And yet, if you know nothing of the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution, how well can you really understand the American Revolution? After all, what shaped the concept of “liberty” that the revolutionaries considered themselves to be defending?
I think this cuts both ways.
To come back to my own Ontario High School experience, we did have an elective in Grade 12 entitled “History of North America.” There was an American History course on the books, but we didn’t get to take it due to lack of student interest.
In N.A. History, we did go into greater detail about 1776 and 1812, but it seemed to have its own snide little backspin to counter all the American rah rah jingoism.
I remember hearing something to the effect of “The American colonies were among the least taxed in the British Empire, so their ‘taxation before representation’ argument was bunk.” I remember leaving that course thinking that the United States was founded by a bunch of greedy shipping magnates trying to evade paying taxes under the guise of liberty. Whether there’s a grain of truth in that or not, I don’t know. Or care, for that matter - I’m not about to hand out pamphlets in the university quad.
Like I said, that makes sense because the Reconquista doesn’t directly contact your country, but at the same time we got several lessons (in Spanish History, in Spanish, in Politics) about how the Reconquista explains why there were so many young dudes eager to go perform the Conquista. It even explains the geographical extraction of those guys (all the ones you name were from a place with very poor land, where nth sons got exactly nothing and which had been the war’s front for the last 500 years). Thing is, in History everything is linked to everything; how much did Marco Polo’s introduction of pasta change Italian economy? And, since Italy was at the time a bunch of separate states, some of which belonged to foreign kings, how much did that influence those other kingdoms? And that’s just one guy going on a very long shopping trip…
My 9th grade World History teacher got sick on Easter. His replacement almost had a heart attack upon hearing that we had only reached Egypt and were about to start on the Etruscs, which most History classes barely mention as a footnote to the Romans. But we’d linked Hammurabi’s Code to the development of legal systems in different places, we’d spent two weeks exploring the semiotics of Egyptian mythology, two days on Akenathon (and monotheism as a concept, and mono vs poly). The classes that had The Other Teacher had covered a lot more ground, but the students there came out hating History; we came out History buffs. I think that training people who can and specially will go look up things in the Encyclopedia, read historical novels/watch historical movies with an eye for what’s historical and what’s tale, is a lot more important than which specific events have been mentioned in class. That teacher didn’t mention the American Revolution, but we came out being able to perform research on the Punic Wars for 10th grade Latin (not mentioned in any class, even though so much of them happened on Spain and the first historical mention of many of our ancestors is from them), the Carlista Wars for 11th grade Spanish History (how can you not mention 5 civil wars which took place in less than 100 years? well, they were never mentioned in our classes - Carlismo as an ideology wasn’t yet at least half the people in the class had one or more Carlista grandparents; can you imagine a class on US Politics which does not mention the Federalists?), or The Great Modern Revolutions (US, France, Russia and China; France had been studied directly and Russia as a WWI footnote) for 12th grade History of Philosophy.
Well said Nava. I found history from ages 11-16 skipped through centuries at lightening speed. But for ‘A’ Level (for non-Brits, we take 9-10 subjects up to age 16, then choose just 3-4 for ‘A’ Levels, ages 16-18), I took “British and European History, 1450-1600”, which may seem like a very short time to spend two years studying, but which meant we got a very thorough picture of how events interlinked.
You’ll be pleased to know we even did some Spanish stuff, Nava - less about Columbus and more about Ferdinand and Isabella. We did a bit about the New World, but mostly in relation to the battles between Spain and England.
Surely you’re joking? The Tudor period was literally one of the most important periods in our history, from defining the nation as a great power, building the empire, the schism with Rome, the subsequent religious upheaval, our relationship with France and the rest of Europe, the start of exploration of the New World, the Spanish Armada and constant threat of invasion etc. etc.
The US was the first to establish essential human rights? Again, surely you’re joking? Judges in England were declaring the air of England “too pure for a slave to breathe” while half your country’s economy was based on the slavery of humans. Bushel’s case had effectively spelt out the role of the jury in jury trials in England a century before the American revolution, the Bill of Rights had established the right to free speech, freedom from arbitrary taxation, and so on, in England and Wales at the end of the 17th century, etc etc.
Quite. Which is why, from a purely British perspective, the American Revolution seems quite small potatoes. The Tudor period marked our emergence as a ‘modern’ nation.
Indeed. The feeling I have got from seeing this sort of discussion multiple times now on SD is that many from across the pond think that as they had a revolution and the French did too that everyone needed to have some sort of revolution. Many European countries still have their monarchies and did not go through a revolution, instead going through a slow evolution to their current state.
Thus the American Revolution isn’t seen as so important as it didn’t have such a direct affect on many countries. Yes, it did affect the French and led the way for their revolution but for other countries the slow evolution to a very similar end result was already well on the way.
Regardless of how much importance is placed on the subject, the perspective in my experience is purely unemotional and factual. Britain lost a colony. We don’t sit in class in tears, feeling embarrassed about our glorious country’s past failures, commiserating with one another.
Perhaps as an analogy, I feel just as much connected with King George III as an American might with someone from the Shang Dynasty. He’s a part of history, a part of British history, but the perspective isn’t that of current Britain’s success or failure, merely that it happened. Why someone would think we’d be ‘bitter’ about the outcome is absolutely beyond me.
