Pls help me find the other side of story.

[weederberries]

I'm looking for a book (school text or non-fiction) or website to help us explore the American Revolution from the other side. I'd like to know and teach my children how the British view the American War for Independence (they probably even have a different name for it) so we can compare the two views.

 

The last time we were in London, we bought the complete set of Horrible History books because a) they are hilarious, and b ) they provide a slightly different view of world events than we have in the US. I've looked through the books from this time period for mention of the war and events leading up to it, but it gets only a cursory mention.

 

I'd really like to hear the story of the American Revolution as told by the other side.

[Kfamily]

You might like this one:

 

George vs. George: The American Revolution as Seen from Both Sides by Rosalyn Schanzer

[5LittleMonkeys]

A quick search yielded this site which gives a few recommendations for books...and I think early on someone mentioned the BBC site having some info.

 

....here is the address for the site:

 

http://ask.metafilter.com/26058/How-do-British-refer-to-the-American-Revolution

 

 

Apparently, it wasn't a big deal to them. :p

[weederberries]

You might like this one:

 

George vs. George: The American Revolution as Seen from Both Sides by Rosalyn Schanzer

 

 

I like it by title alone! :)

[weederberries]

A quick search yielded this site which gives a few recommendations for books...and I think early on someone mentioned the BBC site having some info.

 

....here is the address for the site:

 

http://ask.metafilte...ican-Revolution

 

 

Apparently, it wasn't a big deal to them. :p

 

 

Very helpful link, thank you.

 

I gleaned this from it, among other things.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0001ZWLVA/103-4264164-9939062?v=glance

[5LittleMonkeys]

I think I saw that doc on Netflix. If you have Netflix I'd check before you purchase from amazon.

[weederberries]

I think I saw that doc on Netflix. If you have Netflix I'd check before you purchase from amazon.

 

 

Wonderful. I checked PBS.org and my library, but I forgot to check netflix.

[weederberries]

If it is true that it really isn't taught in British schools, that's an interesting tidbit too. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

[5LittleMonkeys]

Hopefully some of the members from across the pond will pop in, but until then I'll chim in ...

 

Dh spent 5 years in England when he was young, and although he went to DOD school he knew kids from the area. He says that he remembers talking to them about this (because they, the Americans, were learning it in school) and being amazed that most of them didn't know what he was talking about. He said some of them had a vague idea about it, but that it was really, as described on that site, a blip on their radar.

[momma2three]

Jean Fritz's "Why Can't You Make Them Behave, King George?" is very good.

 

But, yeah, it kind of was a blip on their radar. The majority of English public opinion was very much against fighting for the American colonies. They were bleeding money, and bringing next to nothing in except wood and furs, and that was running out (Asia was where the money was). All of the "unfair" taxes that we hear so much about were being levied to pay for the expenses of protecting and running the American Colonies, but particularly paying for the the immensely expensive French and Indian War, which had happened a generation earlier, and which people living in GB were pretty tired of being in debt up to their eyeballs for.

 

King George was crazy, and part of that was that he was extremely paranoid, and he was the one who thought it was important to keep the US colonies. Very few other people thought it was a good idea, except for various sycophants.

[Laura Corin]

If it is true that it really isn't taught in British schools, that's an interesting tidbit too. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

 

I don't remember learning much about it. If you think about it from a British point of view, it's one aspect of the very incident-filled reign of George III. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars had more of an immediate effect on Britain, I would say: social revolution on the doorstep; the threat of invasion.

 

Calvin is working in a later period of history now, but I'll ask Hobbes if it's been mentioned.

 

ETA: okay, it's not included in late elementary in the National Curriculum for England, nor in early elementary. It could be included in middle school in the colonial section, but there's no requirement for it. There are options on it in high school, but it's up to the individual school whether these are taken or not.

 

Laura

[EKS]

My Brother Sam Is Dead has characters who are on the side of the British. It's good to read after George vs George (mentioned above).

[Missouri Okie]

There is a level 3 "I Can Read Book" called George the Drummer Boy by Nathaniel Benchley that is set during the Revolutionary War and is from a British soldier's point of view.

