Revolution 250 Podcast
Revolution 250 Podcast
The American Revolution and the Fate of the World with Richard Bell.
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In The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, historian Richard Bell explores how the struggle for American independence reverberated far beyond the thirteen colonies—reshaping politics, empires, and ideas of liberty around the globe. Bell reveals how revolutionaries from Boston to Bengal, Paris to Port-au-Prince, drew inspiration and warning from the events of 1776. The American Revolution became a test case for freedom in an age of empire. Looking at the stories of individuals caught up in its ferment, Bell shows how the Revolution reshaped the world.
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Hello, everyone.
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Welcome to the Revolution two fifty
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podcast.
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I'm Bob Allison.
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I chair the Rev two fifty advisory group.
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We're a consortium of about seventy five
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or so organizations in Massachusetts
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planning commemorations of the beginnings
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of American independence.
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And our guest today is Richard Bell.
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And Rick Bell is a professor of history
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at the University of Maryland.
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And he is the author of four book
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three book.
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I think this is your fourth book.
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and it's a terrific book the american
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revolution and the fate of the world and
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one of the reviewers says that you tell
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american history as if from a bar stool
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not a lecture podium so thanks for joining
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us it's my pleasure bob great to be
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with you so it really is a book
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about the american revolution as a global
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thing and i'm wondering what are the
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favorite stories or most surprising
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stories you learned in doing looking at
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this global context of the revolution
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Oh, geez.
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So there's so many stories,
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human lives that I try to recapture and
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reconstruct here, right?
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Because on the one hand,
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we're telling a big sweeping story from
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thirty five thousand foot.
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On the other hand,
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we want to build it from the ground
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up and realize that, you know,
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as you know, Bob,
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that this war is fought and felt on
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the human scale.
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Right.
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So I love being able to get close
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to human lives here.
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I'll tell you one story of a guy.
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called John Moseley.
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John Moseley was enslaved in Virginia,
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escaped his Virginian enslaver,
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went to join the King's cause early in
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the war because British commanders like
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Lord Dunmore were strategically promising
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lifelong freedom to enslave people who
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desert their patriot masters and come join
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the British.
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That's a disruption strategy the British
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are using, of course.
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And John Moseley is in British lines.
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He evacuates with the British army and
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ends up in London,
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which is more unusual than it sounds by
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the end of the war.
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He falls on hard times there.
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He's not eligible for a veteran's pension
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in the British army or poor relief.
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And desperate hunger leads him to
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desperate action, Bob.
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He commits a crime of survival, really,
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a victimless crime,
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claiming a dead soldier's unclaimed wages.
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He's arrested for the fraud and
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prosecuted.
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And he is sentenced to fourteen years of
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hard labor in Britain's overseas colonies.
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And this is the point in the story
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when I should remind your viewers and
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listeners, Bob,
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that
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Back before the revolution,
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Britain transported fifty thousand of its
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convicted felons to America,
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to Virginia and Maryland.
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But of course,
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independence means Britain can't do that
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anymore.
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So John Mosley is sent to a brand
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new penal colony,
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which is designed to be the replacement
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dumping ground.
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And that, of course, is Australia.
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So John Mosley will end up as a
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convict field hand in Australia.
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After years of good behavior,
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he'll get a conditional early pardon.
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He will get a land grant,
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which he will reject.
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He will open his own small business in
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the fledgling Sydney township and be
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delighted to work for himself at long last
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and not anybody else.
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So, you know, I love that story because,
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you know, how...
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how high the stakes are for john mosley
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at every point of course but also because
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of the geography right this guy opens the
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war in virginia after the war he's in
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london and within ten years he's in
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australia and that reminds us that places
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as far flung as virginia and australia are
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actually connected by what happens in the
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eight years of the american revolution
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right you really do a great job telling
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these big stories but through the lives of
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the people who are affected by it and
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it's uh
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I mean, I really enjoyed reading the book.
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And then you do have, of course,
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the big themes.
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And you have two chapters on the British
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Caribbean and the Harry Washington that
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really juxtapose the whole issue of
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slavery at this time.
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And it's the different impacts the
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revolution had on the institution of
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slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.
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Yeah, that's absolutely right.
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So there's fourteen chapters,
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but we cover a lot of ground.
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And I do have some arguments I'm trying
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to make through this storytelling,
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but never hit readers over the head with
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it, if you see what I mean.
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So one of the things that historians have
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been asking themselves for a while is,
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given that there were way more than
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thirteen British colonies in North America
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and the Caribbean,
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by some counts there are twenty six.
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Other people say there are thirty.
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given that there are so many British
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colonies in North America and the
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Caribbean, why do only thirteen,
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half or fewer than half, you know,
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secede and successfully separate in the
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American Revolution War?
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And that requires us to think about the
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Caribbean and think about it really hard,
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right?
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So we owe a big debt to scholars
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like, you know,
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Trevor Bernard and Andrew Jackson
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O'Shaughnessy and many others for framing
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these questions.
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And, you know,
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my answer to those questions are,
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Why doesn't Jamaica secede?
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Why doesn't Jamaica join South Carolina,
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with which it has a lot in common
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in the Continental Congress?
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There's a few answers.
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One would be Jamaica's dependence on the
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slave trade in a way that by the
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seventeen seventies,
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many mainland colonies are not quite so
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dependent.
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I would say British military protection
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from French and Spanish attacks.
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They need the Royal Navy on call,
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twenty four seven.
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And I would say sugar exports.
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They send all their sugar to British
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consumers on the mainland who then put it
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in their tea.
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Right.
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The tea, ironically,
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is from China brought there by the East
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Indians.
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So these are ways in which the revolution
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looks very different from British
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Caribbean,
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from the perspective of British Caribbean
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outposts.
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Nonetheless, enslaved people,
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whether they are at Mount Vernon in
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Virginia or whether they are in Hanover
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Parish in Jamaica,
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see the chaos of Britain's war against
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itself as an opportunity to seek freedom.
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So John Mosley, that's what he's doing.
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But also we can see uprisings in Jamaica
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and other places, too,
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trying to use the distractions of the war
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to advance their own liberty agenda.
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So I love this stuff.
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I love these juxtapositions.
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It really is great.
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And then, of course,
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your book begins with China,
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the Empress of China, and then leading.
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So we begin with tea and then leads
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into opium in the mid-early nineteenth
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century.
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Yeah, that's right.
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The book sort of opens in China,
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and then, three hundred pages later,
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it sort of ends in India.
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And ironically,
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the British East India Company is in...
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Oops,
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my lights just went out in the classroom
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I'm in.
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Hopefully, you can still see me.
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Yes, we can see you.
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That's good.
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So,
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the British East India Company is a sort
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of bookend entity,
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both the start of the American Revolution
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and the end.
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We know the opening pretty well, right?
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You guys are in Boston and the Boston
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Tea Party.
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And I had the chance to visit the
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Boston Tea Party Museum over the summer.
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I was quite impressed, actually,
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by what I saw there.
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The Boston Tea Party,
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it should be a wake-up call that this
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is a war informed by globalizing concerns,
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right?
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It's about concerns about the market power
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and monopoly power and corporate greed of
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a global megacorporation that
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based in India with interests in China.
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And so from that beginning,
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we get a war motivated by global concerns.
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And we'll see afterwards American
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merchants rush to secure access to the
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Chinese tea trade for themselves and cut
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out East India.
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companies.
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So there's a certain irony there that
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fighting to keep Chinese tea coming from
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British vessels out of the retail market
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is soon followed by American merchants
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rushing to Canton, to Guangzhou,
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trying to secure their own wholesale
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agreements.
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It really is a fascinating story.
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And then tying it in then with the
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destruction of the opium by the Chinese in
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the in the eighteen forties during the
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The whole debate,
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the East India Company thinks, of course,
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they're going to legalize this because
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it's so valuable to the Chinese,
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but then much to their surprise,
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the Chinese government says, no,
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we're banning it.
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Yeah, Bob, that's exactly right.
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So as the British East India Company
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lurches from one self-created crisis to
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another in the course of the eighties,
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nineties and onwards,
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it eventually pivots towards a new cash
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crop,
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which is opium grown in British India,
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then exported to Chinese consumers.
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As you can imagine,
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opium is highly addictive.
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It's a blight on public health.
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The Chinese government
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bitterly resents and rejects and so to try
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to shut the british east india company out
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of the chinese consumer market to stop all
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the opium sales compare this to say
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fentanyl today or something like that the
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chinese officials are authorized local
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agents in canton to start destroying
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shipments of east india company opioids
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coming up the pearl river and i think
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the year i have in my head is
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In eighteen thirty nine,
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Chinese ministers and their agents dump,
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you know,
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chests and chests of British East India
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Company opioids into the Pearl River.
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And obviously what is a direct homage to
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the Boston Tea Party of what,
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sixty six years earlier.
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So speaking of global ripple effects,
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it's incredible.
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It really is.
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We're talking with Richard Bell.
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Rick Bell is a professor of history at
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the University of Maryland,
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and his new book is The American
00:09:37.553 --> 00:09:39.874
Revolution and the Fate of the World,
00:09:39.913 --> 00:09:42.134
which really is it's both a global and
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very personal book.
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That is the story of what's happening
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around the globe,
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but with these stories of individuals who
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are caught up in various ways.
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One of my favorites was actually William
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Russell,
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the privateer prisoner of war and his
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various misadventures and adventures in
00:09:57.756 --> 00:09:58.057
the war.
00:09:59.306 --> 00:10:00.866
One of my favorites too, Bob,
00:10:00.947 --> 00:10:02.369
thanks for flagging him.
