The American War of Independence: The Rebels and the Redcoats

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• 1. Introduction
• 2. Breaking the connection
• 3. The outset of war
• 4. The widening theatre of war
• 5. Formidable adversaries
• 6. Turning point
• 7. Find out more
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Introduction

The War of Independence plays such an important part in American popular ideology that references to it are especially prone to exaggeration and oversimplification. And two uncomfortable truths about it - the fact that it was a civil war (perhaps 100,000 loyalists fled abroad at its end), and that it was also a world war (the Americans could scarcely have won without French help) - are often forgotten.

'The War of Independence plays such an important part in American popular ideology...'

Here, however, I have done my best to describe this long and complex war in terms that people will find readily comprehensible, but that avoid some of the Hollywood-style simplifications and inaccuracies that have gained so much currency over the years.

And although as I write this piece, the second Gulf War has only recently ended, and although the Vietnam analogy comes to mind often, I have deliberately avoided reflecting too much on recent American politics. No: what I have tried to do is to give readers the most balanced and objective view I can of a war that has done much, as my television screen reminds me as I write, to shape the world we live in.

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Published: 2003-05-01