In the late 18th century, the British had two kinds of colonies: ones they “settled” and ones they conquered. India, a densely populated place that no one could claim to have discovered, had to be conquered. Soldiers were assigned to India to take and hold cities that had existed for hundreds of years. Its people were subjugated, but they would have been impractical to try and replace.

America, like Australia, was settled. British civilians – frequently prisoners – were sent to scrape together new lives in strange and dangerous conditions. These “newly discovered” places were already inhabited, but these previously unknown inhabitants didn’t have much international standing, and so were classified as fauna. The British migrants, frequently sent to these places by trickery or against their will, fought to kill and replace them for the sake of their own survival, and not out of a professional duty to the Empire.

The independence struggles in settled colonies were very different from the desire of India to recover itself from foreign invaders. In settled colonies, the invaders were fighting for autonomy from the people who sent them. They frequently won, but in the end, this only made the British franchise more resilient.

In spite of all their rhetoric about freedom, or maybe because of it, the former colonists set about expanding their dominion. In America, they called it Manifest Destiny, without needing to specify whose destiny they were trying to manifest. It was the destiny of Englishness – white skin, the English language, going to dreary churches. They continued to distrust Catholics and to oppose the Spanish empire’s nearby subsidiaries. They may not have been paying taxes to the Crown, but of course later they became primary trading partners.

Whatever changes in branding there were – from the Constitution to taking the Queen off their money – only helped Englishness to spread. By seeming different in superficial ways, England and America were able to play against each other to mutual benefit.

You can see this dynamic play out in modern times with movements like the Alaskan Independence Party. While there are cases to be made for letting Alaska leave the US, the party was founded and is largely comprised by libertarians who travelled from Kansas. Sold a story of founders and freedom, they moved north, only to be crushed by finding out that federal law still applies at the Arctic Circle. When they say independence, they don’t mean returning sovereignty to the original inhabitants – they mean aligning the state with the dreams they brought up from Kansas, making it into a colony of a colony of a colony.

While Victoria Regina may have gone underground, you’re still reading this in the Queen’s English. American and other settler-motivated independence movements kept British expansionism alive and brought Englishness to places England never could have on its own. Even the flag is unoriginal; the stars and stripes are just a Union Jack, rearranged.