The Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus: A Study in Comparative Politics c7.4

c7.4

Americans won their independence by defeating the British. When they had to think of constructing a sovereign government, the most natural form that suggested itself to them was a *popular* polity. None of the thirteen colonies was bossed by a prince of royal blood. Their society from the very beginning had known only of councils, assemblies, courts, and clubs. A dynasty of kings was thus absolutely out of the question. Besides, in 1782 Washington, the hero of the field, magnanimously rejected, “with great and painful surprise”, the crown and the supreme power offered to him by some discontented officers. The most important problem before the Yankees after 1783 was therefore not the form of government but the form of union. The republic (no matter whether democratic or otherwise)¹ was with them an accomplished fact, one of the socio-political *data*, so to speak; their sole struggle was over the nature of the federation. America’s record thus really stands apart from the story of the evolution experienced by those peoples who by the term ‘government’ are used to mean the rule of a king.