From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of In defeating the British Empire and giving birth to a new nation, the American Revolution turned the world upside down. Thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent and inspired independence movements and democratic reforms around the globe. The American Revolution was at once a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war, fought by neighbors on American farms and between global powers an ocean or more away. In this sumptuous volume, historian Geoffrey C. Ward ably steers us through the international forces at play, telling the story not from the top down but from the bottom up--and through the eyes of not only our “Founding Fathers” but also those of ordinary soldiers, as well as underrepresented populations such as women, African Americans, Native Americans, and American Loyalists, asking who exactly was entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Enriched by guest essays from lauded historians such as Vincent Brown, Maya Jasanoff, and Alan Taylor, and by an astonishing array of prints, drawings, paintings, texts, and pamphlets from the time period, as well as newly commissioned art and maps--and woven together with the words of Thomas Paine-- <The American Revolution <reveals a nation still grappling with the questions that fueled its remarkable founding.

Autorentext

GEOFFREY C. WARD, historian and screenwriter, is the author of twenty books, including A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Francis Parkman Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has written or cowritten many documentary films, including The Vietnam War, The Civil War, Baseball, The War, The West, Mark Twain, Not for Ourselves Alone, and Jazz. KEN BURNS, the producer and director of numerous film series, including The Vietnam War, The Roosevelts, and The War, founded his own documentary film company, Florentine Films, in 1976. His landmark film The Civil War was the highest-rated series in the history of American public television, and his work has won numerous prizes, including the Emmy and Peabody Awards, and two nominations for Academy Award. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.

Klappentext

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the award-winning historian and filmmakers of The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The Roosevelts, and others: a richly illustrated, human-centered history of America’s founding struggle—expanding on the landmark, six-part PBS series to be aired in November 2025

“From a small spark kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished.” —Thomas Paine

In defeating the British Empire and giving birth to a new nation, the American Revolution turned the world upside down. Thirteen colonies on the Atlantic coast rose in rebellion, won their independence, and established a new form of government that radically reshaped the continent and inspired independence movements and democratic reforms around the globe.

The American Revolution was at once a war for independence, a civil war, and a world war, fought by neighbors on American farms and between global powers an ocean or more away. In this sumptuous volume, historian Geoffrey C. Ward ably steers us through the international forces at play, telling the story not from the top down but from the bottom up—and through the eyes of not only our “Founding Fathers” but also those of ordinary soldiers, as well as underrepresented populations such as women, African Americans, Native Americans, and American Loyalists, asking who exactly was entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Enriched by guest essays from lauded historians such as Vincent Brown, Maya Jasanoff, Jane Kamensky, and Alan Taylor, and by an astonishing array of prints, drawings, paintings, texts, and pamphlets from the time period, as well as newly commissioned art and maps—and woven together with the words of Thomas Paine— The American Revolution reveals a nation still grappling with the questions that fueled its remarkable founding.

Leseprobe
• Chapter One •

In Order to Be Free

May 1754–May 1775

From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen not to be extinguished. Without consuming, . . . it winds its progress from nation to nation, and conquers by a silent operation.

Man finds himself changed . . . and discovers . . . that the strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that, in order to be free, it is sufficient that he wills it.

—Thomas Paine

Rights of Man

It had been an awful night—moonless, pitch-black, with a steady, pelting rain that dripped through the bark lean-tos in which thirty-five French-Canadian soldiers had struggled to sleep. As the men emerged into the early-morning light on May 28, 1754, yawning, stretching their stiff limbs, struggling to get cook-fires going to prepare their regular ration of biscuits and split-pea soup, a third of them had only a few minutes to live.

They were camped in a rocky hollow in the heart of what the British called the Ohio Country, the vast territory along the Ohio River between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River. It was claimed by both Protestant Britain and Catholic France—ancient enemies that had fought three wars just within the previous sixty-five years. Each of those conflicts—King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, and King George’s War—had begun in Europe and only afterward spread to North America.

The new war that colonial officials in both London and Paris were already preparing for would reverse that process—beginning with a minor skirmish near the forks of the Ohio River but soon moving beyond the continent to engulf much of the world. Each imperial power was convinced that control of the Ohio Country was the key to controlling the heart of the continent. Both asserted their ownership of it. Robert Dinwiddie, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, proclaimed it “notoriously known to be the property of the Crown of Great Britain.” A French commander responded that it was “incontestably” the property of his king.

A host of Indian Nations made their homes in the Ohio Country, happy to trade with foreigners but wary of their permanent settlement and unwilling to give up their own independence. And so, when in 1753, the French sent canoes filled with troops from Canada to build and garrison a chain of forts meant to link Canada with Louisiana and keep the thirteen contiguous British colonies clinging to the Atlantic coast, some Indians were convinced that French settlers were sure to follow the forts and occupy their lands.

A Seneca spokesman named Tanaghrisson, whose people belonged to the powerful six-nation Haudenosaunee Confederacy, with close ties to the British, sent a message to Dinwiddie: “We do not want the French to come against us at all,” it said, “but very much want our good brothers the English to be with us.”

Dinwiddie owned shares in the Ohio Company, a group of speculators who had been promised a grant of 200,000 acres in the valley provided that they managed to construct a fort there to protect prospective settlers. In 1754, he sent a party of volunteers to disrupt French plans by building the promised fort at the strategic Forks of the River—the site of present-day Pittsburgh. Tanaghrisson was given the honor of putting the first log in place.

The lieutenant governor then dispatched militiamen to the Forks to provide protection for the construction crew. Their commander was Lieutenant Colonel Geo…