350. The Triumph of George Washington (Part 4)

The Rest Is History

Goalhanger

History

4.6 • 18.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

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Summary

With the French and Spanish siding with George Washington’s revolutionaries, the game is up for the British, and it seems time for them to cut their losses. Following the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, the war is effectively over, but what are the short and long term consequences of this? In our final episode on the American revolution, Tom, Dominic and Professor Adam Smith look at the end of the war, the subsequent Treaty of Paris, and the broader question of how the revolution shaped the United States and the future of its people.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for listening to the Rest is History. For bonus episodes, early access, add free
0:05.4	listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at Rest is HistoryPod.com.
0:12.0	Or if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks.
0:30.6	What if it was a mistake from the start? The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution,
0:37.1	the creation of the United States of America. What if all this was a terrible idea?
0:42.5	And what if the injustices and madness of American life since then have occurred not in spite of
0:47.9	the virtues of the founding fathers, but because of them? The revolution, this argument might run,
0:54.9	was a needless and brutal bit of slaveholders panic mixed with enlightenment,
0:59.1	arggle, bargle, producing a country that was always marked for violence and disruption and
1:04.8	demagogu-y. Look north to Canada, or south to Australia, and you will see different possibilities
1:11.4	of peaceful evolution away from Britain towards sane and whole more equitable and less sangrenary
1:17.9	countries. No revolution, and slavery might have ended as it did elsewhere in the British Empire,
1:24.8	more peacefully and sooner. We could have ended with a social democratic commonwealth that stretched
1:31.6	from north to south and near continent-wide Canada. So that Tom was Adam Gopnik, a very great essayist,
1:41.1	in the New Yorker in May 2017, asking if the American Revolution was a mistake from the stars.
1:47.8	And of course, you and I will have our own opinions about it, it was a mistake. But the fact is that
1:53.6	as we reach episode four of this mighty epic, we are in 1778, the French and soon the Spanish
2:02.9	piled in, or in Spanish case, Will Pylem, and they will be followed by other countries who form a
2:08.8	League of Arm Neutrality, the Russians, the Danes, the Prussians, the Austrians, the Portuguese,
2:13.2	they're basically making it very difficult for the British. And from this point, don't you think
2:18.0	Tom, the game is kind of up for Britain? I think the game has been up right from the start.
2:22.9	I don't think there was any prospect of the British ever. I think it was unwinnable from the
	...

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