Must This Englishman Live, &c.: Endless Revisionism From Mr. Roberts

If you're a Yank, & you've been offended by the celebration of treason (treason celebrated, oddly enough, by those who are first to hurl an accusation thereof at their fellow Americans) that's gone on since the slavers lost the War of Northern Aggression Between The States, & have only been more irked as Republican/Tea Bag/conservative/reactionary elements have increased the beating they've been giving the dead & buried horse of states' rights as the sesquicentennial of the Cracker Rebellion & that lost & noble cause has neared, you might have wondered if this revisionist bullshit could be topped.*

Well, Peak Wing-nut, our ass. Of course that can be beat. For example, a book review in The Daily Beast. (Not to be confused w/ The Daily Caller, or [simply] The Daily, which we haven't perused, & fully intend to keep ignoring, no matter how many references to it we see.)

Although Jasanoff does not put it in quite so stark terms, the Loyalists were people who opposed the anarchy that the revolution seemed to offer in its early stages, the tarring and feathering and the mob-rule exemplified by the Boston Tea Partiers’ despicable fancy-dressed hooliganism. They saw the opposition of Boston merchants—for whom, in many cases, read common smugglers—to pay their taxes as a glaring lack of gratitude for the massive debt that British taxpayers had incurred while protecting America during the French and Indian War. They also saw through the ludicrous attempt by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others to portray the gentle, intellectual, and dignified King George III as some kind of European-style tyrant, especially when Americans paid an average of 6d in direct taxation per annum, one-fiftieth of the 25s Britons paid without hypocritically yelping about “liberty.” As for genuine liberties, such as that of conscience, Dissenters could operate in Britain without licenses, but not in some American colonies.

You read right, a review that includes "does not put it in quite so stark terms," but immediately asks, "You dirty peasants, how dare you?" There's a joke about the difference between Loyalist & Royalist here, & it doesn't have anything to do w/ the Japanese. And the hypocritical yelping. It never stops, does it Mr. Roberts? Wouldn't surprise us in the least if Andrew had been hoping that Mubarak would hold on against the filthy unwashed of his once-British colony. (The loss of which we're sure he laments daily, judging from what he finds admirable about the sufferers of the Loyalist diaspora.)

The Harvard historian Maya Jasanoff has trawled the archives of all the major destinations where the Loyalists wound up, including Britain, Canada, the Bahamas, the West Indies (especially Jamaica), and Sierra Leone. Her biggest trove of documents proved to be the records of the Loyalist Claims Commission, which was set up to compensate Loyalists for their losses and reward them for their fidelity to the crown, which had often cost them all they owned. The result is the first comprehensive global history of the Loyalist diaspora. And it really is global; the British empire in India was partly won by the efforts of first- and second-generation Loyalists such as Benedict Arnold’s sons, and Freetown in Sierra Leone was founded by 1,200 black Loyalists. The first serious proposal to colonize Australia came from an American Loyalist.

Slavery in the W. Indies, & imperialism on the other sides of the world. Just as well they left. If only more Confederates had.

We've a vague memory that Andrew Roberts ([His] latest book, Masters and Commanders, was published in the U.K. in September. His previous books include Napoleon and Wellington, Hitler and Churchill, and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. Roberts is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.) was G.W. Bush's fave historian, whatever the hell that meant. Bush 43 being so busy reading & all, how could he possibly have chosen a fave?

*All one sentence. So much for Faulkner.