it or not really all a set of modest hope at the end and you give that there are still people who care about knowledge expand the entire i

think there are signs i think some a in a to get to some uncomfortable truths forces of

and they will not be simply resolved believe and our it is with so i'm hopeful about the when the new equilibrium will arrive. it's instrument that you a guide when you decided to take

this job and move he sat me down a guide he gave me the following advice which i when you ignore the men i think george he where many of the george is a incredible on both sides but he was the world of

literature he would have loved the book.

good afternoon and welcome. i am the saunders director for the international sector for international studies. this is the book launch for the american revolutions book. alan is one of only two living historians. it was also commended for the national book award and he was

about to spend a year and oxford in a long and impressive succession. now his book today is like no other in terms of an overview of the american revolution and as though i think very well the kind of scholarship indirection of work on the american revolutions please join me in welcoming alan taylor. >> thank you for that very kind introduction. i want to think christopher her part in helping to arrange this. she did most of the logistical work and there was a lot involved. i'm very grateful to her.

i want to think my editor who was an immense help in shaping of the book. and so let me begin by saying i was trying to think how do i justify a book on the american revolution. i could say it was a neglected topic no one ever writes on it and i realized that would not fly indeed three of my friends told me in the course of recent years that they were writing their own book on the american revolution and this was impressive because i don't have that many friends. instead i want to say there are a lot of books on the revolution. and mine is an effort to synthesize many of the more specialized works into an interpretation that i hope reflects the trends in the scholarship over the past generation.

now, our classic image of the american revolution is as a relatively orderly event has the alternative to that nasty french revolution so our popular images are things such as you are seeing right now. it represents the committee presenting the declaration of independence to congress in july of 1776. where we had images of battles this is also a troubled painting and this is a remarkably orderly painting because it shows a surrender americans particularly like to have paintings of the british surrendering there aren't any paintings that i know of of the americans surrounding this happened with some frequency. now they are both done he was himself a veteran.

they were commissioned by congress and they are part of an effort to tidy up the revolution to present it as a success as order having been restored and that he have never been lost sight of during the revolution according to these images. but there are other images that suggest that the war was a very nasty experience for the people who were thrust into the midst of it. and certainly this image among the south south carolina and north carolina border it can give you a much more realistic feel. you never quite know how it's gonna play out. it's as if generals have serene control over the battlefield. and whoever has the most control will win the battle and it's not usually the case. or here is another image from the revolution. john andre was the british

officer who was benedict arnold's conflict and why he managed to get away when he was trying to betray his cause andre was left behind and was caught. or this image a lot of the revolution is fine. the places like central new york and western pennsylvania. were just now ohio and kentucky in tennessee. it is in especially grim warfare. they have invaded into their country. they felt it was the best opportunity to roll back. this is another post more painting. and it represents and a

notorious episode from the revolution during that saratoga campaign when the indian allies captured this woman and they argued over who's message it was. it becomes a great object that had rally support. jane was actually a loyalist and she was trying to reach the army when she was killed. but this post more painting let's just say the racial politics are not subtle the native peoples are presented as especially dark and muscular it is presented as passive and as weak.

i also want you to notice the colors of her dress. which are red, white and blue. so the suggestion is that she represents america it is an invitation then to american men to protect their women. it was made by the patriots to try to rally support which is not simply against the british but is also against the native allies of the british. here is one of those allies he is playing -- painted in london in 1775 by george romney. it is a mix of cultures he is he's wearing cloths and metals obtained but they are arrayed

in a very native american combination. and so it makes the point that they have become quite enmeshed in trading relations with the non- native peoples and it is that inter- dependence with the non- native people particularly in the form of trade that is can a shape many of their political decisions. they need to have access to traded grids. the british can supply them with the gods of that they very much need that are being produced in the factories of great britain. they lacked in the manufacturing capacity. it requires the participation you can't state a revolutionary war for men only.