 

I noticed that you have a second grader. It is a good second grade book.

 

The same author has one from an American point of view called Sam the Minuteman.

[weederberries]

Thanks, y'all! :-)

[weederberries]

I don't remember learning much about it. If you think about it from a British point of view, it's one aspect of the very incident-filled reign of George III. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars had more of an immediate effect on Britain, I would say: social revolution on the doorstep; the threat of invasion.

 

Calvin is working in a later period of history now, but I'll ask Hobbes if it's been mentioned.

 

ETA: okay, it's not included in late elementary in the National Curriculum for England, nor in early elementary. It could be included in middle school in the colonial section, but there's no requirement for it. There are options on it in high school, but it's up to the individual school whether these are taken or not.

 

Laura

 

Would it be fair to say that losing the taxes and influence in North America encouraged Britain to explore and colonize in other areas of the world? Is that too large a leap to assume that the one instigated or fueled the other?

[momma2three]

 

Would it be fair to say that losing the taxes and influence in North America encouraged Britain to explore and colonize in other areas of the world? Is that too large a leap to assume that the one instigated or fueled the other?

 

England never collected much taxes from the American colonies. They didn't really even start trying until after the French and Indian War, which was massively costly. America was a money pit, basically, which didn't produce all that much. And England had already basically explored the world. I think Cook toured Australia in 1770? And India and parts of Africa. And even after the Revolution, they still held Canada and several Caribbean islands (the latter of which were much more profitable than the 13 colonies ever were), so they still had plenty of influence in the Western Hemisphere. So, no, I don't think what you wrote is accurate.

[weederberries]

 

England never collected much taxes from the American colonies. They didn't really even start trying until after the French and Indian War, which was massively costly. America was a money pit, basically, which didn't produce all that much. And England had already basically explored the world. I think Cook toured Australia in 1770? And India and parts of Africa. And even after the Revolution, they still held Canada and several Caribbean islands (the latter of which were much more profitable than the 13 colonies ever were), so they still had plenty of influence in the Western Hemisphere. So, no, I don't think what you wrote is accurate.

 

Thanks. The reason I ask is because it was put that way in the cursory mention in the Horrible History book. I wondered how tongue in cheek it was.

[Dolphin]

If it is true that it really isn't taught in British schools, that's an interesting tidbit too. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

 

 

I spent 8th grade (3rd form) in the UK and they did cover it. I might remember more than my English classmates as it really was an eye opener for me. I had always been taught about the American Revolution, and to see it from a different side was very interesting.

 

It was not as important for them. The troop deployment was not what they could have sent. There were just so many other things going on for them at the time.

[Laura Corin]

I asked Hobbes whether he had studied it in school. He said not - he only knew what I had taught him (not much, because we hadn't reached that phase of history by the time he went off to school.)

 

Laura

[AnnaM]

My husband is British and doesn't remember covering it at all. I also want to cover both sides since my children are 1/2 British by blood.

[kjaye]

Have you seen this book?

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1426300425/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

 

George vs. George: The American Revolution As Seen from Both Sides

 

 

I haven't read it, but it's been lingering on our Amazon wishlist. :)

[CrystalM]

Winston Churchill's "History of the English Speaking Peoples" series will cover this. Volume 3 titled, "The Age of Revolution" covers the American Revolution.

[twinkletoesmomma]

We were in the United Kingdom part of Epcot a few years ago, and we were talking with some English college boys who were there to work for the semester. They asked my kids what they were learning in school and when they mentioned the Revolutionary War, they started asking them a ton of questions. They said it is just glossed over in history class and quite the embarrassment to their country. They said that they were trying to learn all about it while in the States. They said that they were particularly fascinated with George Washington. My boys got the biggest realization that history viewpoints are quite different depending on what side of the story you are on.

[KellyMama]

I grew up in Australia (a commonwealth country) and never heard more than a brief mention of the Revolutionary War in our coverage of world history in my K - 11 years (moved to the US in 12th).

[Laura Corin]

They said it is just glossed over in history class and quite the embarrassment to their country.

