In a New Documentary, One of Britain’s Most Famous Historians Reframes the American Revolution as a ‘Messy Divorce’

Lucy Worsley’s PBS sequence highlights the emotional fallout of the battle, with a concentrate on the British perspective

Vanessa Armstrong

– History Correspondent

April 6, 2026

In the United States, the story of the American Revolution is commonly framed as a triumphant struggle for independence. But the colonists’ British counterparts had a different perspective. Some agreed with the Americans that the Thirteen Colonies shouldn’t be taxed with out illustration. Others thought the colonists shouldn’t query how George III selected to rule over his topics. Still others have been merely anxious about the prospect of conflict and its hardships.

As the U.S. prepares to have a good time the 250th anniversary of its founding on July 4, 1776, a new PBS documentary hosted by the British historian Lucy Worsley spotlights people on the different aspect of the Revolution, from the king and his fellow elites to British retailers and the working class. “Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution” additionally examines the occasions that sparked the Revolution and its aftershocks, with an emphasis on the emotional fallout of this historic rupture.

Worsley’s focus is mirrored in the titles of the documentary’s two installments: “The Breakup,” premiering on April 7, and “A Messy Divorce,” which is able to observe on April 14. “This was a perfect union that went wrong,” Worsley tells Smithsonian journal. “It could have gone a different way with couple’s therapy.”

LUCY WORSLEY INVESTIGATES THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION – TUESDAY APRIL 7 8PM ON WYES

No taxation with out illustration

Between 1754 and 1763, American colonists fought alongside the British in the French and Indian War, a subsidiary battle of the world Seven Years’ War. In the aftermath of the hostilities, Americans largely remained loyal to the crown. But they quickly took problem with Britain’s refusal to grant the Thirteen Colonies a consultant in Parliament.

Britain’s leaders believed that their nation’s inhabitants was numerous sufficient that “at least some members of Parliament were going to represent the views of the Colonies,” Liz Covart, a historian who wasn’t concerned in the documentary, tells Smithsonian. “But the colonists end up arguing, ‘Well, we don’t have real representatives, because you won’t seat anybody who comes from America.’”

These tensions got here to a head when Britain launched new taxes to revive its postwar economic system. The charges imposed by the 1765 Stamp Act and the 1767 Townshend Acts have been decrease than the general taxes paid by folks in the British Isles, however Americans maintained their opposition to taxation of any sort without representation.

Some in Britain agreed with the colonists. In December 1768, Peter Verstille, a 34-year-old service provider from New England, sailed to London on enterprise. While there, he visited “disputing clubs,” the place massive teams of males gathered to debate political affairs. Whether Britain had the proper to tax the Colonies was a common subject of debate. Verstille recorded in his diary the consequence of one such dialogue: “It was evidently proved to the general satisfaction of the company that it was neither for the interest nor the honor of Great Britain to tax the Americans at this time.”

Verstille intently adopted the work of the radical British politician John Wilkes, who’d been thrown into the Tower of London a few years earlier on libel fees, though he was quickly launched. Wilkes vehemently opposed the Townshend Acts, which taxed imported glass, paper and tea, amongst different items. A controversial determine, Wilkes nonetheless had supporters in Britain, a lot in order that retailers put out a line of teapots celebrating his name for “liberty” from a corrupt Parliament.

In response to the taxes, colonists banded collectively to cease shopping for British items. Some Americans took to the streets in protest, particularly in Boston, the place native leaders brought in British troops to quell the unrest. On March 5, 1770, British troopers fired at a crowd of Bostonians, killing five and wounding a number of others. As Worsley explains in the documentary, protection of the Boston Massacre in British and American newspapers was “diametrically opposed,” providing “two different ways of looking at the world. Things are shaping up into them and us. And that’s a very dangerous place to be.”

Britain repealed the Townshend Acts in April 1770—with one exception. “They leave the duty on tea, because they figure if the Americans just pay it, then Parliament will have established a precedent where they will have paid a parliamentary tax,” Covart says.