the home front has to be maintained. there are also women who were attached to george washington's army. they were forced to do the laundry of the soldiers. they were actually thrust in the combat roles. the case of molly pitcher. she starts to operate the cannon. that may or may not have happened but there are other cases when we do this. we know it did happen. before the revolution there is also an effort to involve women in the boycott against british beds. long before the patriots declared independence the primary goal was not independence but it wasn't to persuade the parliament to lift the taxes that have been imposed on the colonies.

the argument was at lacked representation so it was not a legitimate legislature to tax the colonists. the chief incident was boycott of reddish manufactured goods. the american colonists were very much themselves dependent upon british consumer goods. there was a case in north carolina where women were ridiculously conspicuous in signing that they would not support or consume british goods. it is denigrated that. that is a cartoon produced from a loyalist perspective. they are disrupting all of social order they are encouraging all sorts of

people to rethink traditional relationships. when you have women who have an active public voice than that and somehow disturbing the very foundation of society. that's what this is suggesting. i think if you look at the details of this you will see you can see that there is the disturbingly french looking fellow who is taking advantage of this woman here he was is distracted by been out there. we can see that some moments poor child is utterly down here. certainly this is exaggerating it. it is rearranging the social order.

throughout society it is creating opportunities for all sorts of people. it would move it more in line with the republican this is occurring in a society where fifth of the people are held in slavery. and especially in the southern colonies. it was legal in every single british colony. they just happen to have a lot more of them. it was 40% enslaved. it was 60%.

the enslaved population cannot be left out of the story of the revolution. and indeed they are often involved in the violence of the resolution as they are seeking opportunities now in the north into the colonies will come from enlisting in patriot forces as an effort to force the hands of the masters. in the south most of the time just all of the new states were not comfortable with enlisting blacks even when they were invaded and occupied by british forces. there were approximately my serving a substitute for the many more enslaved people that their best opportunity came by

escaping to the british and helping them in the war. in which the patriots are always clearly on the side of freedom for everybody. what the revolution is is a great rupture in society in which there is an ongoing contest between people that want disruption or to be as minimal as possible and as short lived as possible and others who are trying to exploit that rupture in order to rearrange society to create a better place for themselves. this was done by a german officer in the french service. this artist was quite intrigued by the diversity of uniforms worn in george washington continental army. the man on the far right here

as you are looking at it is an artillery officer. the man next to him is wearing a hunting shirt and this is a rifleman. the man next to the left as an infantry men and as a man for the far left. and they were on with muskets. it could be fired much more quickly and were less prone to jam. so most of them are armed with muskets and not rifles. i'm sure you're noting that the man on the far left is african-american. in george washington's army was 10% african-american which is far higher than the proportion of african-americans in the northern population where almost all of these soldiers came from. they serve at a rate about twice that of their proportion

in the northern states. and one is two thirds black. if you recall those paintings at the start which showed the declaration of independence or showed the surrender there were no african american phases shown there. now this is benjamin franklin of course. it turns out he was assisted by cherubs now, we know he is a great leader on the patriot side and a great diplomat a politician at the constitutional convention. was the chief negotiator of our alliance with france. it would end the war with great britain. his son was a loyalist.

and decided to stay loyal to the empire. this is the most conspicuous example of families being divided by the revolution. in the book i tend to avoid referring to the patriots as americans because they are americans on both person -- both sides. the proportion of the population is probably peaked at about 20%. and to enter the client over the course of the war. that doesn't mean that the patriots were 80% of the population at the start of the war because there were at least an equal number of people to the patriots who wanted to stay out of the war and be neutral. and they are the group that has received the least attention despite their great numbers. they would shift sides depending on the currents of war and there is a quote from

nathanael greene of a rampant exertion. they end up in the continental army. and then they desert. and so greene said at the close of the war with thought the enemy it's an exaggeration. there are a lot of people switching sides as the war goes along. it's not as we imagine it in 1775 people made hard and fast decisions. some dead. the official chaplain for congress decided when congress declared independence that he did not want to be chaplain of

congress a more and he wanted out. he made it quite clear that he thought the independence was a mistake. this is not such a bad looking guy right. this is warming his heart right now. it really wasn't that bad a guy. it's not that tyrant he was made out to be. he was too conscientious. he wanted to be a constitutional monarch. they were quite restive accepting parliaments superiority. and he did it with the very best. it was parliament that brought on the crisis that led to the american revolution and it was george the third's refusal to interfere with his understanding the ends up

