U.S. History The American response to the British rule under King George III was not swayed by traditional pieties toward monarchy. For example, the official portrait of George III as reflected in the 1770 woodcut illustration from a children's schoolbook (reprinted p121) presents a naive and sentimental patriotism about the idea of "empire" altogether: George is presented as King "by the Grace of GOD" and proclaimed "Defender of the Faith," which mark the English monarch's traditional role as the official head of the Church of England. This was, of course, official policy established only after religious and doctrinal conflict had provoked a civil war and replaced the monarchy with Cromwell's protectorate a little over a century earlier -- but it is worth noting that the origin of so many New England colonies in religious sects, like the Puritans (New England), England's persecuted Catholics (Maryland),...

It was a dire miscalculation for England to think that the American colonists would be happy to remain in an Empire that also included (according to the woodcut) France and Ireland -- the first of these nothing more than a historic belligerent claim dating back before the Tudor era, the second of these a hardly uncontroversial annexation (which would itself be shaken by a 1798 uprising inspired by the revolutions in America and then France). By the time of the events depicted in the engraving reprinted on p.122, the unpopularity of the Hanoverian monarch was sufficient to unite broad sectors of the American population against his rule: the woodcut indicates a broadly democratic swathe of opposition gathered to tear down a statue of the King. At the far right, a gentleman with…