Steve: There were earlier bills on the subject of the Insurrection, of course, but of the ones I saw most of them had to do with 1) strongly condemning the actions of the rebels, or 2) paying for various war expenses. If anyone’s really interested I could swing by the BL next week and take some notes (the Parliamentary records are on open access).
I would put money on the average schoolkid these days not even knowing that large parts of the US was once a British Colony.
I also didn’t learn anything about the American Revolution in school. As others have said, there are many other things that are far more important to the history of our country and there is only so much time to teach them in.
IANABE* but my experience parallels yours. Sadly, it took university level work to delve much deeper than comfy mythologies. Even sadder, the complexities on both sides were the really illuminating–and inspiring–stuff. Even as a little kid, the dreck about Geo. Washington and his little hatchet, etc. mostly inspired skepticism. King George was a raving, drollling madman, the sheeplike Brit masses were cowed into persecuting our plucky colonists but sometime around WWII they came back begging for our help…
Feh.
What actually happened was so rich in human experience, drama and complexity, pop myths belittle everybody.
Veb
[sub]*I Am Not A Brit Either[/sub]
When i reached 4th form (about 14 years old), i was given the choice of history GCSE, or geography GCSE. I choose geography.
However, before that i never studied the US revolution. I did study the US civil war though.
I’d echo what others are saying on this thread. The US declaration of independence is a non event as far as most Brits are concerned. Its part of a long line of countries that have gained independence from the UK. I don’t think badly of Indians because they gained independence 50 years ago, why should i think badly of americans who gained indepence 300 years ago? Its almost ancient history…
They did tell you it happened in 1776 didn’t they? Maybe you needed extra maths instead of history? 
They did tell you it happened in 1776 didn’t they? Maybe you needed extra maths instead of history?
Not only was I a British kid growing up in the United States, the Bicentennial happened the summer between 6th and 7th grades. I grew up with a lot of British=bad; Americans=good stuff when covering the Revolutionary War, to the point where I felt like the British, my people, were portrayed as having no redeeming characteristics, therefore, history as taught was propoganda, therefore history was bunk. Remember – I was a kid at the time, and being the only kid in the room who couldn’t grow up to be president didn’t exactly help.
At one point I asked my parents what they learned about the Revolutionary War when they were growing up, and they said pretty much the same thing others have said – it wasn’t emphasized that heavily, and Britain was concerned with other matters at the time. I also learned from them that the British were being more heavily taxed than the Colonists at the time.
As for my attitude toward history, in one of the universe’s jokes, the guy I nearly married was a history buff, as is one of my closest current friends. Needless to say, I’ve changed my mind about history.
CJ
Well, can you blame them? I mean, a large, formally trained and uniformed army advancing rapidly through the countryside, eventually beaten by a ragtag bunch of natives in civvies using guerilla tactics? Obviously the natives will always be the good guys in that scenario…
cj being president isn’t all it is cracked up to be. at this point you would have more people saying: “no thanks” than jumping at the job.
i think learning about the rev. war even in the states, depends on where you are. if you are in one of the 13 orig. states, you will have more time on it because it is also state history. growing up in ny, pa, ma, va esp., there even may be a class trip or two involved.
i can’t imagine that the rev. war would be stressed in say, alaska or hawaii.
when my mom was in school, the rev. war and civil war, were more stressed and wwi was practically current events. she was out of school when wwii was going on.
now, a history course has to include wwi, wwii, korea, vietnam, persian gulf, rev. war takes a bit of a back seat even in the states these days.
now for a funny story. a bit ago i was giving directions to a baseball field to a dad who was gonna surprize his son. my co worker is from canada and his dad had a conference in boston and drove down to surprize him. i gave him the usual directions to the field which involved the direction: “turn right at the grant statue.” after i said it i realized that he may not recognize grant right off. i then explained that the first statue was lincoln, he was sitting down on a chair in the middle of the road, grant was the one on a horse a bit off to the side.
Forget the American Revolution-how do they feel about the Irish Rebellion of 1916?
everton and amarone - that’s odd. I spend a lot of time in London and constantly hear people talking about how awful Americans are, and how we should still be a colony, etc. (For the purposes of this argument, I’m only recalling conversations overheard before 9-11 and other recent international events.)
In fact, one of my nasty little tricks is to sit quietly for quite a long time, and then order a new drink or something in my very obviously American accent.
But as far as I can tell, British people, like Americans, get much of their history from TV docs so we’re all learning the Australian (Murdock) version of everything.
Do Americans have much emphasis put on the fact that there were a lot of people living in the 13 colonies who had little interest in separating, and consequently fled to the maritime colonies and the Canadas?
matt_mcl – No, that is rarely mentioned at all in ordinary elementary and high school history classes. It might be mentioned in college-level, or in advanced classes. Nor is it usually brought up that had pollsters been around in those days, the likely results might well have been about 1/3 for, 1/3 against, 1/3 have no idea what’s going on or don’t care. In defense of the teachers, in most cases there is so much to cover in so little time, that they cannot realistically get into much beyond the superficial, which is a shame.