making him a bad guy. through 1775 congress is still hoping that the king might intervene and somehow over role parliament on behalf of the resistance. it doesn't happen and then patriots feel betrayed. and this man helps to lead the way. he would write the most influential book in american politics common sense published in january of 1776 becomes the great best seller. no other book other than the bible was read by more americans. many a little -- literate people it is galvanizing to people. because it puts into very vivid phrasing the need to

declare independence the possibility a new form of republic. they must unite in order to win this war and preserve their own peace in the future. none of them are stated. it is the one that starts the attack on the king. as a very face not the union of the empire attorney that they must escape from. we almost never read beyond the first paragraph.

you get into the body of the text and as a great indictment of a king is a tyrant. listing everything that have ever gone wrong is the king's fall. what they are out to do when they declare independence is to smash the sovereignty of which the king is the great symbol. they can no longer be parliament but must be the king. those people who were wavering and those people who were speaking out against the revolution become targets. this is a loyalist cartoon it was in boston. and he had been tarred and feathered.

they're at a place called the liberty tree. they would rally for demonstrations. including the punishment of people who were deemed to be liberties. he was american born. this is samuel c barry and he is very famous for particular quotation which sums up much of the loyalist persuasion is not simply slavish loyalty to the king or even to the union of the empire. they also feared what the patriots represented in their eyes which was mob rule. they felt like the patriots were breaking out of constitutional structures and that they were substituting a government by committees and by congresses they were

putting pressure on local people. to people who are very legalistic lay who cared about order all of this was disturbing more disturbing to them than were the taxes. it was by parliament. to see barry says and part of the quote you can see is chopped off there to the left if we must be enslaved let it be by a king at least. if i must be devoured let me be devoured by the jaws of the line and not nod to death by rats in vermin. so here to there is a suggestion that the revolution is stirring up society and that what have been on the bottom of society might come to the top might be driven to the bottom. it is a great fear for lots of

people. this is a new -- newgate prison in connecticut. one of the inmates there was regimen franklin son. it was particularly a grim place. it doesn't look so bad. ..

>> now, the patriots had many more men in their irregular units, in their militias than did the loyalists, but i just want to convey to you just the scale of the loyalist operation by the end of the war and how essential it had become to the british by the end of the war when they were no longer able to send reinforcements across the atlantic and, indeed, it's a period of time in which the british are drawing down their forces a bit in order to send troops to the west indies. so the british then in this period of drawing back british forces in north america are building up the loyalists to try to replace them. many of you are my age or older, and you may remember americanization in the vietnam war as an effort to, by the nixon administration, to

withdraw american troops and say that the vietnamese were going to take over more of the burden. on a much smaller scale, it's the same phenomena at the end of the revolution for british forces. this is one of those loyalist officers on the right, william jarvis. he was very proud of his service. he had this painting made in 1790 in london after the war was over. he knows that they lost the war, but he's not ashamed of his service in the loyalist regiment. he was in the queen's rangers, and he's so proud of it, he had a special little uniform made for his son who wasn't even born at the time of the revolution. [laughter] and this map is to convey the point that the revolution doesn't just happen on the east coast of north america, it happens throughout the them rate and op call zones of the world, anywhere the british forces were involved.

so you can see that west africa, over here in india is a war zone, the east indian islands, what we now call indonesia, and certainly caribbean. and toward the end of the war, the caribbean is in most ways the key theater of the war, because that is the major place that the battle fleets of these empires are contesting. the west indies were of special importance because they produced sugar, and sugar was the highest value colonial commodity exported from the americas to europe. so whoever can control these relatively small islands in the caribbean holds the keys to empire in the 18th century. and be once the french and the spanish and the dutch become involved in the war as enemies of the british, it is going to compel the british to fight the war increasingly in the west indies and to draw back on their war effort, especially in the northern colonies.