00:10:02.428 --> 00:10:05.051
And I really wanted to call him Bill
00:10:05.110 --> 00:10:05.951
Russell in the book,
00:10:06.011 --> 00:10:07.812
but I know that would confuse sports fans,
00:10:07.993 --> 00:10:09.575
so I resisted the impulse.
00:10:11.015 --> 00:10:12.677
And a lot of what I've learned about
00:10:12.756 --> 00:10:14.479
Bill Russell comes from excellent
00:10:14.538 --> 00:10:17.400
scholarship by my friend Frank Cogliano,
00:10:17.421 --> 00:10:18.442
who teaches at the University of
00:10:18.562 --> 00:10:19.043
Edinburgh.
00:10:19.062 --> 00:10:20.423
So you can't learn about Bill Russell
00:10:20.443 --> 00:10:22.445
without registering Frank as the world
00:10:22.485 --> 00:10:23.005
expert here.
00:10:23.927 --> 00:10:25.587
But my take on Bill Russell is, yeah,
00:10:25.648 --> 00:10:28.389
he's a Boston school teacher who embraces
00:10:28.429 --> 00:10:29.410
the patriot cause,
00:10:29.431 --> 00:10:30.631
like many people in your neck of the
00:10:30.652 --> 00:10:31.153
words, Bob,
00:10:32.173 --> 00:10:34.696
and becomes a patriot privateer after a
00:10:34.755 --> 00:10:36.177
difficult career as a militiaman.
00:10:37.211 --> 00:10:39.011
And a patriot privateer is, of course,
00:10:39.131 --> 00:10:41.534
a patriot-sponsored pirate,
00:10:41.575 --> 00:10:42.615
for lack of a better word,
00:10:43.615 --> 00:10:46.438
who goes out on sort of merchandising
00:10:46.479 --> 00:10:48.900
missions to raid British merchant ships
00:10:48.941 --> 00:10:51.023
and cause general chaos and ruin to
00:10:51.082 --> 00:10:54.306
Britain's global maritime economy.
00:10:54.466 --> 00:10:57.889
And a scholarship by Frank and Eric Dolan
00:10:58.149 --> 00:11:00.572
and Kylie Herbert and many other people in
00:11:00.591 --> 00:11:01.432
the last twenty years
00:11:01.852 --> 00:11:02.735
has demonstrated,
00:11:03.115 --> 00:11:05.639
privateering is a major aspect of the
00:11:05.678 --> 00:11:08.464
Revolutionary War that we've chosen to
00:11:08.524 --> 00:11:10.486
forget about and minimize.
00:11:10.506 --> 00:11:12.289
But the scale of patriot privateering,
00:11:12.890 --> 00:11:13.331
massive.
00:11:13.370 --> 00:11:15.313
I think the number I have in my
00:11:15.333 --> 00:11:15.674
head is like,
00:11:17.136 --> 00:11:19.379
People involved in Patriot privateering,
00:11:19.821 --> 00:11:22.384
tens of thousands of cruises doing massive
00:11:22.423 --> 00:11:25.087
amounts of damage to the British economy
00:11:25.467 --> 00:11:28.672
in a way that is designed to sow
00:11:28.772 --> 00:11:31.196
doubt and discord among the British people
00:11:31.216 --> 00:11:32.898
about whether this war is worth it.
00:11:33.317 --> 00:11:34.639
Can't we just go back to the way
00:11:34.678 --> 00:11:35.239
things were?
00:11:35.278 --> 00:11:37.061
Can't we start trading with our friends in
00:11:37.100 --> 00:11:37.860
America again?
00:11:38.160 --> 00:11:39.581
Why don't we lay down arms and we
00:11:39.601 --> 00:11:40.243
walk away?
00:11:40.283 --> 00:11:42.964
So the political imperatives behind
00:11:43.004 --> 00:11:44.605
privateering are massive.
00:11:44.664 --> 00:11:46.365
And remember, folks, that the US Navy,
00:11:46.426 --> 00:11:48.467
sadly, is not yet much of a concern.
00:11:48.947 --> 00:11:50.168
So Patriot privateers,
00:11:50.188 --> 00:11:51.529
just people renting out their fishing
00:11:51.549 --> 00:11:53.552
boats and adapting them into raiding
00:11:53.591 --> 00:11:54.032
vessels,
00:11:54.412 --> 00:11:57.153
is really what the Patriots do at sea.
00:11:57.634 --> 00:11:59.056
And this guy, William Russell,
00:11:59.076 --> 00:12:00.576
who I'm not going to call Bill Russell,
00:12:01.658 --> 00:12:03.519
is at the heart of this and sadly
00:12:03.558 --> 00:12:08.423
is captured twice by Royal Navy gunboats
00:12:08.842 --> 00:12:10.543
and imprisoned twice.
00:12:10.945 --> 00:12:14.827
First in a British black hole site outside
00:12:14.847 --> 00:12:17.669
of Plymouth called the Mill Prison.
00:12:18.269 --> 00:12:21.253
which he eventually is repatriated from,
00:12:21.552 --> 00:12:22.774
and then he goes right back to work
00:12:22.813 --> 00:12:25.177
as a privateer and is captured immediately
00:12:25.256 --> 00:12:25.657
again.
00:12:25.677 --> 00:12:26.738
He just gets home.
00:12:27.658 --> 00:12:28.360
He just gets home.
00:12:28.399 --> 00:12:30.000
He sees what terrible economic straits his
00:12:30.041 --> 00:12:30.841
wife and kids are,
00:12:30.861 --> 00:12:32.182
so he goes back out to sea,
00:12:32.503 --> 00:12:33.303
is captured again,
00:12:33.344 --> 00:12:37.168
and this time incarcerated in British...
00:12:37.748 --> 00:12:38.288
Hulks,
00:12:38.428 --> 00:12:41.091
zombie cargo ships are in Brooklyn Bay
00:12:41.133 --> 00:12:42.594
because of course Britain occupies New
00:12:42.614 --> 00:12:46.239
York City in the war and almost dies.
00:12:46.359 --> 00:12:47.941
It's like a black hole of Calcutta
00:12:47.961 --> 00:12:50.325
situation inside these Hulks.
00:12:50.345 --> 00:12:52.707
So it reminds us of what privateers did
00:12:52.768 --> 00:12:54.389
and what privateers went through when they
00:12:54.409 --> 00:12:55.871
became POWs as well.
00:12:56.272 --> 00:12:56.692
Right.
00:12:56.751 --> 00:12:58.072
And the British really don't consider them
00:12:58.133 --> 00:12:59.975
prisoners of war so much as pirates
00:12:59.995 --> 00:13:00.575
they've captured.
00:13:00.595 --> 00:13:02.316
Because if you consider them legit
00:13:02.336 --> 00:13:03.496
prisoners of war, Bob,
00:13:03.537 --> 00:13:05.357
you're considering the United States to be
00:13:05.398 --> 00:13:07.759
a legal entity, a real, legit combatant,
00:13:07.820 --> 00:13:08.019
right?
00:13:08.419 --> 00:13:10.000
So what that means is because Britain
00:13:10.020 --> 00:13:12.042
refuses to recognize all these patriot
00:13:12.081 --> 00:13:14.443
POWs as legit POWs,
00:13:14.484 --> 00:13:16.784
it doesn't grant them the basic human
00:13:16.845 --> 00:13:19.326
rights that they would get, ironically,
00:13:19.386 --> 00:13:22.149
if they were French POWs or Spanish POWs.
00:13:22.782 --> 00:13:23.761
Right.
00:13:23.782 --> 00:13:26.783
Then the story does look a lot different
00:13:26.822 --> 00:13:27.864
from these other places,
00:13:27.884 --> 00:13:29.844
and I think it makes us think how
00:13:29.903 --> 00:13:31.105
it must have looked to people at the
00:13:31.144 --> 00:13:32.524
time, wherever they were.
00:13:32.565 --> 00:13:32.764
I mean,
00:13:32.784 --> 00:13:33.784
they would have thought of it as a
00:13:33.845 --> 00:13:36.326
much different story than the way
00:13:36.385 --> 00:13:38.106
sometimes we think of it as just these
00:13:38.147 --> 00:13:40.126
thirteen colonies who have this,
00:13:41.248 --> 00:13:43.447
and we focus a lot on the war
00:13:43.548 --> 00:13:45.249
as it happened in the thirteen colonies,
00:13:45.288 --> 00:13:46.830
but you're really showing how it is really
00:13:46.850 --> 00:13:48.029
a global phenomenon.
00:13:48.927 --> 00:13:50.288
If you're in London,
00:13:50.308 --> 00:13:51.769
you're not simply thinking about what's
00:13:51.809 --> 00:13:53.091
happening in South Carolina.
00:13:53.130 --> 00:13:54.832
You also have to think about Jamaica and
00:13:54.993 --> 00:13:56.614
India and other places,
00:13:56.653 --> 00:13:59.495
the Gibraltar places that the empire has
00:13:59.535 --> 00:14:00.197
to protect.
00:14:00.897 --> 00:14:02.278
Yeah, one way to say that, Bob,
00:14:02.337 --> 00:14:05.020
is that by the war's climactic final
00:14:05.061 --> 00:14:05.701
stages,
00:14:06.120 --> 00:14:08.503
Britain controls about a hundred thousand
00:14:08.663 --> 00:14:09.464
military men.
