A driving sense of duty

The American Revolution is the gorilla in the corner of the room. Some used to pretend that it was safely dead, merely a stuffed gorilla. Others argued that it was inherently friendly. Others again thought it safely distracted by its banana. Alas, it was none of these things, as recent events show. The American Revolution produced a wholly novel society. Its potential for action will dominate our century, as German unification dominated the early 20th. Yet we prefer to pretend that nothing much has happened.

So the British still edge round this momentous question by discussing instead King George III. Nineteenth-century Whigs blamed the loss of the colonies on the king alone, mad or tyrannical or both. In the 20th century, the British bought US involvement in two world wars by subscribing to the American myth of origins. Today, historians are slowly admitting that the world’s most powerful nation is equipped with a self-image that bears only a tangential relation to historical realities.