Effects of the American Revolution

Effects of the American Revolution

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The American Revolution’s true significance has long divided historians — was it a genuine social transformation, or merely a conservative defence of rights colonists already possessed? This article examines that debate, the ideological currents and social factions that shaped the Revolution, the major historiographical schools of interpretation, and the Revolution’s far-reaching effects — on America itself, on Britain, and on the wider Atlantic world — a key theme in the UPSC History Optional syllabus on the American Revolution.

Was the American Revolution Really a Revolution?

The View That It Was Truly Revolutionary

• One view holds that the American Revolution was truly a revolution — a radical event that genuinely transformed American society.
  • As some historians argue, the Revolution was truly revolutionary because it transformed a society bound by the English hierarchy of ranks into one that was egalitarian, democratic, and commercial — creating the first nation built upon democratic values.
• Focusing on what the Revolution did not accomplish — the abolition of slavery, equality for women, greater voting privileges — “is to miss the great significance of what it did accomplish.”
  • The Revolution paved the way for the abolition of slavery, for women’s rights movements, and for the broadening of democracy.
  • The very acts of declaring, fighting, and winning the Revolutionary War were themselves revolutionary: the American colonists revolted against the British government, and that revolt resulted in American independence.

The View That It Was Conservative and Evolutionary

• The other view holds that the American Revolution was not really a revolution, but a conservative event that did not significantly change American society — rather, it reinforced the existing political, economic, and social status quo.
  • Colonial America did not have the social conditions generally believed to cause revolutions: colonists were not an oppressed people, and knew they were “freer, more equal, more prosperous” than any other people of their time.
  • Colonial society had already developed a society of equality only for white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males (WASP); it assigned governmental rule to men of wealth and privilege, and distributed property such that wealthy men and speculators — not small landholders or the landless — owned the vast majority of land.
• The consequences of the war were, in this view, evolutionary: the war did not dramatically change the structure or content of American society.
  • It did not establish a truly democratic government — though, it should be remembered, there were no truly democratic nations anywhere in the late 18th century.
  • It did not create a new economic structure, but rather kept capitalism in place while speeding up the process of industrialisation.
  • It did not significantly alter American society’s structure: WASP men remained relatively equal in their ability to gain wealth, but women and persons of colour had no equality; those in power before the Revolution remained in power afterward; and most land remained in the hands of the wealthy.
  • It did not abolish slavery, but rather allowed it to continue flourishing in the South.
• The social consequences of the Revolution were, by this account, meagre — in neither purpose nor implementation comparable to the massive social changes that later shook France and Russia.
  • For the most part, post-Revolutionary American society was simply the working-out of social forces already evident in the colonial period.

Conclusion

• The actions of declaring, fighting, and winning the Revolutionary War were revolutionary: the American colonists revolted against the British government, and that revolt resulted in American independence.
• However, the consequences of the war were evolutionary: the war did not dramatically change the structure or content of American society. The Revolutionary War instead placed Americans on an evolutionary road toward creating a more democratic nation.

Ideology and Factions

• The population of the Thirteen Colonies was far from homogeneous, particularly in political views and attitudes — loyalties and allegiances varied widely.

Ideology Behind the Revolution

• The ideological movement known as the American Enlightenment was a critical precursor to the Revolution.
  • Chief among its ideas were liberalism, republicanism, and fear of corruption. As a growing number of American colonists accepted these concepts, they fostered an intellectual environment that led to a new sense of political and social identity.

John Locke (1632–1704)

• Locke’s ideas on liberty greatly influenced the political thinking behind the Revolution, especially through his indirect influence on English writers.
  • Often called “the philosopher of the American Revolution,” he is credited with leading Americans to the critical concepts of the social contract, natural rights, being “born free and equal,” and Protestant ideology.
  • He argued that, since all humans were created equally free, governments needed the consent of the governed.
• In 1689, Locke argued in his Two Treatises of Government that political society existed to protect “property,” which he defined as a person’s “life, liberty, and property.”
  • The phrase “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” in the U.S. Declaration of Independence — drafted by Thomas Jefferson — had its root in Locke’s doctrine; Jefferson replaced “property” with “the pursuit of happiness.”
  • The theory of the “social contract” influenced the belief, among many Founders, that among man’s “natural rights” was the right of the people to overthrow their leaders, should those leaders betray the historic rights of Englishmen.
• In writing state and national constitutions, the Americans heavily drew on the analysis of Montesquieu (the French philosopher) regarding the wisdom of the “balanced” British Constitution and a balanced separation of powers.

