Podcast Summary:

New Books Network
Episode: Ronald Angelo Johnson, "Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Sullivan Sommer
Guest: Ronald Angelo Johnson

Episode Overview

This episode features historian Ronald Angelo Johnson in conversation with host Sullivan Sommer about his new book, "Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution." Johnson introduces a reinterpretation of the American Revolution, recasting it as a transatlantic event steeped in racialized struggles for freedom, diplomatic entanglement, and the interconnected lives of people across the Atlantic world. Drawing upon previously underutilized sources—especially Caribbean newspapers and French diplomatic archives—Johnson brings new figures like Mackindal and Edward Stevens to the fore, reframing the Revolution’s narrative to emphasize its Atlantic scope and lingering global impact.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rethinking the American Revolution: A Transatlantic Perspective

• Purpose of the Book: Johnson’s aim is to help readers "see the American Revolution beyond a North American, a U.S.-focused event" ([05:03]).
• The Revolution is interpreted as an exchange of revolutionary ideals—liberty, equality, and freedom—"burning in the hearts of black people in the Caribbean and around the Atlantic world," not just among the Founding Fathers ([10:55]).
• Johnson distinguishes between the American Revolution as a phenomenon of changing minds and societal structures, and the Revolutionary War as just "a means by which to implement those revolutionary changes" ([06:24]).
• Notable Quote:

  “The Revolutionary War was an important part of the American Revolution, but it was different... But Americans today...we inherit the ideals of the American Revolution, not the battles.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [06:26]

2. Mackindal: Freedom’s Martyr and the Haitian Connection

• Mackindal’s story: Johnson opens and closes the book with Mackindal, a formerly enslaved African in Haiti, whose resistance movement predates American colonial agitation for liberty.
• Mackindal formed maroon communities that "affirmed the humanity of black individuality" ([11:23]) and openly taught enslaved people that "being African is beautiful, being African is valuable" ([13:10]).
• His legacy influenced the spirit of the later Haitian Revolution.
• Notable Quote:

  “Mackindal played an important role in rallying descendants of Africa to recall principles instilled within them by families, friends, and communities whom they would never see again.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson (quoting his own book) [13:30]

3. Personal Stakes: Johnson’s Journey and the Role of Diplomacy

• Johnson wrote much of the book in solitude on St. Croix due to COVID-19, immersing himself in a landscape deeply connected to the book’s events and people ([18:11]).
• His background as a U.S. diplomat shaped his conviction that "diplomacy is not about the paper... [but] about people from different cultures, different backgrounds, coming to a discussion with different understandings and finding compromise" ([24:03]).
• The U.S. could not have won independence "without being willing to compromise, being willing to give on certain issues, being willing to enlist help from other people" ([25:12]).
• Notable Quote:

  “From our birth, from, in our DNA is compromise. Understanding the needs of others and realizing that we need our neighbors, we need immigrants, we need people who are unlike us to be the best country that we can be.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [27:10]

4. Treaty of Paris 1763 & the Roots of Colonial Dissent

• The usual focus on "taxation without representation" is complicated by the 1763 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Seven Years War and forced Britain and France into financial straits:
  • Britain had to "spend more money to put military troops in places that used to belong to France" ([29:19]), resulting in taxes across the empire—including the American colonies.
  • France, losing North American territories, doubled down on brutal exploitation in colonies like Haiti.

5. Friendship, Education, and Revolution: Alexander Hamilton & Edward Stevens

• Johnson traces the deep childhood friendship of Hamilton and Stevens, both from St. Croix, and how their Caribbean upbringing and divergent paths (Hamilton toward revolution, Stevens toward diplomacy and medicine) reflect broader transatlantic currents ([35:24]).
• Their trajectories are paralleled by black and mixed-race figures who became leaders in the Haitian Revolution.

6. Print Culture’s Revolutionary Role

• Newspaper networks linked Saint Domingue, Haiti, and North America, exchanging both news and revolutionary ideas. Haitian newspapers reported on American events and black and white Saint-Dominguans staged their own rebellions against the French crown ([41:41]).
• Johnson broke new ground by tracing these print connections, showing "black and white people were also protesting and reacting against the French government in Paris at the same time" as Americans protested the British ([44:22]).
• Notable Fact:
  • Jacques Delaunay, a free man of color, led a rebellion in Saint Domingue in the 1760s, commanding black and white support—a precursor to the broader revolutions.

7. Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre: History and Image

• The illustration of the Boston Massacre, made famous by Paul Revere, whitewashed the actual diversity of the victims, notably Depicting Attucks (a black man) as white ([47:40]).

  • Johnson’s research shows how this distortion shaped memory and narrative.
  • Quote:

    “In that image, all the victims on the ground were white... In a... nation that embraced slavery... the idea that a black man was right out front in their image would have caused questions that Paul Revere didn’t want to have any part of.” ([51:50])

• Attucks’ real-life story—an enslaved man who escaped, lived as a free black man for 20 years, and was the first to die for Boston’s “liberty”—illuminates the complexities and contradictions of African American agency and sacrifice in the revolutionary narrative ([54:58]).

