This course asks and attempts to provide some understanding of two questions.
The first is: why was there an American Revolution? To many Americans this seems a no-brainer. Of. course there was a revolution. We are Americans. We are made of sterner stuff. We were not about to be subjects to any other country, not even Britain.
For one thing this ignores the fact that colonists in British north America very much thought of themselves as British subjects. Between 1688 and 1763 France and Britain fought four wars, parts of each took place in North America. In each of these wars colonists fought on the British side. We know from letters and pamphlets written by the colonists that they were proud of being British subjects and proud of having contributed to British victories.
Another factor arguing against the likelihood of revolution is the fact that the colonies were mutually antagonistic. They rarely agreed on anything. They thought of themselves as 13 sovereign entities. In fact, after the fourth of the wars between France and Britain, Benjamin Franklin tried to organize a committee for mutual defense against the French. He tried to get each of the colonies to send a representative to Albany to discuss this plan. Not a single colony sent a representative. So that was that for the Albany Plan.
So, I maintain that it far from self evident that barely 12 year later, the colonies would unite in declaring independence and fighting a war together.
The second question I will examine is this: once there was a war in which Britain sent thousands of highly trained professional soldier and sailors along with Hessian mercenaries, with hundreds of warships supply ships and tons of heavy artillery–how did the colonial army primarily made up of amateurs whose day jobs were farmers, blacksmiths, and shopkeepers manage to survive long enough to attract support from European nations, especially France?
Dealing with these two questions will be the substance of the ten weeks of this course.