Republicanism

• A motivating force behind the Revolution was the American embrace of the political ideology of “republicanism,” dominant in the colonies by 1775, though of minor importance in Britain itself.
  • This republicanism was inspired by the “country party” in Britain, whose critique of British government emphasised that corruption was a terrible reality there. Americans feared this corruption was crossing the Atlantic; the commitment of most Americans to republican values and their rights energised the Revolution, as Britain was increasingly seen as hopelessly corrupt and hostile to American interests.
  • Britain seemed to threaten the established liberties Americans enjoyed; the greatest threat to liberty was depicted as corruption, which colonists associated with luxury and, especially, inherited aristocracy — both of which they condemned.
• The Founding Fathers were strong advocates of republican values — particularly Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton — a commitment requiring men to place civic duty ahead of personal desire, and a civic duty to be prepared to fight for the rights and liberties of their countrymen.
  • While some republics had emerged throughout history — such as the Roman Republic of antiquity — one based on liberal principles had never existed. Thomas Paine’s best-selling pamphlet Common Sense contributed significantly to spreading the ideas of republicanism and liberalism together, providing a new and widely accepted argument for independence by advocating a complete break with history.
• For women, “republican motherhood” became the ideal — the first duty of the republican woman was to instil republican values in her children, and to avoid luxury and ostentation.

Impact of the Great Awakening

• Dissenting (i.e., Protestant, non-Church of England) churches of the day were the “school of democracy.” Throughout the colonies, dissenting Protestant ministers preached Revolutionary themes in their sermons, while most Church of England clergymen preached loyalty to the King.
  • Religious motivation for fighting tyranny reached across socio-economic lines — encompassing rich and poor, men and women, frontiersmen and townsmen, farmers and merchants.
• The era’s Evangelicalism challenged traditional notions of natural hierarchy by preaching that the Bible taught all men are equal, so that a man’s true value lay in his moral behaviour, not his class — uniting rationalists and evangelicals, and encouraging American defiance of the Empire.

Class and Psychology of the Factions

• John Adams concluded in 1818: “The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people… This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people was the real American Revolution.”
• In terms of class, Loyalists tended to have long-standing social and economic connections to British merchants and government.
  • Officials of colonial government and their staffs — those with established positions and status to maintain — also favoured maintaining relations with Great Britain.
• By contrast, Patriots, by number, tended to be farmers, craftsmen, and small merchants who joined the cause to demand greater political equality.
  • They were especially successful in Pennsylvania, but less so in New England, where John Adams himself attacked Thomas Paine’s Common Sense for the “absurd democratic notions” it proposed.
  • Leaders of both Patriots and Loyalists were men of educated, propertied classes.
• Loyalists, being older and better established, tended to resist revolution.
  • They believed resistance to the Crown — which they insisted was the only legitimate government — was morally wrong, while Patriots believed morality was on their side.
  • Many Loyalists recognised that independence was bound to come eventually, but feared revolution might lead to anarchy, tyranny, or mob rule.
  • In contrast, Patriots — who made systematic efforts to use mob violence in a controlled manner — displayed a prevailing desire to seize the initiative, viewing independence as a means to gain freedom from British oppression and taxation, and above all, to reassert what they considered their rights as English subjects.

King George III

• The war became a personal issue for the King, fuelled by his growing belief that British leniency would be taken as weakness by the Americans.
  • He also sincerely believed he was defending Britain’s constitution against usurpers, rather than opposing patriots fighting for their natural rights.

Patriots

• At the time, revolutionaries were called “Patriots.”
  • They spanned a full range of social and economic classes, but were unanimous in the need to defend the rights of Americans and uphold the principles of republicanism, in terms of rejecting monarchy and aristocracy.
  • Newspapers were strongholds of patriotism, printing pamphlets, announcements, patriotic letters, and pronouncements.
• Patriots were highly sensitive to the issue of tyranny, which they saw manifested in the British response to the Boston Tea Party. The arrival of the British Army in Boston heightened their sense of violated rights, leading to rage and demands for revenge.

