American History Hit - George III - The Last King of America

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

George III is forever known as the king who lost the 13 American colonies. In the US he is thought of by many as a tyrant king, taxing and subduing from across the Atlantic. Professor Jeremy Black tells Don that there is much more to his character, and his relationship with America.Produced and mixed by Benjie Guy. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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All around the 13 colonies, the Declaration of Independence was read in towns and villages, extolling the need for an enlightenment-driven America to forge its own path and a long list of grievances with their ultimate ruler, their monarch from across the sea, King George III of England. Three months later, the revolution against the British in full swing, King George is making his first speech to Parliament since the Declaration. He acknowledges that all was not going well for the British in their war with the American colonies. But what he wasn't to know was that things would only get worse,

and George III would become the last King of America. Hello, everyone. Welcome to American History Hit. I'm your host, Don Wildman. In the American Revolution period, George III loomed large. He was the Craven King we had outgrown, the enemy we opposed. We were done with being subjects of English rule, but we were really done with George. In the Declaration of Independence, which is roughly 1,300 words long, over 700 of them are devoted to a list of grievances against the crown, nay, against George

the third himself. He has dissolved representative houses. repeatedly. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power. He is plundering our seas, ravaging our coasts, and burning our towns. And of course, he imposed taxes without consent, but the list goes on and on. More than 25 grievances. It's the ultimate breakup letter. But how bad was George III? Did he personally deserve such retribution? Such an attack on his reign, never mind his character? Or was he mostly the representation, the embodiment of all things political and philosophical

that the founders could use to most persuasively frame their argument for a better and more enlightened form of American governance. Every epic tale needs its villain, and George III was ours. But here to explain if it was really that revolting is Jeremy Black, British historian, writer, and former professor of history at the University of Exeter, and most pertinent to our chat today, author of George III, America's Last King,

Greetings, Jeremy. Welcome. Thank you very much. George III, by our history over here and now tradition, would seem to have just been vile. A cartoon character, a royal buffoon, all velvet robes and glittering crowns and such. But honestly, most Americans don't know a thing about this guy. First, surprising fact, George III was the third longest reign of a British monarch after only Queens, Victoria, and Elizabeth II. Our own Elizabeth, God rest her soul. he ruled from 1760 to 1820, 60 years.

He did indeed. And he was obviously there for the monarch in the 13 colonies that became the basis of the United States from 1760 until they declared independence. And if you told most people in those 13 colonies in 1765 or 1770 that they were going to rebel, they would have thought this was remarkable. And it's worth also pointing out, you know, I don't want to be difficult. I'm not particularly concerned, as it were, one way or the other, but it is worth pointing out that many people in America fought against independence. Very few people thought of themselves as Americans

then. They thought of themselves as Virginians or Georgians or so on. It actually divided them. And of the units that took the highest casualties in the war, some of them were loyalist units, people willing to die for their vision, which was not a vision of independence. We have been a divided people right to the beginning of America. I mean, truly right down the middle. We remember this man as an effigy, an object of derision, our mortal enemy opposed to the natural-born, inalienable rights of man. How much was this true of him in that present day versus how history has processed the events? Well, I think these days you would argue that most academic historians would be more favourable to George, but every country needs its foundation

myth. And as you absolutely correctly say, George is a convenient villain. And he's been held up again most recently in the musical Hamilton, where he's a figure of fun. Practicality is, of course, he was very different to that, but that's not going to make any difference to the myth. And you and I will talk lucidly about what the man was like, but pretty well nobody will be. convinced by us. Then that's what academic historians are used to. He is, yeah, forever the English king who lost America. No small thing and kind of undeniable, I suppose, but this story is much more complicated than history typically tells. He assumes the throne in 1760 at the age of 22. This was the tail end of a huge war that the British were involved in, the seven years war, which we

