Linda Colley Quotes
For a very long time, loyalists were often left out of patriotic American histories of the revolution. Or they were caricatured as upper-class Tory reactionaries, or - rather like the Jacobites - made the subject only of nostalgic antiquarianism.
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.
John Adams, 2nd President of the U.S.
The “abrupt departure” referred to the Tories. The phraseology is today almost comical were it not so serious a matter. This first New Hampshire Constitution was a very short one developed quickly out of necessity.
The French Revolution was out of control and terribly bloody. Most Americans and even English who supported the principles and reasons for the French revolution ceased their support because of the Reign of Terror. Jefferson, however, saw a link between France and American democracy and was reluctant to end support.
Americans were by no means united in wanting to take up arms against Britain. Relatively few of the loyalist quotations have come down to us, but here is one. It also illustrates why some Americans wanted complete independence: So that they could escape their debts to English merchants. Most however had more noble and unselfish motives. As a matter of fact, the American Revolution is unusual in the sense that there were so many men of substance who sacrificed much of their material wealth for the American ideal. There were also the rogues and opportunists as Galloway describes.
Brant had an English style Missionary education and was an Anglican, belonging to the Church of England. During the American Revolution, he persuaded most of the Iroquois tribes to fight for the British against the revolutionary colonists. However, the Oneida tribe was not persuaded and joined the rebel side. A few New England Presbyterian missionaries had targeted the Oneida people, and when that tribe chose the “wrong” side, Brant believed that the reason was their different religious point of view. After the Revolution, Brant and his Iroquois followers were driven out of their American lands and escaped to Canada, while the Oneida were given complete title to their lands by George Washington.
The word “smashing” is a literal translation from the Khmer language. It is not used in the metaphorical sense as we are used to. To save money, arms, bullets and resources the Khmer Rouge method of execution was to “smash” the victim’s head in with a shovel or other implement. This slogan told people literally to murder their political enemies in this brutal way.
during and after the American Revolution
who support the King of England He was one of the very few British Appointed Colonial American Governors who sided with the Patriots in the American Revolutionary war, and was elected Governor after the war when Connecticut was a State.
The simplistic view that the American colonists were patriots and the British were the colonizers against whom the colonists revolted is not really accurate. The American colonists were polarized into patriots and loyalists. The Loyalist Americans ranged from many of those merchants whose business depended upon England, those whose family were still in England, those whose religion made them loyal to the Church of England, slaves who would be free under British law, Americans who had strong cultural and intellectual ties to England and those Americans who were great believers in monarchy and whose honor required that they fulfill the oath that they had taken to the King of England. Some of the worst atrocities of the American Revolution occurred in the battles of these Americans against each other. See {82105} for more on this point.
This was written more than a year before the American Revolution Battles began. It took time to ship the men and supplies to America and the British did not handle that task with much efficiency. See {636926} for another of the King’s statements.
This is a very enlightening quotation. It shows how far to the right the Nazi Germany had gone. Here, the true believers, describe the notion that Jewish German citizens who had the same status as other German citizens before the Nazis took over as a “liberal position” at a time and culture where “liberal” was a great term of derision as it would become amongst conservatives in America at the beginning of the late 20th century. But in Germany it had become “liberal” to object to a minority of citizens being murdered by the state.
Linda Colley, CBE, FBA, FRSL, FRHistS is an expert on British, imperial and global history from 1700. She is currently Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a Long Term Fellow in History at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. She previously held chairs at Yale University and at the London School of Economics. Her work frequently approaches the past from inter-disciplinary perspectives.