they make the calculated decision that they cannot win the revolution in the northern states, and instead what they must do is put their dwindling forces where they can find the greatest loyalist support. and they quite reasonably concluded that that loyalist support was greatest in the carolinas and georgia. and so there is a major shift of british forces beginning in 1778 out of the north and to the south. the commander more most of this -- for most of this effort is lord worn wallis. lord cornwallis. this is like a reunito onfor your book, andrew. [laughter] all of the great people are appearing in this. now, this is the great villain. this is where you're supposed to hiss when you see this guy. [laughter] this is banister tarlton who is, as you can see, a dashing cavalry officer. this is painted by joshua

reynolds in london, and tarlton was a very capable officer but hyperaggressive and ruthless. and so he didn't like to take prisoners. and he becomes a great villain of the southern campaigns of the war in the eyes of the patriots. many of grow may have seen the movie -- many of you may have seen the movie, "the patriot, "mel gibson. okay, the villain is modeled on him, but i can assure you none of the british officers nailed people up and set the church on fire. that is hollywood. now, the american commander who will ultimately restore order in the south -- and the south was the scene of the most brutal violence of the revolution obviously of, in which the greatest number of civilians lost their lives, in which there was the greatest destruction of civilian property, in which most of this killing and oning and plunlderring -- and burning and

plundering, some of it was done by regular army, but mostly done by irregulars on both sides. and then there are a lot of equal opportunity bandits who one day will pretend to be patriots, the nexting day pretend to be loyalists in order to steal and inflict misery. now, nathaniel green was from new england and was initially quite shocked by all of this. he'd seen some grim stuff in the north, but nothing like he saw in north carolina and south carolina. and he referred to the patriots and the loyalists as fighting each other like, quote, birds of prey -- or beasts of prey be, excuse me. but he is the most resourceful commander on either side in the war, and despite losing almost every battle he was in, he inflicts heavier casualties in each of those battles on the british, casualties that the british cannot replace, and he is very good at distracting british forces so that the patriot irregulars can be mopping up the loyalists.

and so that the longer the battle goes on in the south, the more and more territory the british lose despite winning these battles technically in terms of driving green off on a particular day. ultimately, the battle -- the war is going to be won primarily at a place called yorktown here in virginia. when a french fleet will come all the way up from the west indies and will block the entrance to chesapeake bay. now, i assure you that british -- excuse me, french warships were large, but they weren't as large as the scale of this would suggest. [laughter] it looks like you could walk from the deck of one to the other all the way over to the eastern shore. but this is conveying the point. the effectiveness of the french fleet blocking the entrance to chesapeake bay. and to the right, they scattered ships which are the british fleet trying to break in, and they will fail to do so.

so by the scale of many naval battles, you'd say not that impressive. not a lot of ships sunk, not that many men killed. but in strategic terms, this is of immense importance because by keeping the british fleet out, it means that reinforcements or evacuation cannot be provided to cornwallis who is being cooped up here at yorktown. and be here you can see the siege lines of a joint friend. and patriot -- french and patriot force or surrounding cornwallis and, ultimately, will force his surrender. this is a french painting, and it shows the french army commander. and here he is side by side with washington. they formed a very effective partnership in a war in which there are lots of examples of generals potentially on the same side but unofficially at each other's throats. as was the case with cornwallis and his superior officer, sir henry clinton.

and it's their inability to cooperate that contributed to cornwallis' being trapped. meanwhile, it is the ability of the french commander and washington to cooperate because he's a very politic man. and even though he was a much more experienced officer who came from a much better organized army, he understood that he needed to defer to washington, that that was the most important political statement he could make. and by deferring to them and cooperating with washington so closely, it means that yorktown is almost the perfect military operation on the patriot and french side. now, in this operation the french soldiers are about equal in number to the patriot soldiers. and if we add in some 19,000 french sailors on the french fleet, then the battle of yorktown is really primarily a french victory. but the great beneficiaries of

