NATIONALISM

Did nascent nationalism help stimulatethe American independence movement?

Viewpoint: Yes. Americans by the mid 1700s had developed a sense ofnationalism resulting from increased political, economic, and cultural auton-omy.

Viewpoint: No. Americans in 1776 were still too divided by differences ineconomy, demography, government, and settlement patterns to have devel-oped a sense of nationalism; rather, the colonists were becoming more Angli-cized during the eighteenth century.

When did the United States become a nation? Some historians contendthat an embryonic American nationalism emerged as early as the seven-teenth century with the idea, first articulated by the Puritans, that Americawas part of a providential mission to renovate the world and lead it toward lib-erty and equality. Stoking this sense of American purpose was an awarenessby the colonists of significant differences between the Old and New Worlds: arising standard of living, a large independent middle class, and greater eco-nomic and political opportunity. Uniting the disparate Americans was an his-torical memory of their common motivations for settling the New World and insubduing the American wilderness.

However, other historians argue that the colonists by the mid eighteenthcentury were becoming more "Anglicized," not "Americanized," as witnessedby their increasing consumption of British goods and their aping of Britishcustoms, manners, and clothing. The failure of Benjamin Franklin's plan ofunion (1754), moreover, pointedly revealed the mutual suspicions and dis-unity among Americans. Not until the War of Independence, which wasfought in a spirit of liberal nationalism—and which encouraged Americans tocreate uniquely American forms of art, literature, theater, and national sym-bols—did an embryonic American nationalism emerge.

This disagreement over the genesis of American nationhood reflectsthe fact that a sense of nationalism develops slowly, but erratically, andchanges in intensity over time. Yet, the fluctuating nature of nationalismdoes not diminish its relevance. Indeed, the question of the relationshipbetween American nationalism and the War of Independence is importantbecause it forces historians to confront critical issues associated with thecauses and consequences of this epochal event, as well as the reasons forAmerican victory.

To help provide a common ground for debate, a basic definition of nation-alism is in order. Nationalism is a state of mind among people residing withina certain territory who share a homogenous culture; who believe in a com-mon destiny and a distinct existence from other people (even perhaps asuperiority over all other similar entities that is expressed in an enthusiasticsense of loyalty to the nation and a desire to contribute to its welfare); andwho are united by certain ties—political, racial, religious, cultural, linguistic, orhistorical.

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Viewpoint:Yes. Americans by the mid 1700s haddeveloped a sense of nationalismresulting from increased political,economic, and cultural autonomy.

Was there an America before there was anAmerican Revolution? The question has intriguedscholars of the period at least since 1818, whenJohn Adams described the colonies as "thirteenclocks" and marveled that they had ever struck asone. Given the diversity of economy, demogra-phy, government, and settlement that character-ized the English mainland colonies, Adams'ssense of them as thirteen separate entities is inar-guable. The one thing many colonists sharedwith each other, moreover, was a sense of theirrights and liberties as Englishmen; on the sur-face, that commonality would seem an unpromis-ing material from which to create a collectiveidentity as Americans. And yet, the clocks did allstrike together and they did so, in no small mea-sure, because of the interplay between the colo-nies' distinctive conditions and the colonists'claim of Britishness. By the time Patrick Henryannounced in 1774 that "I am not a Virginian,but an American," there had developed in thecolonies a nascent American nationalism thatmade the Revolution possible.

Between 1680 and 1770 England's mainlandcolonies developed in ways that made them distinc-tive from the mother country and, indeed, fromany other contemporary society. Ethnic diversitywas one of their most striking traits. By 1760, evenin New England, the most homogenous region, 30percent of the population was not of Englishdescent; in the Middle Colonies, the figure was 70percent. Irish, Scotch-Irish, Germans, Dutch, andAfricans lived throughout the colonies; in theSouthern colonies, those of African descent out-numbered all other groups. The colonies were alsoincreasingly characterized by religious diversity,with eighteenth-century America being home tomore varieties of Christianity than was any Euro-pean society. Congregationalism and Anglicanismthrived, but so too did Quakerism, Presbyterian-ism, Lutheranism and Reformed, and the Baptistchurches. In the Middle and Southern colonies, nosingle group accounted for a majority of either con-gregations or believers.

