American Revolution

Esmond Wright remembers the dramatic role in the American Revolution played by Paul Revere, an engraver and silversmith from Boston.

Henry I. Kurtz shows how the result of this battle depressed the British victors, but they held on to Boston for another nine months.

M. Foster Farley describes the battle of the Cowpens, of January 17th, 1781, whereby an experienced old soldier, Daniel Morgan, routed the force led by Banastre Tarleton, a ‘ruthless and ambitious’ young adventurer.

Only a staff composed of men of military genius, and backed by a decisive and imaginative government at Westminster, could have secured a victory in the American War of Independence. Eric Robson reflects on how men of considerable talent, and of much good-will, failed in an impossible task.

An acute commentator on the French Revolution and on the development of the United States, Tocqueville foresaw a century ago many of the political and social problems that face democracy today. Gordon Philo introduces his life and career.

An acceptable minister in peace-time, Lord North’s misfortune was to hold office at the time of the American Revolution and War, as Eric Robson here shows.

Adrian Brunel profiles the influential revolutionary pamphleteer and political philosopher.

Eric Robson looks at the constitutional background - and legacies - of the American Revolution.

Max Beloff profiles the "real author of the Constitution" and one of the most extraordinary of the USA's Founding Fathers.

Motives of commerce and trade, Eric Robson suggests, carried just as much weight in the founding of the 13 American colonies as the desire of Puritan emigrants for liberty of conscience and a life of independence.