this victory will be the united states. now, as i wrap up, a few final points i want to make. the war is extremely destructive. it rampages over what is mostly the united states. and the revolution isn't simply that of the main battle armies, but it's also all of these irregulars raging and ranging across the countryside. and so this is economically devastating. economists who have looked at the colonial economy of 1774 and compared it to 1790 which is at the other end of this period of turmoil that will also last into the 1780s after the formal war say that the american economy declined by 30%. now, there is an economic --

there isn't an economic decline on that order until the great depression of the late 1920s and 1930s. so this is economically devastating to come back from. thousands of people are refugees. now, the patriots are able to go back home again, many of the loyalists are not. some 75,000 loyalists become refugees. as a proportion of the overall population, there's a larger number who are turned into permanent refugees by the american revolution than is case for the french revolution. this is another image of destruction, a statue of william pitt, it was in charleston, south carolina, but it is hit by cannon fire and badly damaged. this represents in upper register here loyalist activities. it shows military corps, where they were organized. you can see every seaport be at one time or other was under british occupation.

also places for loyalist newspapers which are indicated by these reddish-brown dots which you can see also many almost all the seaports. now, in the middle register here these higher red lines indicate larger numbers of refugees. so where you see the lines especially tall, that's where a lot of loyalist refugees went after the war. now, some of them do go down into the west indies and into the bahamas, and and some of them end up over in britain. but the largest cluster of refugees are in the maritime provinces of british knot america. north america. mauve be show shah, new brunswick, st. john. and then there's a smaller cluster of them here in what comes to be called upper canada, we now call it ontario. so the american revolution isn't just generating the united states, it's also generating an english-speaking canada because before the american revolution almost all of the people living in canada were frank to phones

who had been conquered by the british empire in a previous war. and now we're getting a comparable number of english-speaking peoples that will go into canada and will become the great majority in the, both here in the maritimes, but also over in the future ontario. so canada as a bilingual society and one quite different from the united states in citizen many ways -- in many ways, believe it or not, i know americans don't believe that -- is generated out of the american revolution. and canadians particularly in these regions are quite proud of it. they don't think that their cause was a bad one. and this is a painting that was done in the 1930s, very similar to the style of historic paintings that you see hanging in american post offices from the 1930s. only what's being celebrated here are loyalist refugees who are landing in st. johns/new

brunswick. and you can see just how well dressed they are, how orderly. it's this kind of image of loyalist americans, really good americans came into canada is the message of this art. and thens this is the final image i want to leave you with, and this is the toppling of the statue of george iii in new york city right at, shortly after the announcement of the declaration of independence. it leads to an orgy of destroying symbols of royalty and of the union of the empire. and the most conspicuous of those symbols to be found in the colonies was this equestrian statue of george iii. and it's largely made out of lead, and it's melted down, and the bullets that were made out of it were then shot at the british. [laughter] but it's also, it's also a complicated moment because some

of the people who are employed to pull down the statue even though they're not represented in this painting were enslaved people of new york. so the american revolution involves not just the leadership class, and it doesn't just involve the people who are usually featured in the paintings. it involves the entire society are caught up in this war. and it will affect everybody. this includes enslaved people, this includes native peoples who don't want to be incorporated in the united states. it includes women, it includes children. thousands of children are caught up in the war, some of them as soldiers, many more of them as refugees. and so this is a war and this is an era of transformation in many ways, and the most conspicuous forms of those transformations -- at least on an enduring basis -- are the new republican institutions which are premised upon the sovereignty of the people.

now, they will continue to be coming out of the revolution a great deal of debate as to what is the meaning of the term "the people." and it is something that we are still arguing over today. thank you. [applause] >> alan is going to repeat your questions because this is being filmed by c-span, and i know that he'll probably want to conduct his own q and a. but i might just ask the first question, and that is -- >> do i have to repeat your question too? >> yes. >> okay. [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> okay. >> thomas barrow wrote many decades ago an article arguing that the american revolution was just a traditional colonial war

of independence. he was very influenced by vietnam and some of the anti-colonial wars of time, and that is not a revolution. now, is this just a semantical play as to how we define revolutions, all revolutions usually involve rebellion, political revolutions, or is there a reason why the word "revolution" is valid? >> okay. so the question is, was the american revolution just a war for colonial liberation? well, just a war for colonial liberation? that's a pretty big thing. anybody who's been through a war for colonial liberation, it's massive in its dislocation of society and in its consequences. so even if it were just that, that would be extraordinary, i would say. but it's more than that. this is the first war for colonial liberation. somebody has to go first, right?

