Andrew O’Shaughnessy
speaker
31 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 11 Jun
Andrew O’Shaughnessy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
A lot of the beliefs about the British government and British policies were simply conspiracy theory.
Today, we seem as the quintessential American,
But actually, like a lot of the later patriots, he was very pro the Empire, arguably more than the British.
People like Franklin wanted to expand the British Empire.
They wanted settlers to move west into Native American territory, which the British were against because they realized it would lead to war and expenditure.
George III, when he came to power, he was seen as a great breath of fresh air.
He wanted to introduce a new type of politics.
He felt that governments had become incredibly corrupted.
The same people had been in power for ages.
And what is interesting is that the caricatures and the press were much less deferential to the monarchy in Britain than the Americans.
And they reprinted some of this stuff, but you really don't get Christendom of the King in America until 1774.
Britain in the 1750s and 60s was becoming much more nationalistic and jingoistic.
Franklin complained that the ordinary people in Britain knew nothing about America.
And he also said that every Englishman feels themselves to be governor of America.
We shouldn't just be looking at changes in America, but also in Britain that helped make a clash almost inevitable.
One is the rise of Britain as what some people have called a fiscal military state.
British finances were transformed in the 18th century by the creation of the Bank of England.
And what that allowed Britain to do was to fight wars and to keep a very expensive navy.
And it was the navy that really enabled the British to have a far-flung empire.
Britain was maintaining this empire at great expense, but it wasn't paying for the cost of its administration.
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