‘Declaration of Independence’ by John Trumbull (1756-1843) shows the Continental Congress, sitting at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and John Hancock (seated at the desk) receiving the draft Declaration from the five-man committee tasked with drawing it up: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. The Federal Convention of 1787 subsequently adopted a new US Constitution, and Washington served as the nation’s first President from 1789 to 1797.
Part 1 of 2
THROUGHOUT the eighteenth century, London had confined her thirteen American colonies within a trade zone, taxing trade and regulating markets in a bid to pay down the National Debt and boost the struggling East India Company, a government-backed agency. As the Colonies had no MPs, they could not influence Westminster’s policy.
In 1773, protestors dumped a consignment of the Company’s tea into Boston harbour, and King George III’s Government responded with force, provoking full-scale revolt.* The first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on April 19th, 1775.*
The following December, the recently-formed Continental Congress, the rebels’ government, disavowed Westminster’s sovereignty, and delegates signed a Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. Defeat for the fledgling Continental Army at the Battle of Brandywine, Pennsylvania, on September 11th, 1777 was swiftly followed by victory, when on October 7th the British were forced into a humiliating surrender at Saratoga, New York. London hastily offered to recognise Congress and repeal the offending legislation, but too late.
The Government justified taxing the Americans by pointing out that the National Debt reflected the cost of defending them in The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). The East India Company’s flagging fortunes were in part a consequence of the corruption and bad fiscal policy which had recently exacerbated The Great Bengal Famine, and irreparably damaged the Company’s public reputation.
See The Boston Tea Party.
Part Two
‘The Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga, October 16, 1777’, by John Trumbull (1756-1843). Two British forces converged on the Continental Army at Saratoga, one from New York, the other from Canada under General Burgoyne, but managed to let the Americans surround them. General Horatio Gates accepted Burgoyne’s surrender, and made him sign the Convention of Saratoga the following day, by which the troops under his command agreed to disarm and leave America (Congress later revoked the Convention and interned them). Major General Benedict Arnold, who so notoriously defected to the British in 1780, fought bravely for the rebels and was seriously wounded.
EMBOLDENED by the humiliation at Saratoga, Louis XVI, who coveted London’s possessions in India and the West Indies, brought France into the war on the rebels’ side; Spain followed in June 1779, and the Netherlands a year later. Plans were laid for an invasion of England.*
George III’s loyal Prime Minister, Lord North, nevertheless clung to his belligerent policy, defying Parliamentary protest. Then came news that on October 19th, 1781, General Washington had accepted the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, thanks to French ships frustrating the Royal Navy at Chesapeake Bay. Parliament voted to end all military action against the Americans, and North resigned in March 1782.
France’s threat in the West Indies ended with the Battle of the Saintes on April 12th, 1782, and Hyder Ali’s Paris-backed rebellion in Mysore, India, was contained by 1784.* But the King grudgingly accepted that the Thirteen Colonies were irretrievably lost, and the Peace of Versailles on September 3rd, 1783, recognised the United States of America.
The invasion never materialised, owing to an outbreak of disease in the French fleet. But American privateers did harass British merchant shipping in the Irish Sea and even in the North Sea: see The Battle of Flamborough Head.
Hyder Ali, de facto ruler of Mysore, died on December 7th, 1782, but the Second Anglo-Mysore War went on until the Treaty of Mangalore on March 11th, 1784. His son Tipu assumed his father’s mantle and carried the battle to the British until 1799. See Hyder Ali and Tipu.
Îles des Saintes are a small group of islands between Guadaloupe and Dominica on the eastern edge of the Caribbean Sea. Whereas Barbados, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis and other Caribbean islands formerly in the British Empire were granted independence many years ago, Guadaloupe and Les Saintes remain French dependencies.
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