American Revolution

So you can talk about the 1953 coup because they're willing to defend possibly a secular nationalist government from the 1950s, but they are not willing to say that equally the people expressing sovereign will for regardless of the critiques that you might have about the eventual outcomes of the revolution, it was a popular revolution.

In fact, it was more popular than the American Revolution in terms of participation by people in the total percentage.

It was more popular than the French Revolution.

In fact, it was more popular than the Russian Revolution.

This is where we remember events that took place 250 years ago this week.

It's a short bonus episode from the American Revolution podcast so that we can remember these important 250th anniversaries from the Revolutionary War.

This week we remember the Battle of Kipps Bay, which took place on September 15, 1776.

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Howe seemed to be under the delusion that if he could just show the rebels that his army could push them off the field at will, they would soon end the rebellion and submit without the need for a massive loss of life.

I hope you've enjoyed this Revolution 250 moment.

For more context on this story, please check out episode 107 of the American Revolution podcast, which you can get at blog.amrevpodcast.com. And please subscribe for free to the whole podcast on whatever platform you like.

Thanks again for listening to this Revolution 250 moment on the American Revolution podcast.

I'm your host, Rich Napolitano.

This week includes three serious ship fires, the dismantling of a derelict ship, updates about a sixteenth century shipwreck in Namibia, a stranded teenage fisherman, and fascinating artifacts from one of the earliest naval battles of the American Revolution.

So let's get started.

First, we have a ferry fire that leaves dozens missing in the Philippines.

The rescue included U.S. Coast Guard and a good Samaritan vessel.

Now we turn to eighteenth century maritime history.

The Lake Champlain Maritime Museum is now highlighting three fascinating artifacts recovered from Valcour Bay, the site of the famous seventeen seventy-six naval battle between American Revolutionary forces and British forces.

The artifacts provide an unusually personal glimpse into the men who fought in the American Revolution, including a wooden cartridge box with twenty-three musket balls and seven pieces of gun flint, an unusual pair of sliding copper and glass spectacles, and portions of a small sword.

And those kind of things were not very possible in France.

Lafayette, like many people, saw the American Revolution as a kind of potential moment of progress that led him to think that supporting a cause like the American one would help contribute to the progress of liberty everywhere.

Lafayette is determined to join the American cause, believing that victory there would be a victory for all mankind.

And so Lafayette sees this as a grand, exciting adventure, and in many ways, the most exciting thing that a person could do.

This is their chance to win a major global imperial conflict against Britain.

It inserts a load of French money and French troops and expertise and French naval power into the equation.

France's formal entry into the American Revolution transforms what had been a colonial rebellion into a world war.

King George of Britain now has a truly global problem on his hands.

So why don't we back up for the benefit of our listeners? So I will let you do most of the summary, but I'll just lead you in by saying that this is a multi-continent, century-long exploration of The Age of Revolution of Atlantic Revolution and that you really give pretty equal weight to multiple regions and even sub-regions of this very enlarged, let's call it the vast Atlantic world.

That'll lead you into describing why this is not actually a book about the American Revolution or any particular revolution, but about an age.

I think you put it well there when you said it is the vast Atlantic world.

It is.

There's going to be so many things that are going on.

And so – I just kind of put that task before myself of saying, how would I make sense of everything that is happening in this world? And as you say, it touched on four continents.

And the American Revolution is a critical aspect of it.

I wouldn't quite call it a catalyst, but it's the first symptom of a crisis that you see for the broader world.

Among those killed is Crispus Attucks.

It's really an important moment in this early, early stage of what will become the American Revolution.

Eight soldiers and their commander are arrested.

They will stand trial for murder in one of the most closely watched cases in colonial America.

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of the American Revolution.

So this is really the moment where you begin to see patriotism spilling over into the public sphere in a way it had not yet done before.

None of the American states had actual possession of a foot of property in the Northwestern territory.

The Northwest was acquired in the midst of the Revolution only by armed conquest, and if it had not been so acquired, it would have remained a part of the British dominion of Canada.

The man to whom this conquest was due was a famous backwoods leader, a mighty hunter, a noted Indian fighter, George Rogers Clark.

He was a very strong man, with light hair and blue eyes.

The Battle of Saratoga is included by Sir Edward Creasy among his fifteen decisive battles which have,

by their result, affected the history of the world.

It is true that the American Revolution was saved by Washington in the remarkable Princeton and

Trenton campaign, but it is equally true that the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga in the following autumn turned the scale decisively in favor of the colonists by the impression which it made in Europe.

One sees in the perspective of history first the little cockleshells of Columbus, the comings and goings of the precarious Tudor adventurers, the slow, uncertain shipping of colonial days.

Says Sir George Trevelyan in the opening of his American Revolution that then, it is still not a century and a half ago, quote, A man bound for New York, as he sent his luggage on board at Bristol, would willingly have compounded for a voyage lasting as many weeks as it now lasts days.

Adams, during the height of the war, hurrying to France in the finest frigate Congress could place at his disposal, could not make better speed than five and forty days between Boston and Bordeaux.

Lord Carlisle was six weeks between port and port, tossed by gales which inflicted on his brother, commissioner's agonies such as he forbore to make a matter of joke even to George Selwyn.

Its most typical expressions, the Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, are zealously emphatic for the latter interest, for the sacredness of contracts and possessions.

Post-Reformation liberalism did to a large extent let loose property upon mankind.

The English Civil War of the 17th century, like the American Revolution of the 18th, embodied essentially the triumphant refusal of private property to submit to taxation without consent.

In England, the result was tempered and qualified.

I don't like giving people a voice on my platforms because all they do is inject trash into what is an actual worthy discussion.

They don't understand the dynamics of what happened during the American Revolution.

And most likely, they're probably not even from America.

And even if they are from America, that means that they're ill-educated.