Was the American Revolution a World War?

Summary

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Podcast Summary: American History Hit

Episode: "Was the American Revolution a World War?"

Host: Don Wildman | Guest: Richard Bell (University of Maryland)

Release Date: October 27, 2025

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Overview

This episode explores the global dimensions of the American Revolution, examining whether it truly qualifies as a "world war." Host Don Wildman is joined by historian Richard Bell, author of The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, for an in-depth discussion of the revolution’s global alliances, the motivations of European powers, the role of Indigenous and African-descended peoples, and the worldwide consequences of this conflict.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

What Makes a "World War"? (01:41–03:56)

• Don Wildman sets the stage, reflecting on how the terminology of “world war” usually applies to large 20th-century conflicts but asks if the American Revolution fits this description due to its global impact and the participation of major powers beyond Britain and her colonies.
• Don notes, “Our noble struggle was fought for our own reasons and happened against the backdrop of a larger conflict fought for empire, a world war that unfolded between Great Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands.” (02:46)

The Revolution as a Global Struggle (03:57–06:52)

• Richard Bell emphasizes that American leaders strategically leveraged the international rivalries of their era, especially with France, to further the quest for independence.
• He highlights Benjamin Franklin’s success in securing French support as a crucial turning point:

  “France has a navy. ...The most powerful military force in the world at the time is Britain’s Royal Navy. ...So if the patriots want to avoid having their chances of independence slowly strangled by ever tightening British naval blockades, they need a naval ally. And France steps up...” (04:33)

• Bell also mentions the involvement of Spain, the Netherlands, and even less-discussed allies in India.

International Perspectives on the Revolution (06:52–09:49)

• Don and Richard explore differing educational and national perspectives, with Richard explaining that British students of his era barely studied the American Revolution at all:

  “It was just a big black hole in our education...” (07:54)

• Bell contrasts the myth-making of American national narratives with the global reality of the era, remarking on the tendency to tell “nation-boosting narrow stories.” (09:00)

The Many Peoples Caught Up in the Conflict (09:49–12:48)

• Bell stresses the stories often omitted from typical accounts:
  • The participation and choices of Indigenous nations as active agents.
  • The flight of enslaved Black Americans to British lines seeking freedom, leading to further global migrations (e.g., to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone).

  “This is a book about all the people across the world who are sort of sucked in to the American revolutionary fight in one way or the other, often in very unexpected and very consequential ways.” (09:52)

• The Revolution as a catalyst for mass migration and the disruption of lives far beyond the colonies.

European Powers’ Motives and Calculations (15:10–19:33)

• Wildman and Bell discuss the carefully calculated reasons France and Spain entered the war—not out of idealism, but to weaken Britain and reclaim lost imperial ground.
• Bell on the strategic thinking in Paris and Madrid:

  “They’re making a very conscious, calculated decision that they think is in France’s best interests and in Spain’s best interest. They’re not terribly interested in what’s in the interests of the patriots.” (15:41)

• The vast scale of the conflict—including campaigns in the Caribbean, Gibraltar, Central America, and more.

The American Revolution as a World War (20:24–21:42)

• Geographic scope: fighting in the colonies, Canada, the Caribbean, Central America, the Mediterranean, India, West Africa, and even affecting Australia as a penal colony.
• Bell underscores the global reach:

  "There are really very few parts of the world which are untouched by the American Revolution.” (21:07)

France’s Role and Motivations (23:28–30:56)

• France’s support involved not only military resources but also covert supply networks from Caribbean colonies.
• The French crown’s support was primarily motivated by anti-British rivalry and colonial interests rather than Enlightenment ideals:

  “King Louis is a monarch and his prime minister is an aristocrat… so it’s a very odd thing… to see that the French government does wade in to a cause which on its merits does not seem to overlap with the core values of the French empire.” (24:33)

• The priority for both Britain and France remained highly profitable Caribbean holdings (e.g., Jamaica, Saint Domingue/Haiti), not just geopolitics on the American continent.

Spain’s Crucial, Underappreciated Role (33:32–39:10)

• Spain controlled vast territories in North America, had significant vested interests, and supported the Americans indirectly through an alliance with France, not with the Americans directly.

  “Spain goes all in on this war because it has much more skin in the game than France does.” (34:08)

• Spanish New Orleans was a major hub for funneling arms and support to the patriots.
• Despite massive contributions, Spain remains overlooked in most American narratives, in part because its direct military efforts focused on regions outside the 13 colonies.

The Dutch and International Commerce (39:10–42:33)

• The Dutch aided the revolution, primarily through covert trade and financial support routed through their Caribbean trading hub, Saint Eustatius.
• Britain’s eventual declaration of war on the Netherlands tied into competition for colonial and slave-trading interests in West Africa.

Winners, Losers, and Unintended Consequences (42:33–46:00)

• The peace process at the Treaty of Paris favored Britain and the new United States, often at the expense of their allies:

  “France and Spain have allied with the Patriots. The Patriots win the war. France and Spain win the war. And yet they lose the peace.” (43:27)

• The revolution unleashed economic turmoil, massive debt (notably contributing to the financial crisis in France and the subsequent French Revolution), inflated economies, and redrawn trade networks.
• US independence opened the way for American global commerce, especially with India and China.