call over here the French and Indian, 1754 to 1763. Tough way for a kingdom. start. Yes. Initially, the war went badly for the British and indeed their American colonies. But from 1759 onwards, it was really quite a period of triumph. And New France, the St. Lawrence Valley, the basis of Canada, was conquered in 1760. Most of the French West Indies, the French positions in West Africa were conquered. In 1759, the French fleet was defeated when they were, They tried to invade Britain. Spain comes into the war on France's side. And in 1762, the British do what only one other power is subsequently to do, America in 1898, and they capture both Havana and Manila, Cuba and the Philippines. So Britain, when George the third comes to the throne, is on a role. It is a period of triumph. And there is a enormous upsurge initially. in popularity. And indeed, you may recall, that's why so many places are called after him. That's why he's put on a statue in New York, etc., etc. Now, that relationship, as we know, goes wrong,

but it's worth bearing in mind that, as I said before, there was no inherent long-term reason to believe that it would go wrong. And certainly, at the time, in the early 1760s, it led to an upsurge in imperial sentiment, not just in Britain, but in the colonies. Yeah, this was a good time. I mean, this is the rise of the first British Empire that he's going to oversee. But as far as the American colonies go, that debt that is accrued through that fighting becomes a big challenge for his administration to deal with. Much of what will foment the rebellion here has to do with that debt and the various ways

of dealing with. These are famous things, of course, the excise taxes and the intolerable acts, all of these things happen between the years of 1760 onward until the 75. Were these measures that he took or at his administration took to deal with that kind of debt, typical of the way they managed the colonies in those days? There are all sorts of variations between colonies. So how you managed, say, Jamaica was different to how you managed Quebec, to different to how you managed Virginia. There's no one policy. You're absolutely correct that after the seven years war, the government both wants to demobilise its war machine and to deal with the fiscal overhang. And of course, these are societies which find it much harder to think of massive debt than modern

societies do. You know, there's a real challenge to them in that respect. So one way of looking at the American Revolution is that it's a taxpayer's rebellion. People don't want to pay their taxes, they want to free load on the imperial system, and when they're asked to pay a bit of it, they cause absolute blue murders. I mean, obviously, it's much more complicated than that, and there are other factors, and indeed, I think it's fair to say that in different colonies, different factors are to the fourth. It's worth bearing in mind that British had 26 colonies in the New World, and of those 13 rebel and 13 don't. And that itself is interesting because what that underlines is the extent to which different factors play a role. And then if you harbour that down

and look at the 13 that do rebel, there are areas, Long Island, the eastern shore of the Chesapeake, much of North Carolina, much of Georgia, where the majority of people, insofar as we can tell, are loyalists. I mean, the general argument among most historians, is that about a third of the active population were patriots, about a third were loyalists, and about a third didn't want to know. They just wanted to get on with their farming. And the alternative is about a fifth patriots, about a fifth loyalists, and three-fifths really didn't want to know.

So it's worth bearing in mind that alongside all the fuss, and of course there was a fuss, and a lot of people were irritated, but alongside all the fuss, a lot of people just were not as bothered as the, you know, you can have Patrick Henry, you know, give me liberty, give me death. And other people would say, I go and sort of calm down. And so I think that one's got to accept. There is no one point of view. Part of the rhetoric of revolution is always in every revolutionary scenario to try and intimidate those who don't agree with you into shutting up. That works to a certain extent. It works in some areas better than others. How did George view the colonies? Is there a record of this? Were they special in any way?

Yeah, there's a good record for George. He writes his own letters until his eyesight starts to fail in 1805. He is a very active monarch. I mean, he puts a lot of work into it. And his correspondence was both published and also is available to look at online. And I think it's fair to say that the king had what we would regard as a fairly conservative view. His view was that these were people who were essentially bad children, and the revolutionaries presented the king as a kind of bad father. And there is quite an interesting dynamic there about the nature of politics. I mean, subsequently people tend to modernise the political discourse of the late 18th century. But that kind of debate was quite an important one.