Loyalists

• Those who actively supported the King were known as “Loyalists.”
  • Loyalists never controlled territory unless the British Army occupied it. They were typically older, less willing to break with old loyalties, often connected to the Church of England, and included many established merchants with strong business connections across the Empire, as well as royal officials.
  • Some black Loyalists, held as slaves by Patriots, escaped to British lines and joined the British army.
• The Revolution could divide families — the most dramatic example being William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin and royal governor of the Province of New Jersey, who remained loyal to the Crown throughout the war.
  • Recent immigrants not yet fully Americanised were also inclined to support the King, such as recent Scottish settlers in the back country.

Neutrals

• Most neutrals kept a low profile, but the Quakers, especially in Pennsylvania, were the most important group to openly speak out for neutrality.
  • As Patriots declared independence, the Quakers, who continued to do business with the British, were attacked as supporters of British rule.

Role of Women

• Women were involved on both sides. While formal Revolutionary politics did not include women, ordinary domestic behaviour became charged with political significance.
  • They participated by boycotting British goods, spying on the British, following armies as they marched, washing, cooking, and tending to soldiers — and in a few cases, fighting disguised as men.
  • Above all, they continued the agricultural work at home to feed their families and the armies, maintaining their families during their husbands’ absences, and sometimes after their deaths.
• American women were integral to the success of the boycott of British goods, since the boycotted items were largely household goods such as tea and cloth — women had to return to knitting, spinning, and weaving their own cloth.
  • A crisis of political loyalty could disrupt the fabric of colonial women’s social worlds: whether a man did or did not renounce his allegiance to the King could dissolve ties of class, family, and friendship, isolating women from former connections. Legal divorce, usually rare, was granted to Patriot women whose husbands supported the King.

Other Participants

France

• In early 1776, France set up a major programme of aid to the Americans, while the Spanish secretly added funds to buy munitions.
  • American rebels obtained munitions through the Dutch Republic as well as French and Spanish ports in the West Indies. French forces were crucial in helping the Americans win the war — though this reliance on France and other European allies does not diminish the American victory.

Spain

• Spain did not officially recognise the U.S., but became an informal ally when it declared war on Britain on 21 June 1779.

Native Americans

• Most Native Americans rejected pleas to remain neutral, supporting the British Crown instead — both because of existing trading relationships, and because of British efforts to prohibit colonial settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.
  • Facing starvation and homelessness in the winter, many fled to the Niagara Falls area and to Canada, mostly to what became Ontario; the British resettled them there after the war, providing land grants as compensation.

African Americans

• Free Blacks in the North and South fought on both sides of the Revolution, though most fought for the Patriots to further their own interests. Both sides offered freedom and resettlement to slaves willing to fight for them.
  • The British attempted to turn slavery against the Americans, though England greatly feared the effects of such a move on its own West Indies, home to large numbers of slave-holding Loyalists and wealthy Caribbean planters and merchants. British elites also understood that an all-out attack on one form of property could easily lead to an assault on all boundaries of privilege and social order.
  • American advocates of independence termed British calls for slave freedom hypocritical, since many British leaders were themselves planters holding hundreds of slaves.
• Many slaves escaped to British lines throughout the South, causing dramatic losses to slaveholders and disrupting the cultivation and harvesting of crops.
  • After the British defeat, they were evacuated and resettled — from New York to Nova Scotia, or in England, or the West Indies of the Caribbean, and later in Sierra Leone.

Interpretations of the American Revolution

Four major schools of thought have emerged among historians, each presenting a firm argument about what the Revolution really meant, and how it should be viewed.

Covered in Glory: The First Historians

• These historians actually lived through the event. Whether Loyalist or Patriot, they wrote colourful, biased accounts espousing the justice and glory of their cause.
  • Many Loyalist historians presented a negative view of the Revolution, countered by other historians who portrayed the Patriot cause as just and inevitable. Some historians, playing loose with the facts, turned George Washington into a folk hero.
  • These first historians had some difficulty being objective about the great events they had personally experienced.
• Later, in the 19th century, a new generation of historians who had not lived through the war compiled the basic documentary history of the war still used today.
  • To these historians, the Revolution was morally right — a unique turning point in human history — and American victory was inevitable, so that the nation could fulfil its destiny of freedom.

