Wise Words from a General

How a Revolution Saved an Empire
By MICHAEL ROSE
London
AS Lord Cornwallis’s defeated army marched out of Yorktown, Va., in October 1781, its band is said to have played a tune called “The World Turned Upside Down.” It seemed appropriate: Cornwallis, King George III and his ministers were convinced that this defeat and the withdrawal of British troops from the 13 colonies would result not only in anarchy in America but also in the collapse of the entire British Empire.
France, Spain and other rivals, they were certain, would seize the remaining colonies in America, the West Indies, the Mediterranean and India. Worse still, the Irish, heartened by the success of the American rebellion, would rise up. At the end of the day, Britain would become no more than an unimportant island off northwestern Europe.
Of course, George III’s strategic assessment on the outcome of the defeat at Yorktown — like everything else that he had been responsible for during the War of Independence — was entirely wrong. It was by finally accepting defeat in what at that time was a relatively unimportant part of the world that Britain was able to focus on what really mattered — continuing to build its influence and empire across the globe.
If the Whig opposition, led by Lord Rockingham, had not had the moral courage and vision to accept defeat by the American colonists, and had not been able to persuade the king and his ministers to do likewise, Britain would likely have lost its position in the world, and today the people of the largest democracy in the world, India, would be speaking either French or Portuguese. By ending the unnecessary war in North America, Britain was able rapidly to rebuild its army and navy, eventually take on and defeat Napoleon, and become the unquestioned pre-eminent global power.
Few saw this in 1781. During the cruel years of the war, George III had followed a hopelessly flawed strategy and had failed to commit adequate resources to the mission. He had never understood the character or nature of the American people and he had greatly underestimated their determination to throw off the yoke of British rule. The War of Independence had never just been about “taxation without representation.” It had been about the freedom for Americans to develop their own society in the way that they wished.
Americans still spoke the same language and had the same respect for God as the English, but they no longer thought the same way. They wanted to engage in free trade and expand their empire to the West. The radical element of New England led by men like Samuel Adams and James Otis, in particular, had had enough of kings and bishops, the corruptions of the legal system, the vice admiralty courts and the British Navy’s press gangs. It was fortunate for the world that the American Revolution succeeded — for under British rule America would never have become the great country, the force in the world for good, that it ultimately became