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The Long Fuse. How England Lost the American…
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The Long Fuse. How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785 (1995 original; edició 1995)

de Don Cook

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1974137,737 (3.76)10
In The Long Fuse, Don Cook investigates the American Revolution from the British side, throwing new light on this colorful age and its players. He draws from a multitude of primary sources, including personal correspondence and political memoranda, to show how Britain, at the height of her power but suffering from internal political strife, made one mistake after another, culminating in the loss of her prized colonies. In opposition to King George's American policies were such towering figures as William Pitt, Edmund Burke, and Charles James Fox; their speeches in the House of Commons are some of the best oratory in the English language. But despite their eloquence and forcefulness, they did not have the votes to prevail. In the end, the Americans rebelled as much against an English political state of mind as against the British Army. Cook takes us through the war years: King George's decision that "blows must decide" the colonies' future; Lord North's futile effort to negotiate peace after the British defeat at Saratoga, which only hastened the American alliance with France; the secret letter from Washington to Lafayette that the British intercepted, perhaps altering the outcome of the Battle of Yorktown; and the peace negotiations masterminded by Franklin and John Jay. Winner of the Colonial Dames of America Annual Book Award 1996. "The Long Fuse is a marvelous new way of understanding the Revolutionary War. Many Americans have no idea of the extraordinary combinationof brilliance, ignorance, stubbornness and intelligence on the British side. We won with a majestic collection of heroes, fools, geniuses, and rogues; they lost with an unforgettable cast of colorful characters. This eye-opening book is a splendid historical synthesis." - John Chancellor… (més)
Membre:s.dunkelberger
Títol:The Long Fuse. How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785
Autors:Don Cook
Informació:Atlantic Monthly (1995), Edition: 1st Paperback Ed, Paperback
Col·leccions:Daddy's Library
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The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785 de Don Cook (1995)

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Among some of my Liberal friends – as evinced by Facebook posts – there is the tentative feeling that the American Revolution was A Bad Thing. After all, if we had remained part of the British Empire we would now have Gun Control and Parliamentary Government and National Health Service and all those other Good Things that Australia and Canada and England and New Zealand and Pitcairn’s Island have. We might even be part of the European Union. I have refrained from riposte, there being not much sense in doing so; I had framed the response “We might just as easily ended up like pre-Mandela South Africa. Or possibly speaking German. Or Russian.” However, in the front matter to Don Cook’s The Long Fuse, I found a better answer:


“We learned to respect the rights of others to govern themselves in their own way. That was the outcome of the experience learned the hard way on 1776. Without that great act in the cause of liberty performed in Independence Hall two hundred years ago, we could never have transformed our Empire into a Commonwealth.”


Queen Elizabeth II, at the Independence Bicentennial, Philadelphia, July 6, 1976.


Cook is an American journalist who spent years in London as a foreign correspondent for several newspapers. His take on the American Revolution focuses on British politics; the war doesn’t even start until about two thirds of the way through the book. The initial focus is on the titular “long fuse”; the gradual accumulation of petty annoyances that pushed the Colonials over the brink.


In the naïve view, the Revolutionary War was about Taxes, and, since to some people Taxes are a Good Thing and those who don’t want to pay taxes are Bad People, it would seem again that the Revolutionary War was A Bad Thing. It’s further sometimes noted that in contemporary currency the total taxes an average colonial would pay in, say, 1765, were less than the taxes English natives were paying, and less than an average American paid in, say, 1965. As Cook points out what the war was about was not taxes per se but internal taxes imposed by London. The colonies never complained – well, not much - about external taxes – customs duties and import-export regulations. As a free market enthusiast, it’s these that would have griped me a lot more than the Stamp Act. In 1704 the colonies were prohibited from exporting rice, molasses, tar, turpentine, and hemp to anywhere but England; in 1721 they were forbidden to import tea, pepper, spices, drugs, silk, and cotton fabric except through the East India Company; in 1722 it was forbidden to cut trees over a certain circumference unless shipped to England for ship masts; in 1730 import duties on English products were prohibited (although England kept duties on colonial products); in 1732 it was forbidden to export felt, felt hats and beer hops; and in 1750 new iron rolling mills and iron furnaces were prohibited. During the same period import duties on foreign products – especially molasses and sugar from the French Caribbean – were raised. Of course, as Cook points out, one of the reasons the colonials didn’t complain about these customs restrictions is that they were cheerfully ignoring them. There were 200 customs agents to cover the whole Atlantic coast, from Nova Scotia to the Bahamas, and they were easily bribable. Cook notes financial records showing there was a substantial net loss in colonial customs – revenue from customs was about one quarter of the cost of the customs establishment.


