How long did britain rule america

The American victory Saratoga would prove to be a turning point of the American Revolution, as it prompted France which had been secretly aiding the rebels since to enter the war openly on the American side, though it would not formally declare war on Great Britain until June The American Revolution, which had begun as a civil conflict between Britain and its colonies, had become a world war.

The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island , in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North. The Americans suffered a number of setbacks from to , including the defection of General Benedict Arnold to the British and the first serious mutinies within the Continental Army.

Supported by a French army commanded by General Jean Baptiste de Rochambeau, Washington moved against Yorktown with a total of around 14, soldiers, while a fleet of 36 French warships offshore prevented British reinforcement or evacuation. Trapped and overpowered, Cornwallis was forced to surrender his entire army on October Though the movement for American independence effectively triumphed at the Battle of Yorktown , contemporary observers did not see that as the decisive victory yet.

British forces remained stationed around Charleston, and the powerful main army still resided in New York. Though neither side would take decisive action over the better part of the next two years, the British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late finally pointed to the end of the conflict. British and American negotiators in Paris signed preliminary peace terms in Paris late that November, and on September 3, , Great Britain formally recognized the independence of the United States in the Treaty of Paris.

At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain which had entered the conflict in , bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years. Start your free trial today. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present.

As a political activist and state legislator, he spoke out against British efforts to tax the colonists, and pressured merchants to boycott British products. He also We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.

To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it. Of course, evaluating the wisdom of the American Revolution means dealing with counterfactuals.

As any historian would tell you, this is a messy business. We obviously can't be entirely sure how America would have fared if it had stayed in the British Empire longer, perhaps gaining independence a century or so later, along with Canada. But I'm reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would've been abolished earlier, American Indians would've faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government that makes policymaking easier and lessens the risk of democratic collapse.

The main reason the revolution was a mistake is that the British Empire, in all likelihood, would have abolished slavery earlier than the US did, and with less bloodshed. Abolition in most of the British Empire occurred in , following the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act. That left out India, but slavery was banned there, too, in In England itself, slavery was illegal at least going back to That's decades earlier than the United States. This alone is enough to make the case against the revolution.

Decades less slavery is a massive humanitarian gain that almost certainly dominates whatever gains came to the colonists from independence. The main benefit of the revolution to colonists was that it gave more political power to America's white male minority.

For the vast majority of the country — its women, slaves, American Indians — the difference between disenfranchisement in an independent America and disenfranchisement in a British-controlled colonial America was negligible. If anything, the latter would've been preferable, since at least women and minorities wouldn't be singled out for disenfranchisement. From the vantage point of most of the country, who cares if white men had to suffer through what everyone else did for a while longer, especially if them doing so meant slaves gained decades of free life?

It's true that had the US stayed, Britain would have had much more to gain from the continuance of slavery than it did without America.

It controlled a number of dependencies with slave economies — notably Jamaica and other islands in the West Indies — but nothing on the scale of the American South.

Adding that into the mix would've made abolition significantly more costly. But the South's political influence within the British Empire would have been vastly smaller than its influence in the early American republic. For one thing, the South, like all other British dependencies, lacked representation in Parliament. The Southern states were colonies, and their interests were discounted by the British government accordingly.

But the South was also simply smaller as a chunk of the British Empire's economy at the time than it was as a portion of America's. The British crown had less to lose from the abolition of slavery than white elites in an independent America did.

The revolutionaries understood this. Indeed, a desire to preserve slavery helped fuel Southern support for the war. In , after the war had begun in Massachusetts, the Earl of Dunmore, then governor of Virginia, offered the slaves of rebels freedom if they came and fought for the British cause. Eric Herschthal , a PhD student in history at Columbia, notes that the proclamation united white Virginians behind the rebel effort. He quotes Philip Fithian, who was traveling through Virginia when the proclamation was made, saying, "The Inhabitants of this Colony are deeply alarmed at this infernal Scheme.