 

That's interesting - I always had the feeling that, rather than being embarrassing to Britain, the war was just not as important to the UK as other incidents, and therefore was shunted out of the curriculum for lack of time.

 

The UK has lost an awful lot of colonies, usually in less-than-glorious circumstances. If we continued to be embarrassed about them all, we'd never get out of bed in the morning.

 

Laura

[Violet Crown]

My family lived briefly in Glasgow around the time of the Falklands war, and I do recall being amused that the one brief reference in our history text was something like "Cotton imports became an important part of the Glaswegian economy at the end of the eighteenth century as tobacco importation from the American colonies abruptly stopped."

 

[Deee]

It is quite reasonable to say that the loss of America caused the British to look further afield. Cook was sent to chart the Pacific and search for the Great Southern Land in 1770. He charted a large portion of the east coast of Australia and claimed it for Britain (the race was on between the Brits, Dutch and French). By the 1780's, England's prisons were overcrowded (they stocked piled prisoners waiting for the War of Independence to finish). Britain also needed a Pacific outpost for trade and to get one up on the French. So it sent the country's finest (convicts and The Rum Corp) to build a new colony in Sydney. At least, that's what they teach us here in the Colonies.....

D

[Garga]

When my family lived in England when I was a child, no one knew anything about our Revolutionary war. I figured that was because Britain has a good 2000 years of history to slog through, while we have only 200.

[Laura Corin]

When my family lived in England when I was a child, no one knew anything about our Revolutionary war. I figured that was because Britain has a good 2000 years of history to slog through, while we have only 200.

 

Partly that, certainly, but more importantly perhaps: the Revolutionary War is part of the US' foundation myth*. It's not part of the UK's. I think that the English Civil War is probably the nearest equivalent, but you'd have to look at Magna Carta as well and the joining of England and Scotland under the Stuarts and.....

 

*Myth 2. A popular belief or story that has become associated with a person, institution, or occurrence, especially one considered to illustrate a cultural ideal (The Free Dictionary)

 

Laura

[boscopup]

I imagine it was beneficial for the Brits to lose America. It was a money pit for them. The problems the Americans had was that they were taxed without representation. So that was a mistake, but I don't know if having representatives would have even helped the situation, because they needed money to pay for the wars and such.

 

But yeah, what's important to our country (gaining independence) is a blip on the radar of a country with England's history. And add to that a crazy king at that time...

 

Reading through some of the recommended Sonlight books this year, I feel like we've gotten a pretty good idea of the problems on both sides. The Jean Fritz book Can't You Make Them Behave King George gave more of the king's perspective. We also saw some of the back and forth in other books we've read, including the Landmark History of the American Peoples.

[momma2three]

Weeeell... the "taxation without representation" thing is kind of overstated, too. "Representation" was kinda vague even in England, and even after the Revolution it was only land owners who were "represented." The English were actually pretty fair about taxing, at least in relation to pretty much any other European country. There was no income tax, so Parliament worked to come up with creative progressive taxes in other ways. The most famous is the infamous "window tax": Brits would be taxed based on the number of glass windows in their house... the idea being that the very poor didn't have any glass windows, while the very wealthy would have big houses with lots of windows. Thus, it was a way to tax people at a rough income rate without an income tax.

 

In the US, the strategy was going to be the stamp act: an act on paper. Keep in mind that paper was a lot more expensive then, and plenty of people couldn't even read. So the idea was that poor people (who probably aren't even literate) don't buy much paper, while the wealthy, purchase much more. Now, it's not exactly a coincidence that the people who complained loudest about this were a group of wealthy lawyers: ie, the founding fathers.

 

 

The tea tax is also a bit more complicated than is taught in most US history classes in the US, and there are theories that the anger over that had a lot more to do with how it was going to destroy John Hancock's massive smuggling organization (which had made him one of the richest men in the American colonies by the time he was 30, or something like that) than any intrinsic unfairness.

