This thread Voluntary Accession - Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports - Straight Dope Message Board reminds me of the fact that less than 100 years after fighting a batte with France and less than 90 after fighting the colonies, they just gave up Canada to the inhabitants. Why was North America so important in the 1770s and so unimportant in the 1860s?
Yes, Britain retained a formal sovereignity untip 1981, but never exercised (but once, I understand and that resulted in riots and was withdrawn).
They didn’t, which is why Canada entered WWI automatically when the UK entered the war. Canada didn’t become fully independent until 1931 with the Statute of Westminster.
The process started quite a bit earlier than the 1860s, actually.
I’m no expert on Canadian history, but I believe the long-story-short version is that the Canadians wanted self-determination and the British felt that giving it to them was a more prudent choice in the long term than going to war over it.
1/ Parents generally move towards kids having autonomy when grown up. ( Except in Ancient Rome. )
2/ Canadians generally did not want to force a break, and indeed rightly feared becoming Americans more than worrying about a rather tenuous political link with a then powerful ( although short-lived and minor ) empire, which let them get on with self-governing.
3/ Most colonies ( as distinct from possessions with their own original peoples in control ) ought to be eased into becoming their own kingdoms ( given as an appanage to a prince and run by a new connected dynasty * ) or states as peacefully as possible — armed rebellion forces the founding state to fight back, even if they don’t want to. The American Revolution could have been managed peacefully, but that wouldn’t have suited the revolutionaries ( except perhaps Franklin ) since it lacked heroics and the establishment of a founding mythology and subsequent civil religion; just like the USSR later.
This is the first time I’ve seen the British Empire described as “short-lived and minor.”
A political link that brings a country into a major war, on the basis of decisions by leaders of other countries, wouldn’t generally be thought of as “tenuous,” either.
Short-lived perhaps but minor? It had the largest empire the world has ever seen. Your definition of minor certainly differs from mine.
Later on, the British came to realize that native, non-British persons could not be treated indefinitely as colonial subjects, either. But that was another lesson for another century.
By the mid-Nineteenth Century, Britain felt less need to tax its colonies or control their trade. (These had been the two irreconcilable differences with America.) The Empire had been mostly at peace since 1815, and was paying down its national debt, and was moving toward free trade as formalized in the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.
The Nineteenth-Century British did not give up control of the foreign policy of their colonies or dominions, which is what was important to the Empire by mid-century. Britain conducted diplomacy and made war and peace on behalf of the entire Empire until after World War I.
Was Canada the first major holding they released (save for the US)? Did they assume they had plenty of other land and enough loyalty from Canadians that it didn’t matter?
Yes. The Australian colonies (not yet federated into “Australia”) and New Zealand had followed by the 1850’s.
But again, “released” means internal self-government, not control over foreign affairs.
Check out the Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Bzyantine, Umayyad, Han, HRE and Austrian Empires for age based on centuries rather than decades. The British lasted from the 1850s when they took over India ( or really some parts of India ) from John Company to around 1940.
They had some places caught from the 1600s on like the 13 colonies but even that doesn’t compare to the Mongol Empire.
But the choice was for the dominion’s to make. Britain relied more on Kith and Kin pleas than direct orders. They couldn’t even impose conscription in Ireland next-door.
Large perhaps, but mainly the large empty bits that no-one else wanted — except the French, who wanted them to deny them to the English, who wanted them to deny them to the French — not necessarily a bad idea. The pointless Race to Fashoda nearly caused war in Europe.
Plus collecting foreign places ultimately bankrupted Britain. The Dutch Empire was far more condensed and more profitably run. ( But not more nicely. )
One of the final comments at the end of the USA chapter of Barbara Tuchman’s ‘The March of Folly’ is how England had so deftly handled the Canadian situation some dcades after they had so horribly, horribly blundered with the American Revolution. Lesson learned.
The British Empire was the preeminent power in the world for more than a century, and its legacy lives today in the lives of billions. There is no rational interpretation of Earth history in which this is a “minor” matter.
I don’t reject out of hand the notion that the 13 colonies might have been able to leave peacefully, but…cite?
Also, “armed rebellion forces the founding state to fight back, even if they don’t want to” doesn’t make sense. A state that doesn’t want to fight a war is a state that isn’t in a war.
More profitable to stay friends, than to make enemies, come down to it. They learned an expensive lesson with America, and, to their credit, acted more wisely the next time around.
One of the things that I wonder is why they didn’t try a US-style federal type arrangement, with the provinces of Canada, the constituent countries of the UK, and other colonies forming some sort of United British Dominions with a Federal government in London to sort of keep things from falling apart and make foreign policy decisions and the local governments to actually run day-to-day life.
Pretty much for the same reason the British were happy when the Spanish colonies of South America broke away from Spain. Britain was always a nation of merchants and as long as they got rich from trade, they were not particularly interested in who actually ruled it.
For sure there were examples like Cape Colony and Egypt where they wanted to preserve their trade routes against hostile countries, but for the most part Britian was happy to use their navy to equalize everyone (change sides) and rake in the profits.
All interesting replies. I think Freddy the Pig said it best. I don’t think the US could have separated peacefully. There were people in England, Whigs especially, who wanted to ease up on things like the stamp tax and total control over trade, but George III and the Tories were intransigeant.
I wonder what would have happened had the colonies lost. I am just now reading 1776, a book by David McCullough, who makes it clear that Howe could have destroyed half the colonial army in Brooklyn had he pursued them and not allowed them to escape to Manhattan.
It still seems odd to me that 90 years later self-rule passed to Canada without a shot being fired. Even if, as my Canadian friends say, Britain fought WWI down to the last colonial. Probably Aussies and Kiwis say the same.
The Canadians said “please” real nicely …
Remember too, many Americans who liked the British ways, retreated to Canada at the time. Also I think it would have been a more difficult enterprise to protect their colonies, in the event of a conflict. They were less clustered together. Spread further apart through wilder country.
It was discussed. Joseph Chamberlain, the head of the Colonial Office in 1900, advocated for such an arrangement. Nothing came of it, partly because the Dominions weren’t especially interested in sharing responsibility for Imperial defense. They feared shared responsibility would mean shared taxes. Also, the federations in Canada and Australia had enough trouble reconciling their own piece-parts to spend much time worrying about an even grander federation.