Linked to that is another aspect that subsequently people didn't tend to talk about, which is the religious dimension. In essence, if you're looking at the 13 colonies, and there are always exceptions, as there is in any line up, Episcopalians tended to favour the crown and low church, congregate, congregate, for example, tended to favor the revolutionaries. And in some respects, it's an American war of religion. Now, again, there are more factors involved. But this is just to remind you that alongside what you might call the legalistic approach, you know, this is all about constitutionalism, you have the idea that it's to do with material interest. This is all to do with not paying taxes. You have the idea that it's to do with religious factors. You have the idea that maybe it's a

proto-democratic movement, which you can laugh at, given that about a sixth of the population were slaves. So there's all sorts of arguments that have been used. And you would be mistaken to say, oh, well, this is what's the key issue, because for different people, there were different key issues. And that, in a way, is what you'd expect. I hope this isn't an unfair question. It's a huge question. But in brief, what was the idea of empire? Was it eventually to spur the growth of a place and lead to the independence of a colony or not? Not in the 18th century. I would say that becomes a late 19th century idea. And you see the development of the so-called dominions, you know, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. No, I would

say that in the 18th century, as far as the British Empire is concerned, there are different empires, the tension is constitutionally between the idea that there should be, as it were, autonomous representative assemblies. You might call them parliaments, you might call them assemblies in each of the colonies under the authority of the crown, or the alternative, which is the whole lot should be under an imperial parliament, and what's a surprise, that parliament's the one in Westminster. Right. And that is a difference. Now, there is an argument that it was relatively easy for American patriots to persuade themselves and to persuade quite a few others, that they should not have to put up with being told what to do with Westminster, that that was, as it were,

non-representational. But the real difficulty was persuading people to break from the crown. And the argument is that is why so much of the Declaration of Independence is against the Crown, as you correctly said, precisely because actually the crown was quite popular with a lot of people and or linked to this, even if the individual monarch might or might not be popular, there was a belief that monarchy was the natural system. And there are several reasons for that. There were very few republics in that period. Number two, there was a sense that government by a monarch was the form of government that was decreed in the Bible, a book of kings, you know, from the Old Testament,

was the book that was read most commonly in church services, so that, you know, in a sense, the modern monarchs are a sort of version of King David and King Solomon and King Saul. And lastly, there was a sense that a monarchical element, i.e. a monarch, was the most effective way to get even a republic to work. So the Dutch provinces had their stadtholders, Venice had its doge, and what a surprise, America creates a monarch, they call it the president. And America is a different monarchical system. Now, you might argue that the American presidential system

is both a more and a less effective form of monarchy. it's more effective because the idea is that through an election you get the chance to pick the most talented person. All right? That's the theory. We're not discussing the practice. The disadvantage, and whereas, you know, an inherited monarch could be, you know, pretty dim. But the disadvantage of an elected system is that people might not agree on who is chosen. And in the meantime, you have any way the disruption of frequent changes.

Whereas in the hereditary system, at least you tend to know who the next one's going to be. So you get a form of continuity. You might argue that a more attractive model was the Canadian one in that they make the transfer to effectively running themselves and being independent without having to fight a war of independence and without having to fight a civil war. But we know that Canada is more politically mature than America. I assume you don't, that's a sort of waste of time saying that. But it's so much smaller.

That's how we see it. In 1763, George III makes a proclamation, the royal proclamation of 1763, and this is fateful. It limits Western expansion in the American colonies. So you have these sets of colonies who have devoted themselves to this war. Much of the fighting force were the colonists. This was not a desirable result that they could not think of the West as theirs. And the seeds of rebellion are really planted at this point.

True? No. It certainly tees off land speculators in Virginia. There's no two ways about that. Really irritates them. The average Massachusetts person couldn't give a damn about what's happening on the other side of the Appalachians. I mean, remember, in 1775, roughly 75% of Americans live within 75 miles of the coast and everybody that wants does. Why does the Crown make this proclamation? Well, quite simply, because it's trying to stop conflict with Native Americans. And it's interesting your view that it stops the natural manifest destiny of America. Well, you know, there are other ways of looking at the nature of who owned the property and who the Crown had responsibilities to.

