Primary Source Analysis Two

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), or Quakers (Pennsylvania), that rejected the royally-established Church of England for too much Roman influence.

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 tricornered hat and substantial frock-coat accompanied by a hunting-dog seems to give the air of a prosperous burgher or bourgeois proprietor, the woman next to him wears an eye-catching piece of jewelry, they both look on with bemused interest. But the youths on the far left, coming from a bonfire it would seem, look more like rustics -- the one has a collarless shirt, the other a broad and shapeless hat, both suitable for farming families, their faces are engaged, even exultant.

The American decision to throw off monarchy did not preclude social stratification among the Americans themselves, which may have governed the difference in willingness to throw off the King (perhaps even based on earlier religious affiliation and how it measured against the Puritans' decision under Cromwell to behead the British King during the last major revolution undergone by the English). Of course what falls between the two incidents depicted in these illustrations is, of course, the colossal mismanagement of British imperial policy in the American colonies, stemming from an overall.