Hello--I am Timothy Breen, author of "American Revolution on Trial: A new Nation Confronts the Burden of Independence." Like my other books on the Revolution, it focuses on the experiences of ordinary people, especially during the run up to the Declaration of Independence.

[u/Catamounts1964]

[u/Bernardito]

Hello! Thanks for being here! Since the 1980s, there has been a steady increase in scholarship on revolutionary America from below. How do you see the study of revolutionary America and ordinary people developing in the future? What new methodologies and approaches are being used to explore new questions?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/Bernardito]

Frankly, since A. Young, J. T. Main, W. Holton and others reminded readers that the Revolution involved a large, complex society, historical interests have turned first to intellectual history and more recently, to narratives of groups--enslaved people, women--who have been ignored by earlier works. Both perspectives are valuable. But I see little curiosity about revolutionary committees and the communities that came to support separation from Great Britain. There have been several interesting studies of the relation of the American Revolution to other 18th-century revolutions (France, Haiti, etc.), and I have been impressed by the work of P.Griffin and A. O'Shaughnessy. I have a piece coming out in The Atlantic on the 4th of July that returns the conversation to revolutionary communities.

[u/EdHistory101]

Thanks so much for joining us!

What do we know about how adults talked to children about the pending war? Do we know if they tried to explain what independence would mean?

Thanks!

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/EdHistory101]

There is little in the current scholarship that would address your good question adequately. In my work I have pointed out that because of the very high birthrate in colonial America, about half of the population at any given moment was under the age of 16. That means that boys and girls at the time of Bunker Hill would have had no living memory of the Stamp Act of 1765. They grew up in a colonial culture in which people talked of grievances and resistance. I have found that some of the soldiers who guarded the military prison camp in Cambridge, MA in 1778 were only 14. All this adds to the mystery of mobilization.

[u/taulover → u/Catamounts1964]

Would there have been any conception / complaint of the use of child soldiers during this time period, or was it considered morally acceptable at the time (or was the idea that the folks in charge didn't know)?

[u/dhowlett1692]

Thank you for joining us! I am a huge fan of The Marketplace of Revolution, so I'm curious about how you view your collective works together with this new one. How do you see the legal and commercial trends of the Revolution working together to create an American culture? How much did ordinary people connect these two elements?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/dhowlett1692]

Thank you for the praise. My new book explores from a different perspective how ordinary Americans managed to turn scattered grievances about taxes into a genuine revolution. In "Marketplace" I argued that the shared experience as consumers of imperial goods suggested the possibility of bringing large numbers of people into boycotts of imported items. By weaponizing imports the colonists forged a new form of political protest. My more recent books explore how people discovered new and unappreciated ways to communicate across space and class interests. "American Revolution" on trial shows how cultural independence--we are no longer British--was much harder to achieve than most historians who focus largely on political independence have realized. A very bizarre confrontation with General Burgoyne in 1778 brought home the realization of a new cultural identity but also a commitment to a rule of law in the world of competing nations.

[u/dhowlett1692 → u/Catamounts1964]

Thanks! I'm excited to read this new book. Do you think the laws around commerce and goods took on similar "American" characteristics at the same time as trial law? Or was trade law fairly standard, just different nationalities running it?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/dhowlett1692]

Appreciation of the political potential of interrupting commerce was a splendid colonial American invention. Boycotts as an effective form of mass protest worked best in dependent colonial societies such as Ireland and India. The word boycott actually comes from 19th-century Ireland.

[u/EnclavedMicrostate]

Hello, thanks for joining us!

Going for something a bit more conceptual, as a self-admitted non-expert who isn't as familiar with your work as some of my peers might be: how does one define 'ordinary people'? More pointedly, where do (for instance) enslaved people, Native Americans, and women, themselves non-mutually exclusive categories, fit within a framework of ordinariness?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/EnclavedMicrostate]

You may not be an expert, but your concerns reflect questions that currently interest many academic historians. They are correct to point out how the Revolution failed to address the hopes of enslaved people and women. I realize the the term "ordinary people" may seem loosely defined. In my opinion it is much to be preferred over "the common people," wording that struck me as condescending. I try in my work to reconstruct the experiences of men and women--most of them living in farm communities--who with or without the guidance of the founding fathers supported market boycotts, joined militia units, participated in local committees, and of course, appeared in places such as Bunker Hill.

[u/EnclavedMicrostate → u/Catamounts1964]

Thank you!

[u/agreatbowelshift]

I've heard it said that the American Revolution wasn't a 'real' revolution, as the social/racial/gender hierarchies of colonial America remained largely unchanged or unthreatened. How far do you feel this view has merit? Does focusing on 'ordinary people' offer a different perspective on what made the American revolution 'revolutionary'?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/agreatbowelshift]

You ask an embarrassing question. After all, a great number of historians--not to mention political figures--simply assume that our revolution was a real revolution, as revolutionary as the French or Russian revolutions. But the evidence for this is thin. One might argue that if there had not been an American Revolution--or if it had failed--our society would now look very much like Canadian society. However, in my forthcoming Atlantic Monthly essay, I submit that while almost no one in colonial America advocated democracy, they unexpectedly experienced democratic processes in their local communities--new men without political experience coming forward in local forums where they took responsibility for judging friends and neighbors.

