George III continues to divide continents today as he did in his own lifetime. In America, since the 1770s, he has been largely a figure of hatred. In Britain, his reputation is currently on the ascendant. A king once famous for mislaying the colonies and losing his mind is now widely viewed as a sympathetic and benign monarch, devoted to the well-being of his people. For a ruler to be reviled and revered in almost equal measure suggests that larger issues than character or competence are at stake. Any potential biographer, therefore, not only has to reconcile diametrically divergent views but also has to explain the context in which they have flourished. Jeremy Black is at home in this milieu. In The Hanoverians: The History of a Dynasty (London and New York, 2004), he has already provided an approachable survey of all Britain's monarchs from 1714 to 1837. In it he comments that George III lacks a good recent biography. George III: America's Last King is intended to supply that need.

Not only has Black produced a scholarly but accessible life of the king, his chapter “Reputations and Comparisons” (411–38) provides a useful brief historiography. For a monarch who has been the subject of such opposing views, this is particularly valuable. Black demonstrates in his narrative that in the second half of his reign, George III, despite the loss of America, and pace whigs and radicals, enjoyed widespread popularity, at least in England. Indeed, Black could have made more of this. The existence of so many affectionate anecdotes about the king, often revolving round his meeting with his subjects and their failure to recognize him, is in stark contrast with the restrained enthusiasm felt by their people for his predecessors and his successor. However, history is written by the victors—in this case, the Whigs. In the Whig interpretation of history, George III held back and even attempted to reverse the steady evolution of Britain into a liberal parliamentary democracy. In the century and a half this view held sway, American and British assessments of the king largely coincided. Why, then, have they since diverged?

Two things have restored the king's reputation on this side of the Atlantic. First, Sir Lewis Namier and his successors argued that the Whig interpretation was based on a misunderstanding of British politics in the eighteenth century. Here, Black might perhaps have mentioned the rise of the notion of a “long eighteenth century,” stretching from the Glorious Revolution of 1689 to the Great Reform Bill of 1832. This changes the context in which the king must be viewed. As Black convincingly shows, George III saw himself as the heir of the Glorious Revolution. He fully accepted that he was the ruler of a limited monarchy, never consciously seeking to exceed the powers left to the Crown under this settlement. The second factor in restoring the king's reputation was the publication by Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter of their groundbreaking George III and the Mad-Business (London, 1969). By advancing a strictly physical cause, porphyria, to explain George's derangement, they have largely freed him of the imputations of mental instability and the simplistic psychological arguments flowing from this. In graphically describing the appalling way that the king and all other patients were treated by contemporary “mad doctors,” they have also evoked considerable personal sympathy for the distressed monarch. In fact, Black adopts a typically nuanced view here and wonders aloud if porphyria has been used to explain too much, but, like others, he accepts their main conclusions.

Black is, of course, among the most eminent of eighteenth-century diplomatic historians, and his source materials are drawn from repositories across Europe, as well as from the leading libraries of Britain and America. Consequently, he is well placed to judge George III not just as a British monarch but as a European one. Quite apart from a particularly valuable discussion of George as Elector of Hanover, this allows him to compare and contrast the king with the other rulers of the Enlightenment. That George, like them, was a patron of the arts and sciences has long been recognized. Indeed, John Brooke's King George III (London, 1972), until now the best biography of the king and the work that helped secure his popular rehabilitation, was first conceived while Brooke was walking with Namier through the King's Library, then housed in the British Museum. Compared with other European rulers, however, George III emerges not as a constitutional innovator but as a resolute champion of the status quo. Had the Whigs been faced with Gustavus III, who in 1772 overthrew the Swedish constitution, then their critique might have been more justified.

It is a tribute to Black that the only significant flaw in the book is its subtitle, America's Last King, suggesting its main subject is the king's relationship with the colonies. This is not the case. Black does, however, have many interesting things to say about America's struggle for independence. He stresses the explicit targeting of George in the Declaration of Independence. Whether or not this was because America had already broken with Parliament, as Black argues, it was certainly clever propaganda. It was clearly easier to declare independence from a “bad” rather than from a “good” king. Throughout the conflict, George III had seen himself as upholding the rights of the British Parliament. It is, therefore, illuminating when Black quotes Thomas Jefferson tacitly admitting as much in 1774 when urging in A Summary View of the Rights of British America that George should veto Westminster legislation. George had the theoretical right to do so but, in practice, was far too constitutionally minded ever to consider it. At the very beginning of the book, Black recounts being taken aback when told by the guide in Liberty Hall, Boston, that George was a tyrant. If this biography leads to a public reevaluation of the king in the land that he lost, then it will more than have fulfilled its promise.