82
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
82 points (100.0% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
8268 readers
30 users here now
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The Brits did win. America fell back into the British sphere of influence following the French Revolution and the US's humiliating defeat in the War of 1812. America continued to fulfill the role British Aristocrats intended for it, as a subservant trading partner and expansionary military outpost, minus the real cost of empire falling on the backs of British aristocrats. While Americans colonized the rest of the continent, the British Empire continued to expand globally for the next century, hitting its apotheosis in the Crimean War, and then going into retreat following WW1 and WW2.
But even then, British financial interests embedded in the American post-war system continued to enrich themselves enormously straight through Thatcher and Blair. It wasn't until the '08 Financial Crisis that England truly decoupled from the American economy and plunged into irrelevancy.
A British "victory" against American rebels wouldn't have deterred subsequent uprisings, just delayed them for another few years. The bleed on the UK treasury would have continued until America was formally integrated into the British Commonwealth or they were officially cut loose. The American faux-democracy of the 19th century was in the best interests of all parties in the long run.
I wouldn't say that the Brits won, buy they were able to negotiate a managed peace with the USA which benefited both parties.
The Monroe Doctrine was a British idea which got the USA to act as a power to preserve the post revolution status quo, allow for British trade access, and let the UK keep its remaining colonies.
You also had a peaceful resolution of the border between Canada and the USA, something which the UK wouldn't have pushed for if it was trying to be militarily dominant over the USA in the Americas.
The last time that the USA and UK could possibly be considered unaligned was the American Civil War. With that, the UK made sure not to recognize the CSA nor did it participate in recolonization efforts in the Americas like the French in Mexico.
Interesting. I've never heard that the Americans lost the war of 1812, but apparently that's how it's taught in Canada.