It seems to quicken all in Revolution to overpower him at any Risk. While we thus stimulated these two developments, the French provided a third. From to , France and Britain were locked in a gigantic struggle. At times Napoleon had virtually all Continental Europe under his thumb or on his side. For reasons of our own we teamed up with him in His fleet was smashed by Nelson at Trafalgar and a British army gave him the final knockout blow at Waterloo. Britain emerged from the struggle so powerful that it could have kept all the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish colonies it had captured.

But Britain had no enthusiasm for large-scale empire building. Its only interest was in naval bases and ports of call. It kept strategically placed Singapore and Malta, and the Dutch colonies of Ceylon, Guiana, and the Cape of Good Hope, but returned the rich spice islands. Of the French possessions it retained only Mauritius and three West Indian islands.

In this way Britain further fortified the sea lanes along which its merchantmen must travel to its own colonies or to foreign markets and increased its ability to protect those colonies and ships against any naval power that might challenge it in the future. No such power did challenge it for nearly a century, until Germany, having become a large industrial nation, resolved to be a great naval and imperial power as well.

For just under a hundred years, —, the world at large enjoyed a period of peace. In such a world the British Empire could move easily along the three lines already laid down, as an empire of settlement, of trading posts or areas, and of naval bases or ports of call. Force played its part at some points, as it did in our own westward movement which was taking place at the same time. British school history books list about a score of noteworthy colonial wars, chiefly in India and Africa.

Yet the use of military force for spreading political control over new areas was less important than was the energy with which explorers, missionaries, traders, settlers, shipowners, miners, and railroad builders swarmed to the frontiers and there went about their self-chosen tasks.

Sometimes settlement and trade followed the flag. Quite as frequently, however, the flag followed the settler and the trader, either because they cried out for its protection or because they clamored for its support in their desire to expand their field of operations. All this energy at the circumference was matched by abounding vigor at the center. For in Britain there was a rapidly increasing population which was discovering new methods of manufacturing vast quantities of good cheap articles.

It was building the ships to take them out. It was developing the banks and trading firms to handle the business. It was saving money to invest abroad. And it was ready, willing, and able to absorb whatever foods or raw materials the colonists—or anybody else—cared to send to British ports. It was this private enterprise of men at the hub and on the rim, rather than the plans of London governments—which for much of the time were apathetic toward imperial affairs—that made the Empire grow as it did.

Settlement went ahead in Canada and Australia. After South Africa began to attract a few British settlers. Some Afrikanders Dutch South Africans did not like them, their rulers, or their opposition to slavery, and moved into the interior. New Zealand began to attract settlers after The story in these four regions is very much like our own, except that we could move overland while the British colonists had to make a long jump overseas before they began to swarm over the new land.

None of the areas was so rich in resources as was the United States, and progress was therefore much slower as well as smaller. Gold discoveries, the building of railroads, the importation of capital, the rise of manufactures, the coming of the steamship, good times and lean years all played their part. Staple commodities—lumber, wheat, wool, and metals, and later dairy produce, meats, fruit, and other perishables—were produced and exported, chiefly to Britain.

In all areas government came close on the heels of the frontiersmen, if it was not there first. Since the colonists insisted on having a share in making or administering the laws, self-government and democratic institutions spread. Today the empire of settlement in North America, Africa, and Australasia covers about 9,, square miles. It contains about 24,, people of European origin, of whom 12,, are in Canada and 9,, in Australasia.

The first great crisis of British rule in North America came in the s. Throughout the s and s British settlers in the Thirteen Colonies were becoming increasingly discontented about aspects of British rule. Above all, they resented the taxes and duties that the British put on to the goods they traded. They felt that if the colonies paid taxes, they should be represented in Parliament.

King George refused and the discontent increased. By the s a number of rich and powerful American colonists were convinced that the only way that America would be ruled fairly would be if it ruled itself. The result of this view was the American Revolution, which began in and resulted in the defeat of the British in The British did not leave North America, however. Generally, relations between the British government and the settlers in British North America were reasonably good in the early s.

In some settlers in Upper and Lower Canada rebelled against British rule. The rebellion was not large in scale, and it was quickly defeated, but it had important results. The British government appointed the Earl of Durham to investigate the reasons for the revolts and to suggest ways to make the situation better. After the investigation, the Earl produced a document that became known as The Durham Report.