ABSTRACT
The separation of the thirteen North American colonies from Britain in 1783 was long regarded as the terminal turning point in the history of the British empire based on colonies in the Americas. For historians of the imperial school, the American Revolution not only delivered a death blow to the first empire, but also initiated a long hiatus in British imperialism; at the turn of the century, it was thought, Britain was distracted by international war and domestic social and political tensions, and, amidst these diversions, was unable to recuperate its imperialist energies and begin to build a second empire based on new regions and new principles until the 1830s and 1840s.
