American Revolutionary War

How did thirteen quarrelling colonies defeat the strongest empire of the eighteenth century? In this hour-long episode of The Wars Of History Podcast, Mike tells the full story of the American Revolutionary War, from the first taxes to the Treaty of Paris, in a relaxed, personal deep dive that keeps every side in view: Patriots and Loyalists, British soldiers and Hessians, Native nations, enslaved and free Black Americans, and the women who kept the cause alive.

We begin with the French and Indian War and its huge debt, the Proclamation Line and Pontiac's War, then the Stamp Act, "no taxation without representation," the Sons and Daughters of Liberty, the Townshend Acts, the Boston Massacre (and John Adams defending the soldiers in court), the Tea Act, the Boston Tea Party and the Intolerable Acts.

Next, the war begins: the First Continental Congress, Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, Lexington and Concord, Emerson's "shot heard round the world," Bunker Hill, George Washington taking command, the Olive Branch Petition, and Henry Knox hauling the cannon of Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. Then Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Abigail Adams asking her husband to "Remember the Ladies," the Declaration of Independence and its contradictions, and John Adams predicting fireworks every year.

Then the darkest year: the British fleet at New York, Washington's general orders on "the fate of unborn Millions," the Battle of Long Island and the escape in the fog, Nathan Hale, the retreat across New Jersey, Washington's private fear that "the game is pretty near up," Paine's The American Crisis, the crossing of the Delaware, and the victories at Trenton and Princeton.

After that comes the turning point: Burgoyne and Saratoga, Benjamin Franklin in Paris and the French alliance, the hard winter at Valley Forge, Baron von Steuben's drill, the Marquis de Lafayette, Monmouth and the Molly Pitcher legend. We step back to meet Lord Dunmore's proclamation, the First Rhode Island Regiment, the spy James Armistead Lafayette, Deborah Sampson, the Loyalists and William Franklin, Joseph Brant and the divided Iroquois Confederacy, Edmund Burke, and John Paul Jones at sea.

Finally, the war in the South and the end game: Charleston and Camden, Benedict Arnold's betrayal at West Point, Kings Mountain, Cowpens, Francis Marion the Swamp Fox, Nathanael Greene, the French fleet at the Chesapeake, Alexander Hamilton at Yorktown and the surrender of Cornwallis. Then the Treaty of Paris, the Black Loyalists and the Book of Negroes, the Newburgh Conspiracy, Washington resigning his commission, the Constitution, and the revolutions in France and Haiti. Then eight lessons from the war.