Such diversity undoubtedly made Americadifferent from England. Yet, internal diversityalone would not have led colonists to think ofthemselves—or to want to think of themselves—assharing a collective American identity. Indeed,eighteenth-century manuscripts abound with col-onists' expressions of mistrust for their fellows.In his 1762 will Lewis Morris commanded that

his son receive the best possible education; thateducation, however, was under no circumstancesto be acquired in Connecticut, where the boymight "imbibe in his youth that low Craft andcunning so Incident to the People of that Coun-try." Southerners, for their part, warned eachother of the potentially hostile power of the"Goths and Vandals" of the North. Mid-Atlanticsettlers of English descent, including BenjaminFranklin, worried that immigrants to the colo-nies were degrading their institutions and threat-ening their way of life.

The colonies never became homogenous, norwere colonists' relationships ever entirely free oftensions and rivalries. Homogeneity and blandunity, however, were no more necessary ingredi-ents of America's nascent eighteenth-centurynationalism than they would be of the nineteenth-,twentieth-, and twenty-first century nationalismsthat followed. Instead, the colonists' assertiveclaims of what they believed to be their Britishliberties, combined with the British govern-ment's competing view of the proper role of col-onies and colonists within the Empire, slowlyconspired to create a distinctive American iden-tity out of distinctive circumstances.

One factor in the development of a collec-tive American identity was the effort by Englandto govern its colonies in a firm and uniformmanner that started in the late seventeenth cen-tury, continued throughout the first half of theeighteenth century, and accelerated after theFrench and Indian War (1754-1763). In the1690s, faced with mainland colonies thatincluded Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, and NewYork, in addition to the New England and Ches-apeake regions, the British established theBoard of Trade, the colonial customs service,and colonial admiralty courts. The result,although falling far short of a perfect mercantil-ist system, was the increased penetration of Brit-ish authority into American daily life. Britishofficials not only sought to "impose new pat-terns of uniformity" on the colonies, but also,because of their distance from America, imag-ined that the colonies already possessed a unitythat they in reality lacked. According to histo-rian John M. Murrin, America first existed as aunited and distinct entity not in the minds ofthose devoted to the cause of an Americannation but in the minds of those devoted to thecause of British empire. England's efforts tocontrol colonial trade and to prevent the colo-nies from exercising the united power Britishofficials imagined they possessed were crucialfactors in the creation of a real sense, amongAmericans, of shared identity and resentment.

Another function of empire that contrib-uted to the creation of a nascent Americannationalism were the many imperial wars of the

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colonial period. Americans expressed pride inBritish successes and in their own role in them.They also aggressively asserted their loyalty toBritish Protestantism against Spanish andFrench absolutism and "popery." Yet, colonistswere notoriously loathe to leave their farmsuntended to serve with the British Army, andmany felt that the colonies' interests were over-looked when peace treaties were negotiated. TheFrench and Indian War freed colonists from thethreat that had been posed by France's extensiveNorth American territories, but it too high-lighted Americans' differences from the English.Indignant at the vast authority British officersheld over their men and disturbed by the profan-ity and Sabbath breaking of British troops, somecolonists who served expressed a resentment ofBritish mores and power. "Although we beEnglishmen born," wrote one private in 1759,"we are debarred Englishmen's liberty. . . . [TheBritish soldiers] are but little better than slaves totheir officers. And when I get out of their[power] I shall take care how I get in again."

