Looking Backwards (or, as they say in merry old England, ‘Looking Backward’).

July 4, 2007

I think I’ve posted something like this before, but what the hell: it’s Freedom Day!

Happy America day!

Reading that (which, for the lazy among you, is a detailed look at the rhetorical skill with which our Declaration of Independence was drafted) reminded me about how there are two sides to this special day. And I know that, at this point, Britain doesn’t seem to have any harsh feelings about our secession. In some ways, I’m sure they are more than relieved to be rid of us. But I wonder how they felt at the time of the American Revolution.

Did they care about the Colonies’ rebellion? Did they see America as a source of valuable raw materials and arrowheads, or did they see the same potential in the continent with which we retrospectively imbue it? When we declared our revolution, I’m sure the Brits saw it as a kind of cute little uprising in the boondocks of the Empire. And my limited understanding of the conflict is that they were distracted from addressing the America Problem by some kind of meaningful European melodrama involving, I don’t know, a flotilla or something. I just wonder what, if anything, British people were saying and doing at the time of the events we celebrate on this date.

But leaving aside how the Brits felt in from 1760-1790 (or whatever), I really wonder what they thought over the next century or so. When the Empire began to fade, and America started to really thrive. When we went from a less felonious Australia to a global power (and, ultimately, a superpower). Were they pissed at what they lost? Proud of the seeds they sowed? Too focused on cricket, tea, child labor, and emotional repression to care about the USA?

And I really wonder what they think about America over the last half century. I’m thinking the phrases “just deserts” and “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” might figure in (although considering the fact that our respective national fates seem inexorably intertwined at this point, perhaps the schadenfreude is not so satisfying as usual).

I suppose most of these questions apply to India and Africa, too, but I don’t know nearly enough to even begin to affect authority on either subject. Suffice it to say that Britain has had an interesting and complicated global history.

Anyway. Happy Fireworks Day, everybody.

Posted in History, Writing