The fall of the Dutch hegemony (empire) was quite interesting. The guilder as a reserve currency was something new to me.

I recall reading how, after WW2, the Dutch lost 10,000 young men trying to recapture Indonesia. What a waste!

I differ on how on the nature of the American Revolution.

Britain had a civil war which ended in 1688. At that time, the British monarchy yielded its power to an elected Parliament. The king (or queen) had become a ceremonial figure, albeit still had some influence.

It was this Parliament that kept the 13 colonies as vassal states. The colonies were not allowed to send any representatives to that Parliament. So laws could be made in the colonies without input from the people in the colonies. This was normative thinking of those times (and we could argue it happens today).

The English Parliament was functioning "well" by the time of the American Revolution. A governing political party could be replaced by another party via an election, which was novel thinking in those days.

The Americans borrowed a lot from the English example. For example, elections based on first-past-the-post. As well, the English had already begun a process of separation of powers as a check-and-balance. Property rights were better enshrined in England than the rest of Europe. The Americans took those examples to a higher level. In other words, American democracy was not built out of thin air, as the myth likes to portray.

The English Parliament was still very much a bastion of rich, white men--and the Americans copied that collection of politicians as well. It took decades for both countries to adopt universal suffrage.

However the Americans saw the nefarious ways of the political parties. They tried to put together a "party-less" nation, but could not find the words to make it work.

And, in my opinion, much of the good social engineering of the US Constitution was undone when the parties took over the American system.