For Cook, the year of decision was 1760, at the end of the Seven Years War (the war didn’t actually end until 1763, but Montreal fell in 1760 so it was effectively over for the colonies). Prior to the war, there were only 500 British Army regulars deployed in the colonies – five companies spread from Halifax to Charleston. At maximum during the war the number rose to 25,000, with another 25,000 colonial militia – paid for by the colonies themselves, through taxes imposed by colonial legislatures. After the war the British government proposed to keep 10000 soldiers on establishment in the colonies – fourteen regiments – about a third of the total British army. What’s more, none of these were to be deployed on the frontier – essentially anywhere west of the Appalachians – but along the coast; all posts and fortresses west of mountains were abandoned and peace with the natives would be maintained by forbidding settlement in their territory. And this army would be paid for by internal taxes on the colonies – initially the Stamp Act. I hadn’t realized that the Stamp Act was discriminatory against the colonies; again the current politically correct doctrine is that the Stamp Act was merely imposing the same kind of revenue duties on the colonials that the English had been paying for years. It’s true that something like the Stamp Act had been operating in England – but the fees were much smaller. Cook gives a couple of examples; a colonial who wanted to go to a university had to spend two pounds for a matriculation stamp, and then another two pounds for a diploma stamp on graduation; in England these stamps cost two shillings. In order to be admitted to the bar a colonial lawyer had to buy a ten pound stamp; an English lawyer paid six pounds. What’s more, this was deliberately done (as recorded by one of the drafters of the Stamp Act) to “…keep mean persons out of those situations in life which they would disgrace.”


Plus the British government realized that their customs collections were going poorly, and they resolved to fix that. The Royal Navy presence and the number of land-based customs collectors were increased. The colonials had represented that they had no complaint with customs, since they were an external tax – but now they were embarrassed to find that the government was actually serious about collecting them.


The colonials were incredulous; when the French were an active presence in North America the British military was barely a corporal’s guard, but now that there was no credible foreign enemy they were expected to pay for a third of the Royal Army to be deployed there. Plus smuggling operations, which previously been handled with a wink and a nod, were now going to be interdicted. This seems like hypocrisy, since the colonials had always maintained they had no objection to external taxes – but they had a point; customs violations were handled in Admiralty Court, not in colonial courts. The only Admiralty Court in North America was in Halifax. Thus if a ship and crew were seized for smuggling in, say, Savannah, they were transported to Nova Scotia for trial; and Admiralty Court trials were bench trials, not jury trials; and the judge got 5% of any fines levied. (This was also going to be true for violations of the Stamp Act, although Cook notes that very few colonials were tried under the smuggling rules, and apparently nobody under the Stamp Act rules).


Cook’s villain in all this is King George III. The previous Revolutionary War histories I’ve read generally give the King a pass, blaming the problems on his ministers instead; Cook argues that the King was behind it all and insisted on policies that his ministers didn’t like. To me, it seems like a fulfilment of the old saying “Never attribute to malevolence what can be explained by incompetence”. The King, his ministers, and Parliament – even those nominally sympathetic to the colonies – were all clueless about conditions in North America; it might be said that the real slogan of rebellion should have been not “No Taxation Without Representation!” but “What Are These Guys Thinking?”


If George III is the villain, Cook’s hero is Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was acting as Agent for Pennsylvania – essentially a lobbyist. He was also Deputy Postmaster for North America, which nowadays would have been a conflict of interest that the media would run with but which was business as usual in the 1700s. Ironically, Franklin’s original business in London as agent for Pennsylvania was a fight over taxation with the expatriate Penn family; the Pennsylvania assembly wanted to tax their extensive land holdings while they argued that they were exempt from taxation based on the original Pennsylvania Royal Charter (a compromise was worked agreeable to both parties; developed Penn land paid property taxes; undeveloped land did not). As time went on, Franklin became the “go to guy” for formal and informal discussions of colonial policy; he testified before Parliament and the Privy Council and had private contacts with various influential people. Apparently his repeated attempts to explain colonial attitudes lead to several attempts to bribe him, again displaying the cluelessness of the British government; first the assumption that Franklin would take a bribe and second the assumption that he had that enough influence over the mood in the colonies that a successful bribe would have made any difference.


One of the things I never realized was the economic power the colonies had. I’d always envisioned – influenced, perhaps, by my high school American history classes – the colonies as the David to England’s Goliath. In fact, according to Cook the colonial boycott of English goods was a large factor in the repeal of the Stamp Act; English manufacturers were losing more money from the colonial boycott that the Stamp Act collected. Again, however, Parliament displayed cluelessness: the Stamp Act was repealed by the Declaratory Act – which reserved the right of Parliament to impose internal taxes on the colonies in the future. This didn’t really satisfy anybody; radicals in the colonies grumped that with the Declaratory Act the English government would just find other ways of taxing the colonies – which turned out the be the case; Tories in England grumped that if the colonies were allowed to have their way on the Stamp Act they wouldn’t stop until they were independent – which also turned out to be the case.


