>>2579139The East coast of North America really was not remotely valuable in material terms compared to India or Africa.
Besides furs and wood it had no real resources that couldn't be gotten elsewhere easier and cheaper, plus we still had Canada, and we did colonise across Canada all the way across to the Pacific.
Americans simply overvalue what the colonies were worth massively because of their ego and because of the power the US now has.
Back then, the British saw the American colonies were a troublesome backwater that we could take or leave having control over.
It was a dumping ground for puritans and schizos who weren't wanted at home, and failures who had nothing to lose by starting over in a relative wilderness.
While the Yankees pretend they slayed a giant, Britain only fought against US independence half heatedly and barely managed a shrug when the war was concluded.
Plus the French were willing to arm American resistance to British rule, to the point of economically destroying themselves just to say "fuck you" to Britain.
Which as a matter of fact is unironically the main contributors to the spike in poverty which ultimately lead to the French Revolution.
t. Brit repeating what we were taught in A Level (High school diploma level) History class like a decade ago