The private's reference to "Englishmen'sliberty" draws attention to an element of colo-nial thought that was important first to themaking of an imperial patriotism and then tothe making of a distinctive American collectiveidentity. Despite their discontents, Americansaccepted their role as colonists throughout

much of the eighteenth century exactly becausethat role seemed compatible with their deeperidentity as Britons. This identity offered Euro-pean Americans, whether of English descent ornot, the protections of the Magna Carta (1215)and the unwritten British constitution. Euro-pean Americans claimed for themselves the rightto trial by jury, the right to be taxed by theirown representatives, and the broader, founda-tional right of living under the rule of "King,Lords, and Commons" rather than under thekind of absolute monarchies that characterizedthe Continent.

Loyalty to their understanding of the Brit-ish system of government was one factor unify-ing the diverse American colonists; participationin a transatlantic material and intellectual culturewas another. An increased flow of British con-sumer goods to the colonies meant that Ameri-can homes and clothing could follow Britishmodels more closely than they had in the seven-teenth century, and a rise in the amount of Brit-ish books, newspapers, and magazines availabledrew educated Americans into a virtual commu-nity of shared ideas and sentiment. When Ameri-cans first began to develop a shared identity, thatis, they did so as Britons. "We were proud," theReverend Jeremy Belknap remembered, "of ourconnection with a nation whose flag was trium-phant in every quarter of the globe."

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By considering themselves to be British,Americans were participating in the "greatlyheightened articulation of national identity" thatcharacterized England during the second half ofthe eighteenth century. The nature of "British-ness," however, was not easily determined;rather, it was determined by different groups tomean different things. According to P. J. Mar-shall in an article in Uniting the Kingdom?: TheMaking of British History, edited by AlexanderGrant and Keith J. Stringer (1995), residents ofEngland "could perhaps envisage a commoncommunity with the Welsh and, often withmuch difficulty, with the Scots, but they failed toincorporate the Irish or colonial Americans intotheir idea of nation." British citizens living out-side of England, in turn, a group that includednot only Americans but Scots, Welsh, andAnglo-Irish, wished to claim a standing withinthe Empire equal to that of Englishmen, whilealso seeking to preserve distinctive elements oftheir own culture. The resulting tensions founddramatic expression in the gradual, often pained,movement of America toward independence.

Colonial Americans adamantly asserted boththeir Britishness and a sense of their land and insti-tutions as distinctive from and even potentiallysuperior to those of the mother country. Ameri-cans were deeply conscious of the facts that the col-onies were home to a more widespread propertyownership than that of England and that the colo-nies were not home to a titled aristocracy. Colonistswere also proud, and protective, of the powerfullocal assemblies that limited the powers of British-appointed governors, of their relatively frequentelections, and of their relatively broad suffrage.These factors suggested to some that America was abetter home for English republican institutionsthan was England itself.

Throughout the eighteenth century, colo-nists had also increasingly expressed an apprecia-tion of the vastness and natural riches of theirhome. In the 1750s William Livingstondescribed America's inexhaustible magazine ofwealth and argued that without it, "Great Britainmust not only lose her former luster, but, dread-ful even in thought! Cease to be any longer anindependent power." Franklin felt strongly that"the foundations of the future grandeur and sta-bility of the British empire lie in America." Giventheir sense of the power inherent in Americanland and their belief in the virtue residing inAmerican institutions, colonists were not pre-pared to defer to the mother country's view ofhow the Empire should be governed or of whatbeing British meant. When the colonists' view ofthe British constitution came to seem irrevocablydivorced from that of the British government,according to historian Paul A. Varg, "their inter-pretation of it became the warp and woof of a

new nationalism." And when they began to feelthat those whom they had considered their Brit-ish brothers were treating them as second-classcitizens, they felt a collective sense of humiliationand betrayal that was a necessary precondition tothe Revolution.

Coming in conjunction with the long-termrefusal of England to consider Americans theirequals within the Empire, the actions of the Brit-ish government between 1763 and 1775 were, inhindsight, predictably inflammatory. The Procla-mation of 1763, as well as the Sugar (1764),Stamp (1765), Quartering (1765), Townshend(1767), Tea (1773), Quebec (1774), and Intolera-ble (1774) Acts seemed designed, in the view ofincreasing numbers of colonists, to strip them ofboth their rights and their identity as Britons.Ultimately, the government's escalating effortsto keep America within the Empire were suffi-cient to convert colonists' devotion to British-ness and British liberties from a bond ofallegiance into a spur to independence.

