interesting things I learned about the American revolution from Durant's summary of the war from Britain's perspective last night
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1. the extent of opposition to the war in parliament was remarkable, many luminaries spoke forcefully and eloquently against it on both practical and principled grounds at least in the political class britain was deeply conflicted
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2. king george iii was not conflicted in the least, he was Mad as hell the son of a bitch wanted to keep fighting after /Yorktown/ and had to be dragged off kicking and screaming
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3. the american alliance with France is well known, and Spain's declaration of war against England as well however, I had /not/ known that Denmark, Sweden, and Russia adopted a hostile neutrality against England when the royal navy started aggressively searching ships
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4. the population of Britain was something like 6M at that point; the American colonies, 1M not as lopsided a conflict as i had thought in this sense can you imagine if Britain had retained the colonies? we would have swallowed her whole
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5. didn't catch the details but at one point in the run-up to the war South Carolina wanted to limit slave imports and Britain overruled them because it was far too lucrative to give up eat shit
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re: (1), here's a speech from Pitt--worth reading to get a sense of the anti-war faction's disposition https://www.bartleby.com/268/3/24.html
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Burke's speech is also excellent his section on the American temperament and especially religious disposition relative to England is extremely interesting and worth weighing in These Timeshttps://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Burke%27s_Speech_on_Conciliation_with_America/Speech …
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eigenrobot Retweeted thehorsepundit
possible correction on population huuuhhttps://twitter.com/thehorsepundit/status/1329807596425981955?s=19 …
eigenrobot added,
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