Many Americans resisted buying tea to keep away from setting such a precedent. On December 16, 1773, greater than 5,000 colonists gathered at Boston’s Old South Meeting House to debate how to reply to the arrival of ships loaded with undesirable tea. Shortly after, hundreds of males descended on Boston Harbor, the place they destroyed greater than 92,000 pounds of tea, price roughly £10,000.

Unsurprisingly, Britain’s leaders condemned the Bostonians’ actions. Prominent Americans did, too: Benjamin Franklin, as an example, wrote that the colonists ought to “repair the damage and make compensation” to the East India Company, the trading corporation that owned the destroyed tea.

Benjamin Franklin’s shifting loyalties

Despite his disapproval of the Boston Tea Party, Franklin discovered his sympathies shifting to the colonists in the years main as much as the Revolution. The founding father lived in London between 1757 and 1775, serving as a lobbyist for a number of Colonies and as joint postmaster general for the British crown. “He always thought of himself as a Pennsylvanian first, but he was proud to be part of Britain, as many Americans were after the Seven Years’ War,” Covart says.

As early as 1769, Franklin wrote that he was more and more involved about the risk of “a breach and final separation” between Britain and the Colonies. These fears have been exacerbated in December 1772, when an nameless supply despatched him intercepted letters from Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchinson. In them, Hutchinson pleaded with British authorities to ship extra troops to Boston.

Franklin shared the letters with colleagues again dwelling beneath the situation that their contents stay personal, however John Adams published them anyway. The British solicitor basic was livid over the breach, and in January 1774, he excoriated Franklin for greater than an hour in entrance of the Privy Council, a group of politicians tasked with advising the monarch.

Disillusioned, Franklin departed for America in March 1775, simply a few weeks earlier than the Battles of Lexington and Concord kicked off the Revolution. Back dwelling, “Franklin shed his old skin,” Worsley says in the documentary. “He was no longer a British subject but an American patriot. Now, alongside four others, he would help create one of the most famous documents in history”: the Declaration of Independence.

In Worsley’s view, Thomas Jefferson’s early drafts of the Declaration learn extra like a breakup letter than a foundational doc for a authorities led by the folks moderately than the crown. “You could see [Jefferson] dealing with all the nuances and perhaps the regrets and the nostalgia and the things that had gone right,” Worsley tells Smithsonian. “He didn’t want to make this brutal cut, which is what the world was coming to.”

How the British skilled the American Revolution

The British response to the conflict with America was combined. Some considered resistance by the colonists in opposition to George III, whom they thought of ordained by God, as treason. British retailers generally opposed the battle; that they had invested in the Colonies and stood to lose money if the crown now not had a foothold in North America.

Broadly talking, “Britain in the 18th century was changing,” Olivette Otele, a historian who’s featured in the documentary, tells Smithsonian. “People wanted more rights, and therefore some parts of the population, mainly the working class, didn’t understand why they had to fight their fellow countrymen or cousins. They understood these people were fighting for their freedom and independence.”

At the identical time, many in the British Isles failed to totally grasp the sophisticated political points underlying the colonists’ rebel. In a letter, Jane Strachey, the middle-class English spouse of a British member of Parliament, expressed confusion over the “ambitious and restless spirit of the Americans,” which had destroyed “the domestic tranquility of many happy families” round her. Still, she added that she wished the colonists solely peace.

Public assist for the conflict waned over time. In February 1775, politician Horace Walpole described the burgeoning battle as “fashionable,” including that he anticipated the colonists to capitulate inside three months. In his memoirs, historian Edward Gibbon wrote that in the first place, “the pride of England was irritated by the resistance of her colonies,” resulting in widespread approval of the conflict. As the combating continued into the 1781-82 session of Parliament, nevertheless, “the loss of armies; the accumulation of debt and taxes; and the hostile confederacy of France, Spain and Holland indisposed the public to the American war.”

Unrest in England

Events in England additionally mirrored evolving views of the battle. In late 1776 and early 1777, a sequence of arson attacks inflicted injury on royal dockyards in a number of British cities. The crimes prompted a panic; rumors suggested that America or its European allies had despatched saboteurs to assault the British on their very own soil. The fact of the matter was far less complicated: James Aitken, a Scottish-born petty prison who’d developed sympathy for the patriot trigger whereas residing in the Colonies, set the fires on his personal—with out the Americans’ backing—in hopes of destroying the Royal Navy. He was hanged for his crimes on March 10, 1777.

