In fact, the states, having failed to ratify a constitution following the American Revolution, are separate countries that oscillate between cooperating and warring with one another, as in Europe. The little ones wanted each state to have one vote no matter how many people it had. They were too stubborn to split the difference. Turtledove told me that it was Richard Dreyfuss, the actor, who first gave him the idea of the American Revolution as a subject for alternate history.
The two collaborated on a novel, The Two Georges , that is set in the s and based on the premise that the Revolutionary War never happened. The artist Thomas Gainsborough commemorated the deal in a painting, The Two Georges , that is emblazoned on money and made ubiquitous as a symbol of the felicitous "union between Great Britain and her American dominions.
The novel, which contains some delightfully bewildering passages "The British Empire and the Franco-Spanish Holy Alliance were officially at peace, so skirmishes between the North American Union and Nueva Espana seldom made the newspapers or the wireless" , includes a description of the painting :. Bowing before the king, George Washington was made to appear shorter than his sovereign.
The blue coat that proclaimed his colonial colonelcy was of wool like that of George III, but of a coarser weave speaking of homespun. Not all its creases were those of fashion; with a few strategic wrinkles and some frayed fringes depending from one epaulette, Gainsborough managed to suggest how long the garment had lain folded in its trunk while Washington sailed across the Atlantic to advance the colonies' interests on the privy council George III had established.
Most countries following the British system have upper houses — only New Zealand was wise enough to abolish it — but they're far, far weaker than their lower houses. The Canadian Senate and the House of Lords affect legislation only in rare cases.
At most, they can hold things up a bit or force minor tweaks. They aren't capable of obstruction anywhere near the level of the US Senate. Finally, we'd still likely be a monarchy, under the rule of Elizabeth II, and constitutional monarchy is the best system of government known to man.
Generally speaking, in a parliamentary system, you need a head of state who is not the prime minister to serve as a disinterested arbiter when there are disputes about how to form a government — say, if the largest party should be allowed to form a minority government or if smaller parties should be allowed to form a coalition, to name a recent example from Canada. That head of state is usually a figurehead president elected by the parliament Germany, Italy or the people Ireland, Finland , or a monarch.
And monarchs are better. Monarchs are more effective than presidents precisely because they lack any semblance of legitimacy. Indeed, when the governor-general of Australia did so in it set off a constitutional crisis that made it clear such behavior would not be tolerated.
But figurehead presidents have some degree of democratic legitimacy and are typically former politicians. That enables a greater rate of shenanigans — like when Italian President Giorgio Napolitano schemed, successfully, to remove Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister due at least in part to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's entreaties to do so.
Napolitano is the rule, rather than the exception. Oxford political scientists Petra Schleiter and Edward Morgan-Jones have found that presidents, whether elected indirectly by parliament or directly by the people, are likelier to allow governments to change without new elections than monarchs are. In other words, they're likelier to change the government without any democratic input at all. Monarchy is, perhaps paradoxically, the more democratic option. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. George Washington crosses the Delaware, makes the world a worse place in the process. Emanuel Leutze This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in was a monumental mistake. Abolition would have come faster without independence 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.
Independence was bad for Native Americans Starting with the Proclamation of , the British colonial government placed firm limits on westward settlement in the United States. Robert Lindneux None of this is to minimize the extent of British and Canadian crimes against Natives. America would have a better system of government if we'd stuck with Britain Honestly, I think earlier abolition alone is enough to make the case against the revolution, and it combined with less-horrible treatment of American Indians is more than enough.
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Learn more about the rejection of the Empire. The British government never seemed to have seriously considered playing the empire card. They never seemed even to have noticed that opinion in the colonies about what should be done next, and how it should be done was indeed seriously divided. Despite the fact that all of them resented the imposition of direct taxation and imperial interference as much as the colonies that were represented in Philadelphia.
Watch it now, Wondrium. They wore British fashions, read British books, sometimes affected British accents, and they resented the tax schemes of Grenville and Townsend as much for the suggestion that America consisted only of plantations as for the price that it exacted from their pocketbooks. They had not come to Philadelphia to make a revolution.
They thought they had come to Philadelphia to prevent Parliament from making a revolution, or at least a revolution that would upset all their hopes to be considered equal partners in the business of the British Empire. The members of the Continental Congress were unused to working with each other. The problem was that larger political purposes were already starting to take shape whether they liked it or not.
Would a protracted war bankrupt Britain? Was Britain risking starting a broader war? To back down, the ministers believed, would be to lose the colonies. To be sure, the initial rally to arms was impressive. When the British Army marched out of Boston on April 19, , messengers on horseback, including Boston silversmith Paul Revere, fanned out across New England to raise the alarm.
Summoned by the feverish pealing of church bells, militiamen from countless hamlets hurried toward Concord, Massachusetts, where the British regulars planned to destroy a rebel arsenal. Thousands of militiamen arrived in time to fight; 89 men from 23 towns in Massachusetts were killed or wounded on that first day of war, April 19, By the next morning, Massachusetts had 12 regiments in the field.
Connecticut soon mobilized a force of 6,, one-quarter of its military-age men. Within a week, 16, men from the four New England colonies formed a siege army outside British-occupied Boston. Thereafter, men throughout America took up arms. It seemed to the British regulars that every able-bodied American male had become a soldier.
But as the colonists discovered how difficult and dangerous military service could be, enthusiasm waned. Many men preferred to remain home, in the safety of what Gen. As progressed, many colonies were compelled to entice soldiers with offers of cash bounties, clothing, blankets and extended furloughs or enlistments shorter than the one-year term of service established by Congress.
The following year, when Congress mandated that men who enlisted must sign on for three years or the duration of the conflict, whichever came first, offers of cash and land bounties became an absolute necessity. The states and the army also turned to slick-tongued recruiters to round up volunteers.
Moreover, beginning in , the New England states, and eventually all Northern states, enlisted African-Americans, a practice that Congress had initially forbidden.
Ultimately, some 5, blacks bore arms for the United States, approximately 5 percent of the total number of men who served in the Continental Army. Longer enlistments radically changed the composition of the Army. But few who owned farms were willing to serve for the duration, fearing loss of their property if years passed without producing revenue from which to pay taxes.
After , the average Continental soldier was young, single, propertyless, poor and in many cases an outright pauper. In some states, such as Pennsylvania, up to one in four soldiers was an impoverished recent immigrant. Patriotism aside, cash and land bounties offered an unprecedented chance for economic mobility for these men.
Accounts of shoeless continental army soldiers leaving bloody footprints in the snow or going hungry in a land of abundance are all too accurate. Albigence Waldo, a Continental Army surgeon, later reported that many men survived largely on what were known as fire cakes flour and water baked over coals.
But that was not always the case. So much heavy clothing arrived from France at the beginning of the winter in that Washington was compelled to locate storage facilities for his surplus. In a long war during which American soldiers were posted from upper New York to lower Georgia, conditions faced by the troops varied widely.
While one soldier in seven was dying from hunger and disease at Valley Forge, young Private Martin, stationed only a few miles away in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, was assigned to patrols that foraged daily for army provisions. Some , men served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Probably twice that number soldiered as militiamen, for the most part defending the home front, functioning as a police force and occasionally engaging in enemy surveillance.
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