Tuesday, February 04, 2025

Dr Guy Chet & Professor Bob Allison - "The Colonists' American Revolution; Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783"

Here's a useful discussion, between Dr Guy Chet (author of the 2019 book The Colonists' American Revolution; Preserving English Liberty, 1607-1783; publisher page here), in conversation with Professor Bob Allison - about the American Revolution as a British rebellion for liberty. I met Professor Allison when visiting Boston in December 2023 for the 'Tea Party 250' commemorations. 

One of the challenges in telling the American Revolution story to a present-day audience is that we have all grown up with competing nations or competing nationalities as our only paradigm. Movies and war comics and the current affairs media have reduced our capacity to think, because they present everything as a contest between "two teams". And so the American Revolution has often been retro-fitted with these kinds of simplistic, easy-sell, nationalisms.

So, we need to work pretty hard to try to forget about ingrained nationalisms, of conflicts between nations, and think instead about liberty within the nation, or liberty which is worth more than the nation.

Not Americans v British, or Patriots v Loyalists, but rather Liberty v Tyranny. People on each side of the Atlantic were on each side of the cause.




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