It Was All About Economics: The Determinists

• The determinists, writing in the early 20th century, argued that the Revolution was about class conflict.
  • All the rhetoric about republicanism, inalienable rights, and equality was, in their view, so much window dressing to justify hard-core economic motivations.
  • These historians argued the struggle wasn’t just about independence, but about empowering an elite ruling class of Americans at home — pointing to the wealth of many signers of the Declaration of Independence, and contending they merely used the Revolution to further their own grip on power.

The Revolution Was Conservative: The Neo-Whigs

• After World War II, a new school of thought emerged: the Neo-Whigs (a term implying conservatism), who argued the Revolution was neither unique nor radical, but simply a conservative reaction to protect American rights and property from Parliament.
  • They conceded that republican ideology was real enough, but held that, in the end, the Patriots were simply conserving rights they already enjoyed — the American Revolution, in this view, represented nothing brand new or radical, beyond one group protecting its interests against another.

It Was Radical and Ideological: The Debate Today

• In recent decades, the pendulum has swung back toward emphasising the radicalism and ideological nature of the Revolution.
  • This school argues that the revolutionaries were motivated by ideology, had much to lose, and that their Revolution was quite radical by the standards of the age — representing a real change in American social life in favour of greater equality, more economic opportunity for ordinary people, and greater individual autonomy.
  • Regardless of its causes, the Revolution was a radical event with a transformative effect on large segments of American social and economic life. These factors may not have been the motivations for revolution, but the ideals of traditional gender roles, deference, and patriarchy were radically altered as a result.

Effects of the American Revolution

(The debate over whether its impact was revolutionary or evolutionary has already been discussed above.)

Effect on U.S. Navigation

• The ports of the colonies were opened to world trade, and private navigation was promoted.

An Inspiration

Three major events of the American Revolution had great influence on Europe:

• The signing of the Declaration of Independence.
• The implementation of the ideas of the Enlightenment.
• The forming of the U.S. Constitution.

Inspiration for Liberation Movements

• By declaring independence, America demonstrated it was possible to overthrow “old regimes.”
  • The American Revolution was the first successful revolution against a European empire, and the first successful establishment of a republican, democratically elected government — providing a model for other colonial peoples who realised they, too, could break away and become self-governing nations.
  • It was the first time a colony had rebelled and successfully asserted its rights to self-government and nationhood, inspiring many European nations and colonies to revolt.
• The American Revolution was the first wave of the Atlantic Revolutions: the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American wars of independence.
  • Aftershocks reached Ireland in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and also touched Poland and the Netherlands. It encouraged Ireland to raise its head against England — the American colonists’ slogan, “No taxation without representation,” impressed the Irish, who too succeeded in throwing off the British yoke.
  • The American Declaration of Independence influenced the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789).
  • It inspired the revolutionary liberation movement in South America under Simón Bolívar in the 1820s, resulting in the freedom of many countries from Spanish and Portuguese colonial rule.
• The American Revolution established, beyond doubt, that the people of a colony have every right to rise in revolt against their mother country, if the latter fails to care for their interests — and it became clear that it was not, in fact, difficult to defeat a major power.

Inspiration for Political Systems

• The United States had created a new social contract in the form of its Constitution, in which it realised the ideas of the Enlightenment.
  • The natural rights of man, and the ideas of liberty, equality, and freedom of religion, were no longer unrealistic utopian ideals — a fact that made the bourgeoisie of Europe reconsider their own governments and monarchic systems.
• After the Revolution, genuinely democratic politics became possible, and the rights of the people were incorporated into state constitutions.
  • America pioneered several new experiments in political doctrine: the independence of the judiciary, the theory of checks and balances, the theory of separation of powers, the republican form of government, and a federal system granting greater power to federating units — all of which became models for several countries even today.
• The USA became the first secular state, adopted the first written constitution, was the first to give the public a right to vote, and was one of the earliest defeats of imperialism.
  • There was a great blow to absolute monarchy and aristocratic supremacy based on the doctrine of the divine right of kings.
• The Revolution had a strong, immediate influence in Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France; many British and Irish Whigs spoke in favour of the American cause.