00:14:10.284 --> 00:14:12.826
But because it's now stretched thin in a
00:14:12.866 --> 00:14:16.028
global war that encompasses North America,
00:14:16.389 --> 00:14:17.090
that encompasses
00:14:17.330 --> 00:14:19.412
anywhere around the world that France and
00:14:19.472 --> 00:14:22.054
Spain and the Netherlands want to engage,
00:14:22.235 --> 00:14:24.817
and encompasses a major theater in India
00:14:24.837 --> 00:14:26.000
with the Kingdom of Mysore,
00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:28.341
a major theater in the Trans-Appalachian
00:14:28.402 --> 00:14:28.722
West.
00:14:29.783 --> 00:14:33.467
Only of those hundred thousand British
00:14:33.668 --> 00:14:34.970
Allied war fighters
00:14:35.470 --> 00:14:37.811
Only three in ten are in North America
00:14:37.870 --> 00:14:39.831
fighting George Washington and the
00:14:39.871 --> 00:14:40.351
Patriots.
00:14:40.432 --> 00:14:41.153
And to be clear,
00:14:41.452 --> 00:14:43.533
that's one reason why George Washington
00:14:43.673 --> 00:14:45.335
and his land forces are able to be
00:14:45.375 --> 00:14:48.275
as potent as they are in the latter
00:14:48.316 --> 00:14:49.576
stages of the war,
00:14:49.615 --> 00:14:51.616
because Patriot strategy from Congress on
00:14:51.677 --> 00:14:53.957
down has been to pull Britain in every
00:14:53.998 --> 00:14:55.259
possible other direction.
00:14:55.499 --> 00:14:55.759
Right.
00:14:55.779 --> 00:14:58.523
Tie them up in costly skirmishes anywhere
00:14:59.764 --> 00:15:01.706
outside of the Thirteen Colonies.
00:15:01.726 --> 00:15:02.687
So Patriot strategy,
00:15:02.748 --> 00:15:04.850
I think this is not just happenstance.
00:15:04.990 --> 00:15:06.773
I would argue if you look at Washington's
00:15:06.812 --> 00:15:07.214
papers,
00:15:07.254 --> 00:15:09.355
if you look at John Adams's model treaty,
00:15:09.375 --> 00:15:11.519
if you look at where Franklin goes,
00:15:12.120 --> 00:15:13.802
this is clearly Patriot strategy from
00:15:13.861 --> 00:15:14.381
early in the war.
00:15:15.663 --> 00:15:17.365
There's one opposition member of
00:15:17.404 --> 00:15:19.265
parliament who says that the ministry got
00:15:19.326 --> 00:15:20.966
into this war on the presumption that the
00:15:21.287 --> 00:15:23.087
Americans were cowards and the French were
00:15:23.187 --> 00:15:24.649
idiots.
00:15:25.750 --> 00:15:27.230
We call that hubris, right?
00:15:27.331 --> 00:15:27.971
Hubris.
00:15:27.990 --> 00:15:29.773
There's a lot of it in England at
00:15:29.812 --> 00:15:30.173
the time.
00:15:30.253 --> 00:15:33.715
You and I first met maybe twenty plus
00:15:33.735 --> 00:15:35.255
years ago when you came to the Colonial
00:15:35.296 --> 00:15:36.476
Society Graduate Forum.
00:15:37.037 --> 00:15:40.499
And until I was reading your book,
00:15:40.799 --> 00:15:41.220
this book,
00:15:41.903 --> 00:15:43.744
I had forgotten that you actually were of
00:15:43.904 --> 00:15:44.504
British origin.
00:15:44.745 --> 00:15:46.285
So I wonder if you can tell us
00:15:46.306 --> 00:15:47.167
how that came to be.
00:15:47.187 --> 00:15:49.769
You grew up in England, went to Cambridge,
00:15:49.849 --> 00:15:51.890
and then have become an historian of
00:15:52.091 --> 00:15:52.931
American history.
00:15:53.552 --> 00:15:53.792
Yeah.
00:15:53.851 --> 00:15:55.634
I mean, when we first met in Boston,
00:15:55.833 --> 00:15:56.634
at twenty years ago,
00:15:56.653 --> 00:15:58.174
at the Clarence Society of Massachusetts,
00:15:58.255 --> 00:15:59.797
I was probably fresh off the boat in
00:15:59.856 --> 00:16:00.817
some sense, right?
00:16:00.878 --> 00:16:03.158
I was embarked on a PhD in American
00:16:03.198 --> 00:16:04.460
history at Harvard at the time,
00:16:04.900 --> 00:16:07.182
but I'd only been in the country probably
00:16:07.221 --> 00:16:08.202
for a couple of years.
00:16:08.263 --> 00:16:09.844
Now it's like twenty-five years.
00:16:09.903 --> 00:16:10.485
Time flies.
00:16:11.346 --> 00:16:12.466
So I grew up in Britain,
00:16:12.506 --> 00:16:14.649
as I hope my voice still betrays.
00:16:15.812 --> 00:16:17.072
I was born in North London,
00:16:17.153 --> 00:16:18.394
grew up outside Cambridge,
00:16:18.735 --> 00:16:20.236
had the good fortune to go to a
00:16:20.277 --> 00:16:22.360
fancy private school and then went to a
00:16:22.399 --> 00:16:24.241
fancy university, University of Cambridge.
00:16:24.663 --> 00:16:26.205
But I would say that especially in the
00:16:26.264 --> 00:16:27.485
K-Twelve environment,
00:16:28.126 --> 00:16:30.671
I was not exposed to any of this.
00:16:30.770 --> 00:16:33.215
I learned literally zero about the
00:16:33.254 --> 00:16:34.277
American Revolution.
00:16:34.317 --> 00:16:35.919
It wasn't that I was sold some sort
00:16:35.960 --> 00:16:38.062
of pro King George version or something
00:16:38.102 --> 00:16:38.443
like that.
00:16:38.624 --> 00:16:40.005
It's not like we sat around calling it
00:16:40.025 --> 00:16:42.230
the war of American aggression or anything
00:16:42.269 --> 00:16:42.750
like that.
00:16:43.370 --> 00:16:44.631
We just didn't talk about it, right?
00:16:44.672 --> 00:16:48.173
So we studied the Tudors endlessly as,
00:16:48.193 --> 00:16:48.495
you know,
00:16:48.774 --> 00:16:50.875
Henry VIII and then Queen Elizabeth defeat
00:16:50.916 --> 00:16:53.337
Catholic France and Catholic Spain and
00:16:53.357 --> 00:16:54.499
then the Pope himself.
00:16:54.818 --> 00:16:56.059
And then we jumped forward, Bob,
00:16:56.100 --> 00:16:56.899
if you can believe it,
00:16:56.980 --> 00:16:58.620
from the Tudors to World War II when
00:17:00.162 --> 00:17:02.464
Britain defeats the Nazis single-handedly,
00:17:02.504 --> 00:17:02.764
folks.
00:17:02.783 --> 00:17:03.345
Did you know that?
00:17:03.485 --> 00:17:04.384
Single-handedly.
00:17:04.826 --> 00:17:06.026
That's what I was taught back in the
00:17:06.046 --> 00:17:06.307
day.
00:17:06.666 --> 00:17:07.267
So I think, you know,
00:17:07.287 --> 00:17:08.847
what I've learned from that experience
00:17:08.887 --> 00:17:10.709
looking back on it is that every
00:17:10.749 --> 00:17:11.210
country...
00:17:11.829 --> 00:17:13.672
often teaches its schoolchildren
00:17:13.751 --> 00:17:15.473
selective, self-sort-serving,
00:17:15.574 --> 00:17:17.075
narrow nationalist stories.
00:17:17.776 --> 00:17:18.936
I think we'd see the same in South
00:17:18.977 --> 00:17:20.258
Africa or Germany or France,
00:17:20.278 --> 00:17:20.718
anywhere else,
00:17:20.758 --> 00:17:22.240
different versions of the same impulse.
00:17:22.720 --> 00:17:25.222
So it's not hugely surprising that I think
00:17:25.363 --> 00:17:27.104
we in America, and I'm now a U.S.
00:17:27.144 --> 00:17:29.266
citizen despite this silly voice.
00:17:29.967 --> 00:17:30.988
Congratulations and welcome.
00:17:31.127 --> 00:17:31.488
Thank you.
00:17:31.648 --> 00:17:31.989
Thank you.
00:17:32.028 --> 00:17:34.431
Yes, I vote early and often, Bob,
00:17:34.451 --> 00:17:34.851
let me assure you.
00:17:36.673 --> 00:17:38.275
It's not surprising, therefore,
00:17:38.295 --> 00:17:43.599
that we in America have stripped the
00:17:43.980 --> 00:17:47.002
American Revolution of its global
00:17:47.103 --> 00:17:49.065
entanglements over the last two hundred
00:17:49.085 --> 00:17:51.146
and fifty years because we've been
00:17:51.186 --> 00:17:54.170
invested since the founding in the process
00:17:54.210 --> 00:17:55.050
of nation building.
00:17:55.111 --> 00:17:56.691
That's a natural impulse when you're
00:17:56.730 --> 00:17:57.751
creating a new country,
00:17:57.932 --> 00:18:01.932
to find heroic set pieces in which plucky
00:18:02.192 --> 00:18:04.253
homegrown heroes defeat all the king's
00:18:04.294 --> 00:18:06.713
horses and all the king's men entirely on
00:18:06.733 --> 00:18:07.153
their own.
00:18:07.233 --> 00:18:10.134
But the product of that nation building
00:18:10.335 --> 00:18:13.736
has been a bunch of myths that the
00:18:13.776 --> 00:18:14.915
patriots did it alone,
00:18:15.317 --> 00:18:16.876
that everyone was a patriot,
00:18:16.936 --> 00:18:18.698
that patriot victory was inevitable,
00:18:18.938 --> 00:18:20.018
none of which are true.