Colonial discontent and resentment foundexpression in every region. Wealthy Southernersbegan to question their practice of sending sonsto be educated in the mother country, and somebegan to view their debts to British merchantsand middlemen as evidence of an unhealthfuland corrupting dependence on what was comingto seem an alien, even a hostile, power. The slav-ery that shaped all aspects of Southern life, more-over, also played a role in the developingimperial crisis. British officials assumed thatSoutherners' awareness of their potential vulner-ability to acts of vengeance by the enslaved popu-lation would ensure the region's loyalty to theCrown. Once again, however, a factor that wouldseem to be an obstacle to the development ofAmerican nationalism proved a spur to it, andonce again British officials managed to turnimperial glue into imperial solvent. In 1775 theroyal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, triedto convince white Virginians of the perils of warby offering freedom to slaves who fought on theside of England. Dunmore expected his procla-mation to intimidate Virginians into remainingloyal, but instead it convinced many that theyowed no loyalty to a government that would con-spire with their slaves against them. What fur-ther proof could be needed that Englishmen didnot consider Americans their "British brothers,"and that Virginians should instead throw in theirlot with their fellow colonists?

Other regions also developed a sense ofAmericanness in their own distinctive ways. NewEngland had a long tradition of ministers givingsermons on civic occasions, and those sermonswere often quite political in tone. During theimperial crisis, New England ministers began torally their congregations to the Patriot cause,

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proclaiming that America's mission in the worldhad come to require that the colonies leave theEmpire, as it had once required that the Puritansleave England. So influential were the region'sPatriot ministers that the outraged Tory PeterOliver dubbed them the "Black Regiment," andlay much of the blame for America's separationfrom Britain on them. In the Middle Colonies,as well, ministers exhorted their flocks to thecause of resistance; a visiting John Adams waspleased to note that Philadelphia ministers"thunder and lighten every Sabbath" against theBritish. In all regions, moreover, colonial boy-cotts and the news of them in colonial pressesfurthered Americans' understanding of them-selves as a suffering, but a purposeful and poten-tially triumphant, community.

The colonists, in short, drew on their owntraditions and turned to their own local voices ofauthority in responding to what they perceivedas British threats to their liberties and dignity.They also, in the years just before the Revolu-tion, took a turn in the opposite direction,appealing to ostensibly universal truths as theybegan to claim the role of defenders of rightsgranted not by England but by God. Aware oftheir internal diversity, unable to point to a long,indigenous political tradition of their own, andeffectively excluded from full participation in thetranstemporal British political community, colo-nists transformed "rights of Englishmen at com-mon law" into "rights by a higher law." Ashistorian Timothy H. Breen explained, "A newlyaggressive English state," that is, "forced theAmericans to leap out of history and to defendcolonial and human equality on the basis of time-less natural rights." This act of abstraction-incomplete as it was, given colonial slaveholdingand Indian policies—was different from theclaims of common history, traditions, and lan-guage that would forge other group identities,and it was the final element of America's devel-oping prerevolutionary nationalism.

America's nascent nationalism was a func-tion of Americans' sense of their distinctive landand institutions, of the increased cohesion cre-ated by eighteenth-century British administrativepolicies, of the colonists' claim of British liber-ties, and of colonial anger at imperial Acts andattitudes. Before the first shots were fired, Amer-icans had also begun to imagine themselves partof a community grounded not in circumstanceor tradition but in rights and equality. That theyarticulated and expressed allegiance to idealstheir own society and polity did not yet fulfillsuggests the challenges American nationalismwould face in the years after the Revolution, aswell as those it faced in the years before.

-CATHERINE KAPLAN,ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

Viewpoint:No. Americans in 1776 were still toodivided by differences in economy,demography, government, andsettlement patterns to havedeveloped a sense of nationalism;rather, the colonists werebecoming more Anglicizedduring the eighteenth century.

