Aid sent by Louis XVI tipped the scales in favor of a Patriot victory in the War for American Independence. However, this assistance was far from assured. John Hardman argues that the French monarch possessed sharp political insight and talent in foreign policy, and his choice to support the Patriot cause was nearly lost. Why […]
At the end of the American Revolution, sixty thousand Americans loyal to the British cause fled the United States and became refugees throughout the British Empire. Loyalists traveled to Canada, sailed for Britain, and journeyed to the Bahamas and the West Indies. Some ventured still farther afield, to Africa and India. Wherever they went, this voyage […]
There were twenty-six colonies, not thirteen, in British America in 1776, and the majority of the colonies outside the mainland were in the Caribbean. Even though they shared many important similarities and connections with the mainland colonies, they did not rebel. Dr. O’Shaughnessy examines the British colonies in the Caribbean during the American Revolution and […]
The Boston Tea Party was not just a local story, Professor Carp argues, it was also a global story. The East India Company was becoming a territorial power in South Asia. Its principal import, tea, came from China and was becoming a popular drink among Europeans. These Europeans drank their tea with sugar, planted and […]
Winston Churchill called the Seven Years’ War the first world war. Yet, Americans typically think of this conflict only in terms of its North American theater, where it is most often referred to as the French and Indian War. The Seven Years’ War was a much bigger conflict involving world powers France, England, Prussia, Hanover […]
In August 1781, British commander Lord Cornwallis moved his troops to Yorktown, Virginia, hoping he could more easily receive supplies and reinforcements via the York River, near the Chesapeake Bay. Professor Osman details the events that followed, leading to the allied victory at Yorktown. The allied Franco-American forces, most under the command of the comte […]