00:18:20.837 --> 00:18:22.479
of course right so it's much more
00:18:22.499 --> 00:18:24.099
interesting i think to get back to the
00:18:24.119 --> 00:18:27.221
complexities of that messy global war it
00:18:27.241 --> 00:18:29.123
really is we're talking with rick bell
00:18:29.163 --> 00:18:31.023
professor of history at the university of
00:18:31.064 --> 00:18:33.904
maryland author of a great new book on
00:18:33.924 --> 00:18:35.465
the american revolution the american
00:18:35.506 --> 00:18:37.967
revolution and the fate of the world which
00:18:38.086 --> 00:18:40.729
i recommend and you can tell your
00:18:40.769 --> 00:18:42.309
publisher i will be using this in my
00:18:42.349 --> 00:18:44.211
classes and will be recommending it to
00:18:44.270 --> 00:18:45.810
anyone who wants to know the story of
00:18:45.830 --> 00:18:46.471
the revolution
00:18:46.991 --> 00:18:48.471
We love to hear it.
00:18:48.491 --> 00:18:48.811
Yes, yes.
00:18:48.832 --> 00:18:52.992
And another of these characters that and
00:18:53.012 --> 00:18:55.232
whole episodes that really is forgotten is
00:18:55.252 --> 00:18:57.693
the story of Bernardo Galvez and what's
00:18:57.713 --> 00:18:59.314
happening in the Gulf of Mexico.
00:18:59.453 --> 00:19:03.654
And with actually Spain seeing this,
00:19:04.015 --> 00:19:04.174
you know,
00:19:04.214 --> 00:19:06.055
Spain's not getting into the war to
00:19:06.095 --> 00:19:07.434
support American independence,
00:19:07.474 --> 00:19:09.195
but they have declared war on England.
00:19:09.256 --> 00:19:09.615
And of course,
00:19:09.635 --> 00:19:11.236
their first objective is to get back
00:19:11.276 --> 00:19:11.915
Gibraltar.
00:19:12.496 --> 00:19:14.636
And then Galvez really is driving these
00:19:14.656 --> 00:19:16.477
herds of cattle down to Florida.
00:19:17.542 --> 00:19:19.462
Yeah, so I live near Washington, D.C.
00:19:19.482 --> 00:19:19.743
In fact,
00:19:19.804 --> 00:19:21.384
I'm sitting in Washington right now as
00:19:21.423 --> 00:19:22.384
we're doing this.
00:19:22.604 --> 00:19:24.585
And there's a statue of this guy,
00:19:24.785 --> 00:19:26.484
Bernardo de Galvez,
00:19:26.565 --> 00:19:29.326
in a forlorn park near the State
00:19:29.365 --> 00:19:30.705
Department, near Foggy Bottom.
00:19:30.786 --> 00:19:34.067
And I'm sure people walk past that every
00:19:34.106 --> 00:19:34.326
day.
00:19:34.386 --> 00:19:35.987
And if they glance at the statue and
00:19:36.007 --> 00:19:37.268
see the name, they're like, who is that?
00:19:37.528 --> 00:19:38.548
Why is that person here?
00:19:39.367 --> 00:19:41.429
He does not have the name recognition of
00:19:41.528 --> 00:19:43.990
a Baron Steuben or a Marquis de Lafayette,
00:19:44.030 --> 00:19:45.250
but he deserves to.
00:19:45.310 --> 00:19:46.071
In fact, I believe,
00:19:46.152 --> 00:19:47.231
don't quote me on this, Bob,
00:19:47.613 --> 00:19:49.913
that he's one of only eight foreign
00:19:50.493 --> 00:19:52.694
foreigners to have been granted honorary
00:19:52.974 --> 00:19:55.156
US citizenship over the last two hundred
00:19:55.176 --> 00:19:55.656
and fifty years.
00:19:55.717 --> 00:19:56.616
No fact checks, please.
00:19:58.038 --> 00:19:59.939
So who was Galvez?
00:19:59.959 --> 00:20:00.919
For a quick refresher,
00:20:01.700 --> 00:20:04.060
Galvez was the Spanish governor of Spanish
00:20:04.101 --> 00:20:05.801
Louisiana at the start of the war.
00:20:06.201 --> 00:20:09.363
And he goes on a rampage through British
00:20:09.762 --> 00:20:12.124
territories, especially Florida,
00:20:12.625 --> 00:20:14.885
which used to be a Spanish territory,
00:20:14.925 --> 00:20:17.346
but in the year of the British territory.
00:20:18.126 --> 00:20:20.169
trying to reclaim those territories for
00:20:20.568 --> 00:20:20.949
Spain.
00:20:20.969 --> 00:20:23.070
And he has remarkable success also
00:20:23.131 --> 00:20:25.593
building a really multi-ethnic,
00:20:25.732 --> 00:20:28.094
multilingual coalition of Spanish and
00:20:28.173 --> 00:20:30.576
French and indigenous people.
00:20:30.615 --> 00:20:31.836
Really fascinating stuff.
00:20:32.037 --> 00:20:34.259
Kathleen Duval, in her terrific book,
00:20:34.358 --> 00:20:35.159
Independence Lost,
00:20:35.179 --> 00:20:36.220
has written more about this.
00:20:36.539 --> 00:20:39.142
And he's part and parcel of Spanish
00:20:39.241 --> 00:20:41.084
engagement against Britain
00:20:42.104 --> 00:20:42.964
during the revolution.
00:20:43.345 --> 00:20:44.846
Spain is allied with France.
00:20:45.286 --> 00:20:47.167
France is allied with George Washington.
00:20:47.188 --> 00:20:49.068
So by the transitive powers of allying
00:20:49.088 --> 00:20:49.628
with France,
00:20:50.309 --> 00:20:53.112
Spain is on the same team as George
00:20:53.152 --> 00:20:53.571
Washington.
00:20:53.632 --> 00:20:55.012
But they have very different objectives,
00:20:55.073 --> 00:20:56.673
as you point out, Bob.
00:20:56.733 --> 00:21:00.777
Spain is an absolutist Catholic monarchy
00:21:00.817 --> 00:21:02.317
with an empire of its own.
00:21:02.917 --> 00:21:04.859
And so it would be weird that they
00:21:04.900 --> 00:21:06.320
get into bed with a group of
00:21:06.500 --> 00:21:07.601
anti-imperial,
00:21:07.760 --> 00:21:10.123
anti-monarchical Protestant insurgents.
00:21:10.182 --> 00:21:11.203
But they do, effectively.
00:21:11.864 --> 00:21:15.186
And Spain's goal is not really to support
00:21:15.207 --> 00:21:18.568
George Washington for the cause of
00:21:18.888 --> 00:21:19.849
American liberty,
00:21:20.130 --> 00:21:23.992
but to knock the British Empire down to
00:21:24.053 --> 00:21:26.575
size while it can and to reclaim Spanish
00:21:26.615 --> 00:21:27.215
territories.
00:21:27.316 --> 00:21:28.876
I mentioned Florida as an example,
00:21:29.237 --> 00:21:33.119
but we could do Honduras or Belize as
00:21:33.339 --> 00:21:34.141
other examples.
00:21:34.181 --> 00:21:35.541
And then, of course, there's Gibraltar,
00:21:35.561 --> 00:21:36.863
which you mentioned in your question.
00:21:36.883 --> 00:21:37.343
Right.
00:21:37.442 --> 00:21:40.564
Gibraltar is this rocky outcrop on Spain's
00:21:40.723 --> 00:21:41.403
southern tip,
00:21:41.423 --> 00:21:42.884
which guards the gates of the
00:21:42.904 --> 00:21:43.525
Mediterranean.
00:21:44.005 --> 00:21:44.685
It had, of course,
00:21:44.705 --> 00:21:46.506
been a Spanish possession for centuries.
00:21:46.526 --> 00:21:48.446
And then Britain captures it in some
00:21:48.487 --> 00:21:49.928
previous war, in like, in like,
00:21:50.147 --> 00:21:51.048
or thereabouts.
00:21:51.887 --> 00:21:54.449
Spain desperately wants Britain off their
00:21:54.528 --> 00:21:55.329
front porch.
00:21:56.190 --> 00:21:58.411
And so Spain gets into the war in
00:21:58.490 --> 00:21:58.871
part
00:21:59.750 --> 00:22:01.973
to try to seize Gibraltar while Britain is
00:22:02.013 --> 00:22:04.017
distracted fighting its own civil war.
00:22:04.397 --> 00:22:07.801
They even offered neutrality if Britain
00:22:07.821 --> 00:22:09.104
would give them Gibraltar back.
00:22:09.768 --> 00:22:10.868
Which is an amazing moment.
00:22:10.929 --> 00:22:11.628
Spain said, OK,
00:22:11.648 --> 00:22:13.390
we won't get in against you, Britain,
00:22:13.430 --> 00:22:15.171
if you just give us Gibraltar now.
00:22:15.250 --> 00:22:16.592
And King George says no.
00:22:16.632 --> 00:22:17.732
And George Washington says,
00:22:17.813 --> 00:22:19.233
what the hell are you doing, man?
00:22:19.253 --> 00:22:20.134
You had a chance.
00:22:21.934 --> 00:22:22.875
So that leads to a three and a
00:22:22.915 --> 00:22:24.576
half year Spanish and French siege of
00:22:24.596 --> 00:22:26.637
Gibraltar, which is the longest siege,
00:22:26.657 --> 00:22:27.637
the largest siege.