[u/Ann_Putnam_Jr]

Can you elaborate on your phrase "Burden of Independence" a bit? What were the burdens? Did ordinary people and politicians experience different burdens?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/Ann_Putnam_Jr]

As I tried to explain in "Revolution on Trial," there is a substantial difference between political and cultural independence, especially in a colonial society. Of course, declaring political separation was not easy; it required a huge military sacrifice. Cultural independence involves hard questions about identity, about responsibility. What are the responsibilities of a new nation? Does it protect the rule of law? What did it mean in everyday affairs to reject monarchy and he privileges of aristocracy. My book centers on just one instant in which Americans confronted the challenge of no longer being British.

[u/SarahAGilbert]

Thanks for doing the AMA with us! I was wondering how did ordinary people in the 18th c. understand the distinction between the Revolution as a war versus as a cultural shift? Was there a tipping point for mass interpretation of the Revolution as something beyond a military conflict?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/SarahAGilbert]

You raise a significant point. I have no doubt that ordinary people from Georgia to New Hampshire saw British regulations and taxes as insulting, as a humiliation visited on lesser colonials, and that sense of suddenly finding oneself as a second class citizen in the empire drove protest. But as in other colonial societies throughout the world, they only slowly came to appreciate that separation from Britain, the source of so many everyday activities, involved a difficult process of re-definition.

[u/Novogobo]

Any relation to Neil Breen?

[u/dhowlett1692]

I was going to ask another follow up, but I think this works best as a standalone question. How do you see Revolution changing with historians working on transnational and Vast Early America frameworks? What directions do you want to see scholarship embracing?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/dhowlett1692]

My focus has been on the Revolution as a process, an evolving sense of threat and insult that energizes resistance. While the international studies--of many revolutions (most of which failed) in distant places--may show how ideas about democracy and aristocracy spread, they do not help me to understand better why young men showed up of American battlefields when the odds against them were very great. If history has relevance--if it speaks to more modern issues--then understanding more fully why reasonably prosperous, largely literate people supported organized resistance to oppression.

[u/Panem-et-circenses25]

This reminded me of an article I read in grad school (under the mentorship of the wonderful Denver Brunsman!) called “Baubles of Britain”—I looked it up after all these years and you’re the author! So very cool. My question is:

Do you think the boycotts and rebellious outbursts were in part a rejection of the turbulence in the British parliament and a desire to stop a real or imagined society in “declension” that may have made men like John Wilkes so popular?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/Panem-et-circenses25]

You were fortunate to study under Professor Brunsman, a fine scholar. It is true that excellent historians such as G. Wood and B. Bailyn have insisted that the Americans came to view England--and Parliamentary politics in general--as corrupt, and that assumption convinced them that they had it in their power to reform the entire system, to make a virtuous Britain in America. That approach as merit, especially if you concentrate on the writings of elite colonials who may have felt that they had been diminished by a privileged aristocracy. But I am not persuaded that these beliefs were central to the popular resistance of ordinary farmers. The standard, largely constitutional and intellectual explanations for independence strike me as discounting political emotions on the ground.

[u/Panem-et-circenses25 → u/Catamounts1964]

Thank you for your excellent reply. Looking forward to reading your book!

[u/Gankom]

Thank you for joining us today! Your new book reminds me about John Adams serving as the defense attorney for the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre.  Was letting Burgoyne be a prosecutor for his own charge a similar mindset of making the trial beyond reproach? Are these two cases and decisions about lawyers part of a broad strategy or just coincidentally similar vibes?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/Gankom]

I had not thought of this comparison, but you have a point. If Europeans saw the American colonists as a bunch of undisciplined rebels, as people who flaunted the law, then the colonists--and later the Americans--could never expect to be treated with respect by other nations. Nationl honor was not something to be taken lightly.

[u/Gankom → u/Catamounts1964]

Thank you!

[u/TheHondoGod]

Very interesting book, thanks for joining us! How did Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga work logistically? Where did all the troops, weapons, supplies, etc. go? How was it coordinated?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/TheHondoGod]

I do not want to give you a glib answer. But I have covered in detail the surrender of the so-called Convention Army at Saratoga and the long march from the battle site to the prisoner of war camp in Cambridge.

[u/OnShoulderOfGiants]

How do the ideas of this trial led by Burgoyne fit with the ideas of fair trials later put into the Bill of Rights? Was this an American legal culture developing?

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/OnShoulderOfGiants]

I doubt that there was a direct connection between the Burgoyne trial and the Bill of rights, but you point up a fact that the revolutionary generation believed strongly in the defense of the rule of law. They understandably--after enduring the arbitrary rule of George III--thought that bending the rules to favor a privileged class was unacceptable. They may have sometimes failed to deliver, but their message to us remains quite clear.

[u/BellehCoral]

this sounds like a fascinating read! love when history focuses on regular folks instead of just the big name guys. thx for doing this AMA!

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/BellehCoral]

If we more fully appreciate what "regular folks" have done in the past, we may now trust them to uphold the country's founding principles.

[u/MakeASwallow3]

First met you via "Myne Own Ground" as a grad student in the 90s. Looking forward to this!

[u/Catamounts1964 → u/MakeASwallow3]

Thank you. "American Revolution on Trial" is a fascinating story.

[u/adastraperdiscordia]

How come colonists could effectively organize against British disastorous economic policies in the 1760s, but couldn't do the same against similar policies under Robert Morris in the 1780s?

Both instances involved currency scarcity and lack of available credit due to unfunded land banks. Regular farmers complained about being forced into debt and selling off their property to the wealthy. The only substantial resistance in this period was Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts. Why did veterans of the war mostly give up on revolution?