The American Revolution and the Fate of the World

The American Revolution was “a world war” in “all but name,” according to this revealing chronicle. Historian Bell (Stolen) tracks how the conflict “sent caravans of navy vessels... across every ocean on the planet,” precipitated “an unprecedented migrant crisis,” and “shook the political order” from the Americas to China, “securing freedom and sovereignty for millions, while deferring or denying it for many millions more.” The Continental Army was “strikingly polyglot and pluralistic,” as was the British coalition, which included Native warriors and Black fugitives from slavery. The Americans relied almost completely on foreign financing and military intervention, turning the war into a full-fledged great-power conflict, with Spain and France attacking British holdings around the world. In telling the full story, Bell places the Sons of Liberty on equal footing with “Chinese tea-pickers... Sierra Leonean separatists, Jamaican washerwomen,” and more. Particularly riveting is the story of Molly Bryant, a Mohawk woman and widow of a British “diplomat for Indian affairs,” who understood her tribal nation to be “fighting for its survival,” with “wealthy speculators” among the revolutionaries, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, “gobbling up thousands of acres” of land; she urged for an alliance with Britain to stop the “land grab.” Such riveting profiles provide a clear-eyed accounting of a formative conflict for the modern world. (Nov.)