Pod Insights You're Dead to Me American War of Independence (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined in the 18th century by Professor Frank Cogliano and comedian and actor Patton Oswalt to learn about the American War of Independence. Also known as the American Revolutionary War, 2025 marks 250 years since the start of the conflict in 1775, when the first battles between the British army and the colonial resistance were fought at Lexington and Concord. But what caused Britain’s North American colonies to rebel against the king and government in London? At what point did they start to see themselves as American and not British? And how did a colonial militia take on an imperial superpower?
This episode charts the growing rift between Britain and its American colonists, taking in famous events like the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and the calling of the first Continental Congress, all the way through to the Declaration of Independence and the course of the revolutionary war itself. We learn how America fought to free itself from the shackles of British rule, and meet some well-known names from history, including Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and George Washington. And we also ask whose freedom was being fought for, and who – such as Black and Indigenous Americans – got left behind.
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Charlotte Emily Edgeshaw
Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands
Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:46 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, we are chucking our tea in the harbour and charging back to the 18th century for a very special 250th anniversary episode about the American War of Independence slash American Revolution, whatever you call it. And to help our cause, we have two fearsome freedom fighters. In History Corner, he's professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh, where his research focuses on revolutionary and early national America. Maybe you've read one of his wonderful books, including A Revolutionary Friendship: Washington, Jefferson, and the American Republic. It's Professor Frank Cogliano. Welcome, Frank.
2:24 Speaker 03 Thank you very much, Greg. I'm thrilled to be here.
2:26 Greg Jenner? Delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, he is an Emmy and Grammy award-winning comedian and actor. You'll know him from many of my favourite sitcoms, including BoJack Horseman, AP Bio, Parks and Recreation, Veep, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Goldbergs, The King of Queens. His amazing film careers put him in the Marvel Universe, the Zoolander Zooniverse, the Ghostbusters Gooliverse, and the Pixar Tooniverse. He is Remy the Rat himself from Pixar's Ratatouille. It's the wonderful Patton Oswalt. Welcome, Patton.
2:51 Speaker 04 Thank you, Greg. I'm looking forward to winning some big prizes today.
2:53 Greg Jenner? You've played a history professor in Twenty Two Jump Street.
2:57 Speaker 04 Oh, that's right, I did.
2:58 Greg Jenner? Yeah, you did.
2:59 Speaker 04 Wow.
3:00 Greg Jenner? I also believe you are named after General Patton.
3:03 Speaker 04 Yes, I was named after George S. Patton. My dad was a marine, had high hopes, and glad to be here today on this podcast. I'm sure he's very proud.
3:14 Greg Jenner? If you've played a historian and you are the son of a proud military man, do you know your fair bit about American military history?
3:20 Speaker 04 I like history a lot. I read a lot of history. I really enjoy Thomas Cahill's books. I love hinged history moments. That's something that I'm kind of obsessed with, where, oh, something could have completely gone the other way. Clive James is really deep into that kind of world of, I think his quote is like, history is basically a record of the way things didn't have to be. I love that aspect of it.
3:43 Greg Jenner? All right, so I feel like you probably know a fair bit, but we'll be testing you today to see what you've got stuck and what else we can teach you. So, what do you know? This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I guess what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And surely everyone knows that July 4th, 1776 was Independence Day in America. Or was it? There's no shortage of pop culture reminders from the truly terrible Mel Gibson film The Patriot to the truly incredible Hamilton Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Or for slightly subtler references, you've got Nick Cage in National Treasure, featuring a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence, or Will Smith nuking an alien spacecraft on the 4th of July
4:24 Greg Jenner? in Independence Day. Like I said, subtle. But why did American colonists rebel against Britain? How did they defeat an imperial superpower? And can we spill the tea on why Bostonians spilled the tea? Let's find out.
4:36 Speaker 04 By the way, we're both Americans. Did you bring us here to apologize or revolting? It is a little weird you brought two Americans in for this.
4:44 Greg Jenner? All right, Patton, let's test your knowledge. How many British-American colonies were there in British America prior to the revolution?
4:50 Speaker 04 Thirteen?
4:52 Greg Jenner? That's a good canonical answer, and that is the answer I would have given, but...
4:56 Speaker 04 But?
4:57 Speaker 03 Okay, the professor's gonna say, "Well, actually..."
5:00 Speaker 04 Please.
