6 - The American Revolution

Summary

The shift in British emphasis from European to extra-European empire, already visible at the end of the Seven Years’ War, arguably caused the American Revolution and certainly intensified during it. If Hanover did not ‘fall back into political irrelevance’ during this period, it did move from intrinsic to extrinsic importance in that it tended to feature as a point of comparison for publicists more interested in Britain's American empire. Nevertheless, their passing references to Hanover shed light on the nature of its relationship to Britain. Increased references to personal union during the 1760s and 1770s bespeak nostalgia for the Walpole era, one also suggested by Edmund Burke's famous paean to ‘salutary neglect’. Although the Hanoverian professor Johann Stephan Pütter coined the term ‘personal union’ and applied it to Britain during this period, Hanover's relationship to the empire attracted far more attention from Pütter's Anglo-American contemporaries. Given the prominence (though by no means dominance) of natural law in American political discourse, it is not surprising that Hanover should feature in arguments against metropolitan sovereignty. But parliament's supporters also resorted to the personal union thesis, if only to restrict its pertinence to Britain's relationship with Hanover. Accordingly, the personal union thesis (at least as applied to Hanover) experienced fleeting consensus among British commentators. But this popularity abated once Americans resolved to separate from Britain altogether, and began to identify with Hanover's supposed status as an exploited imperial possession. And even though Hanover's personal union did not necessarily depend upon the American parallel, the decline of the latter reacquainted Britons with their old skepticism about the ability of personal unions in general to prevent imperial exploitation.

Imperial constructions of Britain's relationship with Hanover proved their durability in America's reaction to the Stamp Act. Metropolitan Britons already paid a tax on legal and commercial paper, which was stamped to indicate compliance. But in 1765 parliament extended this tax to the empire in an attempt to defray the cost of the standing army which would garrison Britain's new American conquests. Additionally, Britain hoped the revenue would pay down the debt it had incurred in the Seven Years’ War. Americans noted ruefully that they were footing the bill for the wartime defense of Hanover, which the parliament had not taxed.