00:22:27.678 --> 00:22:29.138
I think it's the largest military
00:22:29.179 --> 00:22:31.580
engagement of the entire Revolutionary War
00:22:32.020 --> 00:22:33.642
is the siege of Gibraltar, which fails.
00:22:34.061 --> 00:22:34.762
at the end.
00:22:34.782 --> 00:22:38.626
So Spain pours everything into knocking
00:22:38.666 --> 00:22:40.127
Britain down a peg or two,
00:22:40.468 --> 00:22:42.130
has some huge gains,
00:22:42.830 --> 00:22:44.471
like under Galvez in Florida,
00:22:44.792 --> 00:22:46.173
but also some huge failures.
00:22:46.193 --> 00:22:46.954
Think of Gibraltar,
00:22:47.134 --> 00:22:48.316
think of the English invasion in the
00:22:48.336 --> 00:22:49.317
seventeenth century.
00:22:50.557 --> 00:22:52.059
That English invasion in the seventeenth
00:22:52.079 --> 00:22:53.580
century,
00:22:53.641 --> 00:22:55.563
Spain and France are cooperating and have
00:22:55.583 --> 00:22:57.625
this huge force that is going into the
00:22:57.684 --> 00:22:58.365
English Channel.
00:22:59.483 --> 00:23:00.904
And of course, Britain's army,
00:23:00.944 --> 00:23:01.326
as you said,
00:23:01.365 --> 00:23:02.767
is displaced throughout the world.
00:23:02.807 --> 00:23:05.387
So they're calling together basically any
00:23:05.429 --> 00:23:07.589
guy who's around who can is going to
00:23:07.630 --> 00:23:09.471
go and defend the islands against this
00:23:09.872 --> 00:23:10.852
massive armada.
00:23:10.872 --> 00:23:12.693
It's a huge thing.
00:23:12.753 --> 00:23:14.694
And then it's really a disaster for the
00:23:14.734 --> 00:23:15.736
French and the Spanish.
00:23:16.351 --> 00:23:18.232
Yeah, I mean, by there,
00:23:18.252 --> 00:23:19.693
but for the grace of God, really,
00:23:19.733 --> 00:23:21.916
does Britain not get successfully invaded
00:23:21.957 --> 00:23:23.878
by France and Spain in seventeen seventy
00:23:23.898 --> 00:23:23.979
nine?
00:23:23.999 --> 00:23:24.819
The plan, by the way,
00:23:24.839 --> 00:23:27.701
is to capture the two great dockyards on
00:23:27.761 --> 00:23:28.782
Britain's south coast,
00:23:28.864 --> 00:23:29.845
Portsmouth and Plymouth.
00:23:30.105 --> 00:23:31.566
If they can capture those dockyards,
00:23:31.586 --> 00:23:32.968
then they basically crippled the Royal
00:23:33.008 --> 00:23:34.128
Navy and the game is over.
00:23:34.709 --> 00:23:36.269
But they failed to do that in part
00:23:36.309 --> 00:23:40.791
because of the tenacious opposition by,
00:23:40.892 --> 00:23:41.711
for lack of a better word,
00:23:41.731 --> 00:23:43.512
the Home Guard that they put out,
00:23:43.593 --> 00:23:44.334
Dad's Army.
00:23:44.973 --> 00:23:46.714
They get some retired British general,
00:23:47.015 --> 00:23:48.756
Admiral, Admiral Hardy,
00:23:48.776 --> 00:23:49.415
I think his name is.
00:23:50.056 --> 00:23:51.436
to come out of retirement who hasn't been
00:23:51.457 --> 00:23:53.137
to sea in twenty years to try to
00:23:53.939 --> 00:23:55.799
annoy the French Navy and the Spanish
00:23:55.859 --> 00:23:56.240
Navy.
00:23:56.279 --> 00:23:57.161
But fundamentally,
00:23:57.201 --> 00:23:59.442
however good hard it is, it's the winds.
00:23:59.482 --> 00:24:01.364
The winds don't cooperate and the French
00:24:01.384 --> 00:24:03.644
and Spanish Navy can't land and they
00:24:03.684 --> 00:24:05.487
haven't brought enough drinking water on
00:24:05.507 --> 00:24:06.186
their own ships,
00:24:06.227 --> 00:24:07.607
which seems like an error to me.
00:24:08.729 --> 00:24:10.690
And that causes huge rates of scurvy and
00:24:10.730 --> 00:24:12.631
mortality and forces them to turn around.
00:24:12.651 --> 00:24:14.212
So it's a bit of a debacle as
00:24:14.252 --> 00:24:15.794
far as France and Spain are concerned.
00:24:16.554 --> 00:24:18.655
yeah and of course not only once again
00:24:18.976 --> 00:24:23.319
britannia rules the waves it's uh yes it's
00:24:23.339 --> 00:24:25.162
a lucky escape for britain quite honestly
00:24:25.182 --> 00:24:26.482
but yes britannia rules the waves yeah
00:24:27.044 --> 00:24:28.805
there are some tremendous paintings too of
00:24:28.845 --> 00:24:30.626
the siege of gibraltar and the defeat of
00:24:30.646 --> 00:24:31.708
the fire boats i mean this
00:24:32.488 --> 00:24:34.289
loomed large at the time to have these
00:24:34.329 --> 00:24:37.551
tremendous pictorial representations of
00:24:37.592 --> 00:24:38.432
this heroism.
00:24:38.932 --> 00:24:40.013
Another way to say that, Bob,
00:24:40.054 --> 00:24:41.795
is that the British public,
00:24:41.835 --> 00:24:44.477
who've been down in the dumps about this
00:24:44.636 --> 00:24:47.218
endless quagmire they've been fighting in
00:24:47.298 --> 00:24:47.979
North America,
00:24:47.999 --> 00:24:50.260
which is costing a lot of British blood
00:24:50.421 --> 00:24:51.981
and treasure in seventy-six,
00:24:52.061 --> 00:24:53.502
seventy-seven, seventy-eight,
00:24:54.262 --> 00:24:55.763
the British public gets a new lease of
00:24:55.884 --> 00:24:58.487
life and morale for the war actually
00:24:58.527 --> 00:25:01.328
improves when Britain's greatest enemies,
00:25:01.628 --> 00:25:02.690
France and Spain,
00:25:03.349 --> 00:25:05.451
team up to try to destroy Britain or
00:25:05.491 --> 00:25:06.412
wipe it off the map.
00:25:06.432 --> 00:25:08.213
That is a huge boost to military
00:25:08.253 --> 00:25:08.913
recruitment, right?
00:25:08.933 --> 00:25:10.434
Because if you're a British person in the
00:25:10.454 --> 00:25:11.195
eighteenth century,
00:25:11.455 --> 00:25:13.458
you may be in two minds about beating
00:25:13.518 --> 00:25:15.138
up on some American farmers who you
00:25:15.358 --> 00:25:17.559
regard as your cousins, your brothers.
00:25:18.099 --> 00:25:20.040
But you're not in two minds about beating
00:25:20.080 --> 00:25:20.701
up a Frenchman.
00:25:21.281 --> 00:25:21.902
This is, you know,
00:25:22.342 --> 00:25:24.482
catnip to the British public when France
00:25:24.563 --> 00:25:25.124
joins the war.
00:25:25.263 --> 00:25:26.744
Yeah, really.
00:25:26.765 --> 00:25:27.944
We're talking with Richard Bell,
00:25:27.964 --> 00:25:29.546
professor of history at the University of
00:25:29.586 --> 00:25:30.006
Maryland,
00:25:30.125 --> 00:25:32.846
author of The American Revolution and the
00:25:32.906 --> 00:25:33.907
Fate of the World.
00:25:34.662 --> 00:25:36.002
Your mention of Hardy, of course,
00:25:36.143 --> 00:25:37.443
brings to mind a different Hardy,
00:25:37.544 --> 00:25:40.825
and Lord Nelson is part of this expedition
00:25:40.865 --> 00:25:42.685
to Nicaragua, which is extraordinary.
00:25:43.226 --> 00:25:45.067
Yeah, he's not a lord yet.
00:25:45.086 --> 00:25:45.988
He's not a lord yet.
00:25:46.208 --> 00:25:48.048
I think he's a captain or a lieutenant.
00:25:48.489 --> 00:25:49.088
Don't quote me.
00:25:49.148 --> 00:25:49.950
I get it right in the book.
00:25:50.650 --> 00:25:52.391
um he's at the start of his career
00:25:52.490 --> 00:25:53.912
and he's leading a force of i think
00:25:54.011 --> 00:25:56.733
fifty british marines uh from british
00:25:56.773 --> 00:26:00.616
jamaica into spanish central america to
00:26:00.676 --> 00:26:03.198
try to protect some nearby british logging
00:26:03.258 --> 00:26:06.259
colonies and maybe capture just enough
00:26:06.299 --> 00:26:09.082
spanish territory on the isthmus of panama
00:26:09.462 --> 00:26:11.983
to effectively cleave the spanish empire
00:26:12.064 --> 00:26:14.586
into two right and get a route to
00:26:14.625 --> 00:26:16.446
the pacific for great britain which would
00:26:16.467 --> 00:26:18.929
be a game-changing thing yeah and yet
00:26:20.009 --> 00:26:23.611
When the British Marines land on, I think,
00:26:23.651 --> 00:26:25.832
near the San Juan River in modern day
00:26:25.872 --> 00:26:26.573
Nicaragua,
00:26:27.153 --> 00:26:29.634
they are not greeted as liberators by the
00:26:29.653 --> 00:26:30.555
indigenous people.