5:01 Speaker 03 "Well, actually, Patton, there were 26 colonies in British North America in the Caribbean."
5:08 Speaker 04 Oh!
5:09 Speaker 03 If I may, Greg.
5:10 Greg Jenner? Please.
5:11 Speaker 03 So what happened was, the English, and I'm using English deliberately in this context, apologies to our Scottish listeners, during the 17th century, the English established colonies, the colonies we know of on the eastern seaboard of North America.
5:24 Greg Jenner? Right.
5:25 Speaker 03 But, under the Stuarts, they also established colonies elsewhere in North America, and importantly, in the Caribbean. And by the mid-18th century, when Britain emerges victorious from the Seven Years' War, it's got 26 colonies. So there are the 13 that rebel, and just for our listeners, we'll see if I can name them, right?
5:42 Greg Jenner? Yeah, go for it.
5:43 Speaker 03 New Hampshire.
5:44 Greg Jenner? Yes.
5:45 Speaker 03 Massachusetts.
5:46 Greg Jenner? Lovely.
5:47 Speaker 03 Rhode Island.
5:48 Greg Jenner? Mm-hmm.
5:49 Speaker 03 Connecticut.
5:49 Greg Jenner? Yep.
5:50 Speaker 03 New York.
5:51 Greg Jenner? Yep.
5:52 Speaker 03 New Jersey.
5:53 Greg Jenner? Yep.
5:54 Speaker 03 Pennsylvania.
5:55 Greg Jenner? Yep.
5:56 Speaker 03 Delaware.
5:57 Greg Jenner? Yep.
5:58 Speaker 03 Maryland.
5:59 Greg Jenner? Yep.
6:00 Speaker 03 Virginia.
6:01 Greg Jenner? Yep.
6:02 Speaker 03 North Carolina.
6:03 Greg Jenner? Yep.
6:04 Speaker 03 South Carolina.
6:05 Greg Jenner? Yep.
6:06 Speaker 03 And Georgia.
6:07 Greg Jenner? He's done it! Okay, so we've got 26 colonies, 13 of them on the eastern seaboard of the States. How do they work as colonies? What's the governance?
6:17 Speaker 03 Largely self-governing. They've kind of developed under their own devices for much of the period, the first 100 years after their settlement. And so each of them has its own assembly, for example, which they see as equivalent to parliament. They've They govern this big space, but they're pushing up against people who've developed their own ways of thinking and their own ways of doing things.
6:30 Speaker 03 achieved a degree of autonomy as a result of this. And when Britain wins the Seven Years' War, what Americans will call the French and Indian War, Britain emerges victorious
6:36 Speaker 03 They're pretty used to governing themselves.
6:38 Greg Jenner? Right.
6:38 Speaker 03 Broadly speaking, they share this culture, which they believe they got from Britain.
6:39 Speaker 03 there. They have
6:43 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
6:44 Speaker 03 They talk about the rights of Englishmen all the time, and they're not wrong about that, but they talk about we've got the rights of Englishmen. When we're governing ourselves, that's because we're English or we're British.
6:51 Greg Jenner? And they've won the seven years war, which I mean, you could have been speaking French, Patton.
6:56 Speaker 04 Exactly. Well, kill them all.
7:00 Greg Jenner? Obvious question, Frank. How does it go so wrong? Because we've heard that, you know, Britain has won this seven year war, this very expensive war, and everything is rosy.
7:08 Speaker 03 It's a vanquish France finally. It has a huge public debt as a result of the war, and it's looking to pay down that debt. Here's a good factoid for you. The average person in Britain pays 26 shillings per year in taxes. The average person in Massachusetts pays one. So.
7:28 Speaker 04 Well.
7:29 Greg Jenner? Pay up, Patton. You owe it.
7:31 Speaker 03 The crown says.
7:32 Speaker 04 Really? Hang on, let me get my. You do take Zell? Oh my god.
7:37 Speaker 03 The government says, okay, you need to pay. You you benefited from this conflict, you ought to pay for your own defense.
7:43 Greg Jenner? Right.
7:43 Speaker 04 And what did we say? How did we react to that?
7:48 Speaker 03 Well, Patton, you may know that Americans love to pay taxes.
7:51 Speaker 04 Oh my god. Get out of my way. Let me mail this check in.
