The American Revolution by Geoffrey C. Ward An Intimate History
What's it about?
The American Revolution (2025) expands on the sweeping saga of the American Revolutionary War for independence from the six-part PBS series of the same name. It captures, with considerable detail and rich empathy for the individuals on all sides, the broad international context for the conflict which kick-started more than two centuries of anti-colonial revolutions around the world.
The story of the American Revolution is taught in history classes and recounted by tour guides in cities like Boston and Philadelphia. But it often comes down to a handful of characters and stories about a Tea Party, a midnight ride, Betsy Ross sewing the nation’s flag, or George Washington crossing the Delaware. They tell the two-dimensional tale of an upstart British colony crying for liberty against a distant king, ultimately winning its hallowed independence.
But the reality is far more complicated.
For instance, the tale doesn’t include that more than 20 nations were directly involved in the conflict, with dozens more transformed by the events of 1776 to 1781. The real story starts far earlier than the first shots at Lexington and Concord, and continues for centuries past the surrender at Yorktown. The impact transformed colonies across the Caribbean, East India, and West Africa, whose own fights for independence were inspired by the same dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This lesson dives deep into the global origins and lasting impacts of the American Revolutionary War, busting myths and legends along the way. It brings to light the global context of a war that kicked off two centuries of global revolutions and ultimately inspired many of the modern democracies flourishing today.
One of the most enduring myths about the American Revolution is hidden in how it’s described: as a war for independence between 13 British colonies against their king. It obscures the international context of the revolutionary movement and interconnected global economies. It even ignores the number of nations with stakes in the struggle itself.
Worse still, some of the most legendary moments are outright myths. No one knows who sewed the first flag, for instance, though Betsy Ross has long received credit. No one shouted “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” at the battle of Bunker Hill. In fact, the skirmish didn’t even happen on that particular hill.
Some omissions in the story of the American Revolution seem purposeful. Long before the Declaration of Independence, for instance, six indigenous nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in the Northeast, including the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora had formed a democratic union of their own, known as the Haudenosaunee. Their democracy flourished for centuries before the British colonists in North America ever dreamed of breaking their own colonial bonds.
It was after drawing inspiration from these native nations that the famed scientist of the time Benjamin Franklin first proposed a union of the 13 colonies in 1754. Printing a Philadelphia Gazette cartoon with the provocative slogan “Join or Die.” He brought his “Plan of Union” to a handful of colonial governments and, though the effort failed at the time, 20 years later the slogan would be revived in the leadup to war.
There are other important omissions, too. Like the contributions of countless enslaved Africans – a whopping 20 percent of the colonial population. They had an outsized impact both on the commercial success of the colonies. In a revolution built on individual liberty and self-determination, leveraged by promises of freedom on all sides – including British, French, Spanish, and native nations – their experience of the American Revolution was complex.
In conventional histories, much of the motivation for the war is embedded in fairness. It was a movement against taxation without representation and forced trade quotas with Britain. While these all did play a role, far more relevant are the shifting international relations between Britain, France, and Spain, and the accompanying political and military machinations of their expanding global empires.
With this expanded view, the rebellion of a small, out-of-the-way set of colonies begins to take on the proportions of an epic origin story.
How did loyal subjects of the British Empire become revolutionaries? Given the global reach, naval might, and military force of the empire at its height, this is no easy prospect. Oddly enough, the catalyst can be found in an earlier conflict that forged native-born soldiers from colonial subjects. Known in the US as the “French and Indian War,” the rest of the world calls it the “Seven Years War.”
Between 1754 and 1763, Britain and France and their allies launched the first true world war. Notably, it was a disastrous expedition led by George Washington in which the very first shots of this war were fired. As French Canadian and French forces pushed further into the Ohio Valley hoping to establish forts to protect it as French Territory, British settlers tried to push back. Both French and British forces viewed the Ohio Valley as the key to control of the continent.
But a host of native peoples also called this valley home, and while they were happy to trade with French and British travelers, they were wary of permanent settlements. They’d occupied this land for hundreds of generations.
It was one Seneca leader with close ties to the British, Tanaghrisson, who wrote to the Lieutenant Governor of the Virginia Colony, Robert Dinwiddie, about Seneca fears of French settlement in the area. In response, Dinwiddie sent a party of Virginia volunteers to disrupt the French near what is modern-day Pittsburgh along the Ohio river.
