American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804

Alan Taylor, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, presents a continental history of the American Revolution from 1750 to 1804 that challenges conventional narratives. Rather than portraying the Revolution as an orderly, high-minded event culminating in a democratic Constitution, Taylor describes it as a ground fire spreading across Britain's colonies, driven by local conditions and resistant to centralized control. The Revolution emerged from European imperial rivalries and their native alliances, with western expansion and seaboard resistance to British taxes playing pivotal roles. During the war, Patriot crowds pressured Loyalists and nonpartisans into compliance. Combat occurred in major battles like Saratoga and Yorktown alongside ongoing frontier violence. Discord within the fragile new nation prompted a movement to concentrate power through a Federal Constitution, ratified under the banner of "We the People." Jefferson's expansionist "empire of liberty" subsequently carried the revolution forward, driving white settlement and slavery westward and setting conditions for future conflict.