 

There was another thread here a few days ago where it was discussed how the national history of every country that is taught to students is pretty much always biased in favor of that nation, and the US is definitely no exception. :lol:

[nmoira]

The tea tax is also a bit more complicated than is taught in most US history classes in the US, and there are theories that the anger over that had a lot more to do with how it was going to destroy John Hancock's massive smuggling organization (which had made him one of the richest men in the American colonies by the time he was 30, or something like that) than any intrinsic unfairness.

 

I recently listened to a great podcast about this: Things We Forgot to Remember: The Boston Tea Party.

[momma2three]

 

I recently listened to a great podcast about this: Things We Forgot to Remember: The Boston Tea Party.

 

 

Wow, that looks like lots of fun! I love BB4 podcasts. I try to listen to "In Our Time" when I get a chance.

[tomandlorih]

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is the Liberty's Kids DVD's. While it is more from the American POV, one of the 3 main characters is from England and her father is with the British army and writes to her mom back in London, etc. http://libertyskids.com/

Felicity, the American Girl movie kinda shows both POV also.

[Dolphin]

When your children are older (or even for you know) There is a great set of historical fiction books about the time period just after the American Revolution. (I don't know if you have read them Laura, but please chime in if you have.)

 

They are considered to be very good, accurate works of historical fiction. The Poldark series by Winston Graham. The first book in the series is Ross Poldark. Ross is a man of lesser nobility, but the son of a wealthy man, who is just returning to England after the American Revolution. It really gives you a picture of what life was like there. Also, just how much of an issue the French were to the British at that time. I read these for the first time when I was 14.

 

On the non fiction side, there is a book, our Island History which is a good general history of Britain for those who want it.

[Laura Corin]

When your children are older (or even for you know) There is a great set of historical fiction books about the time period just after the American Revolution. (I don't know if you have read them Laura, but please chime in if you have.)

 

They are considered to be very good, accurate works of historical fiction. The Poldark series by Winston Graham. The first book in the series is Ross Poldark. Ross is a man of lesser nobility, but the son of a wealthy man, who is just returning to England after the American Revolution. It really gives you a picture of what life was like there. Also, just how much of an issue the French were to the British at that time. I read these for the first time when I was 14.

 

On the non fiction side, there is a book, our Island History which is a good general history of Britain for those who want it.

 

I haven't read the Poldark series - I remember their being adapted for television a long time ago, but I don't think I watched them.

 

I checked Our Island Story. There's a chapter called The Story of How America Was Lost (it follows on from the chapter The Story of How Canada Was Won). It's 5 1/2 pages out of 550. It talks about Britain's need for money to pay for the various wars, the King's intransigence in the face of American objections to taxes, the illness of William Pitt the British Prime Minister, the 'dreadfulness' of the war between people who up to then had thought of themselves as compatriots, the fear of the French threat tied up with the American war, the death of Pitt, the loss of the American possessions except Canada. For comparison, there are two chapters about the Napoleonic wars. You can read it here.

 

OIS is not used in schools in its original form - too much racism and other outdated social ideas.

 

Laura

[Dolphin]

I haven't read the Poldark series - I remember their being adapted for television a long time ago, but I don't think I watched them.

 

I checked Our Island Story. There's a chapter called The Story of How America Was Lost (it follows on from the chapter The Story of How Canada Was Won). It's 5 1/2 pages out of 550. It talks about Britain's need for money to pay for the various wars, the King's intransigence in the face of American objections to taxes, the illness of William Pitt the British Prime Minister, the 'dreadfulness' of the war between people who up to then had thought of themselves as compatriots, the fear of the French threat tied up with the American war, the death of Pitt, the loss of the American possessions except Canada. For comparison, there are two chapters about the Napoleonic wars. You can read it here.

 

OIS is not used in schools in its original form - too much racism and other outdated social ideas.

 

Laura

 

 

 

Laura,

Don't watch the series, it is not one of the finest adaptions. Read Ross Poldark though and tell me what you think. My dh (terry prachet, LOTR man), also really enjoyed them. It is all about his neck of the woods.

 

We just found out that dh's cousins from Glasgow are coming to visit this summer. They are going to come for the 4th of July as they think it would be interesting. So I don't think embarrassment is a factor.