity, often by election. The result was that they had a great influence on
Republicanism in the United States.
Two of the most influential of these writers were John Trenchard (1662-1723) and Thomas Gordon (d.
1750), who together, between1720 to 1723, wrote a series of 144 weekly essays entitled Cato's Letters,
which condemned the corruption and lack of morality within the British political system and warned
against the tyranny that such a system engendered (produced). They argued that government patronage
and the Parliamentary system begun by Sir Robert Walpole was corrupt and actually undermined
liberty. They regarded Parliamentary taxation as little more than financing political corruption and
considered standing armies to be a tyrannical act in itself.
In Great Britain the Commonwealth Party had little impact because the British regarded themselves as
the freest people in the world. But on the other side of the Atlantic, the American colonists – faced with
what they saw as an encroachment on their rights as Englishmen - took the ideas of the Commonwealth
Party more seriously. It has often been observed that there is no force more powerful than an idea
whose time has come. So it was that after 1763, the actions of the British government towards the
American colonies convinced many colonists that their worst fears were coming true and they needed
to organize for radical solutions.
14
The Kingship of George III
George III became king in 1760 and unlike his father (Frederick, Prince of Wales, d. 1751), grandfather
(George II), and great grandfather (George I), he was been born in England and spoke English as his first
language. George believed that a few powerful Whig families had controlled the government and had
bullied George I and George II for their own gain. George III also believed that he should have
ministers of his own choosing and that Parliament should be answerable to him rather than aristocratic
management by dominant Whig families. Thus, after William Pitt’s resignation in 1761, he appointed
the Earl of Bute as his first minister and promptly ignored the Whig families that had dominated
British government since the death of Queen Anne and appointed ministers who opposed the Whigs
and used the same techniques of patronage (putting supporters in positions of power) that Walpole used to
control the House of Commons.
Between 1761 and 1770, George tried one minister after another in a vain attempt to gain enough
support in the House of Commons for him to dominate. Finally in 1770, he turned to Lord North, who
in spite of his blundering in the American War of Independence, remained the king’s first minister until
1782. The Whigs despised the king for what they saw as his attempt to impose a tyranny but what
George III was really trying to do was to restore more royal influence to the government the only way
he knew how. He wanted to be king not a tyrant.
The John Wilkes Affair
John Wilkes was born in London in 1725; the well-educated second son of a distiller. Wilkes was said
to be notoriously ugly, and was called the ugliest man in England at the time. He possessed an
unsightly squint and protruding jaw, but had a charm that made him endearing. Wilkes himself boasted
that it took him only half an hour to talk away his face. He was first elected to Parliament in 1757 and
fought for the right of voters—rather than special interests in the House of Commons—to determine
their representatives. He became the editor of a newspaper, The North Britton, and in 1763 (in issue 45)
strongly criticized Lord Bute’s handling of the Treaty of Paris. Wilkes was then arrested under a
general warrant issued by the secretary of state. He pleaded privileges of Parliament and was released.
Even though the courts ruled that he could not be arrested on such a vague warrant, the House of
Commons ruled his criticism libelous and expelled him from Parliament. He fled the country but
remained an immensely popular figure.
Remember: libel is written false accusations or defamation of another person but slander is
spoken false accusations, untruths or defamation of another person.
In 1768, Wilkes returned to England and was re-elected to Parliament, but the House of Commons
refused to seat him. He was elected three more times but each time – under the influence of the king
and his followers – he was refused his seat. After the fourth election, the House of Commons simply
ignored the election results and seated the government candidate. But Wilkes was very popular and
unruly demonstrations by shopkeepers, artisans, small property owners and Whig politicians kept
pressure on Parliament and the government. Their popular slogan was Wilkes and Liberty and when he
was briefly imprisoned in May of 1768; his supporters cried No Justice, No Peace. When soldiers fired
on unarmed protesters, seven people were killed and fifteen wounded in an incident that came to be
known as the St George's Fields Massacre. Wilkes was finally seated in 1774 after he became Lord
Mayor of London. Wilkes supported the freedom of the press, religious tolerance and the American
Revolution. He finally lost popularity when, charged with defending the Band of England during the
1778 Gordon Riots, he ordered soldiers to fire on the mob.
15
American colonists followed these events and their resolve during the War of Independence was
strengthened when Wilkes, Burke, Gibbon and other MPs supported the colonists across the sea. It is
important to understand that all this confirmed colonial fears about a tyrannical monarch and a corrupt
parliament trampling on their political rights. After the Revolution was won, representatives to the
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 included provisions in the new American
Constitution which prevented Congress from rejecting any legally elected member or general arrest
warrants.