Impact on Ireland

• In Ireland, there was a profound impact: the Protestants who controlled Ireland demanded more and more self-rule.
  • While Ireland had a parliament capable of making decisions, only Protestants could vote for it, and the British ultimately controlled it. Campaigners for reform in Ireland reacted to the American struggle by organising a boycott of British imports and forming groups of armed volunteers.
  • The King and his cabinet in London, unable to risk another revolution on the American model, made a series of concessions to the Patriot faction in Dublin.
• Britain relaxed its trade restrictions on Ireland, allowing Irish trade with British colonies and the free export of wool, and reformed government by allowing non-Anglicans to hold public office.
  • They repealed the Irish Declaratory Act, while granting full legislative independence — the result was an Ireland that remained part of the British Empire following these reforms.

Abolition of Slavery in the Northern States

• The spirit of the Declaration of Independence led to laws ending slavery in all the Northern states and the Northwest Territory, with New Jersey the last, in 1804 — long before the British Parliament acted in 1833 to abolish slavery in its colonies.
  • States such as New Jersey and New York adopted schemes of gradual emancipation.

Societal Impacts of the American Revolution

• The Revolution brought myriad consequences to the American social fabric.
  • There was no Reign of Terror, as in the French Revolution; there was no replacement of the ruling class by workers’ groups, as in revolutionary Russia. How, then, could the American Revolution be described as radical?
  • Nearly every aspect of American life was somehow touched by the Revolutionary spirit — from slavery to women’s rights, from religious life to voting — American attitudes would be forever changed.
• Some changes were felt immediately.
  • Slavery would not be abolished for another century, but the Revolution saw the dawn of an organised abolitionist movement.
  • English traditions such as land inheritance laws were swept away almost immediately.
  • The Anglican Church in America could no longer survive, since the official head of the Church of England was the British monarch.
• The Revolution produced a new outlook among Americans, with ramifications long into the future: groups excluded from immediate equality, such as slaves and women, would draw later inspiration from revolutionary sentiment.
  • Americans began to feel their fight for liberty was a global fight, and sought to export their liberty and democracy to other nations.

Status of American Women

• The democratic ideals of the Revolution inspired changes in the roles of women.
  • The concept of republican motherhood was inspired by this period — women were considered to have the essential role of instilling their children with values conducive to a healthy republic.
  • During this period, a wife’s relationship with her husband also became more liberal, as love and affection, rather than obedience and subservience, began to characterise the ideal marital relationship.
  • Society emphasised the role of mothers in child-rearing, especially the patriotic goal of raising republican children, rather than those locked into aristocratic value systems.
• Whatever gains women made, however, they still found themselves subordinated, legally and socially, to their husbands — disenfranchised, and usually confined to the role of mother.
  • Still, some women earned livelihoods that had not originally been recognised as significant by men.

Financial Impact on America

• Congress and the American states had great difficulty financing the war, made worse by the British imposing a tight blockade on every American port.
  • One partial solution was to rely on volunteer support from militiamen and donations from patriotic citizens; another was to delay actual payments, pay soldiers and suppliers in depreciated currency, and promise to make good after the war.
  • In 1783, soldiers and officers were given land grants to cover wages earned but unpaid during the war.
• Not until 1781, when Robert Morris was named Superintendent of Finance of the United States, did the national government have a strong leader in financial matters.
  • Morris set up the private Bank of North America to finance the war, saved money through competitive bidding for contracts, tightened accounting procedures, and demanded the national government’s full share of money and supplies from the confederated states.
• Skyrocketing inflation was a hardship for the few with fixed incomes, while debtors benefited by paying off debts with depreciated paper.
  • The greatest burden was borne by the soldiers of the Continental Army, whose wages — usually in arrears — declined in value every month, weakening morale and adding to the hardships of their families.
• Congress repeatedly asked the states for money, but received little help; by 1780, Congress was making requisitions for specific supplies of corn, beef, pork, and other necessities — an inefficient system that kept the army barely alive.
  • Congress sought to raise money through loans from wealthy individuals, but the scheme raised little, since many rich merchants were supporters of the Crown.
• Starting in 1776, the French secretly supplied the Americans with money, gunpowder, and munitions to weaken their arch-enemy, Great Britain; when France officially entered the war in 1778, the subsidies continued.