Long-Term Impact & Global Echoes (45:57–48:34)

• Bell calls the revolutionary era not a blip but a “geopolitical earthquake.”
• Wildman and Bell highlight the ironies and ripple effects:

  “It is an enormously effective way of changing the world, isn’t it? This small struggle for 13 colonies becomes a world event.” (45:51) “Money talks.” (48:33)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On internationalizing the Revolution:
  “There is not just fighting all across the 13 colonies. There is fighting in Canada, there’s fighting everywhere in the Caribbean, …in the Mediterranean, …in India, …contests in Senegal and West Africa as well.” – Richard Bell (21:07)

• On myth vs. reality:
  “Every nation’s history is a kind of a mythology in a way that reinforces the values, values of that nation and somehow separates it from the greater story.” – Don Wildman (09:16)

• On Spain’s hidden influence:
  “New Orleans is this sort of entrepot…think of it as like an arsenal of the revolution. And the Patriots keep going to that…warehouse for more Spanish guns and more Spanish money every time they face annihilation…” – Richard Bell (37:13)

• On the Caribbean’s importance:
  “By every calculation, those most valuable colonies are not Massachusetts, …they’re Jamaica. Jamaica, Jamaica and Jamaica.” – Richard Bell (28:56)

• On the fate of the Spanish empire:
  “So if you’re the Spanish government, looking back, you might have said that joining the Patriots was the worst idea the Spanish government’s ever had.” – Richard Bell (44:53)

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Key Timestamps

• 01:41 – What is a world war? Framing the episode’s question.
• 04:15 – France’s entry and the geopolitics of alliance.
• 09:49 – The multinational and multicultural realities within the revolution.
• 15:36 – The calculated European motives for entering the war.
• 20:24 – Making the case for calling the revolution a world war.
• 23:28 – How and why France got involved.
• 28:43 – The Caribbean as a theater of war and economic focus.
• 33:32 – Spain’s massive but overlooked contribution.
• 39:27 – The Dutch commercial support via St. Eustatius.
• 43:15 – The postwar peace and shifting fortunes.
• 45:57 – Economic disruptions and global aftermath.

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains a conversational, witty, and inquisitive tone, blending scholarly expertise with accessibility. Both host and guest are eager to break myths and add complexity to the standard narrative, with Don Wildman often drawing out Bell’s expertise for listeners who crave the “messy, global, and entangled” true story of the American Revolution.

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Summary Takeaway

The American Revolution was not just a colonial insurgency but a truly global conflict, woven into the world’s geopolitics, economics, and migrations. Far from an isolated event, it catalyzed a restructuring of empires, trade, and populations that still echo today.

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Transcript

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[Don Wildman]

What is it that makes a war a world war? Oxford English Dictionary traces the term to a Scottish newspaper back in 1848 that cited a war among great powers. In our modern age, we use the term twice and both fit the bill. But Lord knows great powers went to war long before the 20th century. Think of the Napoleonic wars, the War of Spanish Succession, the Mongol invasions, and Rome's conquest of the Mediterranean. Each a hemispheric struggle with global consequences. What about smaller wars that spark bigger ones? Our revolution, for instance, a battle for one tiny nation's independence that created new alliances and tipped the balance of power in Western Europe. Was ours the world war of the American Revolution? Or was it the other way around? History hit listeners. Hello again, I'm Don Wildman. Americans naturally speak of the Revolutionary War in personal terms. It was our fight for independence, our struggle to escape tyranny, our flag of freedom planted in the land of liberty and all that is clear and true in our version of events. But there's another reality to this, another angle on the revolution that is illuminating but usually mentioned as an afterthought, that our noble struggle was fought for our own reasons and happened against the backdrop of a larger conflict fought for empire, a world war that unfolded between Great Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands. The American Revolution was, in this regard, a global event. But just how global? How much can we call the revolution? A world war involving nations far and wide? And did its outcome alter the path of world history as much as it did American? Let's find out. Richard Bell is a scholar and teacher at the University of Maryland. His new book is the American Revolution and the Fate of the World. It reexamines America's founding fight in a much broader context. Professor Bell, Richard, greetings.

[Richard Bell]

My honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

[Don Wildman]

Don, the general point you make in your book is that the American Revolution, as I've mentioned, was part of a greater, more consequential conflict between multiple parties, which by definition tilts towards World war. What made it so? How was the American Revolution? The kickoff in a much bigger game.

[Richard Bell]