Aitken’s solo arson marketing campaign wasn’t indicative of a wider American plot to infiltrate Britain. But his actions influenced British perceptions of the conflict, convincing members of the public that the struggle for American independence threatened their very own security.

Interestingly, when violence broke out in England’s capital in June 1780, it was solely “indirectly caused by the American Revolution,” Worsley says. The British “were just desperate for troops to send to North America, so they relaxed this rule that had previously existed, which was that Catholics weren’t allowed to serve in the army. This upset Protestant opinion that thought that this was giving too much toleration to Catholics.”

The consequence was the Gordon Riots, which London store proprietor and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho witnessed firsthand. In a letter, Sancho described the “poor, miserable, ragged rabble, from 12 to 60 years of age … all parading the streets—the bridge—the park—ready for any and every mischief.” He additionally recounted that the rioters didn’t draw back from violence. Lord Sandwich “narrowly escaped with life about an hour since,” Sancho wrote on June 6. “The mob seized his chariot going to the house, broke his glasses, and, in struggling to get his lordship out, they somehow have cut his face.”

Over six days, tens of hundreds of protesters swarmed London, burning down and ransacking buildings related to Catholics. “It started as a protest against [Catholics in the army], but actually it turned out to be something bigger,” Otele says. An growing quantity of folks have been “fed up with war because the country’s coffers were depleting,” she provides, “and more was asked of them—the price of food, everything was becoming much more expensive for people who were already struggling. And on top of that, you had the elites and the crown telling them to basically suck it up.”

George stopped the riots by sending troops out into the streets. The troopers killed an estimated 300 folks and arrested a whole bunch extra. The unrest, as soon as quelled, did not spark a bigger rebellion in opposition to the crown. “People were still convinced that the king had a divine right” to rule, Otele says. “It wasn’t a deep, profound discontent against the institution of the monarchy. It was just that at one point in time, they wanted more.”

The legacy of the American Revolution

As the conflict wore on, Britain’s king resisted signing a treaty. “It made sense for him to hold the line, because if he lost the American Colonies”—he reasoned—“he would lose the West Indies, and Ireland would be at risk,” Worsley says. “Britain would lose its superpower status, and he personally would have left the British Empire in a smaller state than he found it.”

The choice so troubled George that in 1782, he drafted a letter saying he would hand over the throne. That missive—by no means despatched to Parliament—finds the king scuffling with the weight of his obligations. “It shows him feeling really vulnerable,” Worsley says. “It shows him thinking, ‘I’m no good at this. I’ve got to step down. I just can’t do what they want.’”

The draft letter, Worsley provides, means that George wasn’t the tyrant some made him out to be. “He did ultimately accept that he wasn’t going to get his own way,” she explains. “It would have been petulant of him to go off and not be king anymore. And clearly that isn’t what he did.”

Ultimately, the Thirteen Colonies weren’t the most beneficial half of the British Empire. “We Americans like to think of ourselves as the crown jewel of the British Empire, but we were not,” Covart says. “The Caribbean islands and India, it was these places that brought in a whole lot more wealth. … So at that point, it just became easier to let the Colonies go.”

As Britain waged conflict on multiple fronts, combating European powers along with the Americans, its leaders realized that they may now not dedicate vital sources to the struggle in North America. The Revolution formally got here to an finish in September 1783, when the Treaty of Paris acknowledged the U.S. as an impartial nation.

Worsley hopes that the documentary’s viewers will achieve an understanding of the conflict’s stakes on each side of the Atlantic. “I really feel there’s an emotional pleasure to be had through seeing the birth of America, understanding what this meant for Britain and the thrill of the chase, if you like—a sense of the pleasure of following a story,” she says. “There are twists, there are turns. … There’s trials, there’s disasters, there’s hopefully emotion in that, too. That’s what I want, because you can make people think if they’re also feeling.”