Impact on Britain

Financial Effects

• Britain’s war against the Americans, French, and Spanish cost about £100 million, of which 40% was borrowed — raising the national debt and forcing taxes upward.
  • The trade Britain relied on for its wealth was severely interrupted (owing to reasons such as naval attacks from Britain’s enemies), with imports and exports experiencing large drops, and the ensuing recession causing stock and land prices to plummet.
  • Britain also had to find employment and settlement for people who remained loyal to Britain during the war, but had to migrate afterward.
• Yet Britain had a sophisticated financial system, based on the wealth of thousands of landowners who supported the government, together with banks and financiers in London and an efficient tax collection system.
  • Heavy spending brought France to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution, while Britain had relatively little difficulty financing its war, keeping suppliers and soldiers paid.
  • Wartime industries, such as naval suppliers and elements of the textile industry making uniforms, experienced a boost, and unemployment fell as Britain struggled to find enough men for the army — a situation that led it to hire German soldiers.
• The peace of 1783 left France financially prostrate, while the British economy boomed thanks to the return of American business.
  • The effects on trade were short-lived: British trade with the new USA rose to the same levels as trade with them in colonial form by 1785, and by 1792, trade between Britain and Europe had doubled.
  • While Britain gained an even larger national debt, it was in a position to live with it, and there were no financially motivated rebellions like those in France — Britain was, indeed, able to support several armies during the Napoleonic Wars.
• England, deprived of a good market for her goods, felt the need for a new one — a loss in trade and commerce amply compensated by the markets of India.
  • Once freed from America, England concentrated on India, draining raw materials cheaply and dumping her finished goods there.
  • France, on the other hand, gained a market for her goods in newly independent America.

Political Effects

• The conclusion of the Revolution led to political upheaval; people did not stay in power for long.
  • Lord North, the British Prime Minister and a consistent proponent of the war and the King, resigned in disgrace in 1782. Lord Rockingham was asked to form a government to make peace, though he died only a few months after doing so.
  • The activist government that finally formed in 1783, under William Pitt the Younger, passed reforms taking control of India from the East India Company, and made further parliamentary reforms that marginalised the King’s power.
• King George III’s personal rule — which had, until then, functioned through a cabinet of his own choice, without a proper party system — came to an end in England.

Demand for Reform

• In Britain, the failure of the American Revolutionary War led to demands for constitutional reform.
  • The defeat heightened dissension and escalated political antagonism toward the King’s ministers. Inside Parliament, the primary concern shifted from fears of an over-mighty monarch to issues of representation, parliamentary reform, and government retrenchment; reformers sought to root out what they saw as widespread institutional corruption.
• Petitions flooded in from the “Association Movement,” demanding a pruning of the King’s government, an expansion of the franchise, and a redrawing of the electoral map — some even demanded universal manhood suffrage. Though it achieved widespread support, the Association Movement did not last long.
  • The crisis subsided after 1784, thanks to renewed confidence in the system engendered by the leadership of the new Prime Minister, William Pitt.
• Bribery had greatly increased during George III’s reign; when Pitt the Younger became Prime Minister, corruption was still deeply embedded in administration.
  • Efforts were made to ensure the people received purer administration, rooting out the inefficiency that had been one of the causes of the American Revolution.

Diplomatic and Imperial Effects

• Britain lost heavily in America, both in terms of colonies and prestige, and her further colonisation was checked.
  • The war revealed the limitations of Britain’s fiscal-military state, when it suddenly found itself facing powerful enemies, with no allies, and dependent on extended and vulnerable transatlantic lines of communication.
• Yet Britain, having lost thirteen colonies in America, retained Canada, and land in the Caribbean, Africa, and India — and began expanding in these regions instead, building up what has been called the “Second British Empire,” which eventually became the largest dominion in world history.
  • Britain’s role in Europe was not diminished; its diplomatic power was soon restored, allowing it to play a key role in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
  • The loss of the American colonies, in fact, enabled Britain to deal with the French Revolution with greater unity and better organisation than would otherwise have been possible.
  • Britain gave self-rule to many white colonies, fearing losing them as it had lost America.