The kickoff in a much bigger game. Yes. I'm gonna hesitate to use sporting analogies, but you're absolutely right. I think, you know, we in the United States, where I live and work, though I'm originally British, tend to focus on the sort of nation boosting, nation building version of this narrative, where it's David versus Goliath, where it's rebels versus Redcoats, where it's colonists versus the Crown. And yet to study the American Revolutionary War itself and to look at the people who we call the Founding Fathers here in America, think of George Washington, think of Ben Franklin. To read their mail and to read their private letters and public letters is just to see how much they were interested in hitching the cause of American independence to geopolitical imperatives that would allow them to reach their goals. So the most famous example here, of course, is. Is the entry of France into the war in 1778, in part due to two years of lobbying by Benjamin Franklin, who goes to Paris in 1776 for that express purpose. And when we think about the role of the French in the war, it's very difficult to sort of overstate just how important it is, because France has a navy. Britain certainly has a navy. The most powerful military force in the world at the time is Britain's Royal Navy. And the Patriots, sadly, don't have a navy except on paper, the Continental Navy is the back of a napkin. It's not really yet a fully fledged military force. So if the patriots want to avoid having their chances of independence slowly strangled by ever tightening British naval blockades, they need a naval ally. And France steps up in ways that have nothing to do with King Louis support for an anti colonial, anti imperial, anti monarchical insurgency. Why would King Louis support that? And everything to do with King Louis larger global interests about knocking Britain, its great rival, down to size. And that basic logic, you know, applies to other key allies like Spain and the Netherlands, and also an unheralded ally in India in South Asia, where a Muslim prince named Ida Ali stacks up on George Washington's side as well. So the notion that it's just all the King's horse, that the patriots knock down all the King's horses and all the King's men on their own, Don, it's not what the patriots thought. It's not what the patriots wanted. They're working hard to build a sort of coalition of the willing in the moment at the time.

[Don Wildman]

I love this. I love it because it broadens our understanding of where this really sits in the big story of the world. And it really does. Just like, you know, when we talk about the revolution as being sort of a second act to the French and Indian War, as we call it, the Seven Years War really sets so much up for what is the cause of revolution here. This is the other end of that, or at least during it and afterwards. And it really spreads the whole thing out to understand what was really going on. Listeners will notice from your accent that you might have a view of these events different from the average American. You're British born and raised, obviously. I'm curious what the typical English student learns about the American Revolution.

[Richard Bell]

Listen, I can't speak for all British schoolboys or schoolgirls. Back in the 1980s and 1990s when I was growing up and I had the fortune to go to a private school, a sort of Budget Hogwarts. So. But I. But I. But I will say that I think my own experience and the experience of many other British school children in that era was characterized by a complete lack of exposure to the American Revolution and to American history more broadly at that point. Back then, not even the civil rights era and Martin Luther King were part of British curriculums. I think that's changed now, thank goodness. So I didn't learn like a skewed pro British version of the war. We didn't call it the war of American aggression or Anything like that. It was just a big black hole in our education. You know, I remember studying the Tudors where plucky British Protestants beat up on Catholic France and Catholic Spain. And then we jumped forward like 400 years, Don, to study World War II when plucky British Protestants beat up on Nazi Germany. Right. You see a pattern here? Yeah. So I came to maturity as a college student knowing almost nothing about American history. So I've been sort of a. I was a blank slate when I finally got to college and met some reputable, you know, scholars of American history who were able to tell me just how chaotic and messy and global and entangled parts of this conflict were. And I think that's also at odds with how it's often studied in American high schools as well, where even still today, the impulse is to tell sort of nation boosting narrow stories.

[Don Wildman]

And now you're at the University of Maryland, so you're on our shores and we can straighten you out. It's a myth. Every nation's history is a kind of a mythology in a way that reinforces the values, values of that nation and somehow separates it from the greater story. It's just a matter of pragmatics as much as anything else, I guess. But what happens here in North America is ostensibly between Britain and her colonies. In fact, as you've already mentioned, involves plenty of other parties, namely multiple nationalities within the colonies, never mind organized nations of Native Americans. Can you speak to this aspect of things that again, we often forget how much immigrants were making this country at that time?

[Richard Bell]

Yeah, such a key point. You put your finger on there, Don. And I don't want listeners to this to think this is just a book about, you know, sort of foreign policy and the diplomatic alliances between France and Spain. This book is much bigger than that and hopefully much richer too. This is about people. This is a book about all the people across the world who are sort of sucked in to the American revolutionary fight in one way or the other, often in very unexpected and very consequential ways. This is not just a story about nation states like France and Spain. It's also a story, as you point out, about indigenous peoples and whether they're going to sit out this civil war within the British Empire or whether they're going to try to protect and advance their own interests in the trans Appalachian west by choosing one side or the other and wading in to bring on the outcome that they desire and hold off the outcome they most fear. And indigenous people proved to be central actors in the American War. I argue in the book that we should think of the Trans Appalachian west as the single largest theater of this military conflict, you know, stretching like a thousand miles from north to south. I talk about the role of African descended people in America in some detail here because many of them use the chaos of this civil war within the British Empire to seek freedom, to self liberate themselves, often by running towards the British army, which sees a strategic advantage in welcoming black freedom seekers away from patriot slave owners. And then when Britain loses the war, those black freedom seekers, and there are tens of thousands of them, many of them evacuate to British Canada, especially Nova Scotia, trying to seek a better life. They're helping to sort of people and populate what remains of the British Empire. And then they find great dissatisfaction with their second class treatment in British Canada. And about 1500 of them are able to relocate themselves to another British colony where the British flag is flying after the American Revolution, and that's Sierra Leone in West Africa. And they will eventually, ironically, launch a insurgency against British rule in Sierra Leone. So that sort of migration dawn from let's say, Virginia, where a guy who I write about who was enslaved by George Washington, escapes from Mount Vernon, goes to British occupied New York, goes to British occupied South Carolina, is evacuated to Nova Scotia, then ends up in Sierra Leone. And that's a sort of global odyssey there that is representative of tens of thousands of other people, some of them black, some of them white, many of them native, and their sort of migration and mobility around these different theaters of war and conflict zones in that era. So this sets people on the move. This is a major event in sort of the history of migration in the world. So it's not just about nation states and treaties and soldiers. It's about refugees and asylum seekers and prisoners of war as well.

