The version of the American Revolution many of us were taught was focussed on the ideals and principles of the revolution:  Independence, democracy, liberty guaranteed by enumerated rights.  And if we were taught about the actual conflict, we maybe heard of a few battles in New England and the mid-Atlantic– maybe there was a setback here and there.  But the whole thing was presented as basically inevitable:  Because of those ideals and principles, and maybe a dose of Providence (as some then thought as well.)  

By focusing on the actual conflicts of the era, and the consequences thereof for the greatly divided populace of the Eastern Seaboard of North America in their new 6-part series for PBS, The American Revolution, Ken Burns and Sarah Botstein (Jazz, The Vietnam War, The US and the Holocaust) complicate all of this.  While paying proper attention to the motivating ideals, they delineate the role the desire for the lands of Native Americans played in the war, and they show how the conflicts moved–often via waterways, and usually internecine–from New England, to the Mid-Atlantic, to the South.  And throughout, victory was not just not preordained, but in fact very contingent on the actions both of some outstanding individuals such as Washington (and yes, Arnold), as well as the strategies and agendas of nations as diverse as the Cayuga and Oneida (and yes, The French).

You can watch The American Revolution on PBS starting November 16th.

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