And actually, there were native populations that had their rights. They engaged in warfare. They were about to have, of course, Pontiac's war. and the crown's time to calm things down. And obviously, that's, again, something that doesn't play well with some expansionists. What one has to do is get away from this idea that there is a clear narrative in which a group of people represent all Americans. And out there, there are baddies that have different viewpoints. Did the intelligentsia and did George III understand and embrace those ideas of enlightenment,

that we claim are the antecedents of everything American? George III was a well-read person with a great commitment to the sciences. In that respect, he was very similar to Jefferson. Compared to most commentators and thinkers of the period, he was probably more religious. As far as the Enlightenment underlining American foundation, I don't think so. I mean, as you will probably be aware,

the bodies in France like the Amé des Neuie de Noir were totally against slavery. You know, America did not seem particularly enlightened to many people. But no, I wouldn't have said that George III was anti-enlightenment for a second. I would say that compared to his contemporaries, such as Louis XVIth of France, he's actually well-read, thoughtful, and in some respects, quite similar as a sort of gentleman with interest in reading, farming and science to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. Now that would of course have horrified Thomas Jefferson in particular, but you'll recall that John Adams, when he goes to London as the first American ambassador, is very much taken with George the third. Jefferson is. Jefferson comes over. He's the

American ambassador to France and the two men go on a tour around. England. But Adams thinks George the 3rd is great. I'll be back with more from Jeremy Black after this short break. Do you think that the long list of acts and taxes and so forth that go throughout the 60s into the 70s, if they had been better sold to the Americans with better communication, who knows why, things would have gone differently? I think that's possible, yes. I mean, you know, you get the Adams phrase about the revolution was one in men's hearts and minds before.

fighting started? Well, yes and no. I mean, as I said, there were a lot of loyalists in some areas, South Carolina, for example, after Charleston is recaptured during the war, everybody troops out and swears loyalty to the king again. So it's tricky. I mean, after all, it is not the case that insurgents necessarily succeed. One of the interesting aspects of some of the literature on the American Revolution, which came out in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, is it drew together two strands of thought within America, and more generally, which made victory for the revolution apparently inevitable. One, the idea of liberal progressivism, you know, what you might see if you're thinking in, you know, if you want to create the

mythos round Camelot and Kennedy. And the other one, a more sort of left-wing the people under arms. And the idea is that inevitably, the past, what's anachronistic, is going to fail. Okay? And, you know, you and I are both of a certain age, and that's the kind of stuff that everybody took in with mother's milk. Well, actually, it's rubbish. I mean, if you look at counterinsurgency wars, counterinsurgency wars both succeed and fail.

There is no inevitable, immutable cause of so-called people's warfare winning. And you've got to be very careful as to say that, as it were, progressivist causes necessarily beat what you regard as conservative. And I think one's got to be realistic. America, it's succeeded. Great. We're all very pleased about it. And you're able to present George III as a buffoon.

And most of the British don't care because they've had plenty more that's happened since. for them to get upset about. But the reality is that it was not an easy process. There were many people who didn't share these views, and actually it was a caricature of George. But that doesn't make any difference. People are, if you're a ruler, if you're a governor, if you're a president, you can expect to be caricatured. That's what people do. I would think that at this point in British history, in his reign, the idea of being a tyrant would have been despicable to him, that that had already been argued out. Yes, George the Third didn't see himself as a tyrant at all. And in fact, he very much emphasized the extent to which the Hanoverian dynasty rested on the fact that the Stuarts,

the Jacobites, had been kicked out in the so-called glorious revolution of 1688 to 89, precisely because of their attitude to parliamentary government. So George III considered himself a parliamentarian. He wasn't interested in the idea of lessening Parliament, Westminster Parliament's powers in order to make the Americans happier. He didn't try to suspend the Constitution, as, for example, Gustavus III of Sweden did, from 1772 to 1792. And when things went wrong for him, For example, in 1782, he had to put up with ministers he did not like in the case of Rockingham and then the Fox North administration, just as he'd had to do that in 1765 and 1766. What does George, for example, call on the army of which he's head to suppress them?

No, of course he doesn't. He saw himself as a constitutional monarch. Some British politicians liked him. Some didn't. but nobody thought seriously that he was trying to establish some sort of tyranny. And they read the Declaration of Independence with a degree of wonder. The other thing, of course, which made the, you know, obviously slavery made the British think the Americans were hypocrites to talk about liberty.