[Don Wildman]

I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

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[Don Wildman]

The European powers have been at each other for centuries. This is a chess game that's been played for a long time. They're not going to join this battle, ours on this side, naively, I mean, this is to gain an advantage. What is going on at Europe at this time in the 18th century that is so fraught and fragile? What are their reasons to support the Americans in a war? Honestly, they would assume the Americans are going to lose.

[Richard Bell]

Yeah, that's right, Don. If you got to sit down on the next episode of this show with the Comte de Vergennes, the French foreign minister who's basically the prime minister of France during the revolutionary crisis and the next week got to sit down with the Conde de Florida Blanca, the Spanish prime minister during this war, you would not leave that conversation thinking they were naive. You would think, wow, these are two of the smartest guys in worldwide politics at this time. And I think you'd be right about that. So one of the things I say in the book is that when France and Spain do decide as governments as states to officially wade in, having covertly supplied the patriots with all sorts of arms and munitions in the previous years, they're making a very conscious, calculated decision that they think is in France's best interests and in Spain's best interest. They're not terribly interested in what's in the interests of the patriots. They're of course, interested in their own people and politics and the masters they serve. King Carlos in Spain, King Louis in France. So for both France and Spain, this is an opportunity to knock Britain on its knees. I could say a ruder word, a different part of the body. Knock it on, it's something else. But knock it on its knees is what I'm going to go with here. Because they've seen fairly rapid British Imperial expansion at their expense in the most recent World war. In America, there's this war called the French and Indian War that we often study in K12 schools here in the US but that's part of actually a global war between Britain, France and Spain and others called the Seven Years War. And Britain wins that war at great expense to French territorial control over Canada. France is kicked out of places like Quebec and at great expense to Spanish territories in Central America and the Caribbean. You know, we see Britain gain a toehold in Central America, places like Honduras at the end of the Seven Years War. We see Britain briefly take a Havana. We see Britain take East and West Florida from the Spanish in the Seven Years War. So when 10, 15 years later, there comes an opportunity to kick Britain, while it's very distracted, trying to suppress its own internal insurgency and steal some of those possessions back or reclaim those possessions, as France and Spain would see it, it makes an obvious territorial calculus to say yes. So Spain's a great example here. Don't. Spain pours untold soldiers, ships and sailors into the American Revolutionary War. And even though they don't fight in any of the 13 rebel colonies that have become the United States and so are very easy to overlook and not see. They're tearing up and tearing through British Florida. They are tearing through British Honduras and Belize. Admiral future Admiral Nelson gets beat up in one of those skirmishes with Spanish soldiers. They're trying to reclaim from Britain places like the Upper Mississippi River Valley. And then in Europe, Don Spain and France are working together, teaming up literally against British interests. They invade southern Britain, or at least they try to in 1779, they call it the second Spanish Armada. And then Spain tries to dislodge British military from Gibraltar, that all important rocky outpost at Spain's southern tip, which basically guards the gates to the Mediterranean. And whoever controls Gibraltar controls the Mediterranean Sea. Spain wants it back and launches so much firepower, firepower and manpower in the siege of British Gibraltar in 1779 and 80 and 81, that the single longest siege of the American Revolutionary War is nowhere near America. It's in Gibraltar. It's a three and a half year siege where Spain loses more people than the Patriot Coalition loses anywhere else in the war. It's in Gibraltar, in the Mediterranean.

[Don Wildman]

So we're talking about a struggle for empire, which translates as I want more colonies or I want to keep my colonies or whatever version of that events we're talking about. But that's really what's happening. Ironically, of course, we're trying to break free and create our own country, but these European powers are trying to grab what they can and hold on to what they have and tip the geopolitical balance to their advantage. So let's go through the list of. We're mentioning these things offhandedly, but I want to go through the list of these powers, these nations who are at war on our behalf in a way, starting with, of course, France. Rich. I just want to try to hold on to the fact that this is a list of different countries, and I want to go through each one specifically and talk about their role and what they were really going after. But taken together, it really does sound like this can be called a world war. Right?

[Richard Bell]

Yeah. I would certainly embrace that characterization. Now, notice that I'm not gonna go sit here and call it the first world war, number one. I think that's disrespectful to what happened in 1914-1918 in Europe and around the world. And I also think that every scholar of the Seven Years War, known in America as the French and Indian War, would send me an angry email saying, you know what? The Seven Years War was the First World War. Who do you think you are? But I do think the American Revolution War is a world war. Just look at the geography here, Don. I'm sure we'll come back to the powers involved, but just look at the geography. There is not just fighting all across the 13 colonies. There is fighting in Canada, there's fighting in everywhere in the Caribbean. There's fighting in Central America, there's fighting in the Mediterranean, there's fighting in England, there's fighting in India, there's contests in Senegal and West Africa as well. It's all. It's all motivated in part by the tea trade from China, from Canton. There are really very few parts of the world which are untouched by the American Revolution. In fact, one of the legacies of the American Revolution is that Britain can no longer dump its convicted felons in Virginia and Maryland, so starts dumping them in Australia instead. So plenty of places touched by this conflict.

[Don Wildman]

It's called, isn't it, the Anglo French War, 1778-1783, which happens to be right smack in the middle of what we call the American Revolution. It will itself. You know, it is part of the Second Hundred Year War which in aggregate lasts from 1683 to 1815. I just love this. I love the fact that it broadens the whole subject of our revolution and puts it in this geopolitical context.

[Richard Bell]

And what I love about it too is it also allows us to bring in sort of non traditional actors. So, you know, I've written this book about the American Revolutionary War and, and the Patriots and the Founding Fathers are in every chapter. You don't go long without mentioning Washington or Franklin or Valley Forge or whatever else. But everyone else is here too this time as well. You know, black refugees seeking freedom and asylum wherever they can. And major characters, Native people like Molly Brandt, the Haudenosaunee diplomat who's holding the alliance together out in the trans Appalachian west is a focus. The Prussian drill master Baron Steuben, who many American schoolchildren know a little bit about. He is sent to stage as one example of all the European volunteers like Lafayette, who come over and serve within the Continental Army. And then I've got an American schoolteacher who serves as a patriot privateer, basically a pirate working on behalf of the patriots. And he gets captured at sea by the Royal Navy not once but twice and is held in one British black hole prison after another around the Atlantic world. So putting these human stories alongside this sort of top down geopolitics, Age of Empires stuff, for me that's where the rubber meets the road. Where things get really interesting when you see the human cost of all these geopolitical stakes.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, Most famously the ally is France. It enters into the revolution halfway through or in the midst of, which really triggers our ability to take on the British Navy because we didn't have a navy as you've mentioned, but their role in the war had been predates that they've been secretly assisting early on sending funds and supplies through very discreet means. It can't have been just idealism. Even though we so root the ideas of the Enlightenment and what's, you know, spiritually fueling our revolution to France, likes of Voltaire and so forth. What were they really into it for?

[Richard Bell]

So it depends which French people you're talking about. Right. Don so there are plenty of ordinary French people who do think the idealistic rhetoric of the American patriots is very attractive. Right. Natural rights ideology has been circulating on both sides of the Atlantic, much of it French in origin, by the way, for a while. And natural philosophers like Voltaire are giving the revolutionaries two thumbs up. And ordinary French people are rushing to see plays in Paris about the courage and character of George Washington during the revolution. Think of the reception that Ben Franklin gets when he steps off the boat with his silly beaver skin hat on his head. And they all say, oh, here's an American. Let's put him on a pedestal. So there is some genuine enthusiasm for the American cause, as there is in Britain, ironically, as well, among ordinary British people. But ordinary British people are not the ones in power in Parliament, their government makes a very different decision, obviously. And in France, too, the Comte de Vergennes, the foreign minister, and King Louis, they are not doing this because they are sympathetic to the causes of throwing off empires or rejecting monarchy and aristocracy. King Louis is a monarch and his prime minister is an aristocrat, and they're both charged, basically under oath, with maintaining and preserving and expanding a constitutional monarchy in the context of empire. So it's a very odd thing, Don, in retrospect, to see that the French government does wade in to a cause which on its merits, does not seem to overlap with the core values of the French empire. But the other core value is being anti British.

[Don Wildman]

Of course, what has always confused me is that again, in the American telling of this situation, Saratoga is one, and that's 1777, and boom. The French say, my goodness, they can really fight. Let's help them. That's the take, you know, in grade school. And again, I'm not blaming anybody. This is just how history gets taught when you're young. I understand this, but it's really important to understand that even at that point, the French knew that this was a real uphill battle. So what was going on for the French in Europe at that time that would have convinced them that that was the right move to make?

[Richard Bell]

Yes, you put your finger on something really important there. Right. This sort of myth about the American Revolution. If we talk about France's role in the American Revolution, we often say it's a response to patriot victory at Saratoga over the British, as you just said there. Right. But we learn from the French archives, and I'm building everything I know here on generations of French scholars who've done this extraordinary work here. We know from the French archives that the Comte de Vergennes has been secretly planning for a formal French military alliance since way before Saratoga. And if the American patriots are so good at winning battles, why would they need French help? Right? We know that they do need French help because they've lost way more battles than they've won. And France knows it can be the difference maker in this evolving conflict. King Louis has only come to power quite recently. That's an important thing to think about in terms of French politics here, Don. And like any young king coming to the throne, think of, you know, Henry V in British history several hundred years earlier. He wants to make his mark on the world, and the best way to do it is through quick and speedy military victory against your most hated rival. Don't worry, everyone. The French troops will be back by Christmas. They're promising them. Of course, that's never the case. The troops are never home by Christmas. They see King George's, you know, weakened and distracted and stretched thin, having grown his empire too quickly at the expense of France and Spain in recent years. So Vergen calculates that spending money now is the best way to not spend more money fighting Britain, when Britain is stronger 20 years down the track. So Vergen actually does a sort of cost benefit analysis. Don of should we spend this money? How much is it going to cost? We know we're already in debt from the previous war against Britain. Is it a good idea to get deeper in debt? And Vergenes says, yeah, I've run the numbers. It's a good bet. Let's do it. And he's wrong, wrong, wrong, of course. But the point is, he does all that diligence. He's really thinking, as your question is, strategically at the time.

