The World Of The American Revolution

A lavishly illustrated essay collection that looks through a global lens at the American Revolution and re-positions it as the real 1st world war “Every American should read this marvelous book.” —Douglas Brinkley, author of Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America From acts of resistance like the Boston Tea Party to the "shot heard 'round the world," the American Revolutionary War stands as a symbol of freedom and democracy the world over for many people. But contrary to popular opinion, this was not just a simple battle for independence in which the American colonists waged a "David versus Goliath" fight to overthrow their British rulers. In over a dozen incisive pieces from leading historians, the American struggle for liberty and independence re-emerges instead as a part of larger skirmishes between Britain and Europe’s global superpowers—Spain, France, and the Dutch Republic. Amid these ongoing conflicts, Britain's focus was often pulled away from the war in America as it fought to preserve its more lucrative colonial interests in the Caribbean and India. With fascinating sidebars throughout and over 110 full-color images featuring military portraiture, historical documents, plus campaign and territorial maps, this fuller picture of one of the first global struggles for power offers a completely new understanding of the American Revolution.

The first exploration of the profound and often catastrophic impact the American Revolution had on the rest of the world. While the American Revolution led to domestic peace and liberty, it ultimately had a catastrophic global impact-it strengthened the British Empire and led to widespread persecution and duress. From the opium wars in China to anti-imperial rebellions in Peru to the colonization of Australia-the inspirational impact the American success had on fringe uprisings was outweighed by the influence it had on the tightening fists of oppressive world powers. Here Matthew Lockwood presents, in vivid detail, the neglected story of this unintended revolution. It sowed the seeds of collapse for the preeminent empires of the early modern era, setting the stage for the global domination of Britain, Russia, and the United States. Lockwood illuminates the forgotten stories and experiences of the communities and individuals who adapted to this new world in which the global balance of power had been drastically altered.--Adapted from jacket.

Ideal for American history and food history students as well as general readers, this book spans 500 years of cooking in what is now the United States, supplying recipes and covering the "how" and "why" of eating. This book examines the history and practice of cooking in what is now the United States from approximately the 15th century to the present day, covering everything from the hot-stone cooking techniques of the Nootka people of the Pacific Northwest to the influence of Crisco—a shortening product intended as a substitute for lard—upon American cooking in the 20th century. Learning how American cooking has evolved throughout the centuries provides valuable insights into life in the past and offers hints to our future. The author describes cooking methods used throughout American history, spotlighting why particular methods were used and how they were used to produce particular dishes. The historical presentation of information will be particularly useful to high school students studying U.S. history and learning about how wartime and new technology affects life across society. General readers will enjoy learning about the topics mentioned above, as well as the in-depth discussions of such dishes as fried chicken, donuts, and Thanksgiving turkey. Numerous sample recipes are also included.

"God grant that not only the love of liberty, but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man, may prevail in all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say, This is my country." With this quotation from Benjamin Franklin, historian Richard Morris, Columbia University, opened the fourth Library of Congress Symposium on the American Revolution, held May 8 and 9, 1975, in the Librarys Coolidge Auditorium. For Americans, the Revolution brought independence, nationhood, a constitution clearly defining the relations of the state to the people, and reforms in social and economic equality. But what did it mean to the rest of the late 18th century world? Some answers to this question are found in the papers published in this volume. Following a comprehensive survey of the impact of the American Revolution abroad, by R. R. Palmer of Yale University, leading historians consider its effect on specific countries. France is discussed by Charles Fohlen of the University of Paris-Sorbonne; the Dutch Republic by J. W. Schulte Nordholt of the State University of Leiden; Great Britain by J. H. Plumb of Christs College, Cambridge; the Russian Empire by N. N. Bolkhoitinov of the Instittue of General History, Academy of Sciences of the USSR; the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world by Mario Rodriguez of the University of Southern California; and Ireland by Owen Dudley Edwards of the University of Edinburgh. Concluding the volume are commentaries on the American Revolution in relation to Germany, Japan, and Spain by Erich Angermann of the University of Cologne, Nagayo Homina of the University of Tokyo, and Ignacio Rubio Mañe, Archivist of Mexico.

For most Americans, the Revolution’s main achievement is summed up by the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet far from a straightforward attempt to be free of Old World laws and customs, the American founding was also a bid for inclusion in the community of nations as it existed in 1776. America aspired to diplomatic recognition under international law and the authority to become a colonizing power itself. As Eliga Gould shows in this reappraisal of American history, the Revolution was an international transformation of the first importance. To conform to the public law of Europe’s imperial powers, Americans crafted a union nearly as centralized as the one they had overthrown, endured taxes heavier than any they had faced as British colonists, and remained entangled with European Atlantic empires long after the Revolution ended. No factor weighed more heavily on Americans than the legally plural Atlantic where they hoped to build their empire. Gould follows the region’s transfiguration from a fluid periphery with its own rules and norms to a place where people of all descriptions were expected to abide by the laws of Western Europe—“civilized” laws that precluded neither slavery nor the dispossession of Native Americans.

In the wake of American independence, it was clear that the new United States required novel political forms. Less obvious but no less revolutionary was the idea that the American people needed a new understanding of the self. Sensibility was a cultural movement that celebrated the human capacity for sympathy and sensitivity to the world. For individuals, it offered a means of self-transformation. For a nation lacking a monarch, state religion, or standing army, sensibility provided a means of cohesion. National independence and social interdependence facilitated one another. What Sarah Knott calls "the sentimental project" helped a new kind of citizen create a new kind of government. Knott paints sensibility as a political project whose fortunes rose and fell with the broader tides of the Revolutionary Atlantic world. Moving beyond traditional accounts of social unrest, republican and liberal ideology, and the rise of the autonomous individual, she offers an original interpretation of the American Revolution as a transformation of self and society.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER This groundbreaking book offers the first global history of the loyalist exodus to Canada, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, India, and beyond. At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Liberty’s Exiles tells their story. This surprising new account of the founding of the United States and the shaping of the post-revolutionary world traces extraordinary journeys like the one of Elizabeth Johnston, a young mother from Georgia, who led her growing family to Britain, Jamaica, and Canada, questing for a home; black loyalists such as David George, who escaped from slavery in Virginia and went on to found Baptist congregations in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone; and Mohawk Indian leader Joseph Brant, who tried to find autonomy for his people in Ontario. Ambitious, original, and personality-filled, this book is at once an intimate narrative history and a provocative analysis that changes how we see the revolution’s “losers” and their legacies.

The fourth annual compilation of selected articles from the online Journal of the American Revolution.