7:57 Speaker 03 So what the British did was they instituted various governments instituted a variety of taxes. The most famous, the one we did learn about in school, the Stamp Act, of course.
8:05 Speaker 04 Yep.
8:06 Speaker 03 In 1765 is the most infamous, and that's unprecedented because it's a direct tax on Americans in their colonies. People in Massachusetts say, we pay taxes that are levied by our government. We're represented in that government. That's the way the system works. If you're paying 26 times more than we are, you're paying too much tax. And so their position is not necessarily just greed. It's actually, there is kind of intellectual consistency there.
8:34 Greg Jenner? We haven't mentioned the Townsend Acts. They are the one, they're the official parliamentary acts which allow for the taxation of the colonists, right?
8:40 Speaker 03 Yes, so what happens is there's widespread resistance to the Stamp Act in 1765. Parliament repeals it in 1766, but adopts something called the Declaratory Act in 1766, which is basically apparent saying, okay, I'm giving in to you, but next time you have to do what I say. Because the Declaratory Act says-
8:57 Speaker 04 Which always works. Always works.
9:00 Speaker 03 They say, we're repealing the Stamp Act, but the Declaratory Act says, but we have the authority to tax you in all cases whatsoever. And the following year, they adopt the Townsend Duties. The Townsend Duties are more import duties, more tariffs.
9:13 Greg Jenner? So Frank, these harsh parliamentary acts, they lead to violence, right? Because we've got the Boston Massacre in 1770, when British troops are actually firing on people.
9:21 Speaker 03 Yes, so what happened was, the resistance to these taxes is mainly centered in the port towns, because those are the only cities and the colonies. So Boston, New York, Newport, Richmond, Philadelphia-
9:35 Greg Jenner? Because that's where all the trade's coming in.
9:36 Speaker 03 And that's where the trade is, yeah. Charleston, etc. And that's also where there are crowds, sailors who could be mobilized, things like that. And there are groups that form called the Sons of Liberty, that enforce boycotts and resistance to these taxes. So the resistance was centered in Boston. It wasn't only in Boston, but it was quite, it was most virulent in Boston. And as a result, the British sent troops to Boston in 1768. Redcoat troops. There are a series of incidents that take place, the most prominent of which occurs on March 5, 1770, incident known as the Boston Massacre. Eight civilians are shot, five of whom die. There was a crowd of up to 300 people who were harassing British soldiers, throwing snowballs, ice balls, bricks, and so on at the soldiers.
10:17 Greg Jenner? Bricks. We get the Boston Tea Party after that, which, again, sounds like a sort of genteel Jane Austen thing, but it's a paramilitary organization, this Sons of Liberty?
10:27 Speaker 03 They are certainly a political movement.
10:31 Speaker 03 That is willing to use force or threaten to use force. And those threats are credible because they've done it enough. So the background of this is Parliament adopts something called the Tea Act, which is meant to help the British East India Tea Company, which has huge interest in Parliament, little corruption there.
10:47 Speaker 03 And this calls attention to people, to taxation again. So a group of about 60 Sons of Liberty, rather crudely disguised as indigenous Americans. They board the tea ships. There are three of them in Boston Harbor. They destroy 342 chests of tea, but they clean up after themselves.
11:05 Speaker 04 Ah, wait, they do?
11:06 Speaker 03 They do. They also, nobody's meant to pilfer anything else off these cargo ships or off the wharf. So it's meant to be a controlled demonstration to show that there are limits to resistance.
11:18 Greg Jenner? So what does the king's government do? What does George III's, you know, you've got, you've got the tea protests. Is he, is he sitting and stewing? Is he letting rebellion brew? Is he stirring the pot until things boil over? Tea pun, tea pun, tea pun. What is he doing?
11:29 Speaker 03 Parliament penalizes the colonies. The king and, and his government want to take a hard line. They adopt a series of acts called the coercive acts to punish Boston.
11:38 Speaker 04 Good branding.
11:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, the government of Massachusetts is replaced with a military, the governor of Massachusetts is replaced with a military governor. The port of Boston's closed until the tea's paid for and so on. There are a series of acts intended to punish Boston and also to separate Massachusetts from the other colonies.
11:53 Speaker 04 Oh, like to make the other colonies go like, we don't want anything to do with it like that? Oh, okay.
11:58 Speaker 03 They're being punished.
