The Lost Jewel, Spanish Invasion & Franklins in Paris | Richard Bell

[MUSIC] I just want to offer you my condolences on your defeat in the Great War, the revolution. I know it's still a little soon, but you know. >>250 years feels too soon, right? I mean, this war of American aggression, when are you going to let it go, right? People been rubbing that in my face ever since I got off the boat, right? I came to the US like 25 years ago now, 1999. >> You never left. >> And never left, which was not the plan. But when I got here, and folks here found out that number one, obviously I was British, they could tow right away from my silly accent. And number two, they'll actually study American history and that early period. Americans would ask me all the time, aren't you upset you lost the war? And the first time someone asked me that, I was like, you know, what war are they talking about? And I was scrolling back through wars, like World War II. No, I think we won that one, right? Well, one thing we won that one didn't really occur to me that people would be, I guess sort of gloating about a war that happened almost 250 years ago. But here we are facing each other across the table. >> I'm just saying, you got to look out. Maybe you were sent here for some bias reporting, pro-British reporting. >> Speaking of non-objective journalism, I'm looking at a coffee mug right there. Facing out towards me that says rev war champions, right? >> That's right. >> Yeah, so. >> That is a fact. >> You are not Christian Amapur, are you? >> I, apparently not, because we were the champions of that war. And I will stand by that claim. >> And that were champions, right? That's really reminds me of something in my childhood. Thinking about wars in terms of sports, like champions, right? So, the English, and I'm originally English, obviously, we have a lot of historical animosity, let's say, towards the Germans. And they too us, right? So I think of World War One, World War Two. And the Germans are much better at soccer than we are, which is sad. Because we invented association football a long time ago. But when I was growing up in Britain in the 1980s, I guess it was. We would sing in the playground, two world wars and one world cup. Suggesting we'd beat the Germans at everything that matters. Two world wars and one world cup. So I've got a feeling you might be doing something similar. >> It is. We kind of need that vibe these days. >> You need a little pick me up for sure. >> I'm here to help. But I'm really, really excited to talk with you. I have three podcasts that we're doing because it is the 250th. I thought what better time to cover this topic. >> You know what I'm going to do now, you should go out of business right away. >> That's what I'm saying. And I'm obsessed with the revolution. It comes up on the podcast in different weird contexts. But I was thinking to myself, all the topics we've done on this, which are like a million, we've never done a podcast actually on the revolution. And you have just written a recent book that is specifically on a topic that I think gets crazy overlooked from the war, which is the fact that we in America often think of this as like, oh, the British versus the Americans to try to create a new country, and I guess to see it from Britain or whatever. But this was a world war. This is something that, you know, beyond France, beyond like the rest of Europe. This stretch to Asia in a whole bunch of different ways. Like when did you first realize that? I know you've been studying this for a long time, but when did you start to realize, whoa, this is not just a British first American thing. It's got way more forthward effects to that. >> Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. >> Yeah, I mean, that's right. So keep this a little closer. >> Yeah, sure. So I don't know where to stop because when I was growing up in Britain, we just weren't told anything. Anything about the American revolution, the war of independence, the war of American aggression, whatever you want. We want to call it today. >> I didn't try to. >> We didn't do anything about it at all. So I was a blank slate, right? So it was only when I came to America that even was able to develop some interest in American history. And then I think from the get-go, I was participating in the same sort of pop culture that all of us here in the US participate in, which in public at least outside of academic settings means talking about it in the pretty narrow, pretty sort of, you might even say nationalist sort of terms. That this is rebels versus redcoats. And that's it, game over. That this is the colonists versus the crown. That if you simplify it further, it's Americans versus the British. And it turns out all of that is completely wrong, right? Or at least that's a very significant oversimplification. So one of the ways this new book about the global sweep of the American revolution came about was I was given some pretty traditional talks about different aspects of the American Revolution in bars in Washington, D.C., near where I live. There's an organization, there a great organization called try and figure out what it does just from the title. Profs and points, what does that do? That's professors talking about beer and history. Yeah, pretty much. They send professors into bars to talk about whatever the hell professors want to talk about in front of people with a drink in their hand, right? And it's a great concept, right? And the guy Peter Schmidt, who created it, he's actually franchised that operation to like 10 different cities. Now, so it's probably coming to your backyard. I was going to say everyone in New York. They might well, yeah, they might well. Check your local listings. They might be pulling up D.C. Yeah. So I was doing that in a bar in D.C., a pretty grungy bar. He's since upgraded to much nicer bars. And I think maybe some of the people that had maybe one too many drinks because they got very sort of chatty, very sort of bold during the Q&A session at the end. And there was one guy, I dimly remember, who came up to me after a pretty normal talk about, let's say the Boston massacre or something like that and said, okay, okay, buddy, but you're, but you're British, right? You're British. What did British people think about the American revolution? What did British people with that then think about that war? And I was like, dude, I have no idea. I honestly don't know it, because when I was growing up in Britain, we didn't talk about that at all, so I don't know. No one in America has ever taught me that in grad school, which is why I came to the U.S. in the first place. So I had to go back to my university, University of Maryland, where I teach in College Park right outside D.C. And read all the books in the Big Old Research Library about like British history, politics, and society in the late 18th century to figure out what it was, British people back then thought about the American Revolution while it was happening. And it turns out they thought every possible thing, right? If you imagine that all British people thought the same thing, that all British people were mined up behind King George, like telling him to stick it to George Washington to the Patriots, then you're completely wrong about that. There's huge diversity of opinion in Britain at the time. And I could go on and on about that, because it's interesting. But for the purpose of this, I want to say that. So I turned that research on what British people thought about the war into a talk. I started giving it in bars, profs and pints. And other drunk people would come up to me afterwards and say, "Okay, great, buddy, you told us about what British people thought about the Revolution." What did the Irish then? Right? And I'm like, "Oh, shit." Because I have no fucking idea. Right? So I traipsed back to my library on campus, get all the books on Irish history. And let's be clear. Irish history is incredibly complicated. And there's hundreds and hundreds of books about this sort of thing. So I wrote a talk about what the Irish thought about the American Revolution started giving in bars. And then I hope this is the. I hope this is three different drunk individuals. Not that's the same dude follow me around all the time. But then some other guys like, you know, so. But what about Jamaica? What do the Jamaicans think of the American Revolution? And because I'm a really slow learner, it was probably after that and only after that, the light bulb like slowly went on above my head. And I thought, maybe I have written three chapters of a book about the global history of the American Revolution. And it turns out, and this is amazing, given how many books there are about the Revolution, that there is no book like that, right? When my book, yeah, just popped out in November 2025, it is the only book that does that. I imagine there will be others, but this is the first, right? So. One of the coolest covers of everything. I love that cover, right? Yeah. What is that on the front? It's like, it's George Washington crossing the Delaware, but the graphic designer at Penguin who did that, a pro made it into dominoes, right? Dominoes falling, suggesting, you know, what would be called ripple effects, but butterfly effects, that sort of thing. 100%. So that's how I came to it, came to it. So what's interesting, though, is what you're talking about with the initial spark, is like, people wanted to know what the rest of the world thought of it. But then when you actually start to go investigate that, you're also then falling into how these places were actually directly, were indirectly involved with it. So, you know, I'm sure we're going to be discussing the US and British dynamic today throughout the conversation. But one of the ones that at least is the most obvious of the whole thing is France, because they, it is actually well documented. They had direct involvement, because they had such a, you know, heightened cold rivalry with Britain and the United States, basically. Hot and cold, I think it was mostly a pretty hot rivalry, right? There's no cold war but trying to be journalists. The only cold thing is the weather, I think, right? Everything else is pretty furious. All right, so it was like fuck the French, fuck the British, depending on which side you're looking at. So the revolutionaries decided to make that parlay, if you will, via Ben Franklin, which is something I've read a lot about. But why did it take so long for the French to officially like actually be like, all right, we're gonna put all our might behind this, rather than do it right away when at the time they really didn't belong with Britain. - Yeah, I love that question and it's funny that France is coming up first in this conversation because when I'm out and about talking about this new book and we go to questions, usually the first question is about France because like you sort of say, it's the one piece of this global story that most people have heard before, right? That most of us, if we've been paying any sort