Could an American-style revolution happen in England?

Cromwell's revolution was the closest to an American-style revolution IOTL.

Agreed. The English Civil War had a different gestation, but it was fought over a lot of the same grievances, freedom of speech, the right to worship, taxation and representation.
 
I am not convinced by this - in the late 1700s most of the newly enfranchised voters would have been tenant farmers who would have voted as their landlord told them, meaning that radicals would be unlikely to gain significantly greater representation. Also, a 1700s Reform Act would have been a lot less radical than the one that we got in 1832.

The Great Reform Act brought the electorate from 500k to 800k, and I was suggesting a more modest act. The main change would be giving more power to urban rich voters who mostly voted already but were outvoted by disproportionate power belonging to rural seats or rotten boroughs.
 
Remove Victoria, early death. Have William IV predecease King George IV, leaving their brother Ernst August to take the throne in 1830. A reactionary bigot, he aggressively fought the 1832 Reform Act in the Lords IOTL. As King he could have more influence, perhaps even try to turn the clock back, appointing a High Tory government and ruling by decree.

I agree a buggered 1832 Revolution is the best POD for a British revolution. But after the Napoleonic Wars, was Britain too much bound up in the idea of a monarchy to consider a republic, as opposed to a very defanged monarchy?
 
Yeah, it was a bit of an overgeneralization. The remnants of the great land-proprietors who owned massive grants of land awarded by the crown (mainly Pennslyvania) had their undeveloped tracts seized, or in the case of John Penn, were forced to sell to the state. And the royal governors were of course kicked out.

Interestingly, the pro-Penn party in colonial Pennsylvania is the antecedent of the radical revolutionary faction after 1776. It was the conservative Eastern establishment that was pushing hardest for Pennsylvania to become a Royal instead of Proprietary colony, and the back-country and Western counties were pro-Penn in opposition to this establishment.

Anyway, it's not just about a few land owners and royal governors. The entire mercantile establishment in the South was over-turned. The Scottish factors that bought and exported cash crops from the upper-South was kicked out for good, for example.

Notheless I said "the governing class" because the politicians who controlled the political apparatuses of the colonies remained in power in most of the colonies.

It's just that this summary is such a dramatic over-simplification of what happened that it trends into inaccuracy. Outside the self-governing charter colonies, the royal administration had significant influence in all the royal colonies below Connecticut. Throwing out Royal governors and their administrations is politicians who controlled colonial political apparatuses losing power. While many colonies saw many of the same men sitting in their legislatures after independence that sat prior to it (although, again, even they saw turnover in the years leading up to the crisis), those legislatures were usually significantly checked by the power and influence of the Royal governors present in their colonies.

Although what it ultimately comes down to is that the actual Revolutionary War was one part of a wider revolutionary process in the colonies and, later, United States. Ignoring the fact that ideas of a 'non-revolutionary revolution' are very hard to sustain in the face of the civil wars that happened in almost all of the colonies leading up to Independence, massive changes happened in American society from the 1760's onward, with the actual War being but a portion of the overthrow of the traditional order.

In a lot of ways the United States is a revolutionary government and the social revolution is still going on today. The recent Supreme Court decision to bring homosexuals into the marital fold is as much an expression of the ideals of American liberty and equality as it is anything else.

But that's getting too far afield. The real point I'm trying to drive home is that the Consensus and Progressive positions on the Revolution are both wrong. It wasn't a cynical political maneuver on the part of self-interested merchants and planters with little real benefit or drive from the average person, but neither was it a broad-based national awakening with few social implications. It's complicated and really understanding what happened and what it meant involves a lot of study.
 
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