The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution

by Gould, Eliga H.

• ISBN13: 9780807825297
• ISBN10: 0807825298
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

The American Revolution was the longest colonial war in modern British history and Britain's most humiliating defeat as an imperial power. In this lively, concise book, Eliga Gould examines an important yet surprisingly understudied aspect of the conflict: the British public's predominantly loyal response to its government's actions in North America. Gould attributes British support for George III's American policies to a combination of factors, including growing isolationism in regard to the European continent and a burgeoning sense of the colonies as integral parts of a greater British nation. Most important, he argues, the British public accepted such ill-conceived projects as the Stamp Act because theirs was a sedentary, "armchair" patriotism based on paying others to fight their battles for them. This system of military finance made Parliament's attempt to tax the American colonists look unexceptional to most Britons and left the metropolitan public free to embrace imperial projects of all sorts--including those that ultimately drove the colonists to rebel. Drawing on nearly one thousand political pamphlets as well as on broadsides, private memoirs, and popular cartoons, Gould offers revealing insights into eighteenth-century British political culture and a refreshing account of what the Revolution meant to people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Author Biography

Eliga H. Gould is associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
List of Maps and Illustrations	xiii
Introduction	xv
An Empire of Liberty
Whig Identity in the Reign of George II	1	(34)
Maintaining the Balance of Power	3	(11)
A Matchless Constitution	14	(16)
The Liberties of Britain and Europe	30	(5)
The Blue Water Vision
British Imperialism and the Seven Years' War	35	(37)
``The Sepulchre of British Interest''	38	(15)
Oceans, Indians, and Colonists	53	(16)
The Legacy of William Pitt	69	(3)
Patriostism Established
The Creation of a ``National Militia'' in England	72	(34)
The Power of Popularity	75	(8)
The Militia Riots of 1757	83	(15)
The Price of Victory	98	(8)
The Nation Abroad
The Atlantic Debate over Colonial Taxation	106	(42)
The Origins of the Stamp Act (1765)	110	(13)
An American Theory of Empire	123	(13)
The Plunge of Lemmings	136	(12)
The Revolution in British Patriotism
The Friends of Government and the Friends of America	148	(33)
Ambivalent Patriots	150	(14)
The County Associations (1780)	164	(15)
A People above Reproach	179	(2)
The Experience of Defeat
The British Legacy of the American Revolution	181	(34)
The Limits of Greater Britain	183	(15)
``The Isle of Liberty and Peace''	198	(10)
A Multiracial Empire	208	(7)
Bibliography	215	(38)
Index	253