We declared independence 1776.07.04. It didn’t mean shit to the world, but we declared it and consider it to be the founding of our nation, even though it would take until 1783.09.03 to win the revolutionary war. We also didn’t ratify our first (and significantly worse) constitution until 1781.02.02 (effective 1781.03.01) or our famously beloved second constitution until 1787.06.21 (effective 1789.03.04).
Our founding was an awkward mess, but in our defense we really only had the Haudenosaunee and to a much lesser extent the British to look to for inspiration on how to do what we were going for.
Oh absolutely, but the problem is it led to a lot of the early American debates being of how to balance their influence vs the European influence. These were white people of recent European descent who (mostly, there were some) weren’t interested in joining the Five Nations or any other Iriqouian confederation.
When you only have one good role model you find yourself winging a lot and taking more than you should have from the less good influences you’ve got. Hell, confederation was something that had worked for the Haudenosaunee, but very much collapsed immediately for the United States because we lacked a lot of their cultural technologies and we had a lot of our own cultural and political stuff that got in the way and made federalism work better for us at that time.
Hasn’t “freedom” been the US’s schtick for a while? The US colonies existed before 1776 and gained independence in 1783
We declared independence 1776.07.04. It didn’t mean shit to the world, but we declared it and consider it to be the founding of our nation, even though it would take until 1783.09.03 to win the revolutionary war. We also didn’t ratify our first (and significantly worse) constitution until 1781.02.02 (effective 1781.03.01) or our famously beloved second constitution until 1787.06.21 (effective 1789.03.04).
Our founding was an awkward mess, but in our defense we really only had the Haudenosaunee and to a much lesser extent the British to look to for inspiration on how to do what we were going for.
What’s wrong with that? Wouldn’t the world be better if more had been copied?
Oh absolutely, but the problem is it led to a lot of the early American debates being of how to balance their influence vs the European influence. These were white people of recent European descent who (mostly, there were some) weren’t interested in joining the Five Nations or any other Iriqouian confederation.
When you only have one good role model you find yourself winging a lot and taking more than you should have from the less good influences you’ve got. Hell, confederation was something that had worked for the Haudenosaunee, but very much collapsed immediately for the United States because we lacked a lot of their cultural technologies and we had a lot of our own cultural and political stuff that got in the way and made federalism work better for us at that time.