The American Revolution is known as the American War of Independence in the homeland of the five books, the United Kingdom. As we discuss his five books, we’ll explore whether the events of 1776 were merely a war for independence or more revolutionary. but to begin with, can you please fill us in on the skeletons of the american revolution? We’ll get to the whys, but before we do, tell us when and where.
The standard narrative usually begins with the coronation of King George III in 1760. Everyone in America welcomes the ascension of a reforming young king, but that quickly soured. Parliament turned to Americans for revenue to pay military costs. This led to the first Stamp Act crisis in 1765, in which printed goods were to be taxed, and then to the Townsend Acts in 1767, in which tea and other imported goods were to be taxed. in each case, the settlers protested and parliament backed down. Finally, in 1773, in an effort to save the East India Company, Britain’s leading tea producer which had a monopoly on tea in America, Parliament stood its ground. This is what I call the “pressure cooker” story: Gradually, Americans become more and more disaffected. that’s the old story.
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Recent scholarship suggests that the British authorities easily handled such problems, as they had when similar problems arose in Scotland and Ireland. Some “founding fathers” like Adams were writing pamphlets, but here the events of the 1760s were not expected to lead to a rebellion. It wasn’t the Boston Tea Party, where some Boston settlers dumped East Indian tea into Boston Harbor, leading to a breakup. Rather, it was Parliament’s punishment of Americans and the armed occupation of Boston in 1774 that electrified ordinary men and women outside of New England. colonists who considered themselves loyal subjects to the king felt treated like criminals. Political protests spread, gradually leading to gun battles at Lexington and Concord during April 1775 and then in June at the Battle of Bunker Hill. so the fight was really on.
Tell us about the war itself.
The original goal of the struggle was independence. The declaration of independence was issued in July 1776. The revolutionary goals were developed during the course of the revolution.
the war began, militarily, in 1775 with the battle of bunker hill and lasted until 1783. we tend to focus on the early years, but the suffering and sacrifice of the american people in the last years of the war was just as great like at the beginning. Relative to the population of America, which was about two and a half million people at the time, more people died in the Revolution than in any war other than the Civil War. Many of these deaths occurred in British prison camps and on British prison ships in American ports, which was an outrage.
“revolutionary goals developed during the course of the revolution”
The continental army was divided into regiments by state. The Pennsylvania Line and the Maryland Line, as they were called, became quite competent. below the regiments were local militias. they were not highly trained for battle; they served more effectively as ideological police. The British had a large number of soldiers and also hired perhaps 20,000 people from the Hanover and Brunswick areas of Germany. in the battle of saratoga in 1777, one of the first victories of the americans, about a third of the soldiers who surrendered were germans. The French entered on the American side after 1778 and were essential to American victory, particularly at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, which ended the fighting but not the war. To give you an idea of how essential the French alliance was to us gaining our independence, there were more French troops in Yorktown than Americans.
What role did Native Americans play in this war?
Indigenous peoples played a key role, especially in the Pennsylvania area, where they sided with the Americans. The Iroquois, in the upper New York area, fought well in support of the British side. American independence was a setback for the Native American peoples. After independence, the frontier was flooded with land-hungry families moving to Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky. once the flooding began, the Native Americans had a very hard time holding their ground. the collapse of the border was not a goal of the war, but it was a result of the war.
The American Revolution once held a central position in American history lessons. children were taught that the heroic words of the declaration of independence – that all men are created equal – encapsulated the American creed. Increasingly, schools insist that this is a myth. The Pulitzer Prize-winning draft of 1619 argues that the preservation of slavery was a major impetus of the American Revolution. in the words of ibram kendi, the author of the award-winning print from the beginning, which was my son’s only history book in eighth grade, “we have rejected the master narrative which has in fact been the master narrative.”
I understand the need to pay more attention to Americans left out of traditional history. Of the two and a half million people in the colonies at the time of the American Revolution, 20 percent were black and enslaved. So I understand the people who say that the revolution should have paid more attention to their suffering. As many voices as possible should be included to understand our origin.