Liberal Colonial Policy

• The American War of Independence struck the first blow at the foundations of colonialism; England learned that continuing its old colonial policy might cost it other colonies as well, and so adopted a far more liberal approach.
  • England now granted economic and political independence to its colonies to a large extent, realising for the first time that free trade and commercial monopoly were principles opposed to each other.
  • New colonies were granted the right to trade freely, and freely passed laws to develop their own industries; the method of imperial preference was adopted, bringing the colonies closer to the mother country.
  • Some colonies were given their own legislative assemblies, though members were initially nominated by England — gradually, members came to be elected by local people, with the Governor becoming a link between colony and British government.
• Thus, England was compelled to follow a liberal and rational policy toward its colonies.

Opening of the Settlement in Australia

• The war led to the opening of the first English settlement in Australia.
  • Before the war, Great Britain had used Virginia in America as a place of exile for English convicts; after the war, the English government searched for another place, and looked to Australia.
  • In 1787, some convicts were sent to Botany Bay, and in 1788, the first Australian settlement was made — gradually, a new British Empire was built in Australia.

Loyalist Expatriation

• About 60,000 to 70,000 Loyalists left the newly founded republic; some went to Britain, while the remainder received British subsidies to resettle in British colonies in North America, especially Quebec, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia (currently in Canada).
  • The new colonies of Upper Canada (now Ontario) and New Brunswick were created by Britain for their benefit.
  • However, about 80% of the Loyalists stayed and became loyal citizens of the United States.

How Did the American War of Independence Inspire the French Revolution?

• France was more immediately and profoundly affected by the American Revolution than any other European power.
  • France had aided the rebellion of the British colonies, doubtless out of the French monarchy’s self-interest, but also due to genuine sympathy among many French intellectuals and common people.
• To some extent, the French Revolution was inspired by the American War of Independence because:
  • Young Frenchmen — some of noble blood, like Lafayette — had sought romantic adventure fighting alongside American revolutionaries such as Washington, and returned to France with ideas of individual liberty, popular sovereignty, and republicanism, helping spread revolutionary ideas among the French people. Lafayette became a major figure in the early French Revolution.
  • American diplomats and revolutionaries, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, had lived in Paris, where they freely mixed with members of the French intellectual class who would later become pioneers of the French Revolution.
  • Frenchmen followed developments in revolutionary America with extraordinary interest, which is partly why a figure like Benjamin Franklin was so popular in France.
  • The French philosopher Rousseau’s dreams seemed realised in the USA. The American Revolution demonstrated that it was plausible for Enlightenment ideas about how a government should be organised to actually be put into practice.
  • The American Revolution also bankrupted France, owing to French war aid to the USA, setting off a chain of events that helped bring about the French Revolution.
• All these factors contributed to the French Revolution, whose revolutionaries formed their own slogan: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.”

How Did the American Revolution Influence Slavery?

• The Revolution had contradictory effects on slavery.
  • The northern states either abolished the institution outright, or adopted gradual emancipation schemes.
  • In the South, the Revolution severely disrupted slavery, but white Southerners ultimately succeeded in strengthening the institution.
• The Revolution also inspired African-American resistance against slavery.
  • During the Revolution, thousands of slaves obtained freedom by running away — Thomas Jefferson himself estimated that 30,000 slaves fled their masters during the British invasion of Virginia in 1781.
  • Inspired by the Revolution’s natural rights philosophy, free Blacks agitated against slavery — petitioning Congress to end the slave trade, and state legislatures to abolish slavery — pointing out the contradiction between American ideals of liberty and equality and the reality of slavery. Slaves themselves began to speak the language of natural rights.
• In 1800, a group of slaves in Virginia, led by a man named Gabriel, plotted to seize the city of Richmond.
  • The insurrection was inspired in part by the slave revolt that began in the French colony of St. Domingue (Haiti) in 1791, and also motivated by the ideals of liberty that had led American colonists to revolt against Britain.
  • About 30 of the accused conspirators were executed, and many others were sold as slaves to Spanish and Portuguese colonies.
• President Thomas Jefferson recognised that the Virginian slaves had been motivated by the same ideals that inspired white colonists to revolt against Britain.
  • In a letter to the U.S. Minister to Britain, Jefferson proposed that a group of the insurgent slaves be deported to Sierra Leone in West Africa, where an English abolitionist organisation had established Freetown as a home for former slaves — telling the minister to assure the British that the rebel slaves were not criminals, but men aspiring to freedom.
  • The negotiations with the British proved unsuccessful, and most of the accused conspirators were sold as slaves to Spain’s and Portugal’s colonies.