Their commander was a 22-year-old colonel, George Washington, eager to prove his loyalty to God and the King, and demonstrate his military prowess. He was also a personal investor in The Ohio Company, which sought access to the resources – and the land – for the British.
To rout the French he allied himself with Tanaghrisson and the Seneca, but soon discovered that French Canadians were already establishing strongholds. When the Virginia volunteers and their Seneca allies stumbled on a camp of French Canadian soldiers having breakfast early one morning, they opened fire and quickly subdued the startled company. Before the commander could convince Washington that his troops meant no harm, Tanaghrisson killed him.
Far more than at Lexington and Concord two decades hence, Washington’s Virginia volunteers and native allies delivered a “shot heard round the world.” As the war that followed saw Britain, France, and later Spain vying for colonial supremacy, the conflict spread through the Caribbean to the East Indies, West Africa, and beyond.
The Seven Years War did far more than teach young George Washington military strategy. It honed colonial fighters into a military force, and taught the soon-to-be American revolutionaries all about the weaknesses of British military strategies. Knowledge they’d soon put to use.
The war saw British forces ultimately victorious, and the empire expanded greatly in the process. They won all of Canada east of the Mississippi River, Eastern Louisiana except for New Orleans, the islands of Tobago, Grenada, Dominica and St. Vincent, Senegal in West Africa, and secured a dominant position in India. But the war and the empire was costly, and the British government was looking to recoup losses.
Parliament began levying a series of colonial taxes, starting with the Sugar Act of 1764, to begin replenishing the British coffers. The Stamp Act followed in 1765, which taxed all official printed materials from newspapers to business contracts. This was the first tax targeted directly at the North American colonists and it met with massive resistance. Colonists began to organize in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and called their group the Sons of Liberty.
Their activities made taxation a dangerous proposition. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty hanged effigies of Stamp Tax collector Andrew Oliver, destroyed his office, and forced his resignation. Later that month, they attacked Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s house. When the tax was repealed a year later, they claimed victory.
In 1767 came the Townsend Act, which levied taxes on glass, paper, lead, paint, and tea – all of which the colonists were obliged to purchase from Britain. Once again, the backlash was massive. The boycott of British goods by North Americans led to widespread economic hardship back in Britain. The Daughters of Liberty, which came together from women’s organizations, boycotted British household staples like cotton and wool.
Boycotts were so successful because the Sons of Liberty threatened any merchants who even unloaded goods like tea from British ships. In March of 1770 tensions during the infamous Boston Massacre when colonists were confronted then fired on by British troops. While it didn’t trigger an all-out war, several died. This included Crispus Attucks, a man with mixed African and indigenous ancestry, making him one of the first martyrs to the cause.
Most of the Townsend Act was repealed after the Boston Massacre, except for the tea tax. But the boycott had forged channels of communication and resistance throughout the colonies. By December of that year, Samuel Adams led the Sons of Liberty onto a British ship in Boston harbor, some dressed as Mohawks, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. Similar actions followed in ports like New York and Charleston.
The Sons of Liberty went on to form the first Continental Congress in early 1774, transforming the organization from a network of resistance to a revolutionary infrastructure.
Enshrined forever in the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1861, Paul Revere’s ride is one of the central legends of the American Revolution. Beyond the myths, the infamous ride in April of 1775 to warn the colonists of British troop movements was a coordinated operation led by the Sons of Liberty with several riders across the colonies.
By then, Britain had amassed a full standing army on North American shores to squash the open rebellion. Soldiers were billetted in private homes, fed by locals, and conducted military exercises in public squares like the Boston Common. The Continental Congress had been outlawed by acts of Parliament, but their activities only ramped up in secret. Local militias responded by stocking up on weapons and expanding their spy networks.
When British general Thomas Gage ordered 700 troops to travel from Boston to Concord to seize militia weapons and arrest Sons of Liberty Samuel Adams and John Hancock, they had days to prepare. Though Paul Revere was captured by the British, he managed to warn Adams and Hancock successfully.