Thoughtful people should in general avoidcategorical assertions that dismiss nuance andcomplexity. By 1776 there were certain stirringsof national pride in the thirteen British NorthAmerican colonies. Poems such as "The RisingGlory of America" (1772), written by HughHenry Brackenridge and Philip Freneau, whichanticipated independence, suggested a growingexcitement about the future prospects for Ameri-cans in North America. Yet, beyond question,the American Revolution resulted when Parlia-ment's actions forced British subjects in colonialNorth America to conclude that the British tra-ditions and liberties they cherished were underassault. British colonial North Americans couldarticulate grievances, define categories in whichto place injustices, and mobilize ideas to respondto the actions taken by Parliament primarilybecause during the eighteenth century they hadincreasingly and proudly identified themselves asBritons. As Britons they felt entitled to the free-doms, liberties, and respect that all British sub-jects were supposed to enjoy.

Thus, when Americans declared indepen-dence in 1776 they were not driven by a risingsense of American nationalism, a belief in apolitical and cultural legacy that made them dis-tinct from Britain and Britons. Rather, indepen-dence resulted from a clear and all-encompassingeighteenth-century process of Anglicization inthe thirteen colonies. The term Anglicizationdescribes the interrelated series of social, cul-tural, political, and economic developments thatby 1763 caused the American colonists to morecompletely embrace British models of gover-nance, cultural and social ideals, and commercialpolicies than at any time ever before. Preciselybecause of this process of Anglicization, colo-nists in British North America declared theirindependence and by doing so destroyed theeighteenth-century British Empire.

A good practical definition of Americannationalism is any idea or practice distinct fromthat of England or (after 1707 when Englandjoined with Scotland) of Britain. In the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries one could arguethat to be America was to be "not England," toorganize a polity and society distinct from the

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way things were organized in England. Usingthis definition—to be unlike the English—it isclear that the colonies were much more Ameri-can in the seventeenth century than they were inthe eighteenth century. Indeed, as the eighteenthcentury progressed, the colonies became less andless American.

Each of the original thirteen colonies beganas efforts to show England, by superior example,what it ought to be doing. Pious men andwomen founded the New England colonies ofMassachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, andNew Hampshire because they were disgustedwith England, which they considered corruptand sinful. The duke of York (the future JamesII, King of England from 1685 to 1688) orga-nized New York as an experiment in royal abso-lutism. By properly governing New York, hehoped to show his brother, Charles II, King ofEngland from 1660 to 1685, how to improveEnglish government and society. Pennsylvaniaand Maryland started as experiments in religioustoleration. They were part of efforts to leadEngland away from the hostility shown worship-ers who were not part of the Anglican Church ofEngland. Carolina (which split into North Caro-lina and South Carolina in 1701) began as a Uto-pian society organized around the constitutionaland political principles of a radical English theo-rist named James Harrington. The organizers ofCarolina (who included John Locke) expected toshow England how a truly decent society con-ducted its affairs.

Thus, virtually all of the colonies began witha rejection of English society and, to a certainextent, of English culture. These seventeenth- cen-tury colonies were consciously "not England." Vir-ginia was the only important colony that did notbegin as a social experiment to be better thanEngland. However, Virginia quickly developed intoa uniquely American society. By the 1640s Vir-ginia's economy was devoted almost exclusively toone crop, tobacco, while England had a diversi-fied agricultural economy. Virginia was verymuch a two-class society of brutal, exploitativelandowners and unfree indentured servants whileEngland possessed a rising middle class and adeclining peasantry. There were no illusions thatVirginia was improving on English practices, butas with all the other seventeenth-century colo-nies, it was overwhelmingly "American."