[Don Wildman]

Well, at the time, Haiti is starting to pay off for them so much. Right. They're seeing what's left of their holdings because they've been chased out of North America pretty much as something to protect and something to cultivate. All that is part of his thinking. Right?

[Richard Bell]

I think that's absolutely key. So we often, you know, neglect the Caribbean period when we talk about the American Revolutionary War. One of the chapters in my book deals explicitly with the Caribbean as a theater of war. And we could say two things about it. First of all, there are dozens of British colonies in North America and the Caribbean in 1775, not just the 13 that eventually secure their independence and become the United States. So any American should ask themselves, well, why don't all the other British colonies secede from the Union at the same time, secede from the Empire? Why doesn't Jamaica Go the same way South Carolina does, given all they have in common. That's a question we should ask. What I can tell you very briefly is that King George and his prime minister, Lord north, are desperate to make sure that Britain's most valuable colonies in the new World do not break away. And by every calculation, those most valuable colonies are not Massachusetts, they're not Virginia, they're not even South Carolina. They're Jamaica. Jamaica. Jamaica and Jamaica. So making sure Jamaica does not have any opportunity to become insurgent, active, rebellious, ring, fencing it with troops and ships becomes an important British priority, especially when France and Spain get in, because they have navies that could seize Jamaica and expand the French empire. So it wouldn't just be Guadeloupe and Martinique and Saint Domingue, it would be Jamaica on that list as well as a new French colony. Spain would love that too. And of course, France and Spain do not want the Royal Navy to take any of their colonies in this war. And for them, as you point out, you know, the colony of Saint Domingue, which will later become Haiti, is a cash cow, a money printing factory, and they have to protect their interests in this war torn region.

[Don Wildman]

Boy, I cannot wait to do an episode on the Caribbean specifically because there's so much hidden information there about why they're, you know, climate wise, shipping wise, defense wise. Those islands were, you know, so strategically placed for the, for empire building. It's so interesting. Did the French, though, expect to get their Canada back? You know, did they expect to win back what they lost in the Seven years War?

[Richard Bell]

I'm not sure. Canada remained their top priority. I think you've already put your finger on the Caribbean as the sort of most target rich environment for anyone during this time of upheaval. It's a target rich environment for the British and for the French and for the Spanish and the Dutch. In fact, in that early phase before France and Spain actually officially get in, in 1778 and 1779, most of the COVID supplies that the French and the Spanish governments are funneling to the patriots is coming not directly from Madrid or from Paris. It's coming from Martinique and Guadeloupe and Saint Domingue, it's coming from Spanish Cuba, it's coming from the Dutch island of Saint Eustatia. So I think there's a sense among the French that Canada is gone and we can must make sure that nothing else topples during this time of great uncertainty.

[Don Wildman]

I'll be back with more American history after this short break.

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[Don Wildman]

It'S crazy to think of the siege of Yorktown as much as part of saving Haiti as it was, you know, helping those Americans, of course.

[Richard Bell]

All those French soldiers and ships. Yep.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah. Spain is so overlooked in this, in this conversation for us. It's crazy considering they, they controlled over half of North America at the time. Far more skin in the game than France has, you know, on the continent itself. Are they allies? We've touched on this, but I want to be clear about their alliance with the French at this time.

[Richard Bell]

Yeah, that's the key phrase, alliance with the French. When Spain gets in in 1779, they don't sign a treaty with George Washington and the patriots of the Continental Congress. Cause on paper at least, you know, those are a bunch of Protestant upstart rebels leading an anti colonial insurgenc against monarchy. Why would King Carlos put his name to a document signed by someone like George Washington or John Hancock? So even though they want to prop up that anti British insurgency movement, they want to have clean hands. Yeah.

[Don Wildman]

They want to stick with the Catholics.

[Richard Bell]

That's right. So the ally with France. Right. Who is another Catholic country led by a Catholic monarch. As you probably know, the dynasties of the French monarchy and the Spanish monarchy are actually one dynasty, the House of Bourbon. They're all related To. To each other. So the House of Bourbon brings the two sides together, France and Spain. Spain allies with France and France is allied with George Washington. So by the transitive powers of being allied with France, Spain is indirectly allied with George Washington. And I think the last 20 years we've seen a great flowering of excellent scholarship on different aspects of the Spanish alliance, which I try to really put together in new ways in my book. So we've got this great military history, a sort of top down, Madrid centered history from Larry Ferreira, who wrote a great book called Brothers at Arms about the Spanish alliance. And then the great UNC historian Kathleen Duvall, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize. Her last book was called Independence Lost, and it's about the role of Spanish and native relations in Florida on the Gulf coast during this war. So my chapter tries to bring that top down and that bottom up scholarship together to sort of tell about the interaction. And we see that Spain, as you point out, Don, goes all in on this war because it has much more skin in the game than France does. Spain is the colonial power west of the Mississippi on the North American mainland. Spain wants to return to being the colonial power in Florida, which is currently in British hands. And Spain has its gold and silver mines in Peru and Mexico. And it does not want to see any British expansion in time of war or time of peace that could threaten those mines which are the key to Spain's power in the world. So it throws everything it can at supporting George Washington in different theaters where Washington himself can't reach, like Central America, like the Caribbean Sea, like Gibraltar, and actually invading England itself, something Washington would have loved to do if he had enough ships to do it.