When Gage’s troops arrived in Lexington, they were met by militia under the command of Captain John Parker. Gage ordered the militia to disband and some followed orders. Parker had ordered his troops not to fire unless they were fired on, but someone did. The British opened fire and charged with bayonets, and when the smoke cleared, eight colonists were dead and ten were wounded. The militia dispersed, and the troops marched onward toward Concord.
When the army arrived, it began searching the town for caches of weapons, but forewarned colonists had hidden most supplies. Frustrated, British troops began setting fires and destroying food stores. In response, more than 400 militia members gathered at the North Bridge outside of town. When they saw the smoke, they feared total destruction. They advanced on the 100 British troops guarding the bridge and opened fire. It was the first open fighting between colonists and the British army. It didn’t go well for the British.
Under fire, the British retreated toward the town. But they faced between three and four thousand more militiamen who’d arrived and used guerilla warfare tactics against them. For an army used to the orderly battlefield, urban warfare proved disastrous. Militia members hid behind walls and in woods, picking off British troops assembled in the open. Gage ordered them back to Boston, but when they reached Lexington again they were in full retreat. At day’s end, more than 300 British troops were dead, compared with just 100 on the American side.
When the army reached Boston, militia surrounded the town, leading to the Siege of Boston. As news traveled across the colonies, this initial victory signaled that British military might wasn’t invincible, and that American patriots were willing to fight. These truths would become determining factors in the long struggle to come.
Guerilla warfare and urban resistance tactics weren’t the only innovations early in the conflict. The British responded with equally innovative strategies. Royal Virginia governor Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation offering freedom to anyone enslaved in the colonies, if they chose to join on the side of the British. He also formed an Ethiopian regiment, whose broad sashes read “Liberty to Slaves.” This regiment terrified Southern patriots, but inspired tens of thousands of enslaved individuals to escape to the British side.
American militias had included both enslaved and free Black patriots in their ranks from the earliest days. They were there at the Boston Massacre, serving actively in Northern ranks. When George Washington was named head of the Continental Army in July of 1775, he found that not only were Black patriots already serving, but there was ongoing active recruitment. Terrified of Southern backlash, in a council with his generals, Washington and his army ended recruitment of Black Americans.
But Lord Dunmore’s proclamation had shifted the dynamic on American soil. Natives who chose to ally with the British were also offered incentives like weapons, trade goods, and land grants in exchange for their service. Indigenous interests in stopping westward expansion of colonies aligned with the British need for control. Even Washington had to reverse his exclusion of Black Americans by December 1775.
Both populations drew inspiration from the ideal of self-determination in the budding American revolution, regardless of which side they allied with. Fighting for liberty in a land where many were enslaved was a cognitive dissonance that never resolved. The impact of this dissonance lasted long past the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
In the chaos of the early days of warfare a number of British troops escaped into frontier territories to secure their own land and avoid the fight. A few thousand German mercenaries from Hesse-Kassel did the same. While tens of thousands of enslaved peoples initially escaped and enlisted on the British side, only a few thousand Black loyalists were eventually relocated to Canada.
Over the course of the war, the betrayal of indigenous and enslaved peoples came from all sides. Black soldiers were re-enslaved in both America and across the Caribbean. Native nations who allied with the British were declared defeated after the surrender at Yorktown and faced removal from their ancestral lands.
Ultimately, a revolution fought in the name of liberty and freedom enshrined slavery into its founding documents. More indigenous conflict followed, too, like the Northwest Indian War from 1785 to 1795 and the Tecumseh Confederacy in the 1810s. Far from over, their fight for freedom and liberty was just beginning.
In the aftermath of the surrender at Yorktown in 1781 and the Treaty of Paris which marked formal independence in 1783, the most obvious question was what victory meant for Americans. While there were clear winners and losers, there were also winners who ultimately lost, and a few losers who ultimately won.
First, the Haundenosaunee and Shawnee were stripped of their territories in the Treaty of Paris – without their consultation. Most Mohawk tribe members fled to Canadian territories, but were denied promised land grants for their alliance.
White Americans were the big winners of the American War of Independence, securing the right to self governance. Similarly, France had allied with the Americans and considered their victory as payback for the Seven Years War.