The "American" nature of the seventeenth-century colonies was evident between 1650 and1700 when English officials sought to enforceparliamentary legislation within the increasinglyautonomous colonies and to organize them intoan empire directed from the mother country.Beginning in 1651 Parliament tried to organizethe colonies into a coherent commercial empirewith a series of Navigation Acts that aimed to

direct colonial trade and organize the colonialeconomies to supplement that of England. Thecolonies universally ignored this imperial legisla-tion. Virginia traded with the Dutch, and NewEngland purchased French molasses; in the pro-cess, the colonies made it clear to Whitehall thatthey did not think they existed to serve Englandor assist it in strengthening its economy. Duringthe Glorious Revolution (1688), when the Englishdeposed one king and replaced him withanother, royal authority was so decrepit in thecolonies that Americans from Massachusetts toCarolina overthrew it in a matter of weeks.

But between 1689 and 1730 many thingschanged, which encouraged Americans to con-sciously model their societies after various aspectsof English culture and society. This dramatic trans-formation resulted from the profound change thatoccurred within England during these years. Afterthe Glorious Revolution, England developed aunique and profoundly successful society.England became the world's only limited consti-tutional monarchy where elected, accountableofficials controlled all money matters, particu-larly taxation. The Glorious Revolution also pre-cipitated a cycle of wars with France that did nottruly end until Napoleon Bonaparte's defeat in1815. These wars brought unprecedented expenseand necessitated the pioneering invention of pub-lic-funded and perpetual state debt. Between1694 and 1783 the public debt of England rosefrom £1,000,000 to £283,000,000. Englandproved capable of undertaking such a commit-ment because its political system made those whodid the taxing accountable and therefore trust-worthy. They could tax regularly, pay interest onthe debt, and so borrow tremendous sums whileactually only needing to service the debt (in otherwords, pay the interest) with a fraction of thetotal borrowed.

The vast sums of money available to theEnglish state after 1689 allowed it to wage warand acquire territory more effectively than anynation since ancient Rome. In particular, by1740 the British Navy dominated the oceans.Military might and commercial dominationserved to justify the Glorious Revolution and thepolitical and cultural changes that it started. By1715 Parliament, not an absolute monarch, wasthe sovereign power, a sharp departure fromother European political forms. More than anyother European nation, the British governmenttolerated all Protestant sects and better protectedbasic liberties of speech, assembly, and property.By 1750 most enlightened Europeans viewedBritain as the most liberal and advanced societyof the modern world.

This political transformation brought to Brit-ain unprecedented political stability. Prime minis-ters such as Robert Walpole (1721-1742) governed

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ASSESSING THEAMERICAN TEMPER

On 13 February 1766 the House of Commons examined BenjaminFranklin about the "temper of America towards Great Britain before1763." Franklin replied that it was "the best in the world"; the colonies, heexplained:

Submitted willingly to the government of the crown,and paid, in their courts, obedience to acts of parliament.Numerous as the people are in several old provinces,they cost you nothing in forts, citadels, garrisons orarmies, to keep them in subjection. They were governedby this country at the expence only of a little pen, ink,and paper. They were led by a thread. They had not onlya respect, but an affection for Great Britain, for its laws,its customs and manners, and even a fondness for itsfashions, that greatly increased the commerce. Nativesof Britain were always treated with particular regard; tobe an Old-England man was, of Itself, a character ofsome respect, and gave a kind of rank among us.

And what is their temper now?—O, very muchaltered.

Did you ever hear the authority of parliament tomake laws for America questioned till lately?—Theauthority of parliament was allowed to be valid in all laws,except such as should lay internal taxes. It was never dis-puted in laying duties to regulate commerce....

In what light did the people of America use to con-sider the parliament of Great Britain?—They considerthe parliament as the great bulwark and security of theirliberties and privileges, and always spoke of it with theutmost respect and veneration. Arbitrary ministers, theythought, might possibly, at times, attempt to oppressthem; but they relied on it, that the parliament, on appli-cation, would always give redress. They remembered,with gratitude, a strong instance of this, when a bill wasbrought into parliament, with a clause to make royalinstructions laws in the colonies, which the House ofCommons would not pass, and it was thrown out.

And have they not still the same respect for parlia-ment?—No; it is greatly lessened.