[Don Wildman]

The complexity of that alliance, I mean, can be seen right in the Louisiana Purchase, you know, which had been Spanish and then French. And we think of it as Napoleon's gift to us, but it's really a result of that, those politics between those two countries. This is secret financial support we're talking about from Spain, weapons, uniforms, et cetera, from 76 right through. And it comes from Paris and New Orleans, right through New Orleans. It's coming up and supplying us. I'm fascinated. Why we don't know about this. It's such a cool, you know, conspiratorial history. It seems. Seems like it should be taught.

[Richard Bell]

I agree. It should all be taught, right? My book should be assigned in every classroom. Absolutely.

[Don Wildman]

There you go. Thank you.

[Richard Bell]

But you're right. So as I said, I've learned about this through excellent scholarship by people like Larry Ferreira and What they've discovered is, yeah, the COVID sort of machination of the Spanish government to appear to have clean hands, to appear to be neutral, to appear to be staying out of it while secretly funneling all sorts of things into the Patriots arms, is absolutely massive. And New Orleans, which is Spanish New Orleans at the time, is the centerpiece of that. New Orleans is connected to Spanish Cuba, and New Orleans is also connected up the Mississippi River Valley to some of the battlefields where the actual Revolutionary War is being fought there. So New Orleans is this sort of entrepot. And think of it as like an arsenal of the revolution. And the Patriots keep going to that, like Sam's Club, to that Walmart warehouse for more Spanish guns and more Spanish money every time they face annihilation, which is quite frequently in 1776 and 1777.

[Don Wildman]

And in 79, 1779, Spain does declare war against Great Britain, but as an ally of France, not involved in our war at all.

[Richard Bell]

That's absolutely right. And so one of the reasons we've forgotten, I think Spain's role, Don, is because that alliance was by proxy, with France being the proxy in the middle. And because so much of the most visible Spanish military buildup, you know, where do Spanish ships go? Where do Spanish soldiers go, where do Spanish sailors go? Is not in the 13 colonies that become the United States. It's all around them. It's in Florida, it's in Illinois and Michigan, it's in Louisiana, it's in Texas, and it's in Nicaragua and Belize and Honduras. Because we've limited our geography to the 13 colonies that become the United States, we fail to see how the larger war is also raging all around those places but beyond their borders.

[Don Wildman]

Exactly. Okay. Last but not least, the Dutch, former colonists in North America, haven't been since 1667, gave it up to the English. But we do see the pattern. There are these colonial grudges over lost territory, but there's more than this. Where do the Dutch come down on this revolution?

[Richard Bell]

Yeah. No, I don't want to give the Dutch too much airtime here, because even though they are the third musketeer of the European powers who weighed in, they get in so late 1780 is the treaty that's only about a year ahead of Yorktown, that their military influence is not nearly as keenly felt as that of Spain and France. I really think it's Spain and France and then the Dutch. But let's talk about the Dutch. Let's give them a little bit of their due here, because how many Times do I get to talk about the Dutch? Not many. What the Dutch have is money. And what the Dutch have is an extremely robust and global supply chain. So if you want to buy anything and Spain doesn't have it, then the Dutch have it in spades. And so there's this little island. It's a really tiny volcanic rock in the Caribbean. It's a Dutch island. At the time, it's called Saint Eustatius. The first time I went looking for it, I honestly had trouble finding it on a map. It's very small, but it's very, very important because it's neutral before 1780, because the Netherlands are not part of the revolution before 1780. And so theoretically, any power can come and buy stuff from the warehouses, 600 warehouses that Dutch merchants have on this tiny volcanic rock. And in practice, that means the patriots come calling all the time looking for supplies neutrally sourced. You know, arms and uniforms and medicines and gunpowder and tents and surgeons, bandages, et cetera, et cetera. By one statistic, even before the Dutch enter the war on the patriot side, 40% of ships coming into Philly and Baltimore are coming from St. Eustatius loaded with these Dutch sourced supplies. So the Dutch are the provisioners of the Patriot rebellion for a long time. So it's only a matter of time until Britain gets sufficiently pissed off that the Dutch are doing that under neutral flags that Britain will eventually pile on and challenge the Dutch in war. And when the Netherlands and Britain do finally formalize their opposition to one another in 1780, we see the Royal Navy and the Dutch Navy go to war off the west coast of Africa as the Royal Navy is trying to steal Dutch possessions from that part of the world and start flying the British flag. And you may be wondering what Dutch possessions the Netherlands has in West Africa. And the answer is about a dozen slave forts. And Britain would like nothing more than to expand its market share over the transatlantic slave trade at that point point and weaken its geopolitical rival, the Dutch. Which is sort of ironic because as I argue in the book, one of the greatly unforeseen consequences of the American Revolution is the rise of an anti slavery movement in Britain after the war, which actually succeeds in abolishing Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade. But that's a very unpredictable series of events. And if you ask the Prime Minister, Lord north, he wants to take as many slave forts as he can from the Dutch by the end of the war.

