Exit and Empire

BRIAN BALOGH: We’re back with BackStory. I’m Brian Balogh, and I’m here with Ed Ayers.

ED AYERS: Hey, Brian.

BRIAN BALOGH: And Peter Onuf’s with us.

PETER ONUF: Hey there.

BRIAN BALOGH: And we’re talking today about the path from citizenship in America.

ED AYERS: Before the break, we were hearing about one group of people who chose not to become citizens. And that’s the Loyalists, those 75,000 people who decided they’d prefer life under the British crown to life in this new American republic. So Peter, you’re our 18th century guy. Perhaps you could take a couple minutes and explain what this story about the Loyalists tells us about the larger story of the American Revolution. Who won and who lost that thing after all?

PETER ONUF: Well, this is deeply threatening to us as Americans, because we need to think that Loyalists are losers.

ED AYERS: Right.

PETER ONUF: But as they say in the retail toy business, Loyalists are us. In many ways, the Loyalists are Americans. And their idea of sustaining the freedom and liberty they had under the protection of George III and within the British empire, they say you patriots have got a really misbegotten narrow view of our collective future, because it’s within the empire.

I think the key takeaway for our show today is that before the Revolution, you did not have to emigrate to enjoy the great opportunities of a British world. You could send your son, if you were a merchant in Marblehead, to Jamaica to forge commercial connections. And they don’t leave the country. That’s not emigration. But what happens when boundaries shrink? Think of the United States is a great shrunken fragment of empire in which Americans– these independent Americans– no longer enjoy the opportunities they had enjoyed under the British empire.

BRIAN BALOGH: Peter, it also seems to me that in many ways, the American Revolution was about the British empire not delivering on its promises. Yet it did deliver on the promises for the people who lost, for these Loyalists.

PETER ONUF: Yeah, absolutely. You know, the big promise, Brian, is protection. And the King’s still delivering on that. And what the Canadians get now is law and order, cheap land, low taxes, and that whole rest of the empire to move through. The Americans, meanwhile, are paying sky-high taxes, higher than they’d ever paid before, which is funny because this is a tax revolt, in order to support their new governments and to pay off this enormous national debt.

BRIAN BALOGH: OK, the Loyalists themselves are clearly winners. They do pretty well. But what about the empire itself? How does the British empire do having just lost this war to the colonists in America?

PETER ONUF: Yeah, well, my fellow American, Brian, the bad news for us is the American Revolution was the best thing that ever happened for the British empire.

BRIAN BALOGH: No, that’s good news. Maybe our enemies will lose to us more often.

PETER ONUF: You know what they got rid of was the overhead costs of administering the new United States. Now they continue to exploit American trade, and British capital has an outlet in the new United States. And well, it works, as what is later called a kind of free trade empire that the British establish in the Western hemisphere.

And what the British learn from the American Revolution is that one size does not fit all. And what this new British empire needs is a whole range of forms of governance from no government– in the old United States– to a much more centralized and authoritative colonial administration, particularly when dealing with non-British peoples. And American Loyalists, is Maya suggests, take the lead in the fashioning and re-creation of the British empire. And it enjoys an unparalleled century of expansion and world domination.

ED AYERS: Well, it’s good of us to help out.

PETER ONUF: Yeah, yeah, so we showed the way. You’re welcome.