It would be wholly bizarre if history teachers noted ‘Well, we lost America as a colony, but it turned out quite well, because they saved us in World War II!’. And not only because it’s hilariously wrong. It’s revisionist history. There’s absolutely no telling what would have happened during World War II if the American colonies had been handled better and still being part of the British Empire. Who knows, it might have even nipped the war in the bud, we could have used that help a little earlier you know? 
Ooh blimey, danger of derailing the thread into a WW2 row there.
But bringing up George III reminds me of something. When I first visited the US, I was surprised about how much emphasis Americans placed on the King in the whole affair (‘we thrashed George III’s butt’ kinda thing). This rang strangely in my ears, as, by that time in British history, the King had pretty much become the pure figurehead we have today. The power, and the decisions, were in the hands of the British Parliament and the Prime Minister. It sounds a bit like railing against The Queen for invading Iraq. Now, I understand there’s an emotional strand to this for USAians who mark the event as kicking out a monarchy and establishing a Republic, but I just thought, in response to the OP, it was interesting to point out as evidence of our different perspectives. From our perspective, you didn’t beat the King as such, you beat the British Government.
That’s true. In her book *The March of Folly *(which, if you haven’t read, you should), Barbara Tuchman places most the blame for the loss of the Colonies squarely on the shoulders of Parliament, particularly North and Fox.
Sorry - I meant North and Sandwich.
While I’ve spent some time on this thread stating my belief as to why I think the American Revoltion was important, I have to mostly agree with this.
Not one person on this planet had anything to do with the revolution from either side, so there really shouldn’t be any personal feelings about it, one way or the other.
But I think that the WWII thing raises a good point - not because the US saved the UK - that’s silly and irrelevant and probably wrong, but because it shows that, but for the American Revoltion, we have absolutely no clue what would have happened, or if there even would have been a war. You can make the Butterfly effect argument on all kinds of silly little things, but I think it would be really hard to argue that the world wouldn’t be vastly different if the AWI hadn’t occurred.
That’s what makes it an important piece of history - because it changed the world in a big way. Maybe not at the time - but the long term effects were very large, and history does get the benefit of hindsight. And it’s pretty clear to me that the nature of the revolution, the thinkers who inspired, the people who led it - these things shaped the country that shaped the world. And, if you’re at all interested in history, and disassociated from any sense of pride or prejudice, that, IMHO, makes it objectively relevant to world history.
Indeed, the impression one gets is that the American revolutionaries’ main grudge was that the Brits refused to extend to them the same rights as the Brits had at home: hence, ‘no taxation without representation’ = outrage at being unrepresented in Parliament (the West Indies had a more influential ‘sugar lobby’ than the whole of the American colonies, because the plantation owners could afford to buy the necessary seats!).
One of the great ‘what ifs’ of history is whether a more far-sighted Parlament could have fended off the revolution through the mere expedient of introducing seats for the colonials. In the triumphalism following the Seven Years’ War, that was I guess politically impossible.
Indeed. When my 13-year old son studied the American revolution this last year, I was also struck by how much George III was singled out and even demonized. I took pains to explain to my son that the situation was not that simple and that George III was not a monster.
Some of this likely jingoism; and it may simply arise from American teachers covering the Declaration of Independence, which, for all its lofty justifications in the beginning of the document, degenerates into a laundry list of supposed injustices purportedly visited upon the colonies by the King. This may have been necessary at the time to rationalize such a dramatic break away from the British crown, but in covering the document from only the American point-of-view, American students generally come away with a very one-sided perspective that overemphasizes the part played by the King.
Look, let’s try to inject some sanity into this.
You have a student available to you for history instruction for a limited number of hours. Kids are in school for maybe half the days in a year, nine or ten months a year, and history isn’t the most important subject; you need to teach them to read, write, and do math, as well as squeezing in biology, earth sciences, civics, art, physical education, geography, et al. So your time for history instruction is limited. Your British schoolchild simply cannot learn every history detail from the Roman empire to today in excruciating detail.
So let me ask you this; where do YOU think the American Revolution should rank in the order of importance of British history instruction?
First? No.
Second? No.
Third? Obviously not.
I’m not even British, and I can - without using Wikipedia or Google - think, just right now, of 30 topics that merit more detailed instruction in British history than the American Revolution. Easily. Even if you limit it to events OVERSEAS from the UK the American revolution isn’t at the top - certainly the French Revolution and the two World Wars would be the defining events of modern British history, would they not? Now go domestic; you’ve got the origins of British civilization to deal with, the Act of Union, the ascendancy of James VI/James I, the Norman conquest, the Glorious Revolution, the Wars of the Roses, the English Civil War, the Industrial Revolution, and on and on.
And you can’t just teach them once. The major topics bear repetition.
So just how much time do you wanna spend on the American Revolution? You’ve got maybe 150 hours per school year. Maybe.
Of course, American independence was inevitable anyway. You can blame North and Sandwich for losing the Colonies in 1783, but there is little chance that America does not become one or more independent states at some point, probably in the 19th century.
I would think the British would want their children to know a little about the origins of their major ally. Sorry if that seems “insane” to you.
For all the accusations we hear on these boards of Americans being provincial, I am beginning to think it is the other way around. 
By that logic (counting subjects), the independence of the Philippines must be a very major event in American history, since they were much larger than 4 million subjects in 1946.
How much time does a typical American history class spend on the history of independence in the Philippines (1898-1946)?
They do. They know you were a colony of ours, you rebelled, you won. Go you.