of attention in school, we're dimly aware that there was a French alliance between the patriots and the French king and that there's gonna be French ships that are gonna sail towards North America, that are gonna make a difference. There's gonna be French soldiers and sailors and suppliers and money that's gonna make a difference. In fact, at the Battle of Yorktown, which is arguably the big climactic battle towards the end of the war, though it's not the end of the war, but it's the last big battle on the mainland, it's gonna be French soldiers and sailors which make the difference, which are the game changes, the difference makers there, right? So I think we all know that France is involved somehow, but as to why France gets in and why it waits till the moment it does, that's something most of us don't actually ever pause to think about, and maybe I'm gonna put words in people's mouths here. Maybe we think it's obvious that France would rush in to help the patriots because the patriots are the good guys in history. Wouldn't you wanna help the good guys? Wouldn't anyone want to? - That's right. - Yeah, are you reminding me? - Yeah, we can dismantle that assumption later on if you want to. But France doesn't see it in quite those terms, right? What do they actually have in common with the Patriot rebels? So when we think of France, think of the king and think of his prime minister, who's the foreign minister, Vegem's, his name is, yeah. Or Vegem's, if you wanna pronounce it that way. - Yeah, I don't have a good French accent on that. - Yeah, I don't either to be clear, but I know it's not Vegem's. - Yeah, we were running around France back in December, the if and I, and I just, that's a language I do not have it. It sounds beautiful. - It does sound beautiful. - Yeah, I'm gonna butcher it repeatedly today, so it won't sound beautiful when I try to do it. - Sorry to the French. - Yeah, for our French viewers and listeners, yeah, absolutely. - You've heard me talk about my dad and how once he got into his 50s, he started feeling the energy going away. He didn't like talking about it much, but by the time he hit 60, it was like he had completely hit a brick wall. Doing the same workouts and eating the same diet he had for years, constantly felt like he was moving through the mud. 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Marsmen is made in the USA, third party tested and uses eight natural clinically-dosed ingredients, including Tangad Ali, vitamin D, zinc, boron, and more. And they also offer a 90-day money-back guarantee. So there's no risk. Worst case, you don't absolutely love it and you get your money back. But over 91% of users report higher energy levels. So for a limited time, our listeners are going to get 50% off a life plus free shipping and three free gifts at mengotomars.com. That link is in my description below. That's mengotomars.com for 50% off and three free gifts after you check out. After you purchase, they're going to ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them I sent you. I love friends. We can also murder the Spanish language later on as well if you want, as well. So if you think of the French king or the French foreign minister, Vergen, they have almost nothing in common with the Patriot rebels, right? The Patriots are trying to dislodge a monarchy. France is a monarchy. The Patriots are trying a dismantle and empire. France controls an empire that it would love to hold on, to, right? The French are by law a Catholic nation, King Louis is Catholic. Virgin is Catholic, everyone they know is Catholic. And almost all of the Protestant rebels, almost all the rebels in America are Protestants. So this is not an obvious sort of vendigram of overlap. In fact, in that vendigram, the only overlap is that they both want to see King George and Britain knock down a peg or two, but for totally different reasons, of course. The American rebels want to politically separate. They want to set up their own government, put themselves in charge. France doesn't give two shits about that, but it would like to see Britain lose as many of its colonies as possible from France might even pick up a couple in sort of the melee there. So knocking Britain down is all they have in common. And then you've also got to remember that France isn't ready. You were asking about the timing, right? France is not ready to go to war with Britain in '75, '70s, '70s, '70s. Because France and Britain have been at war for most of the previous, what, 60 years? Beginning with the war of, what is it? Austrian succession, at the start of the 18th century. And then the war of Jankenjeer era, and then most famously the seven years war, which we call the French and Indian war here, right? They've been at war most of the time. And in the last war, the seven years war, the French and Indian war, if you want to call it that, France got whooped, right? France lost big time to Britain, French Canada, became British Canada in '70s. Britain expanded its possessions across the world, including the Caribbean, and its sunk a ton of French navy ships or captured them and made them British navy ships, which is one of the way navy's grow back then by stealing other people's weapons. And so if France did want to wade in on after Battle of Lexington and Concorde, France doesn't have the navy to do it because they've all been destroyed. So if you want to wade in, the France knows that it's going to have to spend years and years rebuilding its navy. And so that's what we see. After 1760, France begins a 20-year-long period of rebuilding its navy. Because navy ships made out of wood in the 18th century. They're incredibly expensive. They're incredibly complicated. You can't just, you know, commission one right there and it sails the next day. It takes years and years and years. - What currency? I don't know if this is a relevant question, but I'm just thinking this in my head 'cause I'm thinking about the different countries here. What currency were the French trading in? They had their own at the time? - They did, the Frank, yeah. - Okay. - One of the oldest currencies in Europe, yeah. - All right, so I would imagine with the loss, I'm glad you brought up the French and Indian War, most ignored war in the history of America, even though it was-- - Oh, let me tell you about the War of 1812. - Oh, the War of 1812 was the one time we got invaded after the revolution wasn't a terrorist at that. It's interesting, it's very ignored, I agree. But like, I would think if the French get an ass weapon in that war and then lose all this stuff, we all know that the losers in war always basically like to keep the war going and to try not to lose they inflate away their currency as well. So were they having in addition to resource constraints of actually rebuilding the stuff and remanning? Were they also having currency issues? - Yeah, I think that's a really smart point to make, right? So we know that the French got into massive debt to fight and lose the French and Indian War and that they're engaged in massive debt repayments, which is affecting all sorts of fiscal issues. So the stat I use in the book is that 60% of all French government revenue in the 1760s and 1770s, the period after the French and Indian War is going to debt repayment, right? Think of 60% of US income right now was going just simply to debt repayment. We're not quite there, we're moving in that direction. - Yeah, so they are hamstrung financially, like you said, they're hamstrung militarily, like I said, you put that together, that's a recipe for being forced to wait until the moment is opportune. And the story goes, the myth goes, the, it's only when George Washington's soldiers win the Battle of Saratoga in what October of '77 or something, the France goes, "Oh, these guys can win, now we're going to help them." That is hot garbage in terms of explanatory power. - That's true at all. - Not true at all. - Wow. - You know, what we know from the French archives and from scholars who've been into the French archives with a much greater grasp of the French language than I have, they're able to show that Vergein, this foreign minister, this prime minister, he's been plotting to rebuild the French navy to get into the war as soon as that war begins, but he's just not ready until the end of 1777. And so the news from Saratoga is certainly welcome news to him, but he knows that one victory of the Patriots Saratoga has not suddenly cured all the Patriots, military and logistics. and supply chain problems. The Patriots lose so many battles before and after Saratoga that from hindsight, you can say Saratoga is a bit of a blip there. So Vergen is not smart enough to be fooled by a blip. He's making a long-term gamble that France jumping in during this war, as soon as it is ready, militarily speaking, is going to pay off for France's benefit in the long term. So you can think about all the things France wants out of the war, but that he's been thinking about it and plotting for a couple of years. Right. I have so many questions here, but I'll start with this. When the French are making a decision of who to back, obviously being at war with the British and the French having land interests over in the Americas, there's the constant threat of like the British coming and taking their land. At the same time, if they go to back this revolutionary army and then they somehow fuck around and win, aren't they worried about like they're going to be like, alright, thanks for the help. By the way, this is Arlan. So that argument is a very real set of concerns, but not for France, but actually for Spain. I know we'll talk about Spain later on, but you're on to something really important there, right? That fear that you'll create something you can't control, like a Frankenstein's monster that'll come back and bite you in the ass afterwards, right? Spain is the one having those sort of nightmare scenarios. It's also the same guys who were like, "Wack and I'm in the French and Indian War." Yeah. So think about that, right? So how do you, let's just maybe pivot topics a little bit here. When we think about the French alliance, we can think about it in terms of diplomats like Ben Franklin swanning around Paris trying to get audiences with Virgin, persuade the King of Spain that now's the King of France, that now's the time, etc. But the other way to think about the French alliance is how it sells domestically back in the rebel colonies. What do ordinary patriots and ordinary loyalists and ordinary neutrals stuck in the middle between those two poles? What do they think when the news comes down that now the rebels are in bed with Catholic France? On the one hand, militarily, this is great news if you're a patriot, right? Because you know that George Washington's army is outgunned, outmaned, undersupplied. It's on its last legs, arguably speaking. It's not a thriving military operation. So you know that you need logistical help, armaments, muskets, etc. You also know that with no disrespect to John Paul Jones, the US