Events in France soon echoed those in America. The fight for liberty in America translated into similar slogans during the French Revolution. It later became enshrined as the revolutionary motto, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” in the nineteenth century.
Spain was also a big winner in the American Revolution, as it regained its colony in Florida in the struggle and the fight weakened long-time rival, Britain. Florida was later sold to America in 1819, as Spanish colonies in Latin America started their own resistance. Latin America saw revolutionary outbreaks during the 1810s and 1820s.
The Haitian Revolt of 1791 also owed inspiration directly to the American War of Independence. When enslaved people heard the rhetoric of documents like the Declaration of Independence, or the impassioned writings of revolutionary authors like Thomas Paine, they took them seriously. They revolted against French rule, another cognitive dissonance among the French, who thought liberty was owed to them but not their enslaved subjects in the Caribbean.
Closer to home, the ripples of revolution didn’t end with the Treaty of Paris, either. Indigenous resistance to American expansion continued through the nineteenth century. Promises of liberty didn’t fade for enslaved Americans, either. The Abolitionist movement owes its roots to the Revolutionary War, as the loyalty of Black soldiers in places like Rhode Island and Massachusetts greatly weakened their appetite for slavery.
The results would be another devastating war on American soil less than a century later, and a struggle for civil rights still ongoing today. The promise of the freedom from oppressive rule and self-determination still resonates powerfully around the world to this day.
In this lesson to The American Revolution by Geoffrey C. Ward, you’ve learned that the American Revolution was a multi-national conflict involving more than 20 nations spanning four continents. It had deep roots in the Seven Years War, which bankrupted British coffers and taught future American soldiers like George Washington about the weaknesses of British military strategy.
Promises of liberty attracted tens of thousands of enslaved and indigenous peoples to fight on all sides, yet the Revolution ultimately enshrined slavery in America’s founding documents and stripped indigenous nations of their lands.
This central paradox – a war for freedom that denied freedom to all but white men – sparked two centuries of global revolutionary movements, from Haiti’s slave revolt in 1791 to Latin American independence struggles throughout the 1800s, as marginalized peoples fought to claim the liberty that 1776 had promised but not delivered.
The American Revolution (2025) expands on the sweeping saga of the American Revolutionary War for independence from the six-part PBS series of the same name. It captures, with considerable detail and rich empathy for the individuals on all sides, the broad international context for the conflict which kick-started more than two centuries of anti-colonial revolutions around the world.
The story of the American Revolution is taught in history classes and recounted by tour guides in cities like Boston and Philadelphia. But it often comes down to a handful of characters and stories about a Tea Party, a midnight ride, Betsy Ross sewing the nation’s flag, or George Washington crossing the Delaware. They tell the two-dimensional tale of an upstart British colony crying for liberty against a distant king, ultimately winning its hallowed independence.
But the reality is far more complicated.
For instance, the tale doesn’t include that more than 20 nations were directly involved in the conflict, with dozens more transformed by the events of 1776 to 1781. The real story starts far earlier than the first shots at Lexington and Concord, and continues for centuries past the surrender at Yorktown. The impact transformed colonies across the Caribbean, East India, and West Africa, whose own fights for independence were inspired by the same dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This lesson dives deep into the global origins and lasting impacts of the American Revolutionary War, busting myths and legends along the way. It brings to light the global context of a war that kicked off two centuries of global revolutions and ultimately inspired many of the modern democracies flourishing today.
One of the most enduring myths about the American Revolution is hidden in how it’s described: as a war for independence between 13 British colonies against their king. It obscures the international context of the revolutionary movement and interconnected global economies. It even ignores the number of nations with stakes in the struggle itself.
Worse still, some of the most legendary moments are outright myths. No one knows who sewed the first flag, for instance, though Betsy Ross has long received credit. No one shouted “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” at the battle of Bunker Hill. In fact, the skirmish didn’t even happen on that particular hill.
Some omissions in the story of the American Revolution seem purposeful. Long before the Declaration of Independence, for instance, six indigenous nations of the Iroquois Confederacy in the Northeast, including the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora had formed a democratic union of their own, known as the Haudenosaunee. Their democracy flourished for centuries before the British colonists in North America ever dreamed of breaking their own colonial bonds.
