# Britain gave it's American Colonies Parliament seats. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 8, 2011, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011 "2011-10-08T17:18:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2011, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/21 "2011-10-08T23:19:56Z")
Without a successful American revolution and a Monroe Doctrine, you probably wouldn’t have had a series of revolutions in Latin America. Britain probably would have offered support to Spain and Portugal to help them retain nominal political control over their American empires in exchange for British commercial access. So the British Empire in America would stretch to the Pacific but it wouldn’t include California or Texas, which would still be part of New Spain. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2011, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/22 "2011-10-08T23:37:24Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Without a successful American revolution and a Monroe Doctrine, you probably wouldn’t have had a series of revolutions in Latin America. Britain probably would have offered support to Spain and Portugal to help them retain nominal political control over their American empires in exchange for British commercial access. So the British Empire in America would stretch to the Pacific but it wouldn’t include California or Texas, which would still be part of New Spain. Actually… the British supported the Monroe doctrine heavily, and were implicitly willing to back it with their blood, treasure, and arms. Whiel it’s not neccessarily going to work the same, it’s hardly unimaginable that Britain would work to undercut Spain (which, let’s face it, is the biggest target) in the same way. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/23 "2011-10-08T23:46:20Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Okay, let’s say that the American colonies were given proportional representation. And let’s say that the parliamentary reforms of 1832 were adopted a few decades earlier. > > You’d end up with a majority of MP’s from Britain with a substantial minority from North America (along with Scotland, Ireland, and maybe some other parts of the Empire like the West Indies). The American MP’s would probably be seeking westward expansion into the American continent. The English MP’s would see this as an unnecessary provocation with other European powers. So there would be an issue there. Assuming there was a war with France (a safe assumption because France and England were always having some war or other) the Americans would be far less concerned about the safety of the home islands and maintaining a fleet in being in the channel. They’d want the Royal Navy to be out in the Atlantic protecting trade and maybe seizing French colonies. On the plus side, a war with France would give the Americans an excuse to seize Louisiana. Years ago I read a quote from a famous historian/economist who said that if the American colonies had remained part of the Empire, by end of the 19th century, the capital of the Empire would be in North America, but darned if I can find the quote now. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2011, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/24 "2011-10-08T23:56:00Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Years ago I read a quote from a famous historian/economist who said that if the American colonies had remained part of the Empire, by end of the 19th century, the capital of the Empire would be in North America, but darned if I can find the quote now. Adam Smith “The Wealth of Nations” “The people on the other side of the water are afraid lest their distance from the seat of government might expose them to many oppressions; but their representatives in parliament, of which the number ought from the first to be considerable, would easily be able to protect them from all oppression. The distance could not much weaken the dependency of the representative upon the constituent, and the former would still feel that he owed his seat in parliament, and all the consequence which he derived from it, to the good-will of the latter. It would be the interest of the former, therefore, to cultivate that good-will, by complaining, with all the authority of a member of the legislature, of every outrage which any civil or military officer might be guilty of in those remote parts of the empire. The distance of America from the seat of government, besides, the natives of that country might flatter themselves, with some appearance of reason too, would not be of very long continuance. **Such has hitherto been the rapid progress of that country in wealth, population, and improvement, that in the course of little more than a century, perhaps, the produce of the American might exceed that of the British taxation. The seat of the empire would then naturally remove itself to that part of the empire which contributed most to the general defence and support of the whole**.” ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 12:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/25 "2011-10-09T00:00:45Z")
The War of 1812 doesn’t happen. Andrew Jackson doesn’t rise to fame, and is just known around town as that crazy bastard who’s always shooting out his window. ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/26 "2011-10-09T00:26:46Z")
“It’s” always means either “It is” or “It has”. “It’s taking longer than we thought.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/27 "2011-10-09T01:02:47Z")