11:59 Greg Jenner? Divide and conquer, very nice. That then leads to the outraged colonists forming the First Continental Congress, headed up by the first president in American history, a great man from Virginia, such as yourself.
12:09 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
12:10 Greg Jenner? And his name is?
12:12 Speaker 04 Hang on, George Hanson?
12:14 Greg Jenner? No.
12:16 Speaker 04 Not George Washington?
12:17 Greg Jenner? No.
12:18 Speaker 04 No, I know that George Washington, who? What's his name?
12:21 Speaker 03 Frank? Peyton Randolph.
12:23 Speaker 04 Peyton Randolph? What? Who? Wow, wait a minute, go right ahead, please. I've literally never heard this name. I've heard the name George Hanson, I've never heard Peyton Randolph.
12:34 Speaker 03 I don't have a lot to give you, Patton, except he's a very prominent political figure in Virginia in the mid 1770s. He's a lawyer, he's a planter, he's a big deal in Virginia, and he gets elected to preside over this first continental congress.
12:47 Speaker 04 So technically, he's the first president?
12:49 Speaker 03 Yes.
12:49 Speaker 04 Wow.
12:50 Greg Jenner? Okay, and what is the congress? What's their policy then? What do they agree?
12:53 Speaker 03 They agree on a number of things. They agree that the individual colonies should start raising militias to prepare for a possible war.
13:00 Greg Jenner? Right, okay, so that's a serious one, that.
13:02 Speaker 03 That's very serious, but they're not providing any money for that, they're just saying you should do this. They say that the colonies-
13:06 Speaker 04 Stand back and stand by.
13:08 Speaker 03 Yes, exactly. The colonies should boycott British goods, so they're responding to the British closure of the port of Boston by saying, "We're not buying any British goods." They want to stop paying British taxes and, of course, not obey the coercive acts. And they adopted Declaration of Rights in October of 1774, which says that they, that is the colonies, are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and that they have never ceded to any foreign power, whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent. So this is about no taxation without representation?
13:39 Speaker 04 Yeah.
13:39 Speaker 03 Life, liberty, and property, which comes from John Locke, where not quite to life, liberty, and happiness yet, we'll get there.
13:45 Speaker 04 When did you get the split between colonists and loyalists? When did that split happen?
13:49 Speaker 03 It's kind of two parts. When the war breaks out in the spring of 75, it starts, because people have to start making choices, but really with the Declaration of Independence, because it's whether either you support independence or you don't.
13:59 Speaker 04 Right, right.
13:59 Speaker 03 And that's when, so, but in this moment-
14:01 Greg Jenner? So when there's a referendum, really?
14:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly, great. In this moment, they're still kind of British, kind of American, and trying to work out what the boundary between the two is.
14:08 Greg Jenner? So the Americans are starting to stockpile weapons, they're starting to sort of drill troops sort of quietly in the corner, but the British authorities are obviously not terribly keen on this, and so Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion, so particularly one state in rebellion.
14:21 Speaker 04 That Tea Party thing really stung them.
14:23 Greg Jenner? Yeah, it did, I mean, it's a lot of money they lost, isn't it?
14:25 Speaker 04 They just really dwelled on that.
14:26 Greg Jenner? I've seen Mary Poppins, the Bank of England, very upset about it. So Thomas Gage is someone we need to introduce here, Frank. Very quickly, who's Thomas Gage, why do you have that?
14:34 Speaker 03 He is the commander-in-chief of British forces in North America, he's also been appointed as the military governor of Massachusetts under the coercive acts. He's got an American wife, interestingly.
14:44 Greg Jenner? Ah.
14:45 Speaker 03 He is believed to understand Americans.
14:49 Speaker 04 Taking our women.
14:54 Speaker 03 And Gage is in charge and he's ordered by the government in early 1775 to do something about Massachusetts. And so he wants the, he's ordered in February to kind of crack down, Massachusetts is declared in rebellion, he's ordered to crack down on the leadership of the resistance there. In April, he sends troops to Lexington and Concord to both seize munitions that the so-called patriot militia are stockpiling and arrest the leaders of the resistance in the, in the colony. Lexington and Concord are now suburbs of Boston, 15, 20 miles west of Boston. They arrive in Lexington first, they're confronted by some militiamen on Lexington Green and there's a brief exchange of shots, nobody knows who fired the first shot.