It was after drawing inspiration from these native nations that the famed scientist of the time Benjamin Franklin first proposed a union of the 13 colonies in 1754. Printing a Philadelphia Gazette cartoon with the provocative slogan “Join or Die.” He brought his “Plan of Union” to a handful of colonial governments and, though the effort failed at the time, 20 years later the slogan would be revived in the leadup to war.
There are other important omissions, too. Like the contributions of countless enslaved Africans – a whopping 20 percent of the colonial population. They had an outsized impact both on the commercial success of the colonies. In a revolution built on individual liberty and self-determination, leveraged by promises of freedom on all sides – including British, French, Spanish, and native nations – their experience of the American Revolution was complex.
In conventional histories, much of the motivation for the war is embedded in fairness. It was a movement against taxation without representation and forced trade quotas with Britain. While these all did play a role, far more relevant are the shifting international relations between Britain, France, and Spain, and the accompanying political and military machinations of their expanding global empires.
With this expanded view, the rebellion of a small, out-of-the-way set of colonies begins to take on the proportions of an epic origin story.
How did loyal subjects of the British Empire become revolutionaries? Given the global reach, naval might, and military force of the empire at its height, this is no easy prospect. Oddly enough, the catalyst can be found in an earlier conflict that forged native-born soldiers from colonial subjects. Known in the US as the “French and Indian War,” the rest of the world calls it the “Seven Years War.”
Between 1754 and 1763, Britain and France and their allies launched the first true world war. Notably, it was a disastrous expedition led by George Washington in which the very first shots of this war were fired. As French Canadian and French forces pushed further into the Ohio Valley hoping to establish forts to protect it as French Territory, British settlers tried to push back. Both French and British forces viewed the Ohio Valley as the key to control of the continent.
But a host of native peoples also called this valley home, and while they were happy to trade with French and British travelers, they were wary of permanent settlements. They’d occupied this land for hundreds of generations.
It was one Seneca leader with close ties to the British, Tanaghrisson, who wrote to the Lieutenant Governor of the Virginia Colony, Robert Dinwiddie, about Seneca fears of French settlement in the area. In response, Dinwiddie sent a party of Virginia volunteers to disrupt the French near what is modern-day Pittsburgh along the Ohio river.
Their commander was a 22-year-old colonel, George Washington, eager to prove his loyalty to God and the King, and demonstrate his military prowess. He was also a personal investor in The Ohio Company, which sought access to the resources – and the land – for the British.
To rout the French he allied himself with Tanaghrisson and the Seneca, but soon discovered that French Canadians were already establishing strongholds. When the Virginia volunteers and their Seneca allies stumbled on a camp of French Canadian soldiers having breakfast early one morning, they opened fire and quickly subdued the startled company. Before the commander could convince Washington that his troops meant no harm, Tanaghrisson killed him.
Far more than at Lexington and Concord two decades hence, Washington’s Virginia volunteers and native allies delivered a “shot heard round the world.” As the war that followed saw Britain, France, and later Spain vying for colonial supremacy, the conflict spread through the Caribbean to the East Indies, West Africa, and beyond.
The Seven Years War did far more than teach young George Washington military strategy. It honed colonial fighters into a military force, and taught the soon-to-be American revolutionaries all about the weaknesses of British military strategies. Knowledge they’d soon put to use.
The war saw British forces ultimately victorious, and the empire expanded greatly in the process. They won all of Canada east of the Mississippi River, Eastern Louisiana except for New Orleans, the islands of Tobago, Grenada, Dominica and St. Vincent, Senegal in West Africa, and secured a dominant position in India. But the war and the empire was costly, and the British government was looking to recoup losses.
Parliament began levying a series of colonial taxes, starting with the Sugar Act of 1764, to begin replenishing the British coffers. The Stamp Act followed in 1765, which taxed all official printed materials from newspapers to business contracts. This was the first tax targeted directly at the North American colonists and it met with massive resistance. Colonists began to organize in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and called their group the Sons of Liberty.
Their activities made taxation a dangerous proposition. In Boston, the Sons of Liberty hanged effigies of Stamp Tax collector Andrew Oliver, destroyed his office, and forced his resignation. Later that month, they attacked Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s house. When the tax was repealed a year later, they claimed victory.