Navy, the continental Navy is a joke in that part of the war, right? They don't have any big ships, any ships of the line. They're so expensive and complicated to build. The US won't build its first ship of the line until 1820. That is too late for the American revolution a little bit. So all the patriots have at sea a small of vessels, a couple of dinghies with John Paul Jones in it paddling furiously. I said no disrespect, so that's all I've meant with no disrespect. A couple little dinghies. And it has private tears, which are awesome, and I'll talk about that for till the cows come home. But what it doesn't have is a big fuck off Navy. Who has a big fuck off Navy? Britain does, right? Britain has the largest deadliest Navy the world's ever seen. Thankfully, the French have by then the number two Navy in the world. So at least it matters when the French Navy comes in on the Patriots side. So in terms of military, this is great news. You can see George Washington at Valley Forge when he gets the news that Ben Franklin and King Louis have signed this agreement. He's like over the moon, like you can't imagine George Washington actually smiling, but he smiled at that one. Oh, he smiled at that one. He was grinning like a little Cheshire cat with that one. He said something like, you know, I've received this news with more, more palpable joy than I've ever experienced, right? Like he's close to some sort of sexual gratification at this. I feel like I've just committed a bit of light treason there on the show here. I'm going to show you my papers before you're here during the wrong administration. I know. I also lost my trade of thought. So after George has recovered himself, the other part of this is cultural though, because the Patriots have just got in bed with their greatest oldest enemy. The Patriots are British Americans. Every Patriot colonist is British in this period, right? And feels British. Identifies is British there, which means they identify as Protestant, which means they identify as anti-Catholic, and it means they identify as anti-French. That is fundamental to British identity across the Anglo-Atlantic world in the 18th century. And their leaders have just got in bed with the guy they've been told to hate for the last hundred years. You did what Ben Franklin is like, you know, the message back home. So Patriot leaders back home here in the 13 rebel colonies, they have to move into high fucking year to package and sell the French alliance as the best thing that ever happened, not the greatest betrayal of American values that's ever happened. And that happens in the press, of course. We see, you know, Patriot leaders think of, you know, poor Revere or Sam Adams or someone like that, you know, filling the press with, you know, pro-packed pro-French stories, saying King Louis, actually, the great savior of mankind, the champion of religious liberty, which would be, you know, anathema like five years earlier, don't want to have ever said that five years earlier. And we know from some scholarship in New England that the King of France is guy in New England. His name's Gerard. He's basically the French ambassador to New England give or take. He actually pays three local Patriot writers and ministers to gin up loads of stories in favor of the pact and put them in the press. So he is astroturfing positive coverage in the Patriot press there to sell this alliance. Get over your anti-Catholic screw pulls, get over your anti-French, screw pulls, get on board the alliance train because it's leaving the station and register under fire to do that. Somehow he forgot to do that. Yeah. Look at that. Yeah. Who would have guessed real? Right. Some things I never happens here. Yeah. Old things are new again, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's also like, always think about the time it would take just to get a basic piece of news over too. So, yeah, the battle, obviously you disabused us of the notion that it was the battle of Saratoga that actually made them get over the top, but like, you have something like the battle of the Saratoga and at Saratoga. And then, you know, the news has to get from the United States all the way to France and this is taken six to six to ten. Yeah, I think the news from Saratoga and Joey can check this if he wants arrives in Paris on December the 6th, 1777 give or take and the battle was in October, right? So what is that? It's probably eight or 10 weeks or something. Yeah. It's like, you could have like five battles after that. No one would know it. Right. You could lose the next five and just the victory would be what arrives on December the 6th. Right. Yeah. It took approximately seven weeks for the news of the British surrender at the Battle of Saratoga October 17th to reach Paris according to the French capital on December 4th, 1777. That's what we got. We got the arriving on the French capital. And so delays like that, what is not, they're not delayed to them. That's just how long news takes, right? It's not delayed. We think of it delayed because we have one day delivery 30, right? So for them, that's pretty quick. And there are worse time lags than that. In the book, I just wrote, one of the chapters is about the role of India. And I know we're going to talk about that because it's fascinating, right? The role of India in the American Revolution is a major theater of the war. And one of the theater of theater, theater. Yes. Yes. The Indian Ocean, the Indian subcontinent, major theater of the war. And in fact, the last battle of the American Revolutionary War is the Battle of Cudelor, that's Cudelor with a sea, Cudelor in June of 1783. And it's only interrupted when a British ship arrives basically from Europe saying, don't you know we signed a piece three days six months ago? The war is over, fellas. Put down your weapons and the British and French Navy put down their guns. Battle of Cudelor, last battle of the American Revolution, big sea battle of the coast of Southern India. In the Indian Ocean. Yep. The 1783 naval battle between a British fleet and admiral, sir, Edward Hughes with admiral L.J. Wildard and a smaller French fleet under the Bali desu friend of the coast of India that took place right before the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War. So it didn't take place before the Treaty of Paris. Yeah, well, the Treaty of Paris, no, no, it's fine. The Treaty of Paris, like any multilateral treaty, right? There's a proposal, there's a provisional and there's eventually a ratification. So the provisional treaty has been announced and news of that is spreading around the globe. And that's what they're reacting to six months later when the news arrives there. It won't be finally ratified until like September or something like that. But that's a done deal by that point. That doesn't matter. That's wild. Yep. So the last battle of the Revolution, this is in this is off the coast of India. Of the coast of India, right? And it's going on so long because they don't know the war is over because of that six-month delay. What is that? 12,000 nautical miles or something from like Paris to India. I think you nailed it. Yeah. I don't know. And you can't go through Suez, you have to go all the way around, you know, Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, just takes forever. So talk about a delay. Yeah. So and how many people would have been in a battle like this, like a big naval battle? The week the 99 killed, 434 wounded and it was 15 ships on the French side, 18 ships on the Great Britain side. Yeah, 15 ships of the line. Those are the big boys. - Yeah, so how many people would be on that? - So you can find that out for me, but I'll tell you that the modern equivalent of a ship of the line would be a destroyer or an aircraft carrier in like World War II speak, right? So these are the big ships. So there's loads of other little ships there as well. - They were epic. - 15 big boys. The very biggest ship the Navy has back then is called a ship of the line. I think it means it has like 60 or 70 cannons on board. Is that right? - In around 1783, ships of the line generally carried crews ranging from 350 to 850 men. First rate would be 850 to 900. Second rate would be 7 to 750. By the way, first rate has over 100 guns referring to cannons, I guess. 90 to 98 on a second rate, third rate, which is 64 to 80 would be 570 men or 500 to 700 men or fourth rate, which are 50 to 60 guns and 350 to 400 men, that is fucking. - So in terms of size, they're much smaller than modern destroyers, battleships and aircraft carriers. - But that's huge. - But they are the deadliest, hugest, most expensive weapons of war anywhere in the world. They're also the most technologically advanced weapons of war and they're made of wood for God's sake. - They're wood and sails. - Yeah, wooden canvas, right and spit, I don't know. - Yeah, 900 guys, 850 guys on a wooden ship. Yeah, don't sign me up for that. That's crazy. There was a woman, I forget her name, but we can pull it up to you so we can give her credit who wrote a great book about the Ben Franklin years in France and negotiating. Then it was later made a mini series on Apple with Michael Douglas. - You were thinking of Stacy Schiff. - Yes. - The book is called The Great Improvisation - Phenomenal book. - Stacy's a great historian. I saw her on Exceler one day and I fan-boyed out. (laughing) 'Cause in my world, she's a rock star. - She wrote an amazing book. - Like you said, they made that into what? The Franklin TV show on Apple where Michael Douglas, for God's sake, played Benjamin Franklin. Once you get past the fact that it's Michael Douglas, he did a really good job. - You know what, I would have never thought a Michael Douglas playing Ben Franklin. I remember when I saw that and I'm like, come on. And then I watched it and he actually did like a solid job. - Yeah, 'cause Franklin is not like, doesn't walk on water. Franklin is one of the most cunning people, the future United States ever produced. And so even though that's not the same as Gordon Gecko from Wallsbury, the idea that he is a snake oral wolf underneath that smile and that grandfatherly pattern boldness. I think Michael Douglas captured that pretty ably. - 100%. I mean, I've been Franklin's my personal favorite American, probably ever, like he was just so many different things. He wasn't a perfect guy by his stretch, but like, you know, a polymath who had so many different talents. I've read many of his biographies as well, but that book just really captured what a, through those traits that you correctly lay out, what a brilliant diplomat he was. And he could, the thing that I really got across is he could take risks diplomatically and fall flat on his face and find a way to mend it up very, very quickly. - He knows exactly what's at stake. He knows how badly the patriots need this alliance from this massive European power. And he also understands that if France will sign up, it will create a permission structure for other European powers to follow