15:37 Speaker 03 Eight militiamen were killed, the rest ran off. Then the British go on to Concord, there's a fight at Concord Bridge, it only lasts about three minutes. There's a larger fight over the course of the rest of the day, but the fighting at Lexington and Concord is relatively brief.
15:51 Speaker 04 Nothing good comes out of the suburbs. I've always said, everything bad comes out of the suburbs, so there you go.
15:58 Greg Jenner? And we then get the Second Continental Congress, because the first one achieved some things, but now shots have been fired, so what is the second?
16:06 Speaker 03 It's starting to act like a government now. The first one wasn't really a government, it was sort of, hey, let's get together and coordinate our response. The Second Continental Congress is acting like a government, because there's a war on, but again, still looking forwards and backwards at the same time, because what they really are saying, they're saying, King George, please intervene and stop this. They sent something called the Olive Branch Petition. Seventeen thousand patriot militiamen are besieging the British in Boston, the Continental Congress is raising an army, but they're also saying, hey, we want to make up, let's just, let's just go back to the way things were. So they're in this weird, between April of 1775 and July of 1776, there's a kind of really weird moment where they're waging war, but also appealing to the king to intervene and stop it.
16:49 Greg Jenner? And Peyton Randolph, he's had to resign, he's no longer president.
16:52 Speaker 03 He's, he's gone.
16:53 Greg Jenner? When do we get George Washington showing up then? When's, when's his?
16:56 Speaker 03 He goes to the Second Continental Congress, representing Virginia, and he wears his uniform to say, hey, I happen to be a soldier. And they appoint him commander in chief of the army.
17:04 Greg Jenner? So the Olive Branch Petition has been offered by the Second Continental Congress to George III, and George III says...
17:11 Speaker 04 He says absolutely not.
17:13 Greg Jenner? Doesn't even read it.
17:14 Speaker 04 What?
17:14 Greg Jenner? Doesn't even read it.
17:16 Speaker 04 Do you think he did that like as a power move as an insult? Or why didn't he read it?
17:21 Greg Jenner? Professor Frank, give us a psychological reading.
17:23 Speaker 03 Well, to accept it is to recognize the authority of Congress, which he doesn't.
17:27 Speaker 04 Oh, OK.
17:28 Speaker 03 So he didn't accept it.
17:29 Greg Jenner? And he declares the proclamation rebellion.
17:31 Speaker 03 He declares them in rebellion in in October of 1775.
17:35 Greg Jenner? So at moments like this, Patton, we need a bit of common sense.
17:38 Speaker 04 Oh.
17:38 Greg Jenner? By which I mean, common sense. Do you know it?
17:41 Speaker 04 Oh, was that Thomas Paine's pamphlet?
17:44 Greg Jenner? Yeah, it is. Yeah, very good.
17:45 Speaker 04 Yay, I know something.
17:47 Greg Jenner? Well done.
17:47 Speaker 04 All right, yes.
17:48 Greg Jenner? What do you know about it?
17:49 Speaker 04 Nothing.
17:50 Greg Jenner? Great. Thank you for coming in.
17:51 Speaker 04 Go right ahead. Please, take it off my hands.
17:54 Speaker 03 Thomas Paine is an English radical who emigrated to Philadelphia in 1774. So he's arrived relatively late. He writes this pamphlet called Common Sense, which is published on January 10, 1776, that basically says, independence is the answer here. Give up your loyalty to the crown. The king's not going to be there for you. A parent doesn't wage war on its children. He can turn a phrase. The guy can write. It sells 150,000 copies. It's by far and away the biggest bestseller of the 18th century.
18:24 Speaker 04 I've only seen the movie version.
18:28 Speaker 03 And he makes an incredibly powerful case for independence. This is a reassuring and incredibly powerful message.
18:33 Greg Jenner? And so the Continental Congress appoints a committee to draft the Declaration of Independence. And do you know who's on that committee?
18:39 Speaker 04 Jefferson.
18:40 Greg Jenner? Yep.
18:40 Speaker 04 Hancock, Clymer. Each colony is represented? Is there 13 people on it or more? There's more?
18:47 Speaker 03 No, no, no.
18:48 Speaker 04 What? I'm wrong.
18:49 Speaker 03 There are five.
18:50 Speaker 04 Five? Who are the five?
18:51 Speaker 03 OK, Jefferson.
18:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:53 Speaker 03 Benjamin Franklin.
18:54 Speaker 04 Uh huh.
18:54 Speaker 03 John Adams.
18:55 Speaker 04 Right.
18:55 Speaker 03 Roger Sherman.
18:57 Greg Jenner? Never heard of him.
18:57 Speaker 03 Robert Livingston.
18:58 Greg Jenner? Never heard of him.
18:58 Speaker 03 Sherman from Connecticut, Livingston's from New York. They're the two that always get forgotten.
19:02 Greg Jenner? Yeah, like, these poor guys, they've done so much. They wrote one of the most important documents in history and everyone's like, who?
19:08 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:09 Greg Jenner? Jefferson presented to Congress on 20th June. It's voted for on.
19:14 Speaker 04 July 4th, 1776?
19:16 Greg Jenner? July 2nd.
19:17 Speaker 04 Oh, my god. American education, folks.
19:20 Greg Jenner? I mean, I understand why you've said that. But John Adams famously says on July 2nd, "I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows and games and sports and guns and bonfire, and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other from this time forward, forevermore." He's basically saying, "July 2nd will forever be."
19:41 Speaker 04 Boy, could he call it.
19:42 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
19:43 Speaker 04 Yeah.
19:44 Greg Jenner? Why do we think it's July 4th?
19:46 Speaker 04 Yeah, why do we?
19:46 Greg Jenner? And was it July 4th?
19:48 Speaker 03 Well, what happens on July 4th is they, so they vote on independence on July 2nd. 12 colonies vote in favor of it, New York abstains. Then they spend the next two days editing, and then they formally adopt the document, the Declaration itself, on the 4th of July. So that is the date, but the vote was on the 2nd. Adams recognized that the vote was incredibly important, thought, "This is the day."
20:08 Speaker 04 Yep.
20:10 Greg Jenner? And New York comes along on the 2nd of August and goes, "All right."
20:13 Speaker 03 Yeah. Guess if you're all going.
20:15 Speaker 04 Fine, whatever. Great, we're in.
20:17 Greg Jenner? The colonies are abuzz with people exalting the cause of liberty. But I have to ask, like, what about indigenous peoples? You know, what we might call Native Americans? What about free and enslaved black people? Are their liberties mentioned at all? Is anyone thinking about them?
20:30 Speaker 04 And are women mentioned?
20:32 Greg Jenner? Right.
20:32 Speaker 03 Excellent questions. The Declaration, of course, says all men are created equal. So there's gendered language there, there's no doubt about that. Those three groups, of course, constitute the majority of the population by a considerable margin. There are two things you need to bear in mind. In 1776, the vast majority of people who lived in North America were indigenous.
20:50 Speaker 04 Right. Yeah.
20:52 Speaker 03 Mustn't ever forget that. And in those seaboard colonies that are rebelling and declaring independence, 20% of the population was enslaved. So on one hand, we can say, "This is liberty for me and not for thee." The question of what will happen to both indigenous people and enslaved people, the war calls into question all the time. Because both sides seek to enlist the support of black and indigenous soldiers, for example. We have the kind of horrible paradox that enslaved people are fighting each other for their Liberty because both sides promise them liberty if they'll support them.
21:26 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
21:26 Speaker 03 Um, so it's a, it's a, it's a complicated question.
21:29 Greg Jenner? And for women, you know, do any of the states allow women to vote?
21:32 Speaker 03 You know, New Jersey.
21:34 Greg Jenner? Really?
21:34 Speaker 03 Doesn't get a lot of credit.
21:36 Greg Jenner? No.
21:37 Speaker 03 New Jersey is.
21:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, let them vote. Ah, fine, you know, what are you gonna do? Let them go.
21:43 Speaker 03 In the aftermath of the revolution, New Jersey adopts a constitution that allows women who can meet the property requirements to vote in the state to vote. New Jersey women are the first women in America to vote. Now, the vote's taken away from them.
21:54 Greg Jenner? Right.
21:55 Speaker 03 In, in the early 19th century.
21:56 Greg Jenner? Right.
21:57 Speaker 03 But there's a, there's a period of about two decades where women vote in New Jersey.
22:00 Greg Jenner? Amazing.
22:00 Speaker 04 Huh.