somebody has to the set the precedent. and setting the precedent then makes it easier for people to imagine that they could do it, and it could succeed. but imagine if you don't have that precedent. what an enormous set of risks it is. and that's one of the reasons why there were so many loyalists. there were people saying we really don't want to do this? this is pretty damn dangerous. just think of -- and they were apt in predicting all of the destruction that this war would unleash. but the patriot response was, we know that. we hope to minimize it. but even if we can't minimize it, it's worth it. and ultimately, the patriots will persuade most americans that that's the political path to follow. and having followed it, they are going to establish political institutions, which in my view, are very different. now, there's carryover. certainly, the british constitution's influential. but just let's look at one

particular colony into a state, new york. for the revolution the only elected people in the entire colony is one house of the legislature. be and there are two representatives per county. no matter the size of the county. so there were these huge counties being rapidly settled up on the frontier. they have two seats. and then there are two in new york city and then two in smaller places. so it's not one man, one vote. and certain rich landlords had their own seats in the assembly. they didn't have to stand for election. they were elected every year. they held these seats. the higher house, the council, appointed to life terms. the royal governor, appointed and serves at the will of the imperial bureaucracy.

can be yanked out of there if he doesn't do what he's told. and so you can say there is some popular government this colonial america -- in colonial america, but the reality is that electoral turnout in new york or in virginia, if it got to 40% of the eligible voters, that was considered unusual. most people didn't bother to vote because they didn't think it was that important, and it's just one of the political institutions. the sheriffs are appointed, county clerks are appointed, judges are all appointed by a system that has very little say for popular participation. now, there are some examples that work a little bit against that. massachusetts has more of a participation. its elected assembly is much more powerful than its council, but it's kind of an aberration. and that's one of the reasons why the british pick on massachusetts so much. they blame massachusetts as especially democratic

constitution for the troubles that seem to be especially conspicuous there. now let's look at new york, going back to my new york example be, after the revolution. both houses of the legislature elected. there is a principal that the counties with larger populations will have more seats. landlords no longer have guaranteed seats. the governor is elected. and now you get to elect something to this supra-state institution, congress. and you even get to elect the electors for somebody called the president, which you could never do before. so there is a thorough republicanizing of the political structures which i think we have underplayed. and i think the primary reason why this all happens and the logic of it continues to unfold over time because anybody who thereafter wants to argue to hem in popular sovereignty can then be called an aristocrat or somebody who wants to bring monarchy back in, and that is

always a loser in politics, if you get tarred with that brush. and one of the guys who was best at wielding this brush was thomas jefferson who managed to plausibly cast his federalist opponents in the politics of the 1790s as people who were out to restore aristocracy and monarchy in the country. they were not, but he could plausibly present them as so, and this was then quite devastating to their political prospects. i promise the rest of my answers had been shorter. [laughter] kathleen. >> [inaudible] everybody and all the institutions -- [inaudible] involved in this, what did you say about the church, the clergy -- >> well, i can't say too much, because i'm going to give another talk which you've invited me to give, which is very much on that topic, so i'll give the concise version. it is that in some ways religious life anticipates this

republican culture, i argue, in that there is a major movement within protestant denominations beginning back in the 1730s which argues in favor of individual choice. that every believer is individually responsible at the end of days. and, therefore, no individual can be bound by some sort of parish commitment by the community. if an individual believes i'm not an episcopalian, why should i be forced to pay taxes, why should i be forced to go and hear this minister whose words do not con to say true grace to me? -- convey true grace to me? i want to go and hear my own preferred person. well, that logic was close i have of these church -- corrosive of these church establishments, and when the revolution comes along, it gratefully accelerates that