suit, which is how Spain tumbles in within a year and eventually the Netherlands too. And, you know, the Continental Congress had had guys in Paris for a while since like 1774 or 1775, but they weren't our top guys. The first wave were not our top guys. There's a guy called Silas Dean, who does plenty of good things for the American cause. But he's the one who's in Paris, waiting to receive a copy of the declaration of independence after it's finalized in Philly. And to take it to the French court and say, look, we're serious about independence. We're not going back to Britain. We're not going to make peace with them. You must jump in and sign with us now. And number one, he has bad luck because that copy of the declaration of independence never arrives. It's thrown over the side of a ship when that ship is almost intercepted by some sort of British vessel on the Atlantic. And so he's left utterly high and dry for like two or three months waiting for a replacement to arrive. And he doesn't know what happened to the original. And he is quite frankly losing his shit. And he sends all these letters to Congress. And they are increasingly irate like, where the fuck are you guys? Where the fuck are you guys? You told me you were going to vote. You told me you were going to send something where the fuck is it? And it only takes eight weeks to get there. That's right, he doesn't know what's happened. And it's not just aggressive. He's increasingly, I would say, you know, unstable. Like he's saying, I will kill myself. If you don't get me a new copy right away, that's literally a paraphrase of a quote that his life will have no meaning. If Congress doesn't get his act together and send him a copy of the declaration of independence right away. So many historians, and I hope I'm not besmuching his memory, would say that he's not the finest diplomat that the future United States has ever produced. So no surprise, once a copy of the declaration does finally arrive, a replacement copy who comes right after it, Ben Franklin, right? They send Ben Franklin, and effectively the 18, to replace Silas Dean and Arthur Lee and dudes like that. So they'll send Franklin, they'll send John Jay, they'll send John Adams, of course. And for a time, you know, John Adams and Ben Franklin were working in Paris at the same time. And I've got lots of respect for John Adams, but their two diplomatic stars could not be more different. - They did not get along. - Yeah, so he, but then Franklin, like kind of won the power struggle there. And Adams left, and Franklin was able to stay. 'Cause that's also like, you're already a Ragtag group of revolutionaries trying to just organize a basic army in America, fighting off all these battles with the greatest military in the world, Britain. - So they're the greatest navy in the world. The army was like B plus, but the navy is A plus. - Yeah, the only B plus. - Only B plus. - Not a top grader. - Yeah, I wouldn't guess that. But either way, like a formidable force. And yet, you're supposed to have oversight over like a couple guys trying to make diplomatic decisions a half a world away. - Half a world away, right? So what that means is when they send these diplomats, they're effectively delegating pretty much everything to those guys, 'cause they can't call them up or buzz their, what are they used to be called? The pages, the blackberries, right? They call them buzz their blackberries and say, new instructions do this now. Franklin is on his own. He might get instructions which are always gonna be, you know, a month, two months out of date, right? So just like military commanders fighting a battle in the 18th century, once you appoint those people and send them into the field, whether it's the field of diplomacy or a battlefield, it's up to those commanders on the ground. So think of Franklin as a commander on the ground, making autonomous decisions. And like Washington, Congress made a couple of really small appointments. Washington is one, Franklin is the other. - Absolutely, but he, I think he gets their late summer, 1776 when he gets there, I believe he finds out that Washington's army had to flee New York, which is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. And it's also right after, I didn't even know about this until I read one of these books. Maybe it was one of H.W. Brands or maybe it was one we're talking about, I can't remember, but Franklin was one of the three diplomats who went and met with how in general, how in Staten Island, I think, to try to stave off the war and like come to sort some sort of agreement. And Franklin was the one who put his foot down, and said, no, I was a loyalist for the longest time. I'm not doing this anymore, we're done. He goes and breaks up basically with his own son, who was the governor of New Jersey, and then gets on a ship to France, and he's like, fuck it, let's go. - That's crazy. - We are putting New Jersey right back at the center. - That's exactly where it belongs. - Yeah, that's what I hear. That's what I hear during my time in New Jersey this week. - That's right. - I just came from Maristown, actually. I was at Washington's headquarters in Maristown. - Yeah, I used to live around the corner for the George Washington Slepteer house. - Yeah, well, I'm sure every house in New Jersey, probably he slept in it somewhere. - Well, maybe, I mean, he was getting around, but you know, that was like-- - I hope he was sleeping, yeah. - That's right on the hill there. My window used to be able, like, look right at it. - Wow. - Yeah, so the Ben Franklin point is well taken, right? Because Franklin has made quite the pivot, quite the transition. In the 1750s and '60s, he is one of the most loyal subjects of the British Empire, the king is lucky enough to count on, right? He thinks that the sun will never set. On the British Empire, he thinks it's the biggest, most prosperous, freest structure the world's ever seen. He thinks it's a political perfection in some ways. And so all he wants really is for some of the colonies to get a bit more respect from the British government have their occasional grievances listened to. And he's hired as basically chief lobbyist for several different American colonies to go to London and make sure those grievances are regularly aired and heard. And he's very good at his job, which means he has a role to dex full of contacts in the British government, that he counts them all as his friends. And there's quite the transformation from that to the diehard patriot who is putting his foot down, like you said, and say, no, we are in this to win this in 1776. And that has a lot to do with the changes that Britain makes in the 1760s, passing down deeply unpopular pieces of tax post-Stampact, Townshend duties, the response to the tee. party, the coercive acts as a big one for Franklin and the Quebec actor, we could go down the list, but then the other part of this is personal. As Franklin becomes more enamored of the Patriot cause, he makes a bad decision. In about 1774 or so, Joey can check us the date on this, there's the event at the cockpit in the House of Lords, and that's where he gets accused publicly of having leaked some letters that came through his hands between two different colonial British officials, and those letters end up in the Boston press, and they make those British colonial officials look very bad and very stupid and very dodgy, and there's a leak investigation. Who leaked these letters? And the fingers start pointing at Franklin, and Franklin is called into the House of Lords to an area called the cockpit to account for that accusation, and let's be clear, he is guilty as hell. First of all, Joey, when was that? Guilty in a good way, but yeah. The best kind of truce, right? I think they open up the show with Michael Douglas just getting murdered and caught, right? Yeah. So that is one hour of the solicitor general, the modern equivalent might be, you know, the attorney general here in the US, screaming at Ben Franklin in front of an audience who thinks this is the funniest thing they've ever seen, right? So if you're Ben Franklin, if you had any lingering love for the British Empire by January 29, 1774, one hour later, that is gone, right? That animosity is gone. And so when his own son, who he'd helped get a job as royal governor of New Jersey, does not quit in solidarity with his dad and says, no, no, I'm going to keep, keep taking the King's paychecks. Then this struggle between the Patriots and the British becomes a family struggle within the Franklin family. There's several books about William Franklin that use that moment as the big framing device. And it's a family tragedy. These two basically never speak to each other again. Oh, it's, it's hard like, and they're just the highest level example, because we're talking about literally Ben Franklin and obviously some was a powerful guy too. But this is a pattern that happened a lot more than gets reported in history within America, where you had within families, loyalists and revolutionaries. And then this war totally separated them. Yeah, I know this is a topic you'll want to speak about with brands, as well as HW brands. But yeah, the idea of the American revolution as a civil war is an idea very familiar to scholars for decades. Yeah, we've been saying this to the public till we're blue in the face. The American revolution is the first American civil war brands now has a book with that title. Great. Yeah, great book. So it's a reminder that we weren't we, do you notice the we they're creeping in? I'm a US citizen. We wear off on you. I'm married to a woman from Missouri for God's sake. All right, all right. So we in America, one of the myths we've carried with us is that we were all patriots back then nonsense, complete nonsense, right? This is a civil war among Americans, right? If there's two million white Americans in the 13 rebel colonies in 1776 or so, they split three ways at least patriots, which are rapidly emerging new group, which didn't exist, you know, 12 months earlier, they might be now 40% of the population. There are still loads of loyalists who think that separating from Britain is the worst idea they've ever possibly heard, at least 20% are vocal loyalists. And that leads the other 40% in the middle. We call them the neutrals. You might call them swing voters or independent voters today. The people that have a percentage. Huge, yeah. Yeah. So the big center of the electorates, the wrong word of the population is up for grabs, right? So patriots want to peel off as many of those neutrals to their side to run up their numbers and create a bigger base. Loyalists want to peel off as many of those neutrals as they can. So when loyalists and patriots are screaming at each other in the public newspapers and fighting each other in the streets and lynching each other, they're doing that for the audience of the neutrals, right? Loyalists want to impress the neutrals. Patriots want to impress the neutrals and convince them that which side is the right side of