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the more decisive war, strangely enough, was probably the french & indian war/seven years war because that displaced the french model, which was oriented almost entirely on trade/river networks and not so much on colonization with the english model, which is what explains north america as it is today, really.
the american revolution was in significant ways won because of french help (which in the longer run didn't help the monarchy so much as they defaulted on the bonds that paid for messing with the english and that set into motion that chain that resulted in the french revolution) but they weren't interested in going beyond helping. i guess that fucking with the english was gratification enough. plus wars---you know---win/win unless you're in them. lots of money to be made.
the war of 1812 doesn't seem to me to have been that big a deal---i mean the british burned up washington dc which by most reckonings woulda meant Win---but i don't remember how things shook out from there and what the terms were that ended it.
personally i wonder where the british woulda exiled the revolutionaries to after they won--whether they would have replicated what the newly independent americans did to the loyalists or if something else would have happened.
past that, i would agree with baraka.
but counterfactual history admits of all kinds of possibilities.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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