British reactions to the American Revolution are not well understood today by Americans, who assume an implacable hostility from their erstwhile rulers. In fact, many British radicals and religious Dissenters supported American demands, even after the Declaration of Independence. The leading opposition party in Parliament gave the Americans limited support, arguing that they could be restored to the empire, while the government showed an almost desperate willingness to negotiate up until the outbreak of war, and even beyond it, for example in the notorious Haldimand Affair. For their part, Americans first demanded “British liberties,” then divided themselves irrevocably over the issue of independence, with sizeable groups of Loyalists in every state moving to the British side. During the war, British strategy was to hold onto American ports and the slave-holding South, because imports of tobacco were so vital to the British economy. In the aftermath of revolution, however, the British quickly rebuilt their trading networks with the Americans, who remained dependent on imports from the former home country. Yet if Britannia was not ruined by the American Revolution, it faced a series of internal shocks that arose from that conflict, from the rise of Parliamentary reform to massive anti-Catholic rioting in London. In the end, the British were compelled to pursue a different type of empire elsewhere, notably in South Asia.

Paul Monod taught British and European History at Middlebury College for 40 years before his retirement in 2024. He was named Barton Hepburn Professor of History in 2005. He is the author of several books, including Imperial Island: A History of Britain and its Empire, 1660-1837 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) and Think of England: Nation, People and Race in the English Imagination (Cambridge University Press, to appear in December 2025). With Susan Amussen, he is co-editor of the forthcoming New Cambridge History of Britain, Vol. 5: 1500-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 2026).