No, it could also mean “Of or belonging to the hairy cousin from the Addams Family”. ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/28 "2011-10-09T01:29:32Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > We’d all be speaking Canadian. We’d all be speaking Canadian, _eh?_ ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/29 "2011-10-09T03:04:15Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > The War of 1812 doesn’t happen. Andrew Jackson doesn’t rise to fame, and is just known around town as that crazy bastard who’s always shooting out his window. He’d still have the Creeks and Seminoles to fight. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/30 "2011-10-09T03:11:58Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Actually… the British supported the Monroe doctrine heavily, and were implicitly willing to back it with their blood, treasure, and arms. Whiel it’s not neccessarily going to work the same, it’s hardly unimaginable that Britain would work to undercut Spain (which, let’s face it, is the biggest target) in the same way. Britain was a fundamentally conservative power in its foreign policy. If people in Latin America achieved their independence, Britain was willing to accept the situation and adapt to it. But if Spain looked like if was able to maintain viable control then Britain wouldn’t have been trying to change the status quo. Pretty much the same policy they’d adopt in regards to the Ottoman Empire a few decades later - prop up the weak regime and use that support as an opening to gain economic influence. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/31 "2011-10-09T05:28:20Z")
I think that this thread underestimates the burr up his ass that Samuel Adams and his ilk had. Britain could have given representation. The Intolerable Acts would have passed over American votes. The uprising would have just used that as an excuse as to why Parliament didn’t care about the colonies, etc. The Revolution would have continued as scheduled. No taxation without representation was a nice slogan, but we could have done the same without it. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/32 "2011-10-09T06:41:05Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > The Revolution would have continued as scheduled. No taxation without representation was a nice slogan, but we could have done the same without it. This. No one was saying, “no taxation without representation” and meaning “we’re OK with the taxation, but pissed off about our level of representation”. People didn’t want to pay the taxes, and “bodies we aren’t represented in don’t have the authority to levy taxes on us” was the specific legal theory they went with as to why they should be repealed (as opposed to just saying “we don’t want to pay them”). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/33 "2011-10-09T08:03:07Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > The War of 1812 doesn’t happen. Andrew Jackson doesn’t rise to fame, and is just known around town as that crazy bastard who’s always shooting out his window. Or maybe he joins the British Army. Seems like the sort of fellow to yearn for war, when young. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/34 "2011-10-09T08:28:08Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > This. No one was saying, “no taxation without representation” and meaning “we’re OK with the taxation, but pissed off about our level of representation”. People didn’t want to pay the taxes, and “bodies we aren’t represented in don’t have the authority to levy taxes on us” was the specific legal theory they went with as to why they should be repealed (as opposed to just saying “we don’t want to pay them”). Don’t forget how divided the people of the colonies were at the time – roughly 1/3 Patriot, 1/3 Loyalist, 1/3 neutral/indifferent, as I recall. Revolution was by no means inevitable. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/35 "2011-10-09T08:55:13Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Another consequence is that the slavery issue (at least, within the English-speaking world) gets thrashed out in Parliament – by MPs from slave provinces of America (including not only the cotton provinces of the southeastern mainland, but the Caribbean sugar islands of Jamaica and Barbados), and MPs from free provinces of America (including Newfoundland, Upper Canada, Lower Canada, etc.), and MPs from Britain and Ireland (where only Protestants can vote, and one wonders – one **really** wonders – what the American MPs from various provinces might have to say about **that!).** Without the precedent of the American Revolution to inspire them, it is kind of hard to imagine the slave provinces of America trying to secede from the Empire over the slavery issue. Especially knowing they’d have to fight Royal American **and** Imperial British forces. So, Civil War averted. Or the weight of the Americans in Parliament in the 1830s resulting in slavery not being outlawed in the first place, leading to decades more of slavery in the other colonies. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/36 "2011-10-09T14:47:17Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > This. No one was saying, “no taxation without representation” and meaning “we’re OK with the taxation, but pissed off about our level of representation”. People didn’t want to pay the taxes, and “bodies we aren’t represented in don’t have the authority to levy taxes on us” was the specific legal theory they went with as to why they should be repealed (as opposed to just saying “we don’t want to pay them”). As I’ve already said, I disagree. It was the lack of representation that was the real issue not the taxation. The consensus would have been “we’re OK with the taxation, as long as we get a say in our representation”. As I pointed out, the taxes were actually quite low - lower than what people were paying in England without protest. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/37 "2011-10-09T14:54:20Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Britain was a fundamentally conservative power in its foreign policy. If people in Latin America achieved their independence, Britain was willing to accept the situation and adapt to it. All true, except that it didn’t help Spain in actual history, either. The U.S. didn’t have the firepower to do jack to the Spanish until the Civil War. My point is that the Monroe doctrine was little more than a vague threat backed up by vague possibility fo British intervention. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/38 "2011-10-09T14:59:57Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > All true, except that it didn’t help Spain in actual history, either. The U.S. didn’t have the firepower to do jack to the Spanish until the Civil War. My point is that the Monroe doctrine was little more than a vague threat backed up by vague possibility fo British intervention. But the alternative “America doesn’t become independent” history would arguably be tilted in Spain’s favor. First, there would be no American Revolution to serve as an inspiration to Latin American revolutionaries. Second, there would arguably be no French Revolution, hence no Napoleon, and therefore no French invasion of Spain in 1808. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/39 "2011-10-09T15:05:57Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > But the alternative “America doesn’t become independent” history would arguably be tilted in Spain’s favor. First, there would be no American Revolution to serve as an inspiration to Latin American revolutionaries. Second, there would arguably be no French Revolution, hence no Napoleon, and therefore no French invasion of Spain in 1808. But there **might** be some Latin American colonials looking north and saying to the Viceroy, “Hey, why can’t **we** have representation in the Cortes in Madrid?!” “Well, what do you care, the Cortes doesn’t actually **do** anything, does it?!” “Well, maybe it should!” Hard to stop that kind of talk once it starts. Especially if the creoles start writing their relatives in Spain. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011/40 "2011-10-09T15:32:59Z")
From [_The American Way of Strategy,_](http://www.amazon.com/American-Way-Strategy-Michael-Lind/dp/0195308379/sr=8-1/qid=1166282273/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-9788122-0265632?ie=UTF8&s=books) by Michael Lind: > [@](#): > > Many people remember vaguely that the American Revolution had something to do with taxes. A few remember that the issue was whether the power to tax lay with London or the American colonies. But this was a surrogate for the real issue: preserving the American way of life. > > In the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century, the British colonists in North America developed a distinctive way of life quite different from that of their British cousins. Something like Britain’s aristocratic society endured in the South and parts of the Northeast. But in general, colonial society was characterized by a degree of middle-class prosperity and widespread property ownership unknown in any other society in the world. Not only were America’s yeoman farmers, artisans, and merchants better off than most Britons and Europeans, but also the cost of government was much lower. > > The trouble began in the aftermath of the French and Indian War (Seven Years’ War) of 1754-63. The British imperial government insisted that the colonists pay more of the costs of their own defense. The colonists, however, feared that the London parliament was trying to destroy the system of colonial self-government that had grown up in the preceding generations. They remembered that the London parliament had destroyed the Scottish parliament in 1707 (it would eliminate the Irish parliament in 1801). They feared that the same thing was now happening to them. They would pay ever higher taxes, even as their colonial assemblies lost authority to the London parliament. As a result, British North America might come to resemble Ireland or Scotland, impoverished countries where absentee landlords held vast tracts of land and where major decisions were made by well-connected aristocrats and merchants in London with little or no accountability to the people whom they ruled. > > \ > > This history may be familiar but the point is not. For Americans, the independence of the United States from Britain and its organization as a democratic republic was a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end was the safeguarding of the communal right to self-government and the individual liberties that the British settlers in America had already enjoyed for generations under British rule. Americans adopted their own strategy for defending the American way of life against imperial centralization – independence as a democratic republic – only because their first choice, self-government within a federal monarchical empire, was rejected. Democratic republicanism and national independence were only two of several possible methods for preserving what by 1776 was the traditional American way of life, characterized by personal liberty, widespread property ownership, low taxes, and an inexpensive military. Well, representation at Westminster would have provided another way to preserve the American way of life – i.e., whatever His Majesty’s Government wants to do in the direction of the not unreasonable goal of integrating America more thoroughly and regularly into the Empire, American MP’s will be there to explain why this or that particular idea simply will not do. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/britain-gave-its-american-colonies-parliament-seats/599011.md?page=3)