history. So when I was talking earlier on about how the patriots have to sell the pact with France to the American people, they're trying to persuade neutrals. It's a smart move. And loyalists are saying, no, no, no, don't you see? They've just got in bed with the Catholic enemy. And when the French Catholic soldiers and sailors come over here, they are going to enslave you. They are going to be like the Inquisition. They're going to torture the Protestantism out of you. They're going to ban the speaking of English in New England. Don't you see what your leaders have duped you into exception? Open your eyes, Sheeple is what the loyalists are saying. Coltake, but still this is interesting because the religious aspect is something that there's not you mentioned it earlier, making the distinction, but the the threat of the religious type of holy inquisition that could occur is something that does not get discussed. It doesn't get discussed. This is Christian on Christian crime. Christian on Christian. Yes. Right. There's some websites you can check for that sort of thing. That's right. Absolutely. So this is the 18th century. This is not too far from the great holy walls of the 17th century. Franco-phobia is the core of British identity in the Anglo-American world. Anti-Catholicism is the other core of that right now. The patriots are in bed with those. Why was it so hardcore anti-Catholicism? Yeah. Lots of reasons, I think. One is that after the Protestant Reformation, where we see the spread of Protestantism around parts of Europe like the Netherlands and Britain, there will be a counter reformation to try to undo that. And we'll see Catholic powers like France and Spain try to strangle the Protestantism out of various groups of people. In Britain, Queen Mary comes to power in the 16. Oh, geez. Let's say. Let's say. I should remember this from high school history. No, it's the 15th century. You're an American now. It's the 15th century. Let me get the first two digits at least. It's the 15th. When did Queen Mary the 1st come to power? 1553. When Mary Tudor came to power, replacing her Protestant brother Edward and his Protestant father, she is a Catholic queen and she starts burning Protestants. They're called the Marion Burning, Mary Marion, right? So where do we get bloody marriage? Yeah, that's where we get bloody marriage from. Maybe not the drink. Yeah, right. So there's stuff like this happening all across Europe that Protestants feel persecuted by Catholics who are on the rise again. So if you are in a Protestant country like the Netherlands or Britain, you start to see yourself as victims, right? Against an external threat which is bigger than you, more powerful than you, more established than you, and you start to see yourself as embattled, and you start to see yourself, you compare yourselves to the Israelites in the Old Testament, right? Being persecuted by the Egyptians or something like that. And an embattled identity is a very powerful identity. When you're backed into a corner, you suddenly believe things very strongly about right and wrong, right? So that is what British, how British identity is forged. The Princeton historian Linda Colley wrote a great book about this called Britain's, where she says that British identity emerges in the 18th century, not by actually figuring out how to accommodate the differences between the English and the Welsh and the Scottish and the Irish, but by just by saying, no, no, we all have a common enemy. And that common enemy is France, Catholicism, and the Pope, maybe in that order, right? That's how British identity emerge. Emerge, as I've forgotten your question at this point, remember what it was? No, we were talking about how the religious aspect of the war was something that was highly not only propagandized, but considered as a looming threat. One, in fact, they share an overall religious agreement in that it's all Christianity, but they were worried, meaning like the people trying to market to the loyalists, they were worried that if the revolutionaries won the war, the French Catholics would be allowed to come in and literally use the word like enslave the Protestants and torture them. So if you are a Patriot writer, how do you counteract everything you just said? First of all, with great difficulty, how do you sell the Franco-Pact on a religious ground? How do you undo that anti-Catholic, anti-French sort of agenda? We know that Patriot writers, some of them being paid for literally by France itself, suggest that no, no, no, we should not be this new pact with France, should not be the target of your anti-Catholicism. You know who's really plotting a devilish, popish plot to enslave you? It's not King Louis, it's not the Bishop of Rome, it's not the Pope. It's being even better. It's George the Third. George the Third is the real Catholic threat, the real popish threat. Now George the Third is a Protestant, so this is crazy talk, right? He's the head of the Church of England, so calling him a popish plotter is not so. Never let that truth get in the way of the good. But as a conspiracy theory to say he's been corrupted by some popish priests in his circle and that he wants to enslave all Americans and make them worship him rather than Jesus Christ, they get some good mileage for that conspiracy theory. So we're seeing different conspiracy theories do battle using Protestantism. and Catholic language, isn't it wild? - It's nuts, again, there's so many things that like don't, 'cause there was so much going on, there's so many things that don't get reported on with this because there's already like a lot of complex weird alliances and stuff like that. But the religious thing, it always comes back to that somehow with the war. - Somehow, I'll just see. - And I'll just get every war. - I'll be quick, 'cause there's a great new book I want to make sure people hear about, which taught me a lot of this. The book is called Religion in the American Revolution. It's by Kate Cartay, teaches SMU down in Dallas. So folks want to go deeper. That's a great place to start. - And what's her premise overall premise there? Is she just discussing in greater detail? What we're talking about? - Suddenly in greater detail. So she argues that we can think of the British Empire, not just in secular terms, but in religious terms as well. She talks about how the empire has created a scaffolding of imperial Protestantism, where people who participate in the British Empire, whether in England or America, are also participating in imperial Protestantism. And so, a framing the British Empire is something that must be defended because it's a bastion of Protestant religion. And so, to see the British Empire or see it dismantled is to see Protestantism or watch it be dismantled. So it provides an extra layer of glue for the British Empire. That's her argument as I understand it. What do you, you know, it's well documented that at the time of this war breaking out, it was viewed as the British Empire was the most powerful empire in the world. And certainly at a place close to what its peak would be. What was the scope of their empire economically, diplomatically, control wise around the world at the time? - Yeah, so I'm gonna accept half the premise of the question there. So the British Empire is a big deal, a big fucking deal in the 18th century. Whether it's reached its peak, I think that's where we're gonna argue here, right? So let's hold that second thought. But yeah, the British Empire in 1775 is a big fucking deal and it's getting bigger and more dangerous if you're not part of it. So it got a slow start. Britain is one of the last European powers to try to build an empire in the new world. Spain and Portugal get their first, as you may remember. I've heard some of your shows on that subject on New Spain, for instance. - Oh yeah. - And France gets in as well. Britain's really the laggard there. And they end up where they do in places like James Town and Massachusetts, because the other empires have taken all the good stuff first in the Caribbean, for instance. So the English Empire in America, where do I want to say about this? By the 1770s, it's about 26 give or take colonies in the new world. We're very familiar with the 13 rebel colonies, but if you do some basic math, it means that there's at least as many that don't successfully rebel in the war that we both know is coming after 1775. And so those are the colonies. Some of them are well-established Caribbean colonies. Think of Barbados, which is like 1624, Jamaica, which is taken from the Spanish in let's say the 1650s or 1660s, and various smaller places, which we could list. But in the senator, right? Yeah, so as of recently, 'cause in the seven years war, French Canada becomes British, right, Canada, right? French Quebec becomes British Quebec. It's the British flag flying over Quebec in 1776. Britain also has Nova Scotia, which is a maritime economy on that sort of peninsula, but it's not very well built out. And then Britain's also taken this time from Spain, the Florida's. Florida was Spanish territory before the seven years war give or take by 1760. It is British. The British flag is flying over East Florida, it's in Augustine, and over West Florida, at Pensacola, it's two colonies, sort of peninsula and panhandle back then. So imagine that today, British flag flying over Florida with two Florida's. I don't want to think about two Florida's. I think one is plenty. Yeah, plenty. It's a wild place down there. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah, sport. My brother-in-law, I should give a shout out to him. My brother-in-law is the sportscaster on one of the TV networks in Tampa. So I love Tampa, yeah. Love Tampa, yeah. We went to Clearwater for New Year's, loved it. Yeah. Minus the Scientology, great place. Anyway, so one Florida is a lot. Yeah, I don't touch you now, and that's right. (laughing) So there were 13 other colonies. There are at least 13 other colonies in that rebel. So there's 26 colonies. Some of them recently claimed from France and from Spain, which is to say, every time Britain picks up a colony, it's to the detriment of France or Spain, right? So who's on the rise in the New World in the 1770s? It's Britain, sure. Who's on the back foot? It's France and Spain. France has been kicked out of all of North America. Only has Caribbean colonies left. Guadalupe, Martinique, Sandeming. Spain is massively under, the Spanish empire in the New World is underpopulated and overstretched and very fearful of Britain will keep pushing in to more Spanish places. So Britain's the ascendant empire in the 1770s. You can see why those other empires, France and Spain, would think it's the best news that ever has ever happened, that the British empire is now at war with itself as of 1775. Now, it also makes sense geographically why the 13 are the ones that came together 'cause they're in North America. They all touch each other. It's generally like the same kind of culture across that minus some political beliefs and stuff. But I think there's also the idea that the British maybe got, I don't want to say like a big head, but it appears that way based on their legislation after the Seven Years War, the French and Indian War, like they had their own colonists there in America fighting in the red coats for them. They kill the French. It's a resounding victory. They get more land out of it and everything. And now they're like, holy shit, we are in charge over here. And something happens between, you know, say roughly 1760 and 1775, which is not, that's not even a full generation, not a long time, to where all the same guys that we laid out who fought in that war for the British, many of them, literally turn all the way over and suddenly are like, get out of here. - Like a young man called George Washington, for instance. - Yeah, how does that, you know, you mentioned the Stamp Act, you mentioned the course of Acts, you mentioned the taxation without representation, which is all these things and certainly a huge piece of it. But how did it go out, what are some other factors we overlook as to why it went so 100 to zero or zero to 100 in that short a time? - Yeah, people write whole books about this, right? It's a great question. Let's think about this from the British perspective, rather than from the perspective of future patriots responding to British events. If you are the British government in 1763, then you have just narrowly survived a global war in which France and Spain tried to wipe the British empire off the map. And you have only succeeded having lost the early phases of the seven years war by throwing everything and the kitchen sink into North America to create a troop surge situation whereby British and colonial troops can together numerically overwhelm the French and their native allies, cutting off native supply chains, forcing some of the French's native allies to actually switch sides. So by the end of the French and India war, it's the British and the British and Indians versus the French, the natives of change sides. - Can we pull up the numbers on that, by the way, D, like how many, how many? - Sure. What do you pull up? The troop surge in 1757 or 1758, and see what sort of numbers Britain was throwing at the problem in the middle of the war 'cause they were losing midway through and they turn it around through the troop surge, right? - Thanks to Mel Gibson. It all comes back to Mel, how are we doing now? - Yeah, 1757 to 1758, British executed a major troop surge in North America, directed by Secretary of State William Pitt, aimed to reverse the early Seven Years War failures, this strategy culminated in 1758 with 16,000 British and provincial troops attacking Fort Carillin, representing the largest single force deployed in North America at that time. - So that is unprecedented. 'Cause Britain and France are fighting each other around the world in the 1760s. The French and Indian War, the Seven Years War, is a global war, but William Pitt is doubling down on victory in North America. We'll create a global ripple effect to victory everywhere, which is true by the way it does happen that way. But that troop surge is incredibly expensive and also persuading natives to move from their French allies to the British side is also very expensive as well. So Britain emerges from that war, arguably close to bankruptcy and also having built a bunch of forts in the Trans-Appalachian West, think of the ridge of the Appalachian mountains to make sure the French don't come back somehow, even though the French are no longer there. The point is it's been expensive and they don't have any money to pay for it. So in the years after 1763, we see a series of British finance ministers say that well, we need to increase revenue in our empire to great, we need greater taxation receipts if we're gonna be able to pay off this massive war debt and live to fight another day against France and Spain when they inevitably come back and beat us up again. And so that, leads to a range of slate of pieces of new taxation policy. And this is where we come in, right? Because we know the names of some of those pieces of tax policy, the stamp act, the town shend act. What you may not know, what we in America may not know is that there were similar pieces of legislation enacted on British people in Britain to achieve the same effect to raise revenue for the empire, right? And British people were the most, some of the most highly taxed people in the world. Most taxes did not actually apply to American colonists. The British in Britain got the worst of it, but they can't declare independence from the finance ministry because the finance ministry is down the street and has an army, right? It's the colonists who react with the most sensitivity to those tax hikes after 1763. No one likes a tax hike. I totally get that. And there's also really bad messaging around why Britain is raising prices on like newspapers and playing cards and legal diplomas and fashions and paints, et cetera, all the things taxed by the stamp act and the town shend duties. The messaging should be we just we in Britain just sent an expensive army to the colonies to prevent you guys being conquered by the French. Now we need to recuperate costs and we're asking you to pay a small share of that price. That should be the messaging. That's not the messaging that the patriot that the future patriots hear. They interpret these tax hikes as we are dumping all the expenses of this war on you and you alone because we see you as inferior to us. And we do not recognize that we relied on you to bail us out of what was a losing proposition in the French and Indian war. So there's a real messaging conflict. There were messaging perception conflict. Interesting that a lot of it was at home, though, too. Yeah, where they're taxing the shit out of people in the what we know is the UK now. And why wouldn't they? Because there are only about two million colonists and white colonists in North America. There are seven or eight million people in Britain. You go where the people are if you're trying to raise revenue by marginal taxation, you go where the people are first, right? Yeah. Yeah. Can we pull up a map of the British Empire circa 1765? Because that'll help with high-ass next question right here. Because the colonists prior to the American Revolution are viewed as white British colonists from the mainland. The people obviously in the country are Britain are literally originals of the that's the colonies. See if we can get a global one. But people originally of the British Empire. But then they have a lot of what they would view as like assets around the world as well in other places where there's also like what they would view as third world countries where they're either enslaving people or totally pillaging people of, you know, the actual value of whatever the economic outputs are there. So what I always wondered is if you had such a first world kind of nose-up power why they felt they had to rely so heavily on tax revenues from their own people rather than doing the pillaging. They were already doing around the world from other economies. Yeah. Well, there's plenty of pillaging in the 18th century to be sure. But yeah, that global map we're hunting for, what it would show would back up your point, right? It would show that Britain has interests in other parts of the world. Those interests take a couple of forms. They're usually extractive interests. So Britain has a couple of logging colonies in Central America, roughly where Belize and Nicaragua are now. And that doesn't sound very interesting to us today logging colonies, big whoop. The number one name in the world. What's it made of? It's made of wood, right? Yeah. And they can't get that wood from Britain because they've long ago chopped down all the trees to build the previous generations of ships. They need logging colonies, right? This is like enriching uranium today, right? That's how valuable logging colonies are. That's a weird comparison. Yeah. So logging colonies in Central America, I've already told you about Florida and Canada and the Caribbean colonies, but then think about West Africa. Oh, here it comes. That's later, of course. That's later. Yeah. Little later, but yeah, no, we can talk about it while we're using thematically. We're going to kind of get you. So you can see a couple of logging colonies there in Central America on the isthmus of Panama. Then you could there you go up to the left there to the left, Mosquito Coast British Honduras, those ones. Then you can also see Jamaica. Jamaica is the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, the jewel. Yeah. It may not be the biggest colony by landmass, but it is by far the most economically precious and valuable of every British colony in the world because you can cultivate sugar there's the largest of the Caribbean sugar colonies. And cultivating sugar is like planting money trees in your backyard and just having the bloom every day, right? And so to fuel Britain's Caribbean colonies, it relies in on 12 West African slave forts or factories on the west coast of Africa a bit further north there around there. That's sort of area. Yeah, don't worry too much about the factories. So the two words are used interchangeably. Factory means warehouse in the 18th century. Yeah, warehouse for captive Africans are waiting transportation to the new world primarily to Jamaica, but they're built to resemble forts. If you Google Joey, you know, the Elmina Fort or factory, you will see just how militarized they are. They have you know, canon emplacements and stuff like, stuff like that. So the 12 forts on the West African coast are British extractive assets, the extractive asset, the asset they're extracting is not wood. It's human beings, right? It's manpower there to prop up the international slave trade. Britain also has interests in India by 1765. Britain does not control India as it does on that map. That suggests it's a post 1850 map. But if you kept that map up Joey, and imagine it's actually mostly indigenous South Asian territory at the time, you would see three British outposts. You would see one on the left hand side and two on the right hand side of the Indian subcontinent peninsula. And those would be Madras to use their 18th century names Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. And these are just, you know, forts with towns in them. Gives them access. Yeah, it gives them, it gives them trading access to indigenous rule of South Asian rules who are willing to trade. And the East India company is actually the agent on the ground. So it's not the British crown or the British army. It's the Walmart of the British Empire trading sort of on behalf of the British crown, but sort, sort mostly for its own profit. I don't know if this, this is definitely not a perfect parallel. I'm just doing my best to look at modern day. You might look at say the US and China and different ports that they have significant say trading control of around the world where we don't control the country