8. John Adams’ Complexity: On Revolution and Race

• Johnson reads a nuanced John Adams quote about the challenges and “fiery trials” of revolution ([56:43]), noting that Adams supported black participation in the revolution when convenient but later voiced reservations as global (and non-white) revolutions spread:
  • Adams wrote:

    “Revolutions are no trifles... they are never to be undertaken rashly... once revolutions begin... when and where are they to cease?”

  • Johnson observes that this was written in 1818 as Adams surveyed the "contagion of liberty" enveloping not only the U.S. but Haiti and Latin America ([57:47]).
  • "When revolution is in the hands of the people, the people decide when it begins and when it ends." ([61:20])

9. The Siege of Savannah: Black Haitian Volunteer Soldiers

• While Johnson “rants” against battle-focused narratives, he devotes a key chapter to the 1779 Siege of Savannah due to its transnational significance ([64:41]):
  • Over 1,000 black men in Haiti responded to a call to fight, but only 550 served in the Chasseur Volontaires battalion alongside white American soldiers—a unique instance of integrated fighting in the South ([66:16]).
  • French and American sources confirm their courage, dispelling the myth that black soldiers only did menial labor. The French commander praised their valor, and the Haitian newsletter celebrated their heroism ([70:34]).
  • Johnson sees in their story a challenge to American historical memory and a powerful example of transracial and transnational solidarity.
  • Notable Image:

    “I want to reorientate an image in your head of 550 black men in a matching military uniform with a musket and ball and powder, armed, coming onto the shore of Georgia, which was a huge slave society. That is an image that had never been seen or even conjured in the minds of Americans in the 18th century.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [66:16]

10. Ending with Mackindal and the Treaty of 1783: Ongoing Revolutions

• Johnson closes with the Treaty of Paris (1783) and a return to Mackindal’s enduring influence ([77:24]).
  • Postwar, black veterans and leaders in Haiti, inspired by their revolutionary service, became central figures in the Haitian Revolution.
  • He underscores that the “contagion of liberty” seeded in these events ignited the revolutions that followed in Haiti and throughout Latin America ([79:56]).
  • Notable Reflection:

    “What happened in North America did not stay in North America. It is going to infect the globe with a contagion of liberty that ... once it starts, it cannot be turned off.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [80:10]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “I want my readers to begin to see the American Revolution as these exchanges between people in different places from different backgrounds, but all living through this reality that we now call the American Revolution.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [05:03]
• “They were not waiting around for Enlightenment writers like Voltaire and Rousseau and Montesquieu to tell them that they deserved freedom. They knew it, and they were doing things to pursue that. And Mackindal ... was not just concerned about his own freedom. He was concerned about the freedom of his people.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [12:05]
• “Diplomacy is not about the paper. It’s not about the resulting treaties, which are important, ... but diplomacy at its core is about people.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [24:03]
• “You see, just in that alone, I’m trying to reorient what was happening in that moment. ... White Georgians and black Haitians falling in battle together and falling literally next to each another...in Savannah, Georgia, a place that is known [for] horrible slavery and segregation.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [69:25]
• “Once it starts, it cannot be turned off. And ... we are still in an act of revolution, of trying to make a reality [the promise] that all people are created equal.” — Ronald Angelo Johnson [80:40]

Important Timestamps

• [01:07] – Dramatic prologue: Mackindal’s martyrdom in Haiti
• [05:03] – Redefining the Revolution; John Adams’s vision of "the revolution in the minds and hearts"
• [11:23] – Mackindal’s legacy and Black resistance pre-dating North American unrest
• [18:11] – Johnson’s personal motivations & St. Croix writing retreat
• [24:03] – The meaning of diplomacy and compromise in U.S. founding
• [29:19] – The Treaty of Paris (1763) and its deep imperial consequences
• [35:24] – Hamilton & Edward Stevens: Caribbean friendships, education, migration
• [41:41] – Print culture: How Haiti and the U.S. colonies exchanged revolutionary ideas
• [47:40] – The Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks, and the power of propaganda in images
• [56:43] – John Adams’s warning about “fiery trials” and endless revolution
• [64:33] – The Siege of Savannah and the story of 550 black Haitian soldiers
• [77:24] – Closing reflections: Treaty of 1783, Mackindal’s spirit, and the revolutionary “contagion of liberty”

Conclusion

Johnson’s "Entangled Alliances" reframes the American Revolution as a profoundly interconnected, Atlantic-wide struggle, with diplomacy, race, and cross-border alliances at its heart. The book, grounded in riveting personal stories and wide-ranging archival research, calls readers to recognize the Revolution as a "contagion of liberty" whose promise and challenges remain alive today.