But that really the American cause in Britain, which was, you know, there was a degree of popularity for the American cause in 75, 76. But that disappeared largely in 1778 when the Americans' allies. with the French. He never visited America, which is interesting, too. He never left his part of England, in fact. You do wonder, I mean, this is just revisionist ideas, but had he done so, he could have been a very popular king here. It brings to mind when the taxes is repealed after 1765, his statue is a hallowed point in New York. Yes, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's part of course of the technological problem of that period of any state across the Atlantic in the 18th century,

just as indeed, as president, American presidents were not in the habit of leaving the United States. So, you know, you're absolutely right. It's a factor. It is a problem. Devolved and delegated government of that type is a real problem. I mean, obviously what you have, and you have the same pattern in the United States is the idea of the governor, as you have in America, is the representative of the central government. And on the whole, that tends to work unless there's a political breakdown. There was definitely a political breakdown in 75, 76, and one has to ask seriously whether it would have been better for Britain in 76 to just call it off. But, you know, it's a difficult thing to do, as I said. What I think it then becomes is a war for survival once the

Americans are allied with the French and even more when the French and the Spaniards and the Dutch are on the other side. So it's a really difficult struggle for the British then. George the third, of course, being religious, and a lot of the American figures are religious, sees it in part of God as testing him and God is testing Britain. Well, I think a lot of people would have preferred not to have been tested. Yeah. I've often thought of that, that this was a precedent-setting war as far as the British were concerned. I mean, the design on world empire was real and happening already. What was going to be tested out by reacting the way they did to the American colonies was a preview of how they would do otherwise elsewhere. Is that true at all? Well, I mean, I think Britain faces four

major rebellions in the 18th century. 17, 15, and 16, Jacobite won in Scotland to North England, the British state wins. 1745 to 46, Scotland and Northern England, the British state wins. 1775, the American one, the British state loses. 1798, the Irish one, British state wins. So there's nothing inevitable about losing. I think as far as empire as a whole is concerned, there are different understandings of what imperial power means. For some people, it's an attempt to pursue trade and commercial hegemony. For some, it's an attempt to obtain land for settlement. For some, it's part of a struggle, particularly France.

In other words, if the French want to be there, we've got to stop them, because otherwise the French are going to be too powerful. For some, it's a sort of ideological thing that in a way we are in the way, we are in the shadow of imperial Rome and we have to recreate that. And of course, that kind of understanding what's, you know, of history as a kind of moving through stages, was to very much be taken up by the Americans in the 20th century, the idea that, you know, the European empires are fading, failed, and America's destiny is to lead the world through a kind of encouraging liberal democracy and capitalist trade. And, you know, as always happens, one's own view of one's own

good motives are not always shared by others. Correct. We need to pivot towards the later years of this man's life, which he becomes very famous for. And again, this is a mythologized view of the man. I saw the movie Madness of King George, so did all these other Americans. And that's sort of, he goes from being an effigy against our revolution to being this crazy. man who's, you know, ranting and raving, this is not how it really went. I'd like to correct that version of events. Yes. I mean, George III is born in 1738. He has a mild cold in the mid-1760s, but the first time he is ill, and he is badly ill, as you say, is 1788, so the age of 50. He has what, to some people, is Porphyria. It's more likely to have been actually a much more complex,

sort of bipolar disorder then. He then is cured, cures himself, body rights itself. He then keeps going healthily till 1801 when there's a recurrence more briefly. Then 1804, there's a recurrence more briefly. And then at the end of the decade, beginning of the next decade, a permanent shadowing. And he remains permanently ill till he dies. So you could emphasize the illness. On the other hand, you could point out, he was of some years in that period. Remember, most people don't live a fantastically long life. He was personally quite fit. He took a lot of exercise, both walking and riding, didn't eat too much. He was very worried about his weight, didn't drink too much. And I think it's fair to say that on the whole, his health was good. But there was this very dramatic episode in 1780.

which in part was disconcerting precisely because people weren't expecting it. The symptoms were akin to madness and there was a sense that maybe the king would never recover and therefore there was the question of who should be regent and that then created a political bun fight because the government was worried about the Prince of Wales, the future George IV whom they saw as an opposition figure as well as a profligate and extravagant. And they didn't really want that or they wanted the Regency Limited or they were in power or they wanted for the queen. And the opposition kicked up blue murders. And this one went on until George recovered. There was an enormous church service at Westminster Abbey and everybody thanked God and moved on.