erosion, particularly in the south. and virginia is the chief example of that. now, new england will be much slower to get rid of its establishments, and they will lipping -- linger on there. it's the story of a religious cultural change that begins before the revolution and will continue after it and which in some ways is accelerated by that revolution. yes. >> could you tell me the numbers of populations of patriots versus the loyalists and give me a better definition of the irregulars as how they were defined? >> okay. so irregulars can take many different forms, but almost everyones who is male and over the age of 16 up until at least the age of 45 but could be 60 is supposed to enroll in a militia. and so as you can imagine, the training of these militiamen is basically nonexistent. their arms are often nonexistent

or broken, and they're going to vary greatly in quality. so they -- you don't want to put these guys out into a field with british regulars with bay to nets coming at them because they're going to do the sensible thing and and run away. but a lot of times george washington's dependent on these guys because he can't get other people to come into the continental army which is the regular army of the patriots. be being in the regular armies is a set of miseries. food's bad, officers are not polite, they treat you really bad, they tell you to do things you don't want to do, they tell you to dig latrines, they whip your back literal and treat you in the words of these soldiers like slaves, and then you're not really paid most of the time. and you are subject to the diseases of the camp, and so there are a lot of common americans who say, yeah, i really want the patriots to win, but i don't want to go and seven in the continental -- and serve

in the continental army. so that's why george washington often has to use, has to supplement with these militiamen. some of these militiamen this these very chaotic regions like the carolinas, there really is no higher command over them. they're just operating on their own. they're people like francis marion and thomas sumter and nathaniel green will make suggestions to them, but they're waging their own war. and their soldiers aren't paid. they're these militiamen, and they're being paid in what they can steal from the other side which creates all the incentive in the world to define wavering people as loyalists whose horses and cattle have to be taken to make a political point and to keep your own force going. so one of the consequences of that is it doesn't really pay to be a wavering person toward the end of the war. you better pick a side so that you can make a. [applause] be bl case to at least half of them that they shouldn't plunder you, rather than both sides coming in to plunder you.

yes. >> [inaudible] >> yes, i'll get you in the back in just a moment. >> could you please speak a little bit more to the economic consequences of the war? did it affect some regions more than others or certain sectors more than others? >> right. >> and how is that used to the advantage of one side versus the other? >> okay. well, i can speak more about the -- the question was, what were the economic consequences of the revolution. i can speak more about the subsequent effects. now, certainly during the war to have armies rampaging through, there is the violence they literally do, but there's also the fact that they need forage for their horses, they need food for their men, they need firewood. the easiest place to get firewood are fences. so almost every fence in the county affected by the revolution gets burned up at one point or other during the war because the soldiers pull the rails out, and they build fires. these guys are hungry.

they're going to help themselves to all the chickens and pigs that they can get their hands on. so nathaniel green put it, he said the visitation by an army, no matter which side you support, is a disaster to the civilian population. so this is going to be affecting both sides. now, when the war's over and the british have gone home and the loyalists, thousands of them, have had to leave, other loyalists come back and try to lay low, everybody's got to try to pick up the pieces of all this devastation. but the other thing that's contributed to negative economic trends is that trade's disrupted. this, we often assume that the british empire was a bad deal for the colonists. economically, for most colonists, it offered a very good deal. the largest protected trading community in the world.

and lots of americans benefited from that. and this is also something that's giving loyalists pause. why do we want to give this up? do we really want to be independent operators in a world of empires rather than being part of this protective empire that is the most successful empire on earth? so when you get frozen out then at the end of the war from access to british colonies and you are frozen out of the protection that the royal navy provided in laces like the mediterranean -- in places like the mediterranean, then this is going to shrink american commerce pretty dramatically during the 1780s and contributes to this lingering depression of the 1780s which is essential backdrop to the decision that the political leadership makes that they have to have a stronger union than had been provided by first constitution, the articles of confederation.

now, mary, did you have a question? >> [inaudible] >> oh, the microphone. excuse me. >> so this is a question mostly about the sources you encountered throughout your research. you talked about the enslaved perps of the american revolution and how it was often underacknowledged or not acknowledged at all about their contributions. so what exactly did you come across that illustrated their role in the revolution? how were you able to kind of discuss that in your book? ..