American Revolution

Gliederung

• The colonies in 1763
• The growing ferment
• Taxation Without Representation
• Resistance and Retaliation
• Lexington and Concord
• Resources of the opponents
• American Advantages
• British Disadvantages
• Course of the war
• Clinton's Southern Expedition
• Invasion of Canada
• Britain's Northern Offensive of 1776
• Battles of Trenton and Princeton
• The Failure of Negotiation
• Saratoga Campaign
• British Capture of Philadelphia
• The French alliance
• Valley Forge and the Battle of Monmouth
• War in the West
• War in the South
• Conclusion
• Political, social, and economic effects
• Institutional Changes
• The Spirit of Progress
• Creation of the Constitution
• Yorktown Campaign
• Constitution of the United States
• Genesis of the constitution
• FRAMEWORK
• Popular Control but not Majority Rule
• Power Limited and Circumscribed
• Federalism as a Basis
• Three Coordinate Branches of Government
• Harold W. Chase
• Article I
• Paris, treaties of

The American Revolution, the conflict by which the American colonists won their independence from Great Britain and created the United States of America, was an upheaval of profound significance in world history. It occurred in the second half of the 18th century, in an "Age of Democratic Revolution," when philosophers and political theorists in Europe were critically examining the institutions of their own societies and the notions that lay behind them. Yet the American Revolution first put to the test ideas and theories that had seldom if ever been worked out in practice in the Old World--separation of church and state, sovereignty of the people, written constitutions, and effective checks and balances in government.

A struggle to preserve and later to expand the dimensions of human freedom, the American Revolution was also an anticolonial movement, the first in modern history. Before then, countries had usually come into existence through evolutionary processes, the result of tradition and history, geography and circumstance. The United States, on the other hand, had a birth date, 1776; it was "the first new nation," a republic born in revolution and war, a pattern followed by scores of fledgling states since that time, especially in the so-called Third World areas of the globe since 1945.

For many nation-makers the American rebellion has been a relevant revolution, offering insights and parallels that have aided them in their quest for self-determination.

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