A Short History of the American Revolutionary War

by Stephen Conway

Overview

The American war against British imperial rule (1775-1783) was the world's first great popular revolution. Ideologically defined by the colonists' formal Declaration of Independence in 1776, the struggle has taken on something of a mythic character. From the Boston Tea Party to Paul Revere's ride to raise the countryside of New England against the march of the Redcoats; and from the American travails of Bunker Hill (1775) to the final humiliation of the British at Yorktown (1781), the entire contest is now emblematic of American national identity. Stephen Conway shows that, beyond mythology, this was more than just a local conflict: rather a titanic struggle between France and Britain. The Thirteen Colonies were merely one frontline of an extended theatre of operations, with each superpower aiming to deliver the knockout blow. This bold new history recognizes the war as the Revolution but situates it on the wider, global canvas of European warfare.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857733542
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/12/2013
Series:	Short Histories
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	451,993
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Stephen Conway is Professor of History at University College London. He is the author of The War of American Independence, 1775-1783 (1995), The British Isles and the War of American Independence (2000) and War, State and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (2006).

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Dramatis Personae
Timeline

1. The Long Road to Lexington

2. The War for America

3. The World War

4. Civilians

5. Endings and Explanations

6. Epilogue

Notes
Further Reading
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Stephen Conway's A Short History of the American Revolutionary War offers proof that big things come in small packages. In lucid prose, without a whiff of cant, Conway cuts through a century-long scholarly logjam about whether the American Revolution is best seen as a war about home rule, or about who should rule at home (as Carl Becker famously posed the question). Instead, Conway gives us a global American Revolution with multiple causes and ambiguous and far-reaching consequences. Conway's A Short History of the American Revolutionary War locates the conflict's deep roots early in the colonial period, and traces its broad branches from Boston to Bengal, Philadelphia to the Philippines. His tight narrative tracks the war's many fronts in North America, the Caribbean, West Africa, South Asia, and beyond. Conway explores multiple wars as well as multiple continents: here unfolds a brutal civil war as well as a heroic struggle of colonial liberation, a European and ultimately a global conflict as well as the war that made the United States. A political and cultural conflict, Conway's Revolution is first and foremost a shooting war, with all the attendant drama and contingency of the finest military history. A diverse cast of characters—ranging from ministers in London; to generals in far-flung fields; to African-Americans fighting for freedom, Native Americans demanding alliance, and women seeking safety and stability—gives a human face to bloody insurrection and grand strategy. This is the work of a master historian at the height of his powers. I know of nothing like it." - Jane Kamensky, Harry S. Truman Professor of History, Brandeis University, USA

"A major scholar of the Revolutionary War, Stephen Conway has written an outstanding introduction for both students and laymen. He excels in placing the war in a global context including Europe, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and India. He has demonstrated better than anyone the diffusion of British troops and ships throughout the world, and the extent to which military demands in the Caribbean deflected much-needed resources from winning the war in the American colonies. Transcending the narrow national focus of so many accounts, he reveals this to have been a war in which Britain was more isolated than at any other time in its modern history and in which it was threatened with serious attempts of invasion for the first time since the Spanish Armada. Conway offers a compelling explanation of why Britain lost America. At the same time, his broader perspective shows that it was a war that the British did not entirely lose, since they won major victories against the Bourbons in 1782 and succeeded in bankrupting France." - Andrew O'Shaughnessy, Professor of History, University of Virginia and Saunders Director, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello

'Stephen Conway's Short History takes a remarkably enlarged view of the American Revolutionary War: from a rebellion in the British colonies of North America to the intervention of European powers, to fighting that spread round the globe, to a post-war settlement in which Britain fared unexpectedly well. Conway has told this sprawling story with authority and clarity. He has shown that while the British were unable to keep thirteen of their American colonies, they did have the fiscal and naval resources to survive the war and fare better than their enemies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This Short History is just the place to begin to understand the American Revolutionary War.' - Ira D. Gruber, Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History, Rice University

From the Publisher