over there, but because of the access point we have and, you know, the, whether it's China or the US and flooding in assets to those countries for trade effectively like they're very reliant on what we may do. And that might be a similar kind of relationship. Yeah, that's right. So access point is a great way to phrase it, I think. So Britain has strong trading interests in Africa, especially in Asia. It's real settled populations are only in North America. And so you were asking earlier on about, you know, sort of why is it that those 13 colonies are the ones that rebel, but some of the others don't like Quebec and like East Florida and Nova Scotia or West Florida and Jamaica and the Bahamas and, oh wait, West Florida is not today's Florida either. It's a bit. It overlaps with Alabama today. Yeah, yeah. So if you draw a line down the middle of what looks like West Florida there, you'd have the current boundaries of Alabama on the left. And I think the panhandle of Florida on the right. Wow. How about that? So the 13 rebel colonies are the only ones with really, truly significant settler populations. East Florida, West Florida, largely underpopulated. West Florida, 5,000 people, for instance, that's nothing. Whereas Virginia, let's make up a number 500,000 or something like that. Right. So it's the settled colonies that rebel. Those colonies which are underpopulated do not think they can survive alone beyond the protection of the British Empire. Only the settled ones think they've got the manpower to actually defend themselves. And you said there's around a approximately a neighborhood of two million colonists at the time of the war exactly. So that's not including slaves that are in the economy. So before I even get to like the slave economy, which is what it ran on, what were the main, you know, you mentioned sugar. There's obviously tobacco. What was the main like GDP drivers in say the 13 colonies to start with? So we could run north to south, right? So let's start, you know, up New Hampshire, Massachusetts way. And we would say that they lack the big famous agricultural cash crops because the climate won't allow it. But you can make something of an industry out of timber. You can make something of an industry out of fish and fur. And the Canadian colonies will do some of those same things as well. As we go south, we're starting with Pennsylvania removing southwards. We start to see that wheat and corn and cereals and tobacco, cereal crops, cereal crops, not just was right, cereal crops. Yeah. Because Cheerio is actually growing the ground. It puts some glycinate on that shit. Speaking of which, when I grew up in Britain, the BBC used to do like an April Fools day, something or other on one of their networks every year. And the only one that ever like went viral in the 1980s was when their flagship, like, 60 minutes program. It was called Panorama. Yeah, it's the diet, the one that they did. There you go. You know, it did the diet interview, right? Their flagships, investigative journalism program did a, a story about how there was a blight on pasta trees in Italy and all the pasta was falling off the trees because it was full of rotten disease, right? So convincing generations of kids that pasta, literally spaghetti, grew on trees in long strands, which to be clear kids. That's a tie-in appropriation. I don't like that. No, we didn't like it either. I don't like that. We were very confused. Yeah. We should have sued for that. Yeah. Your New Jersey is a lot of Italian blood here. I can, I can feel it in the room. Let me tell you. I know you can. A lot of glares come. Notice I've not put a crossword against the challenge. Yeah, right. Yeah, we're going to get the where they were in this war. I'm sure they were really a big part of it as well. So wheat and tobacco in places like Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Virginia, all the way up in Pennsylvania, wheat, you can get away with wheat and Pennsylvania, tobacco, bit more dodgy. And then a mochan wheat. I don't know about that. And if you go further south, the climate starts to allow even more profitable crops. If you get as far as South Carolina, you can grow rice and you can grow indigo, which is used to die various fabrics. That is actually very, very lucrative rice and indigo. And then if you keep going south, bottom of Florida, and most of the Caribbean, you can plant sugar. The curse of Western Europeans, sweet tooth in the 18th century sugar is incredibly profitable. Sugar is the big driver of the wealth of the British Empire. They put that like tea and stuff for absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're drinking coffee. Exactly. You can put in anything. It goes great with everything. Let me tell you. Yeah, it goes great in your slushy or slurpy or other terrible drink. We didn't have 7-11 back then, but you know, that's why you thought the revolution was out of style. That's right. You're going to get 7-11. Yeah. And that's we freed India. Thank you. They could come over here. I'm sure they're very grateful. They do an amazing job. But anyway, so essentially it is a crop economy across the board. And like you said, up in the north, you know, your crops would be more timber or they might actually like hunt fur and get some fish as well. So how many slaves approximately do we think or based on censuses do we know lived in America say around the outbreak of the American revolution? Yeah. We know a lot about this, right? You know, slavery's been a focus of intense scholarship over the last 50 years since the civil rights era and deservedly. So it's also become highly politicized and highly charged as well. But we have pretty good statistics. We know that in the 13 rebel colonies, the total non-native, non-indigenous population is two and a half million. So if two million are white folks, that means that 500,000 people of African descent and the vast majority, I'm going to say 95% of those black folks are enslaved people in colonies like Virginia, Maryland, where I live now and places further south like South Carolina, Georgia and North Carolina. A quick reminder, that doesn't mean that there wasn't slavery north of Maryland. It just means it wasn't as widespread or as profitable because you can't get rich, you know, in the fish and fur trade and because enslaved labor doesn't really help you with operations there. Not in the same way. When you see enslaved people in Massachusetts or New York or Pennsylvania or Rhode Island, they're primarily not going to be involved in industrial scale agriculture. They're going to be involved either in small scale, subsistence farming, when a white farmer owns one or two enslaved individuals to work on various tasks around a small property or enslaved individuals are going to be working in domestic slavery as an enslaved cook or enslaved nurse made or something like that. Or they're going to be involved in maritime dock work, right? They're going to be the teamsters and the holiers and even sailors as well. So Christmas addicts, for instance, a name that probably rings a bell. Christmas addicts is one of the five men to die in the Boston massacre in 1717. And Christmas addicts whose half native and half of African descent is at one time an enslaved sailor then he gains his freedom and then he continues sailing as well. That's one suspected image of him. We're not sure if that's him or not. But he's the first to die at the Boston massacre. So there are black people in the north and some of them are enslaved but just not in like industrial agriculture settings. And it was also throughout the formation of America a huge hot button topic among the founding fathers to where you had some founding fathers. I usually geographically depending on where they were from adamantly saying we have to keep slavery and you had other ones pretty adamantly saying we don't have to keep it and we should get rid of it. What I've always understood from the history is that the reason eventually in both the declaration of independence where they deleted the line and then in the constitution to where they had the three fists, the amendment and all that stuff and kept it in. The reason that the pro-slavery people want out is because they were so concerned that like the economy would crash if they ended it overnight. Was it that or was it more complicated than that? I mean everything's more complicated but you are certainly right that as white planters see it in places like South Carolina or Virginia and Maryland and the Caribbean colonies, most especially perhaps, slavery is what makes their extraordinary prosperity possible. They can't imagine a world in which they remain as wealthy without coerced workers of African descent to do that work. And that's because some of these cash crops, I mean I think rice but especially sugar are good examples. They are so labor intensive and so back-breakingly awful work that you can't find free people who will do that work for wages, right? Because to work in the sugar cane business and the Caribbean is to watch your life force be stolen from you rapidly. Vincent Brown, a scholar at Harvard University, wrote a great book about slavery and sugar in Jamaica and he says basically that if you arrive as a coerced laborer of African descent in Jamaica to work in the sugar fields, there is now a clock that's ticking and the clock is behind you and you can't see it but it has less than 13 years on it and by the time it gets to zero you are dead. So no matter what you you could be 21 years old, right? You could be 15 years, it's going to kill you, it's going to kill you. So Jamaica and places like it they are slaughterhouses for black people. So the evil benefit that white planters make from that, of course, is all the sugar that gets cultivated through that labor and that sugar makes white planters in places like Jamaica the richest people on God's earth at this time. So I'll graph it. Mostly, yeah, because forced labor is incredibly extractive. So we think that white planters in Jamaica are 55 times wealthier than the average Englishman. We think that white planters in Jamaica are 35 times wealthier than the average colonist in North America. So you can see why planters in Jamaica when the revolution comes along, they don't want to do anything to rock the boat of their prosperity and their prosperity. Let's go back to something we said earlier on. Depends on importing and slave people from British slave factories on British ships to Jamaica and then selling their sugar on British cargo ships to Britain to be put into British cups of tea and they depend on the protections of the British Navy to protect their profitable islands from French or Spanish conquest. So for all those reasons, you can see why white planters in Jamaica wanted nothing to do with the revolution because it would seem to jeopardize everything they held economically so dear. It's so sad that things like this just come down to what your profit is, but that is the reality of human nature throughout all of human history. And