Independence: The Tangled Roots Of The American Revolution, by Thomas Slaughter

This book, if not exhaustive in its approach, manages to accomplish in a little over 400 pages an immensely worthwhile task: demonstrating the two-sided nature of the divide between the United States and Great Britain founded in continual and persistent miscommunication about a small set of terms relating to independence. The author provides a well-researched and detailed support for the case of how this misunderstanding came to be, and how it came to be so important, but what it amounts in somewhat simplified terms is that colonists openly desired and insisted upon independence in the sense of local autonomy and a respect for their own local representation, as well as the legitimacy of their own dignity and self-interest, while the imperial government in London, especially after 1763, but even before this, demanded to be seen as imperial overlords before whom the colonists were rebellious dependents, a tragic misunderstanding that inevitably resulted in conflict.

Although, ultimately, as a patriotic American with a strong distaste for tyranny and a great deal of native suspicion for authority that does not prove itself to be acting with my best interests in mind, I tend to sympathize greatly with the plight of the colonists in their struggles with the imperial government, and I resent the corruption of government and the dangers of civil servants losing respect for the commonfolk, the colonists themselves certainly do not show themselves to be blameless. The author’s demonstration of the bigotry and disturbingly easy recourse to violence in situations of debate are greatly troubling to me, as is the fact that conspiracy theories were so readily believed by colonists, having a key role in provoking the final break between the United States and Great Britain over the harsh treatment of Massachusetts for its principled but provocative resistance to imperial authority.

In a series of pithily titled chapters that move their way from colonial origins to an examination of the global scale of the British Empire and its cross-currents, Slaughter demonstrates that from the very beginnings of the American colonies there was a fundamental disconnect between the views of the colonists and the expectations and assumptions of Parliament. This divide between local populations and imperial elites was by no means limited to Britain’s colonies, but the tradition in Great Britain of petitions and revolt as a recourse against overly powerful central governments gave an edge to the situation in the colonies that led to increased conflict. Although there were plenty of divides within the colonies themselves over issues like ethnicity, militarism, economics, and political representation, Britain’s heavy-handed attempts at rule were such that a great degree of unity was able to be achieved by Britain’s bungling, which this book does a great job of discussing, especially with regards to corrupt officials who managed to antagonize key colonists, like the Laurens family in South Carolina and John Hancock in Massachusetts, and radicalize those who had been restrained and conservative.

This is a compelling book in its even-handed approach, its focus on using primary documents rather than commentary to make its points, and in the way in which it focuses around a small set of contested terms like independence and white, to give but two of the most notable examples. The book is full of enlivening episodes and it contains a great deal of importance for those who wish to understand the contemporary struggle in the United States between different conceptions of our legacy, as this book demonstrates the core of opposition to central authority, especially if it is run by corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats, that remains important in contemporary American society. A separation that was wanted by few ended up taking place in order to preserve the independence that the colonists had and that they refused to give up on in the face of mounting disrespect and provocation by an imperial central government. May others profit from the example.