The Brits and Americans have totally different takes on events important to our history.
One example is in American history we learn that the Puritans came to this country to found a religious commonwealth. English histories tend to stress that the rank and file of English society welcomed the Restoration and liberation from the religious party poopers, the Roundheads. Oh yeah, Puritans, Roundheads, Cromwellians, Dissenters, etc. were all cut from the same cloth.
I think a more balanced view of winning the revolution might be that we won because we kept fighting or the pretense of fighting. AND the war was not universally popular in England or in the Parliament. The Whigs under Pitt led an articulate opposition to the tax on tea and later to the conduct of a war against the colonies.
Yes, a French fleet did prevent the British from withdrawing across the York River in October 1781; and Washington accepted Cornwallis' surrender. England was also fighting the Netherlands, France, and Spain; undoubtedly, the outcomes of these battles were of greater importance than continuing to field armies in the American colonies. Only George III wanted to keep to keep fighting after Yorktown, but in the end, the Prime Minister [Tory] Lord North convinced the king to accept the loss of the American colonies and to appoint a Whig government under Shelburne to conclude a peace.