22:01 Greg Jenner? Let's get back to the war. We get another big win, Battle of Saratoga, which is a huge one for, for Washington Army. And this is, this is a big win over John Burgoyne, the British general.
22:11 Speaker 03 That's right. He's defeated by the Continental Army, not by Washington.
22:14 Greg Jenner? Oh, okay.
22:15 Speaker 03 He has another general in command, Horatio Gates. Washington is.
22:17 Greg Jenner? Horatio Gates, good name.
22:19 Speaker 04 Nice name. Very good name.
22:21 Speaker 03 And Benedict Arnold is prominent in that fighting for the Patriots.
22:23 Greg Jenner? Okay.
22:24 Speaker 04 Oh.
22:25 Speaker 03 But the, the point is Burgoyne's.
22:26 Speaker 04 What happened to him? He's beloved.
22:28 Speaker 03 Never heard from again.
22:31 Speaker 03 The reason Saratoga is important is it's the first really big victory that the, the colonists, the rebels inflict on the British in over, in almost a year.
22:41 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
22:42 Speaker 03 And it shows the French that the rebels are credible. Because of the victory at Saratoga, Benjamin Franklin, who's then American ambassador in Paris, negotiates a formal treaty with France. And in February of 1778, France recognizes the United States, enters into a military alliance, and suddenly Britain's in a lot of trouble.
23:02 Greg Jenner? The big military win that shocked everyone is Yorktown. Seventeen eighty-one, the Americans defeat a big British army, and this is the end of the war, which no one's, no one's seen that come in, right?
23:11 Speaker 03 Yes, the French and the Americans defeat a big British army.
23:13 Greg Jenner? Oh, sorry.
23:14 Speaker 03 And that's really, really important.
23:15 Greg Jenner? Pardon. You should just be désolé.
23:17 Speaker 03 So what happened is after Saratoga and the French alliance, the British concentrate on the southern colonies because they're the more lucrative and they they've kind of written off the north and they send an army under General Cornwallis to the south. That army fights around the south. It ends up going to Yorktown, Virginia, seeking resupply. It's blockaded there in the in the fall of 1781. A combined Franco-American army marches south from New York and there's some fighting. There's a siege that goes on. Cornwallis ultimately surrenders. Now, it need not be the end of the war, though.
23:50 Greg Jenner? Right.
23:50 Speaker 03 Because Britain fought France for 25 years.
23:53 Greg Jenner? I was gonna say, Britain's a superpower. We can fight forever.
23:56 Speaker 03 Britain has the means to continue.
23:57 Greg Jenner? In the words of Captain America, I can do this all day.
23:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, the government collapsed because the war wasn't popular in Britain.
24:03 Greg Jenner? Right. So the war ends and there are peace treaty. Do you know where the peace treaty's held?
24:07 Speaker 04 Um, I don't.
24:09 Greg Jenner? Do you wanna guess?
24:13 Speaker 04 Philadelphia?
24:14 Greg Jenner? No, it's Paris.
24:16 Speaker 04 Oh.
24:17 Greg Jenner? Sort of neutral territory, but not really because the French have been in a war, right? So they've all got to go to Paris. And it's a sort of big old kind of like, we'll have this, you have that. But the thing that's quite interesting is that they're discussing kind of boring stuff like fishing treaties.
24:28 Speaker 03 It's not boring if you live in New England.
24:30 Greg Jenner? All right, sorry, take it back.
24:32 Speaker 03 And John Adams is a New Englander. So North Sea fishery is incredibly important industry, but yes, they are there arguing about fishery.
24:39 Speaker 04 How much cod can I catch? I gotta know.
24:42 Speaker 03 But they do talk about fishing. Crucially, the Americans and British make a side deal. According to the alliance of 1778, the French say to the Americans, under the terms of that treaty, no separate peace with the British. We're in this together.
24:57 Greg Jenner? Mm-hmm.
24:58 Speaker 03 The Americans make a separate peace. They betray the French.
25:00 Speaker 04 Nice. But hang on, wasn't part of the British thinking that, fine, we'll let them have this one. They won't be able to sustain this and we'll just slowly chip away at them and we'll get them back?
25:13 Speaker 03 Yes, so the British give incredibly generous borders to the new United States. All the territories south of the Great Lakes and west to the Mississippi River.
25:23 Greg Jenner? Wow, okay, so that's a huge chunk of land.