To what causes is that owing?—To a concurrence ofcauses; the restraints lately laid on their trade, by whichthe bringing of foreign gold and silver into the colonieswas prevented; the prohibition of making paper moneyamong themselves; and then demand a new and heavytax by stamps; taking away at the same time, trials byjuries, and refusing to receive and hear their humblepetitions,

Source: Jack P. Greene, ed,t Colonies to Nation: 1763-1789 (NewYork: McGraw-Hill, 1967), pp. 73-74,

effectively by utilizing all the modern political andeconomic developments. Walpole realized that thepublic debt and expanding empire vastly increasedthe amount of patronage available to him. The ris-

ing debt required the employment of thousands oftax collectors and other bureaucrats. The expand-ing empire needed to be staffed by salaried profes-sionals. The endless wars required commissionedofficers and military contracts to supply armies andnavies and build ships. Who received these desir-able positions and contracts was decided by theprime ministers. Starting in the 1720s, Britishpolitical leaders began to dispense patronage tomembers of Parliament and other influential sub-jects. This practice guaranteed majorities in Parlia-ment and consensus within the elite class thatowned most of the realm and much of the Empire.

A minority in Britain denounced as corruptthis method of forging political stability. Thisminority articulated a critique informed by anideology called classical republicanism, whichargued that the King's prime minister, withpatronage, seduced Parliament and so graduallyreduced it to an obedient servant of the Crown.Thus, eighteenth-century developments under-mined the independent Parliament that the Glori-ous Revolution had established. The solution wasto reverse all the modern developments of publicdebt, an enlarged national state, and an expandingempire. The only people who could be trusted toundertake this reversal, classical republicans argued,were the truly independent landed gentlemen ofthe English countryside. Such men lived on theirown land and did not depend on the lucrativepatronage ministers dispensed. If landed gentle-men did not take power, Parliament would becomethoroughly corrupted. Thus, the King wouldenslave the one institution that defended Britishliberty. But after 1720, as Britain grew increasinglypowerful and wealthy, only marginal cranks, out ofstep with mainstream developments, listened to theclassical republican critique.

Thus, eighteenth-century Britain had thepower to enforce legislation such as the Naviga-tion Acts. But after 1715 the colonies welcomedthis enforcement. The reasons for this completeshift in attitude were a mixture of self-interest anddevotion to principle. The Navigation Acts pre-vented the colonies from trading outside the Brit-ish Empire. But more important, they denied thenon-British access to the Empire. By 1750 Britainwas the wealthiest nation in the world and, alongwith its colonies, constituted the most desirablemarket. The Navigation Acts provided colonialproducers a monopoly of this market. By 1750American merchants nearly universally obeyed theNavigation Acts. Colonial goods traveled on Brit-ish (which included colonial) ships to Britain orother British colonies.

The colonists' willing inclusion in the Empirewas not merely the result of self-interest. By themid eighteenth century the colonists agreed withthose living in Britain that being British was some-thing to be proud of. Only Britain provided taxation

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with representation, toleration for all Protestants,protection of private property, and basic libertiesthat enlightened individuals viewed as naturalrights. Britons on both sides of the ocean com-pared Britain to its archenemy France. France wasCatholic; Britain was Protestant. France's monar-chy was absolutist, Britain's was limited and consti-tutional. France was poor; Britain was prosperous.By 1750 Britons believed that all these things fittogether. Protestantism, prosperity, and liberty wereengaged in a bitter struggle against Catholicism,poverty, and tyranny. Only the British Empire pro-tected the basic rights that made life worth living,rights that only Britons, on both sides of the ocean,were lucky enough to enjoy.

This change in colonial attitudes is seen mostclearly during the French and Indian War (1754-1763). It was, to that point, the bloodiest and mostexpensive of the wars that Britain fought withFrance. After 1758 colonists taxed themselves atrecord levels to help fund the war; they paid for bar-racks to quarter British troops; and, after some ini-tial misunderstanding, colonial officers willinglysubordinated themselves and their men to Britishofficers of equal or greater rank. With the eagerassistance of the colonists, Britain managed toexpel France from North America.