In 1767 came the Townsend Act, which levied taxes on glass, paper, lead, paint, and tea – all of which the colonists were obliged to purchase from Britain. Once again, the backlash was massive. The boycott of British goods by North Americans led to widespread economic hardship back in Britain. The Daughters of Liberty, which came together from women’s organizations, boycotted British household staples like cotton and wool.
Boycotts were so successful because the Sons of Liberty threatened any merchants who even unloaded goods like tea from British ships. In March of 1770 tensions during the infamous Boston Massacre when colonists were confronted then fired on by British troops. While it didn’t trigger an all-out war, several died. This included Crispus Attucks, a man with mixed African and indigenous ancestry, making him one of the first martyrs to the cause.
Most of the Townsend Act was repealed after the Boston Massacre, except for the tea tax. But the boycott had forged channels of communication and resistance throughout the colonies. By December of that year, Samuel Adams led the Sons of Liberty onto a British ship in Boston harbor, some dressed as Mohawks, and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor. Similar actions followed in ports like New York and Charleston.
The Sons of Liberty went on to form the first Continental Congress in early 1774, transforming the organization from a network of resistance to a revolutionary infrastructure.
Enshrined forever in the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1861, Paul Revere’s ride is one of the central legends of the American Revolution. Beyond the myths, the infamous ride in April of 1775 to warn the colonists of British troop movements was a coordinated operation led by the Sons of Liberty with several riders across the colonies.
By then, Britain had amassed a full standing army on North American shores to squash the open rebellion. Soldiers were billetted in private homes, fed by locals, and conducted military exercises in public squares like the Boston Common. The Continental Congress had been outlawed by acts of Parliament, but their activities only ramped up in secret. Local militias responded by stocking up on weapons and expanding their spy networks.
When British general Thomas Gage ordered 700 troops to travel from Boston to Concord to seize militia weapons and arrest Sons of Liberty Samuel Adams and John Hancock, they had days to prepare. Though Paul Revere was captured by the British, he managed to warn Adams and Hancock successfully.
When Gage’s troops arrived in Lexington, they were met by militia under the command of Captain John Parker. Gage ordered the militia to disband and some followed orders. Parker had ordered his troops not to fire unless they were fired on, but someone did. The British opened fire and charged with bayonets, and when the smoke cleared, eight colonists were dead and ten were wounded. The militia dispersed, and the troops marched onward toward Concord.
When the army arrived, it began searching the town for caches of weapons, but forewarned colonists had hidden most supplies. Frustrated, British troops began setting fires and destroying food stores. In response, more than 400 militia members gathered at the North Bridge outside of town. When they saw the smoke, they feared total destruction. They advanced on the 100 British troops guarding the bridge and opened fire. It was the first open fighting between colonists and the British army. It didn’t go well for the British.
Under fire, the British retreated toward the town. But they faced between three and four thousand more militiamen who’d arrived and used guerilla warfare tactics against them. For an army used to the orderly battlefield, urban warfare proved disastrous. Militia members hid behind walls and in woods, picking off British troops assembled in the open. Gage ordered them back to Boston, but when they reached Lexington again they were in full retreat. At day’s end, more than 300 British troops were dead, compared with just 100 on the American side.
When the army reached Boston, militia surrounded the town, leading to the Siege of Boston. As news traveled across the colonies, this initial victory signaled that British military might wasn’t invincible, and that American patriots were willing to fight. These truths would become determining factors in the long struggle to come.
Guerilla warfare and urban resistance tactics weren’t the only innovations early in the conflict. The British responded with equally innovative strategies. Royal Virginia governor Lord Dunmore issued a proclamation offering freedom to anyone enslaved in the colonies, if they chose to join on the side of the British. He also formed an Ethiopian regiment, whose broad sashes read “Liberty to Slaves.” This regiment terrified Southern patriots, but inspired tens of thousands of enslaved individuals to escape to the British side.
American militias had included both enslaved and free Black patriots in their ranks from the earliest days. They were there at the Boston Massacre, serving actively in Northern ranks. When George Washington was named head of the Continental Army in July of 1775, he found that not only were Black patriots already serving, but there was ongoing active recruitment. Terrified of Southern backlash, in a council with his generals, Washington and his army ended recruitment of Black Americans.
But Lord Dunmore’s proclamation had shifted the dynamic on American soil. Natives who chose to ally with the British were also offered incentives like weapons, trade goods, and land grants in exchange for their service. Indigenous interests in stopping westward expansion of colonies aligned with the British need for control. Even Washington had to reverse his exclusion of Black Americans by December 1775.
Both populations drew inspiration from the ideal of self-determination in the budding American revolution, regardless of which side they allied with. Fighting for liberty in a land where many were enslaved was a cognitive dissonance that never resolved. The impact of this dissonance lasted long past the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
In the chaos of the early days of warfare a number of British troops escaped into frontier territories to secure their own land and avoid the fight. A few thousand German mercenaries from Hesse-Kassel did the same. While tens of thousands of enslaved peoples initially escaped and enlisted on the British side, only a few thousand Black loyalists were eventually relocated to Canada.
Over the course of the war, the betrayal of indigenous and enslaved peoples came from all sides. Black soldiers were re-enslaved in both America and across the Caribbean. Native nations who allied with the British were declared defeated after the surrender at Yorktown and faced removal from their ancestral lands.
Ultimately, a revolution fought in the name of liberty and freedom enshrined slavery into its founding documents. More indigenous conflict followed, too, like the Northwest Indian War from 1785 to 1795 and the Tecumseh Confederacy in the 1810s. Far from over, their fight for freedom and liberty was just beginning.
In the aftermath of the surrender at Yorktown in 1781 and the Treaty of Paris which marked formal independence in 1783, the most obvious question was what victory meant for Americans. While there were clear winners and losers, there were also winners who ultimately lost, and a few losers who ultimately won.
First, the Haundenosaunee and Shawnee were stripped of their territories in the Treaty of Paris – without their consultation. Most Mohawk tribe members fled to Canadian territories, but were denied promised land grants for their alliance.
White Americans were the big winners of the American War of Independence, securing the right to self governance. Similarly, France had allied with the Americans and considered their victory as payback for the Seven Years War.
Events in France soon echoed those in America. The fight for liberty in America translated into similar slogans during the French Revolution. It later became enshrined as the revolutionary motto, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” in the nineteenth century.
Spain was also a big winner in the American Revolution, as it regained its colony in Florida in the struggle and the fight weakened long-time rival, Britain. Florida was later sold to America in 1819, as Spanish colonies in Latin America started their own resistance. Latin America saw revolutionary outbreaks during the 1810s and 1820s.
The Haitian Revolt of 1791 also owed inspiration directly to the American War of Independence. When enslaved people heard the rhetoric of documents like the Declaration of Independence, or the impassioned writings of revolutionary authors like Thomas Paine, they took them seriously. They revolted against French rule, another cognitive dissonance among the French, who thought liberty was owed to them but not their enslaved subjects in the Caribbean.
Closer to home, the ripples of revolution didn’t end with the Treaty of Paris, either. Indigenous resistance to American expansion continued through the nineteenth century. Promises of liberty didn’t fade for enslaved Americans, either. The Abolitionist movement owes its roots to the Revolutionary War, as the loyalty of Black soldiers in places like Rhode Island and Massachusetts greatly weakened their appetite for slavery.
The results would be another devastating war on American soil less than a century later, and a struggle for civil rights still ongoing today. The promise of the freedom from oppressive rule and self-determination still resonates powerfully around the world to this day.
In this lesson to The American Revolution by Geoffrey C. Ward, you’ve learned that the American Revolution was a multi-national conflict involving more than 20 nations spanning four continents. It had deep roots in the Seven Years War, which bankrupted British coffers and taught future American soldiers like George Washington about the weaknesses of British military strategy.
Promises of liberty attracted tens of thousands of enslaved and indigenous peoples to fight on all sides, yet the Revolution ultimately enshrined slavery in America’s founding documents and stripped indigenous nations of their lands.
This central paradox – a war for freedom that denied freedom to all but white men – sparked two centuries of global revolutionary movements, from Haiti’s slave revolt in 1791 to Latin American independence struggles throughout the 1800s, as marginalized peoples fought to claim the liberty that 1776 had promised but not delivered.
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