As for your recommendations, let’s start with the stamp law crisis first published by Yale historian Edmund S. morgan and his collaborator helen morgan in 1953.
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edmund morgan was a great stylist. he knew how to write accessible prose. I love the architecture of this book. weaves together a chapter on politics, on what’s going on in parliament and what the king is doing, with chapters on how the lives of ordinary Americans have been transformed by the decisions you read about in the previous chapter. this back and forth between high politics and local response is creative genius. the stamp law crisis is a model of what great historical writing can be.
In his preface to the third edition of Stamp Act Crisis, Morgan writes that he wanted to republish the book to “reaffirm the importance of ideas in society, particularly political and constitutional ideas.”
When Morgan rose to prominence in the profession during the 1950s, World War II had just ended. there was a feeling that the American ideology of freedom and freedom propelled us to victory over an alien and evil ideology; many historians projected these sentiments against communism. the intellectual environment of the time was oriented around the clash of ideological systems. there was a sense among cold war historians that the American values of freedom and liberty were not only superior but had also proven superior in competition with these other systems. That was the world Morgan came from.
“in the ideas and ideals that animate politics and find their way into laws and constitutions, we discover the understanding that people have of themselves, including the crucial ideas that allow them to think of themselves as people”, according to Morgan. How did the ideas generated by the stamp law crisis help create what has been called the American creed?
I think what morgan meant was that many colonists felt that england had been corrupted and that there was a desire for a more virtuous policy. Notions of liberty and rights became absolutely paramount in the story told by historians of Morgan’s generation.
but let’s be honest, when we talk about American ideas, we have to say: whose ideas? we’re talking about what white American men thought.
next, a brilliant book on how a diverse set of estranged colonies developed the confidence to act collectively and sustain a long-running rebellion against a mighty empire. please tell me about your own revolution market.
revolutions arise because of people whose names are not recorded in the history books. if you don’t have the people on the street behind you, you only have ideas. My research showed that the common denominator among small towns scattered throughout the United States was consumption habits.
British manufacturing absolutely dominated the US market. all consumer goods in a colonial house were British-made. slowly, Americans realized that they could weaponize consumption. if you tell me in private that you are a revolutionary, I may believe you, but be skeptical that you will act according to your beliefs. but if you stop buying imported fabrics and give up your tea, I know you’re committed.
Protests and boycotts became more successful as Americans communicated through newspapers. newspapers were the facebook of revolutionary times; they were how Americans organized and confirmed that neighboring peoples were coming together. people in georgia reading about the actions of people in massachusetts learned that strangers were sharing their protest; that gave power to the revolution in time. The Market Revolution is about how the American people, through boycotts of consumer goods, began to resist British oppression.
How innovative was this non-import activity? you call it “a reinvention of political culture.”
It was a total innovation. I couldn’t find any previous sustained effort to arm consumption. when people talk about the political inventiveness of americans, they point to the us. constitution and ignore the fact that the Americans were essentially the first to successfully boycott. I heard from historians in Asia and elsewhere that it is indeed unprecedented. later, this technique was imported by gandhi, for example, to gain a political voice for people who lacked a vote in the leadership of their country.
Bernard Bailyn’s Ideological Origins of the American Revolution are in many syllabuses. why?
The book first appeared as the introduction to a proposed four-volume series of what Professor Bailyn thought were key documents for understanding the American political mind. Ideological Origins of the American Revolution argues that ideas were central to the American Revolution. Bailyn described Americans, on the eve of the revolution, as believing that a conspiracy had taken hold of British politics, causing power to fall into the hands of a corrupt few and causing the revolutionaries to resolve to defend a purer form. Politics.
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“American independence was a setback for the Native Americans”
Ideological Origins of the American Revolution was the most popular book that focused on the intellectual life of the revolution; I win a lot of prizes. it probably remains a key text for students, especially graduate students, in universities today. Bailyn and Morgan were the giants of the field in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
bailyn and this book challenged those who claimed that the American revolution was primarily a product of class struggle. Can you explain the progressive historians’ interpretation of the revolution, most enduringly summarized by historians Charles and Mary Beard?
