The American war against British imperial rule (1775-1783) was the world s first great popular revolution. Ideologically defined by the colonists formal Declaration of Independence in 1776, the struggle has taken on something a mythic character, especially in the United States. From the Boston Tea Party to Paul Revere s ride to raise the countryside of New England against the march of the Redcoats; from the heroic resistance of the militia Minutemen at the battles of Lexington and Concord to the famous crossing of the Delaware by General George Washington; and from the American travails of Bunker Hill (1775) to the final humiliation of the British at Yorktown (1781), the entire contest is now emblematic of American national identity. Stephen Conway shows that, beyond mythology, this was more than just a local conflict: rather a titanic struggle between France and Britain. The thirteen colonies were merely one frontline of an extended theatre of operations, with each superpower aiming to deliver the knockout blow. This bold new history recognizes the war as the Revolution but situates it on the wider, global canvas of European warfare.

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【Review】

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Offers proof that big things come in small packages. This is the work of a master historian at the height of his powers. I know of nothing like it.

--Jane Kamensky, Harry S. Truman Professor of History, Brandeis University.

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Stephen Conway has written an outstanding introduction for both students and laymen. He offers a compelling explanation of why Britain lost America.

--Andrew O' Shaughnessy, Professor of History, University of Virginia

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Stephen Conway's Short History takes a remarkably enlarged view of the American Revolutionary War: from a rebellion in the British colonies of North America to the intervention of European powers, to fighting that spread round the globe, to a post-war settlement in which Britain fared unexpectedly well. Conway has told this sprawling story with authority and clarity. He has shown that while the British were unable to keep thirteen of their American colonies, they did have the fiscal and naval resources to survive the war and fare better than their enemies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This Short History is just the place to begin to understand the American Revolutionary War. --Ira D. Gruber, Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History, Rice University

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"Stephen Conway's Short History takes a remarkably enlarged view of the American Revolutionary War: from a rebellion in the British colonies of North America to the intervention of European powers, to fighting that spread round the globe, to a post-war settlement in which Britain fared unexpectedly well. Conway has told this sprawling story with authority and clarity. He has shown that while the British were unable to keep thirteen of their American colonies, they did have the fiscal and naval resources to survive the war and fare better than their enemies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This Short History is just the place to begin to understand the American Revolutionary War."

--Ira D. Gruber, Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History, Rice University

Stephen Conway is Professor of History at University College London.