00:26:30.674 --> 00:26:32.655
No one ever greets a foreign invasion as
00:26:32.675 --> 00:26:33.415
the liberators,
00:26:33.455 --> 00:26:34.576
just don't buy the rhetoric.
00:26:35.317 --> 00:26:36.557
Well, we always think they will.
00:26:36.998 --> 00:26:38.199
We always think they will, right?
00:26:38.259 --> 00:26:40.079
And the troops will be home by Christmas,
00:26:40.099 --> 00:26:41.180
Bob, as well, right?
00:26:41.240 --> 00:26:41.800
Don't believe it.
00:26:42.901 --> 00:26:46.063
And the disease environment for pale,
00:26:46.843 --> 00:26:49.025
sickly British soldiers is incredible.
00:26:49.105 --> 00:26:50.846
Mosquitoes do their deadly work,
00:26:50.905 --> 00:26:53.267
and everyone gets malaria and dies on the
00:26:53.307 --> 00:26:54.667
beach, pretty much.
00:26:55.909 --> 00:26:57.611
Lieutenant Nelson or Captain Nelson,
00:26:57.631 --> 00:26:58.951
whatever rank he is at the time,
00:26:59.673 --> 00:27:01.314
is lucky to survive.
00:27:01.334 --> 00:27:02.055
He's invalid.
00:27:02.154 --> 00:27:04.136
He does get sick, but he doesn't die.
00:27:04.377 --> 00:27:04.897
And of course,
00:27:05.238 --> 00:27:07.701
if he had died in seventeen seventy nine,
00:27:07.740 --> 00:27:08.382
seventeen eighty,
00:27:08.741 --> 00:27:10.683
British history during the Napoleonic Wars
00:27:10.723 --> 00:27:12.065
could be very, very different.
00:27:12.085 --> 00:27:13.886
Yes, really would.
00:27:15.208 --> 00:27:16.509
I mean, the book really has,
00:27:17.309 --> 00:27:18.550
I fear we may be giving it all
00:27:18.631 --> 00:27:18.911
away,
00:27:18.951 --> 00:27:21.833
but there are so many interesting pieces,
00:27:21.853 --> 00:27:24.253
surprises really on every page that it's
00:27:24.315 --> 00:27:27.135
well worth talking about many of them.
00:27:28.537 --> 00:27:30.378
I think there's so many surprises here for
00:27:30.398 --> 00:27:32.019
me as a researcher and writer.
00:27:32.579 --> 00:27:33.941
I think there's a surprise, like you said,
00:27:33.980 --> 00:27:35.321
in every page and every chapter.
00:27:35.342 --> 00:27:36.742
So we could do all day and people
00:27:36.762 --> 00:27:37.824
would still have a reason to go buy
00:27:37.844 --> 00:27:38.144
the book.
00:27:38.644 --> 00:27:40.265
That's right.
00:27:40.325 --> 00:27:41.786
What do you think surprised you the most
00:27:41.846 --> 00:27:43.767
as you were doing the research and writing
00:27:43.847 --> 00:27:44.147
the book?
00:27:44.817 --> 00:27:48.800
So the disconnect between how we talk
00:27:48.840 --> 00:27:51.923
about this war in pop culture in America,
00:27:52.222 --> 00:27:54.444
which is David versus Goliath,
00:27:54.545 --> 00:27:56.086
rebels versus redcoats,
00:27:56.145 --> 00:27:57.708
colonists versus crown,
00:27:58.288 --> 00:28:02.510
and the rich veins of scholarship proving
00:28:02.691 --> 00:28:05.833
otherwise that academic historians have
00:28:05.853 --> 00:28:08.174
been mining so brilliantly for the last
00:28:08.234 --> 00:28:10.317
twenty, thirty years is really crazy.
00:28:10.836 --> 00:28:12.738
uh to me and so you know this
00:28:12.778 --> 00:28:14.240
book is an attempt to sort of get
00:28:14.299 --> 00:28:17.981
my arms around right or more different
00:28:18.122 --> 00:28:21.344
bodies of scholarship which each on their
00:28:21.525 --> 00:28:24.105
own say something about the global
00:28:24.145 --> 00:28:25.887
dimensions of the american revolution but
00:28:26.028 --> 00:28:28.409
aren't normally gathered together or made
00:28:28.630 --> 00:28:30.770
to talk to each other and so you
00:28:30.790 --> 00:28:32.592
know scholars who write about the role of
00:28:32.711 --> 00:28:34.433
german soldiers the hessians for instance
00:28:34.634 --> 00:28:34.773
yeah
00:28:35.294 --> 00:28:37.515
in the revolution normally don't get to
00:28:37.555 --> 00:28:40.856
talk to scholars of indigenous America
00:28:40.896 --> 00:28:43.557
like Kathleen Duval, for instance.
00:28:43.597 --> 00:28:45.618
So by putting all their scholarships in
00:28:45.659 --> 00:28:47.619
the same book between the same covers,
00:28:47.961 --> 00:28:49.300
we're getting fourteen different
00:28:49.340 --> 00:28:52.502
conversations together and we get to see
00:28:52.522 --> 00:28:54.124
that they add up to far more than
00:28:54.163 --> 00:28:56.144
the sum of their individual parts, right?
00:28:56.464 --> 00:28:57.905
So we get to see the global picture
00:28:58.165 --> 00:28:59.826
when we put together these different
00:28:59.906 --> 00:29:02.567
narrow veins for the first time.
00:29:02.627 --> 00:29:03.949
I think this is a brand new history
00:29:04.429 --> 00:29:05.308
of the American Revolution.
00:29:05.328 --> 00:29:06.529
I don't think there's anything quite like
00:29:07.049 --> 00:29:08.871
this out there on the market.
00:29:08.891 --> 00:29:10.230
So I hope this will do some myth-busting
00:29:10.290 --> 00:29:11.652
and some game-changing and broaden
00:29:11.672 --> 00:29:13.172
people's perspective.
00:29:13.893 --> 00:29:14.532
I agree.
00:29:14.593 --> 00:29:15.313
And I think it will.
00:29:15.373 --> 00:29:16.252
And it just, I mean,
00:29:16.313 --> 00:29:18.193
as I was reading it and looking at
00:29:18.213 --> 00:29:18.653
the notes,
00:29:18.713 --> 00:29:21.174
seeing how much is drawn from the works
00:29:21.255 --> 00:29:22.596
of, you know, Andrew Jackson,
00:29:22.615 --> 00:29:24.115
O'Shaughnessy, Frank Cagliano,
00:29:24.155 --> 00:29:25.856
Frederica Baer, Kathleen Duvall,
00:29:25.896 --> 00:29:27.397
these other scholars who really have been
00:29:27.438 --> 00:29:29.518
doing this work really to change the
00:29:29.557 --> 00:29:30.199
narrative.
00:29:30.618 --> 00:29:31.358
But we know that
00:29:32.199 --> 00:29:34.080
narrative really hasn't shifted but it's
00:29:34.121 --> 00:29:36.163
true right i think this is part of
00:29:36.223 --> 00:29:38.707
the kind of you know what's new about
00:29:38.727 --> 00:29:40.828
the american revolution i think a lot
00:29:40.909 --> 00:29:44.093
rests on what all of this uh generation
00:29:44.113 --> 00:29:45.795
now of scholarship that you and others
00:29:45.815 --> 00:29:47.436
have been doing now was this a
00:29:48.327 --> 00:29:50.671
Was there a moment in around two thousand
00:29:50.711 --> 00:29:52.413
when scholars said, hey, let's look,
00:29:52.432 --> 00:29:53.894
let's look at what's happening among the
00:29:54.193 --> 00:29:56.696
Germans or among the native people?
00:29:57.057 --> 00:29:57.317
You know,
00:29:57.397 --> 00:29:58.859
all the individual scholars speak for
00:29:58.880 --> 00:29:59.440
themselves.
00:29:59.500 --> 00:30:00.500
But I would say, you know,
00:30:00.902 --> 00:30:03.064
we within universities and you know this,
00:30:03.104 --> 00:30:04.445
Bob, from where you sit, you know,
00:30:04.465 --> 00:30:06.007
we've been asking interesting questions
00:30:06.027 --> 00:30:07.868
for a long time, I think.
00:30:07.970 --> 00:30:08.170
Right.
00:30:08.789 --> 00:30:10.832
And we've all noticed in our own lives
00:30:10.852 --> 00:30:12.353
that we live in a globalized,
00:30:12.432 --> 00:30:14.433
entangled world today.
00:30:14.674 --> 00:30:16.736
And we take those notions back into the
00:30:16.796 --> 00:30:18.116
eighteenth and nineteenth century.
00:30:18.136 --> 00:30:19.218
And we look for what's similar,
00:30:19.258 --> 00:30:19.817
what's different.
00:30:19.857 --> 00:30:21.219
And we try to analyze that.
00:30:21.239 --> 00:30:22.900
And it shouldn't really surprise us that
00:30:23.500 --> 00:30:24.481
the eighteenth century,
00:30:24.501 --> 00:30:26.103
which is among many things an age of
00:30:26.222 --> 00:30:30.205
empire, is a globally entangled world.
00:30:30.546 --> 00:30:30.826
Right.
00:30:31.026 --> 00:30:32.606
Everything is connected and there are
00:30:32.666 --> 00:30:34.868
ripple effects, even butterfly effects.