Before World War II, perhaps looking at the Russian Revolution, some historians searched the American Revolution for evidence that territorial interests and class competition were behind the ideas espoused by the founders. Morgan and Bailyn showed the shortcomings of looking at events through such a narrow lens. Bailyn looked at the evidence and found no sign in the pamphlets of the period of class competition within the white American population, so she turned her attention back to the importance of ideas in starting the revolution.
pulitzer prize-winning great gordon wood’s radicalism of the american revolution is next on our reading list.
Gordon Wood was a student of Professor Bailyn at Harvard. he is a great writer. in this book he traces the movement from a pre-revolutionary society centered on monarchy, hierarchy and privilege to a revolutionary society. he explains how Americans gradually found themselves espousing republicanism. republicanism can mean a secular government, where there is no king, or republicanism can mean a system in which all people have a voice. is a masterful book on how Americans went from a monarchical society to a republican society, clearly and carefully documenting each stage of this change.
i want to remind your readers that when most americans in gordon wood’s book talked about equality, they talked about equality for white men. that is also what thomas jefferson meant when he spoke of equality in the declaration of independence. he never got the feeling that African-Americans or Indians were involved.
Gordon Wood argues that the American Revolution set in motion changes that “made the interests and prosperity of ordinary people, their pursuit of happiness, the goal of society and government.” and he claims it was “the most radical and far-reaching event in American history.” How did the revolution transform American society according to the wood and according to you?
i have different views, but i think gordon would say that during the war and in the lead up to the 1787 constitutional convention, american leaders believed in a republican society in which the leaders would be virtuous, not involved in dirty money. -making. he describes the men we call the founding fathers as almost philosophical figures. however, he explains, it wasn’t until after the 1790s and into the 19th century that Americans decided that equality really meant anything. Early in the republic, some Americans decided that everyone should have a voice and that even the little man in the street should be heard by their government. this led to what he calls the breakdown of classical republican society into the more liberal and open world of the nineteenth century. So, as Wood says, we go from monarchist to republican to liberal. wood has this tripartite way of looking at politics.
Finally, I wanted to ask you about one of the most revealing and fun readings about revolution, the will of the people.
In the will of the people, I had several goals. one was shining a light on the lives of often overlooked people of the revolutionary period. The Will of the People is complementary to the work of intellectual historians, such as Bailyn and Woods. The ordinary men and women of the towns and villages of what became the United States were absolutely essential in launching and sustaining the revolution. the ideas articulated by ordinary people launched the revolution and the sacrifices ordinary people made sustained the American revolution, even when things were going horribly wrong on the battlefield. children, parents and husbands gave their lives for the revolution. families sacrificed their consumer comforts and economic well-being for the cause.
I tell the stories of people who do not appear in the stories of intellectual historians and who are not the subject of any biography. understanding their lives is as vital as understanding the revolution. I was able to read practically all the surviving newspapers of the revolution. I examined all the published materials of the time, including sermons, which gave ordinary people religious justifications for protesting. After all, the American Revolution was not just an ideological conflict. the revolutionaries had to endure misery and fear and bloody conflict. the basic concepts of war, misery and fear, are left out of the story. I tried to restore the emotional register of the revolution so that readers have a fuller idea of what it meant to fight for independence.
Did the revolution forge a national identity?
The initial aim of the revolution was simply to roll back parliament. when parliament was unwilling to compromise, the goal became independence. but to sustain the war effort and the vacuum left by the withdrawal of the British authorities, citizen security committees and observation committees were created, some elected, others appointed. These citizens’ committees not only led the revolution, but also governed the colonies and got loyalists on board. so these committees, like the security committees during the French revolution, watched over the revolution at key moments. it is estimated that as many as 20,000 adult white men suddenly found themselves in positions of authority. they had never been chosen before. earlier they might have been seen as too poor or uneducated for government affairs. a large number of new people became involved in government. during the revolution, the colonies became a republican country. they had not set out to become a government of the people, but in the course of the war, that is what happened. At the end of the American Revolution in 1783, to a degree no Founding Father planned or anticipated, America became a nation led by the people.
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