At the same time, American culture and soci-ety was also becoming more "Anglicized," that is,English. This transformation is most conspicu-ously illustrated in the creation of "great houses"by planters and merchants after 1720. In theSouthern colonies, planters constructed palatialcountry mansions styled after the English countrymanors. Likewise, wealthy Northern merchantsbuilt urban mansions that followed an Englishtownhouse pattern. With English-style homes, gen-teel Americans also sought to acquire English graceand manners appropriate for their social and eco-nomic status. To that end, they paid close attentionto countenance, bearing, and speech. WealthyAmericans increasingly sent their sons to Englandfor their education, an important part of which wasto acquire proper English manners and speech.Those who could not afford to go to Englandlearned the finer points of genteel behaviorthrough English "courtesy" books. Thus, at leastamong the elite, houses were similar (despiteregional variations), and learning, manners, anddress were comparable.

This Anglicization is also seen in the birth ofan Anglo-American consumer society by the mideighteenth century. Indeed, the American marketfor English imported goods increased 120 percentbetween 1750 and 1773. By the early 1770s, forexample, New York monthly journals listed morethan nine thousand different English manufac-tured goods available for purchase. This new con-sumer market provided Americans of all social andeconomic classes and of all regions with a common

vocabulary, a common element of personal experi-ence, and a standardization of taste. As Americanspurchased the same British manufactured goods,they became increasingly Anglicized. In the pro-cess, it drew the colonists closer to the culture ofthe mother country and greater dependency.

After the French and Indian War (1754-1763), however, a great deal changed in Britainthat weakened the political ties between Americaand the mother country. Parliament abruptlyshifted tactics by taxing the colonies directly,ordering the colonies to quarter troops in theirhomes, and sending British troops to America toforce the colonists to comply with this unpopularlegislation. In doing so, Parliament abandoned themethods it had used to get the colonists to volun-tarily pay taxes, quarter troops, and obey the Brit-ish military. During the war the colonists hadtaxed themselves at far higher levels than Parlia-ment demanded after 1763. They had done sobecause Parliament allowed their own colonialassemblies to determine their financial contribu-tions to the Crown. The colonists thereforebelieved that they possessed the British rights oftaxation with representation and security of prop-erty. When Parliament began to demand taxesafter 1763, the colonists believed that thisapproach violated their British liberties. Becauseof sixty years of increasing pride in Britain andtheir own British identity, the colonists knew whatliberties Britons possessed. Their very identifica-tion with Britain—and their devotion to British lib-erty, property, Protestantism, and natural rights-allowed them to understand and articulate whyParliament, whose members they did not vote forand to which they sent no representatives, shouldnot tax them. The more British the colonistsbecame, the angrier they grew as Parliament, intheir eyes, was destroying the liberties it was sup-posed to protect.

As the conflict over how best to structure andprotect British liberty grew more intense, Parlia-ment finally opted for a military solution. The col-onists did not necessarily despise the Britishmilitary. They had willingly subordinated them-selves to it during the French and Indian War. Butafter 1765 the military, like Parliament, suddenlylooked like the enemy and not the protector ofBritish liberty. Increasingly, the classical republi-canism that had been marginal in Britain appearedto make sense in the colonies. Clearly wealth andpower had corrupted Britain. British liberty wasno longer safe within the Empire. To protect andenjoy it, to structure life around it, one had to leavethat Empire. The colonists' very Britishnessallowed them to understand and explain why theway Britain treated them was wrong. And whenthey did so, they looked to a British language ofpolitical opposition to help them to understandthe situation they now faced. Anglicization

HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 211

allowed eighteenth-century Britain and its coloniesto forge the most powerful Empire the world hadseen in 1,500 years. And this same process ofAnglicization broke that Empire apart thirteenyears after it reached its zenith.

-ANDREW SHANKMAN,NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

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212 HISTORY IN DISPUTE, VOLUME 12: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION