Prelude To Revolution

Download or read book Prelude to Revolution written by Peter Charles Hoffer and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-08-31 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fine study . . . by a prolific scholar who adeptly restores the Salem Gunpowder Raid to its rightful place in the history of the American Revolution.” —New England Quarterly On April 19, 1775, British raids on Lexington Green and Concord Bridge made history, but it was an episode nearly two months earlier in Salem, Massachusetts, that set the stage for the hostilities. Peter Charles Hoffer has discovered records and newspaper accounts of a British gunpowder raid on Salem. Seeking powder and cannon hidden in the town, a regiment of British Regulars were foiled by quick-witted patriots who carried off the ordnance and then openly taunted the Regulars. The prudence of British commanding officer Alexander Leslie and the persistence of the patriot leaders turned a standoff into a bloodless triumph for the colonists. What might have been a violent confrontation turned into a local victory, and the patriots gloated as news spread of “Leslie’s Retreat.” When British troops marched on Lexington and Concord on that pivotal day in April, Hoffer explains, each side had drawn diametrically opposed lessons from the Salem raid. It emboldened the rebels to stand fast and infuriated the British, who vowed never again to back down. After relating these battles in vivid detail, Hoffer provides a teachable problem in historic memory by asking why we celebrate Lexington and Concord but not Salem and why New Englanders recalled the events at Salem but then forgot their significance. “A well-told story that deserves to be read . . . [Hoffer] reveals something of the practice of the historian’s craft, even as he resurrects a dimly-remembered event.” —History

Download or read book Prelude to Revolution: France in May, 1968 written by Daniel Singer and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1970 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Prelude to Revolution written by Alexander Rabinowitch and published by . This book was released on 1968 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Prelude to Empire written by Sushil Chaudhury and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Is A Perceptive And Comprehensive Study Of The Plassey Revolution Of 1757. The Author Looks At The Event In All Its Aspect Such As Bengal Under The Nawab, The Activities Of European Companies And The Asian Traders, Nawab Sirajuddaula, Causes Of Conflict Between Him And The East India Company, The Imperatives Of The Revolution, Genesis Of The Conspiracy, The Main Conspirators, The Revolution And Its Aftermath.

Download or read book The Political Trial of Benjamin Franklin written by Kenneth Lawing Penegar and published by Algora Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Benjamin Franklin, it seems, was a reluctant revolutionary. In tracing the course of his political transformation, this book will explore the social and political understandings and misunderstandings that both sustained and divided Britain and its colonies in North America. At the center of the story is Benjamin Franklin's decision in late 1772 to use a cache of personal letters that had fallen in his lap in London for revelation in Massachusetts - essentially a Wikileaks for 1772 - and the consequences of that decision for himself and for the cause of an amicable settlement of differences between the colonies and the British government. The personal side of Franklin's life in London is explored fully enough for the reader to appreciate both his strong attachment to the place and the inevitable sense of loss from which he reluctantly retreated in the spring of 1775 upon his departure from Britain and return to Philadelphia. In the tradition of narrative history, this book combines two main stories, each one complementing the other. Woven into the chronological and social history is a tale with an air of genuine suspense and mystery about it, revolving around Franklin's publication of private correspondence with political ramifications. The "leak" was a shock to all, and had consequences for the prospect of avoiding a deeper rift with Britain, a cause Franklin pursued with increasing frustration in the last few years before the American Revolution. There are notable editorial innovations in the book. The appendices contain full transcripts of significant documents of the time (a first) as well as a thorough exploration of the mystery over the identity of Franklin's source for the Hutchinson letters. A practical 'time-line' is included showing major correlative events.This work will fill a partial void in the late colonial period in American history and will deepen our understanding of the role of the American with the most extensive experience of British political and cultural sensibilities of the time.

Download or read book The Counter-Revolution of 1776 written by Gerald Horne and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-04-18 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies—a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.

Download or read book Before the Revolution written by Daniel K. Richter and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-03 with total page 555 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America began, we are often told, with the Founding Fathers, the men who waged a revolution and created a unique place called the United States. We may acknowledge the early Jamestown and Puritan colonists and mourn the dispossession of Native Americans, but we rarely grapple with the complexity of the nation's pre-revolutionary past. In this pathbreaking revision, Daniel Richter shows that the United States has a much deeper history than is apparentÑthat far from beginning with a clean slate, it is a nation with multiple pasts that stretch back as far as the Middle Ages, pasts whose legacies continue to shape the present. Exploring a vast range of original sources, Before the Revolution spans more than seven centuries and ranges across North America, Europe, and Africa. Richter recovers the lives of a stunning array of peoplesÑIndians, Spaniards, French, Dutch, Africans, EnglishÑas they struggled with one another and with their own people for control of land and resources. Their struggles occurred in a global context and built upon the remains of what came before. Gradually and unpredictably, distinctive patterns of North American culture took shape on a continent where no one yet imagined there would be nations called the United States, Canada, or Mexico. By seeing these trajectories on their own dynamic terms, rather than merely as a prelude to independence, Richter's epic vision reveals the deepest origins of American history.