GrimTuesday said:
All the dandies needed something to sip over their conversation about their rather unjust revolution *(if you really think about it, the Colonies didn't have that much of a reason for rebellion)
*[Yes I, as an American do think that the grounds for independence were more than a little shaky]
I'm a Brit and I think that's dumb.
We didn't deserve any of those colonies as most of the Americans wanted to leave, then that is the end of the matter. Canadians wanted to stay so they stayed. Shame we had to have a bloody war to sort it out and it's a DAMN GOOD THING that we didn't have that with India. India also did not have many "good reasons" to leave except for the most important one: they WANTED independence.
It is not a matter of cold legalistic reason, it's a matter of the peoples' choice. That's Self-Determination. That's
The Chicago Way Democracy.
Northern Ireland voted on staying part of the UK and (by quite a close margin) voted in favour though the various republican movements fought long and hard for a republican majority.
One thing the Argentinian Junta didn't get was though they had good "reasons" to invade The Falklands they lacked the most important one: the will of the actual people who lived there. Who did NOT want to become subjects of a South American military dictatorship, weirdly enough they wanted to be part of Thatcher's Britain but that was their choice.
Self-Determination has been the guiding principal of the dismantling of the British Empire after the Second World War, after destroying Hitler's attempts at empire building it would have been hypocritical in the extreme to continue ruling from afar places that did not wish to be ruled by Britain. Many chose to stay, but many others peacefully ceded to varying success.
Now the American Civil War, that's a case where arguably the will of the people were ignored, but America at that time was one united country, the will of the people is as a whole. One bay overrun by pirates cannot cede simply because that's where all the pirates are. The South was not some overseas territory ruled from afar, Washington DC was literally only a day's walk away from the Confederate Capital of Richmond VA.
Although the war didn't start over slavery, could that really continue to be tolerated by the North? How can you have self-determination of the people when people are being enslaved by the millions?