By your logic, Britain would have been better off without the captive market in India, because of Adam Smith. We know this isn't true. Why would you assume that Britain wouldn't benefit from a captive market in America as well?
No assumption is necessary. Did you read what I said?
I did not say "Losing British America wasn't a significant blow to Great Britain, because of the ideas of Adam Smith."
Let me be try to be clearer. "
People at the time observed that Great Britain didn't seem to be significantly worse-off economically with its relation with the United States, even after the loss of British America;
and this served, in Great Britain at the time, as a vindication of the ideas of Adam Smith because it was in line with his arguments." The mention of Smith was a side-note, and the chain of causation that I am suggesting is the opposite way round to the one you seem to think I am suggesting.
Is that clear?
Could the 13 colonies have embargoed British trade, or gone to war with Britain, as the USA did in the Napoleonic Wars? Obviously not.
The Embargo Act and the War of 1812 were inconvenient for Great Britain (though the former hurt and offended Americans more than it did Britons). I didn't say the American Revolution represented
zero loss for Great Britain; indeed, I explicitly said it wasn't zero loss but it was a rather lesser loss than a lot of people estimate.
Compared to the Napoleonic Wars, which were far more important from the British perspective for reasons that certainly
ought to be blindingly obvious, the British government scarcely even paid attention to the War of 1812. Incidentally, the same thing can be said of the British people as a whole; just ask today and most of us haven't even heard of it.
I know that there's a tendency of Britons to view the colonists as a bunch of freeloaders, but this doesn't square with reality. It was a colonial victory in the War of Austrian Succession (Louisburg) that kept the Low Countries out of French hands.
Things changed over time. Earlier in their history the American colonists viewed themselves as British and weren't so unhappy, therefore, about their money and their men supporting Great Britain. Later in their history this plainly wasn't true. I didn't think that, even in the United States, the idea that the colonists started off viewing themselves as English and later developed a separate national identity of their own was a controversial one. Is it?
And if you're going to deny that the major colonial war close to the American Revolution was started by American expansionism and the main (though not only) British victory therein was the victory of American expansionism, I shall be quite surprised. The same applies if you're going to deny that the conduct of this war, which was focused in Great Britain's colonial ventures and fought for the benefit thereof, was a total disaster for Great Britain's international position in Europe, where, of course, Great Britain actually
is.
As for 'freeloaders', no, it's more sophisticated than that. The Americans didn't want their money or men supporting the endeavours of Great Britain because they didn't regard themselves as part of Great Britain. In the same way, most modern Britons don't like the idea of money going from Great Britain to the EU (even if it's a trifling amount compared to other expenditures) because they don't regard themselves as Europeans; even most Europhiles only say that leaving the EU would be bad for the economy, not that it would be bad for the sake of the ideal of European integration. And many Scots have the same opinion of the United Kingdom. It's not "them damn lazy Yanks", it's that people in State X who would rather be in a different State Y (whether or not State Y yet exists) are obviously going to be reluctant to make sacrifices for the sake of State X.
This is a very strange argument. "Britain managed to prosper without America; QED, Britain with America would not have been significantly stronger."
Now, in contrast, let's see what I
actually said:
me said:
The practical facts are that the tax income derived from British America by the central government was rather small, the British Empire's era of greatest strength came after the loss of British America, and indeed the loss of British America did not greatly harm it save for its pride, which was certainly very greatly battered.
It takes quite the verbal contortionist to twist that into:
not me said:
the British Empire's era of greatest strength came after the loss of British America AND THEREFORE the loss of British America did not greatly harm it save for its pride, which was certainly very greatly battered.
You keep looking at the benefits of the colonies as solely a tax, and not the economic benefits (trade, a source of soldiers, etc.) This is why you're skewing the outcome.
They were a source of soldiers before, yes, but they weren't afterwards. And as I would have thought American history would emphasise, taxation matters.
_____________
Of course they were being expansionist, and of course expansionism was certainly not unknown to Great Britain itself. After all, that's why the colonies existed in the first place. The point isn't to establish British moral superiority over those evil Americans, muahahahaha. The point is that while it may sometimes be useful to spend lots of money and lives on one's
own imperialist ventures, it seldom is to do so for
someone else's.
History doesn't stop at 1900 whatever the Forum.
And since we don't live in an ATL where the Texas oilfields, California's gold fields, Nevada's silver fields, and the amber waves of grain of the Midwest don't exist for Britain, we are free to obsess on the tiny amount of tax revenue gained in the 18th century.
bottom line, bottom line, bottom line
…My precious?
But more seriously: Control of strategic resources is useful; but taxation does matter because we have to consider who would actually have benefited from those resources if the colonial system continued. (That is, if the OTL colonial system continued; if it was replaced after the American Revolution with something that removed autonomy and dramatically hiked up taxes, things would of course be different.) Would the British benefit? Somewhat. Not zero, but not hugely. But most of the benefit would go to the Americans. The Caribbean island comparison—half an island under France, to a vast continental-scale realm under Great Britain, and it's the former that generates more revenue—makes it clear just how very low the taxes on the Americans really were. Therefore, most of the money the Americans made would have gone to the Americans. Of course, that's perfectly reasonable from a moral standpoint, but is of limited use to the British. Not no use, but limited use.
My contention is not that the American Revolution was no loss to Great Britain, but that it was a much lesser loss than a lot of people say; and that it was certainly not enough of a gain to the Kingdom of France (by virtue of the loss to Great Britain) to justify the tremendous cost that it reaped upon the Kingdom of France, namely the destruction thereof.
Agreed. Tory triumphalism could potentially lead to a very dark period in British parliamentary history, with all kinds of negative butterflies.
Indeed. Certainly Great Britain lost the war—no-one with a brain would deny that—but I would go so far as to say that it's a war it was in Great Britain's long-term interests to lose. Not only because it shocked the British out of their complacency and arrogance of the post-Seven Years' War era (well, as much as Britons can ever be made less arrogant, anyway

), it's also the case that holding on longer wouldn't have been of much benefit and would have been expensive in money and lives. It's like the French in Algeria; you'll be hard-pressed today to find someone who thinks that France would be better-off if it hadn't lost Algeria when it did, because if that had happened then France would just have spent more money and more lives trying to hold on, but still would have lost it anyway.
What turned out to happen was for the better for all concerned. The Americans were now independent and no longer had to contribute to a nation to which they plainly didn't want to contribute; and the Britons no longer had to contribute to the funding of wars started by the Americans that benefited the Americans, and didn't have to spend the money and lives it would have taken to hold down the Americans if they had won, which would surely have been considerable and would probably not have succeeded in holding down the Americans indefinitely anyway.
The Spanish Empire was on a downward slide for a long time. If any European power was going to lose their empire economically, it was going to be Spain.
I don't disagree. But the assertion was that the British would have penetrated Latin American markets earlier if they'd won the American Revolution. Perhaps the Spanish Empire's collapse was indeed inevitable, but the Revolutionary French occupation of Spain was certainly a big push down that ramp. As a result thereof, it is my contention that without the French Revolution the British economic penetration of Spanish/post-Spanish America would have started later, not earlier.