The story plays out, I mean, again, mythology, that the, you know, the sadness or humiliation of losing the American colonies was some sort of trigger of all of this. It's, of course, not true. But it's the way it looks. I am curious about his opinion of the loss of the American colonies and how it played out in the rest of his reign. That's a very good question. Like anybody who, you know, he was pulled in different directions. First of all, he was very disappointed. He believed that this represented. some failing on his part that God had let him down because God was angry with him because he had sinned. It was very much the sort of providential form of Christianity, which was very strong in the 18th and 19th century. And under pressure to change governments and to accept a change of government in 1782, he actually considered abdicating.

But when Adams, he gets over that, other issues come up. And of course, there is very little at all interest in revanchism in Britain in trying to get back this position. So when Adams turns up, I mean, George says to him, I opposed your independence with all my energy and effort. Now that it has happened, I hold out my hand in friendship. And that very much seems to have been George's viewpoint. And he was more concerned. I mean, if you look at the 1780s, I mean, the idea that the mad episode, was to do with America.

That's rubbish. He was more concerned. 1787, Britain nearly went to war with France in the Dutch crisis. 1790 Britain nearly goes to war with France and Spain in the Nukasan crisis. 1791 with Russia in the Ochikov crisis. And then 1793, it goes to war with France. And it's at war with France from 93 to 1802, 1813 to 1814. And then again, in 1815.

Quite frankly, there are other things to think about them. America. I want to circle back to what you said at the beginning, which I think is so fundamental to the story and news to us all, that the character of George III was used as much as a ploy, almost a wedge issue, I suppose, driven between Americans who were actually fond of monarchy. And if they could, I'm speaking of Patrick Henry and Jefferson and all the rest, could frame the bad guy correctly, then they could more expediently usher the people onto a new way of life, a new way of governance. That's fascinating to me, and that flies directly in the face of the mythology that we have built up. This is the, you know, we are at the steep slope towards the 250 remembrance, which comes in 2026. And so much of what we speak of these days in terms of the revolution is about reconsidering those events and becoming, edging our way closer to the truth of these characters and the truth of these motivations, which is all very important and all very refreshing to me because it needs to be outed.

It needs to be said clearly what makes this country, what made it really happen. I agree with you, but let me add a perspective because I'm a foreigner, which means I both understand and don't understand. It's interesting for me listening to you, by the way, I've been writing a history of America. But let me make a point. The problem for Americans in this is you have a historical constitution and therefore an account about your mythos about what happened in the 18th century that is regarded as tremendously important to your legitimacy. That is ridiculous. America is a functioning democracy of over 300 million people.

It doesn't need to keep going with a sort of rather poor view of the past. By poor, I mean, full of inaccuracies. In order to point out it's the world's largest society, it's a functioning democracy, It's a society which is impressive precisely because, in contrast to mine, where everybody talks about where people come from, in America, they're usually talking about where they're going to the world they can make for themselves, their families, and hopefully for their country. So I actually think there is a problem. I don't think that you should in 2026 be spending your time sort of fighting over what happened in 1776. I think you should be thinking. more about how to improve the functionality of your present system of governance, your present system of social mobility, your present system of looking after your environment. Those I think are more pertinent issues. As an historian who's lived through understanding the past, I often think that people spend

too much time in the past. I stand corrected and I welcome it. We're actually in agreement. I wasn't as articulate as I should have been. But this is the kind of stage of history that is really interesting to me when things sort of get outed and refreshed. You do it for a living. The rest of us just sort of cruise along hoping for clarity. And we're getting it.

So thanks especially to your books. Jeremy Black, thank you very much for joining us here. I invite everyone to pursue this man's excellent works. And I hope to speak to you again on American History Hit. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it.

Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time. This podcast includes music from Epidemic Sound.