00:30:35.568 --> 00:30:40.573
effects and so on so yeah I think
00:30:40.633 --> 00:30:43.815
that the goal is to really platform in
00:30:43.855 --> 00:30:45.757
this book which is a very public facing
00:30:45.797 --> 00:30:47.657
book aimed at you know anyone who buys
00:30:47.718 --> 00:30:49.338
books for Christmas or the airport
00:30:49.358 --> 00:30:50.640
bookstore on your way on to wait to
00:30:50.660 --> 00:30:53.041
vacation for Thanksgiving to platform the
00:30:53.082 --> 00:30:54.982
amazing scholarship of people who've been
00:30:55.002 --> 00:30:57.384
writing books for fellow historians for
00:30:57.404 --> 00:31:00.507
the last twenty years right if this brings
00:31:00.606 --> 00:31:01.367
more attention to
00:31:01.607 --> 00:31:03.289
to people who do read the end notes
00:31:03.330 --> 00:31:03.971
like you did,
00:31:04.672 --> 00:31:06.314
to the work of scholars like Frederica
00:31:06.355 --> 00:31:08.176
Bayer, who wrote a great book on Hessians,
00:31:09.499 --> 00:31:10.700
or Cassandra Pibus,
00:31:10.720 --> 00:31:12.321
who wrote a great book about black
00:31:12.382 --> 00:31:15.866
refugees in the global diaspora after the
00:31:15.886 --> 00:31:17.108
war, then wonderful.
00:31:17.169 --> 00:31:18.471
They deserve all the attention they can
00:31:18.490 --> 00:31:18.651
get.
00:31:19.486 --> 00:31:20.946
Yes, true.
00:31:20.967 --> 00:31:22.268
Harry Washington is another of these
00:31:22.307 --> 00:31:24.249
characters, you know, like John Mosley.
00:31:25.009 --> 00:31:26.769
Well, he doesn't start in Virginia,
00:31:26.809 --> 00:31:29.971
but he then makes his way to Nova
00:31:30.011 --> 00:31:31.472
Scotia, Sierra Leone.
00:31:31.492 --> 00:31:31.673
I mean,
00:31:31.712 --> 00:31:34.414
it's a tremendous story of this global war
00:31:34.515 --> 00:31:37.176
and these individuals then who are moving
00:31:37.196 --> 00:31:39.298
around in a way we often don't imagine.
00:31:39.877 --> 00:31:40.218
Yeah, Bob,
00:31:40.258 --> 00:31:41.578
you and I have probably known about Harry
00:31:41.618 --> 00:31:43.318
Washington for many years.
00:31:43.398 --> 00:31:43.920
I can't think.
00:31:44.259 --> 00:31:45.839
It was probably years ago I first read
00:31:45.880 --> 00:31:47.760
Cassandra Pibus's scholarship and learned
00:31:47.780 --> 00:31:48.882
about Harry Washington.
00:31:48.902 --> 00:31:50.241
But I was at a book talk yesterday
00:31:50.261 --> 00:31:50.721
for this book,
00:31:50.741 --> 00:31:52.222
and I was talking about Harry Washington.
00:31:52.623 --> 00:31:53.743
And there were maybe, I don't know,
00:31:53.784 --> 00:31:54.644
forty people in the room.
00:31:54.683 --> 00:31:55.003
And I said,
00:31:55.044 --> 00:31:56.404
how many of you have heard of Harry
00:31:56.424 --> 00:31:56.825
Washington?
00:31:57.325 --> 00:31:58.445
And the only two people who put up
00:31:58.465 --> 00:32:00.107
their hands were my teaching assistants
00:32:00.387 --> 00:32:02.470
who happened to be there.
00:32:02.490 --> 00:32:03.151
I'm glad they did.
00:32:03.391 --> 00:32:04.412
Yeah, I'm glad they did too.
00:32:04.612 --> 00:32:05.913
But clearly we've got work to do to
00:32:05.933 --> 00:32:07.595
get the Harry Washington story out there
00:32:07.615 --> 00:32:08.916
because it's amazing.
00:32:09.237 --> 00:32:11.358
Why is there not a movie about Harry
00:32:11.378 --> 00:32:13.040
Washington TV show, right?
00:32:13.540 --> 00:32:15.482
So in thumbnail form,
00:32:15.502 --> 00:32:17.184
I'll be very brief here because it does
00:32:17.244 --> 00:32:19.326
dovetail with the John Mosley story I told
00:32:19.386 --> 00:32:19.768
earlier on.
00:32:20.548 --> 00:32:21.449
Born in Africa,
00:32:21.568 --> 00:32:23.590
enslaved by transatlantic slave dealers,
00:32:24.050 --> 00:32:25.972
ends up being owned by George Washington
00:32:25.992 --> 00:32:26.732
at Mount Vernon,
00:32:27.854 --> 00:32:29.955
and flees to the British side during the
00:32:29.976 --> 00:32:30.296
war,
00:32:30.776 --> 00:32:33.178
evacuates with Britain to Nova Scotia in
00:32:33.258 --> 00:32:35.980
direct contravention of the Fugitive Slave
00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:37.201
Clause of the peace treaty.
00:32:37.842 --> 00:32:39.163
ends up in British Nova Scotia,
00:32:39.442 --> 00:32:41.003
hates it there because being free of
00:32:41.064 --> 00:32:43.546
slavery is not the same as being treated
00:32:43.586 --> 00:32:44.886
with respect and dignity.
00:32:45.047 --> 00:32:46.807
There's plenty of racists in British
00:32:46.847 --> 00:32:47.888
Canada.
00:32:47.989 --> 00:32:49.849
Ends up in a new British colony in
00:32:50.030 --> 00:32:51.571
West Africa called Sierra Leone,
00:32:51.852 --> 00:32:54.394
which is sold to him as a post-racist
00:32:54.554 --> 00:32:55.213
paradise.
00:32:55.894 --> 00:32:56.434
Guess what?
00:32:56.494 --> 00:32:56.974
It's not.
00:32:57.056 --> 00:32:57.496
It's not.
00:32:58.056 --> 00:33:01.298
And so he and others launch what you
00:33:01.337 --> 00:33:04.098
might describe as a Sierra Leonean
00:33:04.240 --> 00:33:06.461
independence movement against the British
00:33:06.560 --> 00:33:08.061
Empire in eighteen hundred,
00:33:08.741 --> 00:33:10.982
which is echoes really the American
00:33:11.022 --> 00:33:12.183
independence movement that George
00:33:12.203 --> 00:33:14.744
Washington had started twenty five years
00:33:14.845 --> 00:33:15.105
earlier,
00:33:15.145 --> 00:33:16.645
though the outcome in the Sierra Leonean
00:33:16.685 --> 00:33:17.507
case is quite.
00:33:18.366 --> 00:33:19.887
different, unfortunately.
00:33:19.948 --> 00:33:21.769
So Harry is at the center of this
00:33:21.808 --> 00:33:23.490
global odyssey,
00:33:23.790 --> 00:33:25.191
and he's such a compelling character,
00:33:25.451 --> 00:33:27.333
not only because of what he does and
00:33:27.393 --> 00:33:29.273
what he says or what he believes or
00:33:29.294 --> 00:33:29.814
what he wants,
00:33:30.173 --> 00:33:31.555
but also because he's this sort of
00:33:32.155 --> 00:33:34.317
doppelganger for George Washington going
00:33:34.356 --> 00:33:35.778
down in a very different universe.
00:33:36.018 --> 00:33:37.159
Yeah.
00:33:37.179 --> 00:33:37.278
Yeah.
00:33:37.459 --> 00:33:38.038
It's amazing.
00:33:38.098 --> 00:33:39.200
Really an amazing book.
00:33:39.279 --> 00:33:40.520
I know we could spend the rest of
00:33:40.540 --> 00:33:41.661
the day talking about this.
00:33:41.840 --> 00:33:43.001
I wonder if there's anything else you
00:33:43.021 --> 00:33:44.182
would like to share before we
00:33:44.857 --> 00:33:45.238
let you go.
00:33:45.258 --> 00:33:46.459
I know you just gave a lecture,
00:33:46.499 --> 00:33:48.380
and now we've been grilling you.
00:33:49.160 --> 00:33:50.240
Anything else we should share?
00:33:50.320 --> 00:33:52.781
I love talking about this book.
00:33:52.883 --> 00:33:54.502
I will just reiterate, folks,
00:33:56.064 --> 00:33:57.345
a point that Bob and I talked about
00:33:57.384 --> 00:33:58.045
when we began,
00:33:58.085 --> 00:34:00.767
which is that while this does tell a
00:34:00.826 --> 00:34:03.828
global sweeping story that covers lots of
00:34:03.868 --> 00:34:06.390
places and moves theme by theme,
00:34:06.710 --> 00:34:08.510
it's also a human story driven by
00:34:08.590 --> 00:34:10.652
characters and individuals with names and
00:34:10.672 --> 00:34:11.293
what happens
00:34:11.992 --> 00:34:13.693
And I'm really proud of the way we
00:34:13.753 --> 00:34:17.614
try to bind the macro and the micro,
00:34:17.653 --> 00:34:19.735
the global with the human in this book.
00:34:20.715 --> 00:34:22.195
How did you decide on the structure of
00:34:22.215 --> 00:34:22.496
the book,
00:34:22.976 --> 00:34:24.556
the thematic approach as opposed to a
00:34:24.715 --> 00:34:25.956
chronological approach,
00:34:26.076 --> 00:34:28.617
or any number of other ways you could
00:34:28.637 --> 00:34:29.456
have organized it?
00:34:30.036 --> 00:34:31.318
Yeah, it's an interesting question, right?