Well, we all know what happened next. The last third of the book concerns the Revolution, but there’s very little military history here. Although all the major battles are mentioned Cook is mostly interested in how someone in contemporary London would see them – confused and contradictory dispatches arriving about thirty days after the event. Once again he gives a lot of attention to politics, describing Franklin’s efforts in France in some detail. There was a tendency in the French government – at least with some of the people Franklin was dealing with – to imagine that America would go from being an English colony to a French one; Franklin had to delicately disabuse them from this notion. He had recourse to “clandestine” meetings with English agents – he knew perfectly well these were monitored by the French – to give the impression America might make a separate peace whenever the French became especially obstreperous. Even then, the French attitude seemed to be more about getting sugar islands in the Caribbean than assisting in America; they didn’t coordinate the Yorktown campaign with Washington, and he had to swallow his pride and march his army out of the trenches around New York to be in on the siege of Yorktown at all (even then Cornwallis wanted to surrender to a French general rather than Washington).Of course the war didn’t end right there, but it was over for all practical purposes. An interesting bit of historical trivia: the treaties ending the war were signed in Paris (by this time England was at war with America, France, the Netherlands, and Spain simultaneously). Each of the parties got its own treaty; however American copy has been lost and the only copy is now in the Public Records Office in London.


All in all an interesting take on things; as mentioned variously above it disabused me of several notions I had held about the Revolution. About the only questionable thing is Cook’s portrayal of King George; he notes that George III was an inveterate political letter writer, often producing several pages a day; but despite the claim that George was the prime agent responsible for the loss of the colonies Cook seldom quotes him. No maps, but none are really necessary. Illustrated with portraits of the various parties. A rather skimpy bibliography, but with many primary sources. No foot- or endnotes. The index was adequate for everything I wanted to look up. ( )
  setnahkt | Dec 26, 2017 |
The main reason for reading this book is the focus on the politics at the UK end. It provides lively descriptions of the personalities involved. But in general I found it to be unreliable. ( )
  johnclaydon | Jun 16, 2015 |
I gave up on this book 90 pages in, so maybe it isn't fair that I review it, but since at this time there's only one other review of it, I hope that someone might find this helpful. I really wanted to like the book, and I think I might go back and try to read it again sometime, but for now, I found it annoying. In almost every passage that Cook quotes, he's italicized the bit he thinks is most important, and then puts [Emphasis Added] after each one, which is what you're supposed to do if you do that, but if you have to do that every time you quote a passage, you either need to find a better way to set up your quotes so that you can quote only what you actually need, or you need to quit assuming your readers are complete morons who can't figure out which bit of the quote is pertinent to your argument. If he'd only done it occasionally, once or twice in the entire book, that would be one thing, but he did it a lot - like every two or three pages, and sometimes in multiple quotes on a page. After a while, the only thing I'd remember reading on a page was [Emphasis Added], so despite really wanting to read a different take on this period in history, I gave up.
  ShanM816 | Feb 23, 2010 |
2947 The Long Fuse: How England Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785, by Don Cook (read 20 Jan 1997) This is an exceptionally well-done book, even though it has no footnotes. It has a good bibliography and Cook does a workman-like job, telling of the war through mostly English eyes. While I have been over this ground before, I found this fresh and well-done. He makes the Revolution seem not nearly such a close run thing as do people reviewing it from the American side. ( )
1 vota Schmerguls | Jan 20, 2008 |
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In The Long Fuse, Don Cook investigates the American Revolution from the British side, throwing new light on this colorful age and its players. He draws from a multitude of primary sources, including personal correspondence and political memoranda, to show how Britain, at the height of her power but suffering from internal political strife, made one mistake after another, culminating in the loss of her prized colonies. In opposition to King George's American policies were such towering figures as William Pitt, Edmund Burke, and Charles James Fox; their speeches in the House of Commons are some of the best oratory in the English language. But despite their eloquence and forcefulness, they did not have the votes to prevail. In the end, the Americans rebelled as much against an English political state of mind as against the British Army. Cook takes us through the war years: King George's decision that "blows must decide" the colonies' future; Lord North's futile effort to negotiate peace after the British defeat at Saratoga, which only hastened the American alliance with France; the secret letter from Washington to Lafayette that the British intercepted, perhaps altering the outcome of the Battle of Yorktown; and the peace negotiations masterminded by Franklin and John Jay. Winner of the Colonial Dames of America Annual Book Award 1996. "The Long Fuse is a marvelous new way of understanding the Revolutionary War. Many Americans have no idea of the extraordinary combinationof brilliance, ignorance, stubbornness and intelligence on the British side. We won with a majestic collection of heroes, fools, geniuses, and rogues; they lost with an unforgettable cast of colorful characters. This eye-opening book is a splendid historical synthesis." - John Chancellor

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