25:24 Speaker 03 It's basically a third of the present continental United States, with the exception of Florida, which goes to the Spanish. And the reason the British do that is, they think this is gonna fail. They're gonna fail.
25:34 Speaker 04 You'll be back.
25:35 Speaker 03 We're gonna get it. We're gonna get all this back, it's gonna fall into our laps. Now, if we'd said this a couple of years ago, we'd say, well, ha ha, they got fooled. Maybe they're playing a long game, the British, and then we are gonna be back. Who knows? Maybe it is gonna fail.
25:47 Speaker 04 Yeah, actually, hmm, wait a minute. Are we seeing, this is a very long game.
25:53 Greg Jenner? The longest of long con.
25:55 Speaker 04 Yeah. Wow.
25:57 Greg Jenner? The nuance window.
26:03 Greg Jenner? This is where Patton and I sit silently to ponder our fishing-related treaty clauses, while Professor Frank takes to the congressional floor for two minutes to tell us something important about the American War of Independence slash Revolution, whatever you call it. My stopwatch is ready, Frank, take it away.
26:17 Speaker 03 The nuance I would like to develop in the nuance window is, this is British history as well as American history, and we make a mistake in seeing this as American history only. We need to interpret this as British history as well as American history, these events, because it takes two sides. But also, I think we should rethink our understanding of Britain in this period. To some extent, the American Revolution is a failure of the British Constitution. The British Constitution can't accommodate Britons who live overseas. The Americans, that's what their message is from 1765 down to 1775. We're just like you, and we have the same rights you do. And Parliament can't accept that, and Parliament doesn't recognize that, and the British Constitution,
27:00 Speaker 03 as flexible as it is historically, can't accommodate that. And so to some extent, this is all a result of what might be seen as a British constitutional crisis, that in turn leads Americans to create their own constitution. And they want a written constitution because they say the problem with Britain is the Constitution isn't written. So America goes off on its own way, but then Britain historically was often presented as a sort of failure for Britain, and it is, except the British Empire continues to grow and thrive for another century. However, they learn their lesson. They don't give rights to settlers anymore and colonists. They don't say you're on a par with us. They don't allow them to have their assemblies, nor do they ever tax another colony again.
27:44 Speaker 03 So Britain does learn and adapt, and its empire is not the same as a result of these events. So these are incredibly important events for the United States. We need to see these events as British events as well and see them in the context of British constitutional and imperial history.
27:57 Greg Jenner? Amazing. Two minutes exactly. Thank you.
28:00 Speaker 04 Whoa, Professor. Yeah. That was a quill drop.
28:06 Greg Jenner? Do you feel like you've learned some stuff here?
28:09 Speaker 04 I actually did learn some stuff. There was a lot wanting in my high school and college education.
28:14 Greg Jenner? I think you did great.
28:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, thank you.
28:16 Greg Jenner? Listener for more American political history, check out our sequel episode on Becoming America with Chris Addison. We've also got episodes on the abolitionists, the journo truth. We've got one on Frederick Douglass. For more South American independence movements, we have one on Simon Bolivar, which is very good fun. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds in the UK. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guest. In History Corner, we had the fantastic Professor Frank Cogliano from the University of Edinburgh. Thank you, Frank.
28:43 Speaker 03 My pleasure. Thank you. It was a lot of fun.
28:45 Greg Jenner? And in Comedy Corner, we have the outstanding Patton Oswalt. Thank you, Patton.
28:49 Speaker 04 It's so good to learn about my home country of America. Thank you.
28:54 Greg Jenner? And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we fight to free another neglected historical topic. But for now, I'm off to go and chuck 340 chests of coffee into Boston Harbour. It's not a political protest. I just hate coffee. Bye.
29:13 Speaker 05 Hello, it's Lucy Worsley here and we're back with a brand new series of Lady Swindlers. Here we are in cell number one. I'm just shutting us in, Ross. Wow. Following in the footsteps of some all-new criminals. Could you take me down to the other end of Baker Street, please?
29:29 Speaker 06 Certainly, jump in.
29:29 Speaker 05 Thank you. Join me and my all-female team of detectives as we revisit the audacious crimes of women trying to make it in a world made for men.
29:39 Speaker 07 This is a story of working-class women trying to get by. This is survival.
29:45 Speaker 05 Lady Swindlers, Season Two with Lucy Worsley, from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on BBC Sounds.
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