00:34:31.338 --> 00:34:32.858
It's maybe a bit inside baseball for some
00:34:32.898 --> 00:34:33.818
people, but as writers,
00:34:33.838 --> 00:34:35.659
we think about structure a lot, right?
00:34:36.498 --> 00:34:38.820
The alternative way to write this would be
00:34:39.360 --> 00:34:42.461
a chronological global history.
00:34:42.501 --> 00:34:43.663
We begin at year one.
00:34:43.722 --> 00:34:44.922
We end at year whatever.
00:34:45.344 --> 00:34:46.623
And every paragraph,
00:34:46.664 --> 00:34:47.885
we jump to a different place.
00:34:47.985 --> 00:34:50.646
Meanwhile in India, meanwhile in Ireland,
00:34:50.786 --> 00:34:52.367
meanwhile in Sierra Leone.
00:34:52.447 --> 00:34:54.068
I think that would just spin you around
00:34:54.088 --> 00:34:55.349
and have diminishing returns.
00:34:55.809 --> 00:34:57.550
So I made the decision very early in
00:34:57.570 --> 00:34:59.530
the project that this was going to pick
00:34:59.610 --> 00:35:02.311
fourteen or however many different themes
00:35:02.351 --> 00:35:03.811
and geographies and peoples and
00:35:03.851 --> 00:35:06.873
individuals and keep the focus on them.
00:35:06.952 --> 00:35:09.333
Let's say the Irish for twenty pages.
00:35:09.373 --> 00:35:10.934
And then the next chapter would be about
00:35:11.255 --> 00:35:12.255
African descended people.
00:35:12.275 --> 00:35:13.414
And then the next chapter would be about
00:35:13.434 --> 00:35:14.755
the Caribbean, whatever else,
00:35:14.775 --> 00:35:17.297
because I wanted people to go deep into
00:35:17.317 --> 00:35:20.077
the texture of the past.
00:35:20.597 --> 00:35:23.018
So I'd also say that I began some
00:35:23.039 --> 00:35:25.360
of these chapters when people asked me to
00:35:25.400 --> 00:35:27.161
give talks about certain subjects.
00:35:27.202 --> 00:35:28.762
Like, you know, people would ask me,
00:35:28.782 --> 00:35:28.943
you know,
00:35:29.242 --> 00:35:30.443
what was the American Revolution like in
00:35:30.483 --> 00:35:30.764
Britain?
00:35:31.083 --> 00:35:31.943
And I would say, you know,
00:35:31.983 --> 00:35:32.364
I don't know.
00:35:32.425 --> 00:35:33.644
I should go read some books about that.
00:35:33.684 --> 00:35:34.565
So I went and read a ton of
00:35:34.585 --> 00:35:36.547
books about this and wrote a talk.
00:35:36.586 --> 00:35:38.568
And then that talk eventually became the
00:35:38.628 --> 00:35:40.969
seed for the chapter called Disunited
00:35:41.028 --> 00:35:41.409
Kingdom,
00:35:41.449 --> 00:35:43.210
who the title of the chapter tells you
00:35:43.250 --> 00:35:44.911
everything about how the war was received
00:35:44.931 --> 00:35:45.771
in Britain right there.
00:35:46.726 --> 00:35:49.028
Again, the perception we often have,
00:35:49.469 --> 00:35:50.690
David versus Goliath,
00:35:50.710 --> 00:35:52.731
everyone on this side of the Atlantic were
00:35:52.751 --> 00:35:53.572
the patriots.
00:35:53.592 --> 00:35:55.373
And then in England and Britain,
00:35:55.393 --> 00:35:57.454
they were united against these upstarts
00:35:57.514 --> 00:35:59.056
when you show there's really a tremendous
00:35:59.157 --> 00:36:01.237
disagreement in England and Britain as a
00:36:01.297 --> 00:36:02.998
whole about the war.
00:36:04.159 --> 00:36:05.960
Huge vocal disagreement, right?
00:36:06.181 --> 00:36:08.503
The British are as disunited over this as
00:36:08.543 --> 00:36:10.443
the Americans are, actually.
00:36:10.983 --> 00:36:13.365
And thanks to the scholarship of James
00:36:13.425 --> 00:36:13.965
Bradley,
00:36:14.686 --> 00:36:16.327
we know that there's a real vibrant
00:36:16.467 --> 00:36:18.528
anti-war movement in Britain.
00:36:18.568 --> 00:36:20.809
There are peace petitioners sending in
00:36:20.889 --> 00:36:23.210
tens of thousands of signatures saying,
00:36:23.411 --> 00:36:27.273
end this now, not in our name.
00:36:27.333 --> 00:36:28.373
Who do you think you are?
00:36:28.494 --> 00:36:29.635
Blood and treasure, right?
00:36:29.735 --> 00:36:29.835
Right.
00:36:30.255 --> 00:36:31.976
And that gets stomped on when France
00:36:32.036 --> 00:36:33.496
enters the war and suddenly you can't
00:36:33.516 --> 00:36:34.635
criticize the government anymore.
00:36:34.655 --> 00:36:35.516
Right.
00:36:35.916 --> 00:36:37.277
And even some of the British military
00:36:37.317 --> 00:36:38.817
figures who said they wouldn't be involved
00:36:38.836 --> 00:36:40.637
in American war, like Admiral Keppel.
00:36:40.677 --> 00:36:42.657
Now he's defending the home islands
00:36:42.697 --> 00:36:44.018
against the French invasion.
00:36:44.039 --> 00:36:46.119
Yeah.
00:36:46.179 --> 00:36:47.559
Well, we could go on all day, Rick.
00:36:47.579 --> 00:36:49.480
This has been it's a great book and
00:36:49.539 --> 00:36:51.081
I want people to read it rather than
00:36:51.121 --> 00:36:52.800
just listen to us to you talk about
00:36:52.840 --> 00:36:52.900
it.
00:36:53.836 --> 00:36:55.018
And again, just to give it away,
00:36:55.278 --> 00:36:56.920
Baron von Steuben appears in it,
00:36:56.981 --> 00:36:58.083
and so does Peggy Shippen.
00:36:58.603 --> 00:36:59.885
Yes.
00:37:01.108 --> 00:37:02.710
And of course, the chapter on India.
00:37:02.730 --> 00:37:05.052
We didn't even talk about those tremendous
00:37:05.092 --> 00:37:06.876
facets of the book and the story.
00:37:07.884 --> 00:37:09.827
really should change the way we think
00:37:09.847 --> 00:37:12.750
about this whole episode in a much more
00:37:12.809 --> 00:37:14.032
interesting and exciting way.
00:37:14.512 --> 00:37:16.014
And Bob, I know your readers and viewers,
00:37:16.155 --> 00:37:17.295
listeners and viewers are very smart,
00:37:17.315 --> 00:37:18.918
but if you don't know who Peggy Shippen
00:37:19.077 --> 00:37:19.298
is,
00:37:19.438 --> 00:37:21.201
Google her and find out who her husband
00:37:21.260 --> 00:37:21.541
was,
00:37:21.561 --> 00:37:23.143
and then why I wrote a chapter about
00:37:23.184 --> 00:37:24.606
her will start to make sudden sense.
00:37:25.085 --> 00:37:26.945
right yes yes very good so thank you
00:37:26.985 --> 00:37:28.806
so much for joining us it's uh my
00:37:28.847 --> 00:37:31.327
pleasure thank you thank you and and every
00:37:31.367 --> 00:37:33.307
week we thank folks in and around who
00:37:33.367 --> 00:37:35.547
are listening in and this week and we
00:37:35.588 --> 00:37:37.307
acknowledge people who are regular
00:37:37.347 --> 00:37:40.248
listeners and um if you are in one
00:37:40.268 --> 00:37:41.728
of these places and want some revolution
00:37:41.748 --> 00:37:44.090
two fifty swag send jonathan lane an email
00:37:44.130 --> 00:37:46.090
jay lane at revolution two five oh dot
00:37:46.190 --> 00:37:49.590
org and this week in deference to our
00:37:49.771 --> 00:37:51.070
guest and the topic
00:37:51.442 --> 00:37:53.244
I'm going to thank folks who are mainly
00:37:53.364 --> 00:37:56.226
not in the original Thirteen Colonies.
00:37:56.246 --> 00:37:58.429
So I want to thank our listeners in
00:37:58.469 --> 00:38:00.190
Frankfurt on Main, in Hesse,
00:38:00.670 --> 00:38:03.534
and in Seguin, Texas, and Lafayette,
00:38:03.554 --> 00:38:05.175
Louisiana, Lafayette, Indiana,
00:38:05.456 --> 00:38:08.119
Johannesburg, and in Nantes, Massey,
00:38:08.179 --> 00:38:10.581
Paris, and Bordeaux, in York,
00:38:10.802 --> 00:38:12.963
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Westminster,
00:38:13.083 --> 00:38:13.605
and London,
00:38:13.965 --> 00:38:16.847
madrid marbella and barcelona in
00:38:16.927 --> 00:38:20.048
krapnitsky in the ukraine in tel aviv and
00:38:20.148 --> 00:38:23.510
amman in almaty kazakhstan in pego pego
00:38:23.831 --> 00:38:27.853
kawasaki in japan bebedoro in brazil and
00:38:27.934 --> 00:38:30.014
roros norway thank you all for joining us
00:38:30.074 --> 00:38:32.516
and everyone between and beyond and now we
00:38:32.556 --> 00:38:34.257
will be piped out on the road to
00:38:34.277 --> 00:38:34.677
boston