Calls for Reform: The Yorkshire Association
The unfolding of the American Revolution also made a deep impact on many Englishmen. They saw in
the struggles of John Wilkes and the American colonists, protests against the power of a self-appointed
aristocracy and a king who wanted more royal authority. And both of these were in conflict with the
ideal of Popular Sovereignty and the English Bill of Rights of 1689. So it should be no surprise that
even before of the American War of Independence broke out, there were calls for parliamentary reform
in Great Britain. Many reformers like Major John Cartwright (1740-1824) demanded that parliament
meet every year, the secret ballot be used and all men have the right to vote.
The Yorkshire Association Movement took root in the late 1770s for two reasons: Lord North’s
bungling of the war in North America (i.e., The Intolerable Acts), and his policies at home especially the
raising of taxes to pay for the war in North America. It was organized in 1778 in northern England by
Christopher Wyvil (1740-1822), a landowner and retired Clergyman. Its purpose [which echoed Major
Cartwright’s demands] was to press for limits on government spending and an increase in freely elected
members of Parliament (MPs). The Yorkshire Association disintegrated in the early 1780s for three
reasons. First, Lord North was replaced as the American War was ending and that meant their principal
target was gone; second, it was unable to gain support from a broad range of people and, third, it was
unable to keep its momentum because of more radical movements inspired by the French Revolution.
Nevertheless, the movement provided many of its younger members experience in political protest that
would continue the calls to reform Parliament after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815.
The Triumph of George III
Nevertheless, the movement had a salutary but short lived effect. In 1780, the House of Commons
passed a resolution which called for a decrease in the power of the king. In 1782, Parliament adopted a
reform measure that abolished some patronage available to the king. But George III continued to
appoint his own ministers. In 1783, Parliamentary pressures and anger of the lost war in America
forced Lord North to form a coalition government (multiparty government) with an old critic of his and
King George, Charles L Fox (1749-1806), who was a longtime Whig Member of Parliament and (as we
noted) a protégée of Edmund Burke. The king was furious and forced Lord North out of the
government. George III then approached William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806), son of the hero of the
Seven Year’s War, and Pitt, with powerful royal support, put together a House of Commons favorable
to the king. Two years later Pitt tried a pass a modest reform bill and when it failed he abandoned all
attempts parliamentary reforms.
However, by the mid-1780s, George III had achieved the royal power he had so much desired. But in
1788, at the height of his triumph, he was struck down by mental illness (probably from the blood
disorder called porphyria). George III recovered shortly afterwards, but relapsed in 1804 and by 1810 – at
the height of his power and popularity – agreed to accept a regency headed by his son, George IV. The
regency governed in the name of George III but led to a grave weakening of royal authority.
16
The Results of the American Revolution
The greatest surprise of the American Revolution was economic. The new nation needed money
for investment and British financiers were only too willing to lend money and British trade with
the Americans after independence actually increased – dramatically!
Less surprising and more obvious were the political and social ramifications and consequences:
1. The American colonists demonstrated to Europe that a successful governmental structure could be
established without kings or hereditary nobility. They founded a nation based on popular
sovereignty which had the highest legal and political authority. The implications were so dramatic
that Europe could not for long ignore them.
2. The American Constitution extended what had been begun during the Glorious Revolution. The
American colonists believed that they were preserving traditional English liberties against the
tyranny of Parliament and King George III. And once their constitution was adopted, the Americans
quickly insisted on a Bill of Rights to protect their liberties.
3. The Americans also rejected the social hierarchy of colonial days. Even though the franchise (the
right to vote) was limited to men of property, the Americans embraced the democratic ideal and
asserted the equality of all white males before the law. And they rejected social status based on
birth, wealth or political office.
4. Even though by modern standards, the American political system of 1789 was not perfect (i.e.,
slavery), it nevertheless produced a society more free than the world had ever before seen and
achieved it in a relatively bloodless manner without violent, social upheaval.
5. Thus the American Revolution was genuinely radical but peaceful and its influence would widen
with time as Europeans interacted with the new republic.
17