[Don Wildman]

The Dutch officially recognized the United States in 1782. As you say, very late in the game part of that. There is some ideals in this, maybe the cynical ones. They're the Protestants. They're the Protestant country. So they're going to support. They had much to do with it being a Protestant land. America, in the beginning, it generally doesn't work out well for the Dutch as their world empire begins to, you know, continues to degrade. And it's the same thing that happens to the Spanish soon enough. I mean, speaking in century terms, all of this has varying impacts on, you know, payoffs for these guys down the road. It's really. The British do very well in the end, coming out of the American Revolution, ironically.

[Richard Bell]

Yeah, that's one of the deep ironies here, Don, that you put your finger on. Right. We know who the victors are in the American Revolution. They are the Patriots, right? Sometimes literally the leaders of that resistance. Think of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson. They become future presidents of the United States. We know who the winners are in the, let's say, the global peace talks in Paris that end the war that produced the Treaty of Paris. The losers may surprise you because some of the losers were the winners. France and Spain have allied with the Patriots. The Patriots win the war. France and Spain win the war. And yet they lose the peace. They lose the peace treaty. The peace treaty is an incredibly dramatic set of backroom wheelings and dealings which result in. In the British and the Patriots making a private backroom deal that effectively excludes the interests of France and Spain and the Netherlands and native people and people in South Asia and many other people as well, from the spoils of victory there. And so, ironically, France and Spain and the Netherlands get almost nothing in the formal settlement. And Britain, arguably, and we could debate this till the cows come home, get a whole lot of things they actually want in the Treaty of Paris. And if we could skip forward, as you just did, Don, and think over the next century, we can say that the Spanish Empire will be systematically reduced by various imperatives, one of which is the westward expansion of the United States, which will eat into the Spanish New World and the Mexican New World systematically. And the other is the expansion of the British Empire. So the Spanish Empire contracts as the British Empire expands in the roughly 50, 80 years after the American Revolution. So if you're the Spanish government, looking back, you might have said that joining the Patriots was the worst idea the Spanish government's ever had.

[Don Wildman]

Yes, exactly. Among other things. So the effect of this revolution on the world economy at the time, it causes inflation, it destroys trade networks, it creates enormous debt. I think of France, certainly. And that ends up playing out in their own revolution, which is a huge deal. Long term effects. The independence allowed the US to develop its own trade policies, especially towards the West. I mean, we become this purveyor of all sorts of resources over the next century. Plus that, of course, as you say, they open the West. How does that destroy Spain's empire? Needless to say, Never mind, as we've already talked about, the native peoples and everything that happens as a result of that. It is an enormously effective way of changing the world, isn't it? This small struggle for 13 colonies becomes a world event.

[Richard Bell]

Yeah, because, you know, in the big history of European empires, you called it the second Hundred Years War there, Don. The American Revolution can seem like a blip, but I don't think it's a blip. I think it's a geopolitical earthquake. Earthquake, right. And part of that is the military struggle that we've talked about so far today. But the book I've written covers much more than just the military struggle between those two states. It also looks at. Yeah. The economic consequences of this war. Let's say, during the war. Let's not lose sight of the fact that it causes a famine. One of the first refugee crises in modern human history is brought on by the American Revolution. And often natives and white loyalists, but especially natives are the victims of that famine. There are real consequences to all these economic contractions and tumults and naval blockades. And after the war, we see a sort of reshuffling of the economic world order. It is deeply ironic, perhaps that Britain and the US become very friendly trading partners pretty quick, even before political relations have been properly repaired and restored. And yet Also now the U.S. of course, gets to set its own international trading policies. It gets to decide, decide who it trades with. And the answer is everyone, not just Britain. And so free trade for the US after the war means reaching out to unexpected parts of the globe that US merchants in their colonial days had had very limited access to. And the great examples I point to in the book are India and China. We see US merchants race off to Canton in China right after the war. 1784 is the date of the first US merchant to arrive in China on board a ship called the Empress of China. And they're there, guess what? They're there to buy. They're there to buy tea. They're there to buy tea. Which, if you know about the Boston Tea Party, deeply ironic, but it turns out Americans love tea and they do not want to forsake it permanently. They want to source their own from the same place the British got them before the war. And then the US Goes into direct competition with the East India Company in the tea trade in China. We see similar things In India, where US merchants arrive after the war, 1784 again hoisting the Stars and Stripes on their ships. The first time an American ship with that flag has entered harbors around western India and eastern India, and they find that they have to basically get into bed with the British East India Company, which controls so much of the trade there. Again, deeply ironic given the Boston Tea Party.

[Don Wildman]

Well, capitalism first and foremost, making money. The Dutch taught us that much.

[Richard Bell]

Money talks.

[Don Wildman]

Yeah, in general, it's a be careful what you ask for situation. Richard Bell works at the University of Maryland and has written the book we talked about in this conversation. Put it on your the American Revolution and the Fate of the World. So important as we approach our celebrations of 250 and so forth to understand that we are part of a bigger picture even today. Thank you so much, Richard. Nice to meet you. I hope we meet again.

[Richard Bell]

Thanks so much, Don.

[Don Wildman]

Hey, thanks for listening to American History Hit. You know, every week we release new episodes. Two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American History Hit with me, Don Wildman. So grateful for your support.

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