I’m sure you would have come across a fair amount of anti-Americanism, in the UK as well as the rest of Europe. But I suspect the colony remarks were not exactly serious, or were more a statement that if America were still a colony, it couldn’t be doing whatever it was that pissed off the speaker. I stand by my comment that nobody in the UK really cares about the revolution itself.
A few things that don’t get mentioned in American histories of the Revolution:
A lot of Americans supported the Crown. Approximately a third of the population in the colonies were Loyalists and many fought against the Revolution. After the war ended, there was by treaty supposed to be no reprisals against them. Despite this, most loyalists were forced into exile (many going to Canada).
A lot of Englishmen supported the Revolution. Not perhaps to the point of independance, but many Englishmen (including Members of Parliament) felt that the American argument that they were entitled to representation in Parliament had merit. Many English officers refused to serve against Americans and concerns over the loyalty of English troops was one of the reasons that German mercenaries were used.
The Americans intentionally targetted George III. Most of the policies the Americans objected to had been legally passed by Parliament. But the Americans, who were arguing in favor of democracy, couldn’t easily say that they were opposing a democratic government. So American propagandists blamed much of the unfavorable policies on King George III even though they knew he was not particularly repsonsible for them.
Backing up what my fellow Brits have said, the War of Independence is not perceived as a big thing over here.
Its not a case of “We are bitter about it so don’t talk about it.” its just generally not seen as a big thing.
Obviously for you guys its a bloody major thing - it was the beginning of your nation and played a huge part in the formation of your national character, but to Britain its eclipsed by events in Europe that happened at the same time.
It isn’t generally studied at school - any time spent on that period of history focuses very much on the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which played a key role in defining our national character.
I studied it at University, and in a way i was lucky because we had a very good Lecturer and of those studying the module, about 50% were American exchange students. It was certainly interesting to see how teaching on it contrasted between here and America.
To those of us who do know a lot about it, we aren’t so much bitter about you winning as embarrased and amazed that you actually did - i mean come on guys! How bloody flukey can you get???
At the end of the day, if you ask a Brit about the war or bring it up then the reaction you’ll get will depend on how you brought it up:
The legitimate question
American: So what do you think of the War of Independence?
Brit: Not bothered, don’t really know much about it but you guys fought for what you believed in and won. Fair enough.
If a dodgy comment is made by the Brit such as “I can’t believe you beat us!” then its purely in jest and the Brit will make that obvious. You have to remember that as a nation we’ve always had a soft spot for an underdog - and you guys were definitely the underdog.
But if you brought it up in another way:
The attack on British national Pride
American: Ha! We beat you in the War of Independence!
Brit: Oi! Listen you arrogant bubble-gum chewing git…
Then we’ll argue to hell and back about it - because you are insulting us and taking a swipe at our ability in war. We are generally a pretty mild people, but we are bloody proud, patriotic and stubborn minded when we need to be (ask Hitler 
) and there is no way that we’d let an attack like that slip by.
Thats when we’ll start poking great big holes in the “myth” of the revolution.
This is also how we react to films such as “The Patriot” - we have no problem with you guys being proud of your achievement, but we do have a problem with us being portrayed as the “big evil bad guys” who you trashed militarily when neither claim is true.
At the end of the day, we may moan about you yanks but we actually quite like you as a nation so its generally in jest. We can’t bring ourselves to hate you for rebelling (because we know that in your situation we’d have probably done the same).
Our history is so broad that the brief altercation with you guys is just a speck that pales into insignicance.
I think we (as a nation) need to finally give you Americans something that we should have given you a long time ago. We’ve been unfair and cowardly by putting it off for this long, and its about time you had closure so here goes…
The Break Up Speech
I’m sorry, the time we had together was nice, but it was a fling - it couldn’t last. It was never the real thing and it never could be.
Its not you - its us.
I’m sorry but there’s someone else. She was there before you and she’ll always be there for us, and we’re so sorry but even during our time together - we were still thinking about her.
We wanted so much and tried so hard to hate you and hold a grudge but we just couldn’t do it - there is only room in our hearts for one nation.
And that always has been, and always will be…
France
I’m just going to agree with the general consensus and add that it’s understandable that the ‘War of (American) Independence’ is a big deal in the country that was created as a result of the war, but from here, it’s just another episode in an unusually long and colourful nation history; the birth of the US is sandwiched somewhere between all that Napoleonic stuff and empire building elsewhere.
We shouldn’t hijack this thread, but this is an excellent question because unlike the American Revolution the Easter Rising is much more relevant to our lives today and directly concerns a conflict that has cost lives during our own time.
In spite of that I suspect very few English people know much about it (it wasn’t taught when I was at school).
From questions I often get asked I would think they aren’t really taught anything about it.
and to be honest, It didn’t have alot of bearing on British history. Just another revolution brutally quashed in the colonies.
Now in Irish history, it was a major event.
A thread I started ages ago deals with this exact subject. Conclusion: jjimm is a conspiracy theorist.