American Revolution

Robert Hole shows how important historical context is for an understanding of the most significant document in American history.

Stuart Andrews considers the life and radical milieu of the dissenting preacher whose support first for the American and then the French Revolutions brought him public controversy, and in the case of the latter, triggered Edmund Burke's classic denunciation of 1789.

Jonathan Clark probes the anti-Catholic actions and millenarian rhetoric of 18th-century America, challenging the assumption that 1776 was solely a product of secular and constitutional impulses.

Jack N. Rakove tells how 'the miracle at Philadelphia' 200 years ago was an amalgam of high principles and backroom wheeler-dealing, to provide safeguards for the smaller states.

The symbols, slogans, ideas and architecture of the Founding Fathers were saturated in the world of Ancient Greece and Rome.

'My country, right or wrong' – but which country? The dilemmas of allegiance posed for Americans by the outbreak of war between the colonies and the British Crown led a cross-section of that society into the loyalist camp, including (with an eye to the main chance) 'the most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army', as Esmond Wright describes.

At the Boston Tea Party the Americans not only flouted the unpopular tax laws on tea imposed on the colony, they also retrieved the image of the Mohawk from the hands of British cartoonists and reinstated him as the symbol of American liberty.

What caused former Englishmen to declare their separate identity as Americans? Ian R. Christie explores the issues underlying British recognition of United States' independence.