How Does a Society Decide Its World Is No Longer Acceptable?

Before a Revolution Can Begin, the Existing World Must Stop Feeling Inevitable The American Revolution presents us with an obvious question: Why did the American colonists rebel against Great Britain?  We can answer that question by studying taxes, representation, imperial policy, the aftermath of the French and Indian War, the Boston Massacre, the Tea Act, […]

The Continental Dollar: The Default That Built American Credit

Introduction In this interview: “If they default on the Continental dollar, that’s going to wipe off a lot of debt … and the minute you do that, you go from a negative 40 million net worth to a positive 40 million net worth.” Watch this segment in the video below (01:16:19) How could default create […]

The American Revolution Myth We Learned Wrong

Introduction In this interview: “You had this thing called the Quartering Act, which forced soldiers into people’s homes, and Americans were so upset about it that they wrote the Third Amendment. That’s a very nice, easy story…. The story is wrong.” Watch this segment in the video below (07:33) Most Americans learned that the Quartering […]

The Boston Massacre: A Permanent Rupture in the Imperial Family

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part V The Boston Massacre can be understood as a kind of “family history”—and not just metaphorically. It was lived, quite literally, in the homes, streets, and relationships of Boston itself. When the Army Brought Its Families When British regiments arrived in 1768, they didn’t come alone. Alongside roughly 2,000 […]

The Boston Massacre Trial: Politics & Performance?

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part IV If the shooting on King Street was chaos, the trials that followed were something else entirely—carefully staged, deeply political, and just as consequential. From the start, this wasn’t only about guilt or innocence. It was about perception—who could claim the moral high ground, not just in Boston, but […]

Paul Revere’s Depiction of the Boston Massacre – Confusion and Conspiracies

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part III Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre is one of the most famous images from 18th-century America—but it is not a neutral snapshot of what happened. And that’s really the place to start: this is not a photograph of a street scene. It’s a story. Revere wasn’t trying […]

In the Boston Massacre, Did British Soldiers and Colonists Know Each Other?

Reconsidering the Boston Massacre – Part II One of the most revealing and underappreciated layers of the Boston Massacre story is just how socially entangled British troops and Boston residents were before the shooting on King Street. It’s easy to imagine a rigid divide — angry townsfolk on one side and “British soldiers on the […]

Native Americans in the American Revolution: The History We Didn’t Learn

Introduction In this interview: “The Haudenosaunee’s Central Council fire in Onondaga, the site of modern day Syracuse, New York, had been burning as a symbol of the Confederacy of these people since before colonization…. for hundreds of years, they extinguished the council fire during the American Revolution and say, everyone can go their own way […]

Concord’s Crisis: A Town Pushed to the Edge Long Before the Revolution

Introduction In this interview: “And they hold a muster and they don’t get enough people.” Watch this section in the video below (00:11:45). Concord, Massachusetts, on the eve of the American Revolution, was far from a small simple farming town. Beneath its seemingly quiet rural setting lay a community in social, political, generational and economic […]