one of the ugliest things in human history across many cultures is that things like slavery were not only around but rampant. And obviously we formulated this country on and ended up having to fight a war where that was a big part of it. And so I always try to look at history to where it's like, yes, people are also products of their time and they can have extremely cold takes because things were normalized in society that never should have been normalized. And I try to just look at it. No pun intended is black and white as possible. But the one thing I've never really been able to square with the whole slavery aspect is the fact that many of the people who were doing this regardless of being businessman and looking for a profit, they were labeling themselves as Christians and believed in God and Jesus and all this stuff. And yet they were subjecting people to completely stripping them of their basic humanity against their will. And in many cases treating them way worse than they treated their cattle. What it, you know, it's kind like the trillion dollar question here, but like, how did such a cognitive dissonance formulate in America and particularly at this time? Like, did they just was it a giant brainwashing? What was it? Yeah, I'm not sure they would have seen it. It's culturally dissonant, right? For them, this is totally normalized, right? They exist in a cultural universe where the air they breathe is suffused with the idea that there's nothing incompatible between slave holding and being a good Christian person who goes to church on Sundays and sees themselves as doing everything right to go to heaven, right? And that's because almost every major Christian denomination you care to name in the 18th century is either officially silent or ambivalent on the morality of slavery or or or two thumbs up on the slavery stuff. And, you know, a great example of this would be sadly the Church of England. The Church of England is the official established church of Britain. It also is established as the Anglican Church in Virginia and places like that is the king the head of that officially. And whoever the British monarch is at the time, man or woman, king or queen, they are the head of the Church of England. And this matters, of course, because the royal family, we know from the scholarship of Brooke Newman at Virginia Commonwealth University wrote a great book about this called The Crowns Silence. We know that the royal family from the get-go is up to their necks in investments, personal and institutional in new world slavery. So it is the royal family who is authorizing the construction of slave forts in West Africa. It's the royal family who is offering thousand year long monopolies to preferred Englishmen to set up slave trading companies to compete with Spanish and Portuguese. Thousand years. Thousand year monopoly. Would you like a thousand year monopoly? I mean, it sounds like a good deal, but not for the terms. Indeed, yes. They had no qualms with the terms. The directors of the Royal African Company, the company I'm referring to, they had no qualms with the terms. They thought it was a great deal. They rushed into business. And soon set about turning Britain into the primary purveyor of enslaved people in the world, even eventually transporting Spain's enslaved people for it for a while as well. That's like having Amazon takeover, Walmart's delivery service or something like that to choose a sick example. So the British royal family are up to their necks in this. I want to give you just a couple of examples of that, which have always stuck with me. One is that the one is actually about the royal family, one's about the Church of England, which was the original question. The royal family example is, you know, you've probably heard of slave branding, right? The idea that slave trading companies sometimes brand the flesh of those they claim to own with certain marks to indicate ownership, right? Yeah. The Royal African Company, the biggest English slave trading company, did exactly that as all its competitors did too. And it would brand two letters, dy, on the people it claimed to own and move across the Atlantic, dy, dy, dy, right? And they want to get, you want to guess what dy stood for? I have no idea. Duke of York, King's brother, who was the CEO of the Royal African Company at that time, right? New kind of island. Yeah. So that's right. So that's one example of the Royal family's utter sort of centrality to slave trading in the British Empire. And now we're reminded that the Royal family is also the head of the Church, the King is the head of the Church. So no surprise then that the Church of England is pretty ambivalent at best and arguably quite pro-slavery in certain respects. We know from scholars in the Caribbean that the Church of England owns in Barbados a slave plantation for a period. I think it's called Codrington Hall. Codrington Hall. What if that's right? Codrington Hall with a see at the start. A plantation I want to say in Barbados owned by the Church of England for a time to raise revenue for the Church of England. So part of its diverse portfolio of investment. No, with a see at the start with a see at the start. Codrington, I think. C-O-D-O-D, everything else look right. Yeah. I could be wrong. We're not as well-versed in spelling British around here. If I got it wrong, I'll be embarrassed. Yeah. It's well, you've been away for a while. That's right. I'd be wearing off, you know. Codrington Hall, you said there's Barbados? I think it's Barbados. Now there's everything riding on how rural it is. Google AI, I think. That's a better question. Got it. All right. So Codrington plantations looks like you got the spelling right. We're two historic sugarcane producing estates on the island of Barbados. Correct. Established in the 17th century by Christopher Codrington and his father of the same name sharing the characteristics of many plantations of the period in their exploitation and slavery. Their particular significance was a part of a charitable bequest on the death of the third Christopher Codrington to the society of the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts. Do the next sentence. The history of the plantations illustrates the 18th century Church of England's dependence on the financial support of local landowners for its Christian missionary work in the West Indies and until growth of abolitionism, the institutional unwillingness to address issues relating to slavery. Now I actually do have to give to British, I guess like some participation points credit here, they were early to abolishing slavery comparatively speaking to the United States. Yeah, I want to say it was like around 1830. There was a movie made it Ian McSumpthen the fucking fantastic four guy. He was great now. Oh, you saw that movie. Yeah, you're a prophet. Yeah, I know it's amazing grace. The amazing grace. That's it. So they were they were early to this. So as a little tangent here, what kind of flip the switch there for them to be like, yeah, we're not going to. Yeah, let's talk about that. Great question. Yeah, that movie, amazing grace. I will say for the record, that's not a great movie. Historically, gets many things, twists many things and is paid for by right wing right wing Christian media. So, you know, just be aware when you're watching that. And I'm always reminded of so this is a scene about the rise of parliamentary abolition in Britain in the early 1800s and it follows the career of a guy, some people may or may not have heard of called William Wilberforce, right? Who's a white member of parliament from Yorkshire who converts to evangelical a form of evangelical Christianity and then takes that moral conversion as the inspiration for his anti-slavery crusade. And he will lead the campaign in parliament to abolish the British slave trade in 1807, which will be the first step to later abolishing slavery, empile wide in 1830 in the 1830s. As you said, that movie, however, I know you like to talk about movies. So I like to talk about movies too. That movie, however, is I think deeply problematic on its racial politics. This is a white savior movie, primarily where only white people get to do things and black people are there to suffer a cry. And the very first scene, it's one of the most appalling racist scenes I've ever seen in a movie, it begins on a stormy country road in Britain, where this white savior, William Wilberforce character stops his carriage during a rain storm because he sees the horse driving another carriage has gone lame and is suffering and is about to be shot by the driver because it's suffering. And he goes over and pets this horse and looks into its eyes like having a connection between human and animal. And the horse is black intentionally. And so the movie makers seem to be saying, look, right? He can he can feel empathy for these poor suffering inferior creatures slash animals. It's just fucked up, right? So it was when I was watching and I was watching. So let me spoil all your favorite movies for you anytime. He was still great in it, that guy. He was. Yeah, he's a well. He's really good. But the idea that like they did it years and years earlier, obviously through I'm sure a lot of different forces causing that is very interesting to me because they were a sprawling global empire at the time, who in the context of history, when people talk about the British empire, they don't exactly say like, hey, they were progressive, you know what I mean? But this was like relatively speaking, a more like kind of progressive, like, okay, let's get into this. I think that's all worth worth saying. And I'm always willing to hear that case. I'm going to put two flies in the ointment here, though I don't dispute the general point. Two flies in the ointment. Write that one down. Write that down. Don't write that down. No, I like that. That's good. The first would be, you know, in Britain, where I'm from, all we remember is that we abolished the slavery. We forget that we had the slavery and that we perfected the slavery, that we exported the slavery around the world, that we got rich on the slavery, we only remember that we abolished it first part and we didn't abolish it first, the Danish did. The second thing is that when Britain does abolish the slavery in the 1830s, it does throw so through a series of moves that in retrospect look pretty questionable, I think. Now I don't know the right way to abolish slavery. The best way is not to have slavery in the first place, perhaps. But the British do it by paying off the slaveholders. In the 1830s, the British Parliament passes a piece of legislation, I think it's called the Abolition Act, and it takes out a massive loan from a Dutch banking syndicate for 20 million pounds, which today would be what Joey can tell us. How much would 20 million pounds in 1833 be in 2026 dollars? But it's going to be huge. It's going to be huge. And that loan is used to pay off any English slave holder. Do we have a 2.15 billion pounds to 2.27 billion in 2026 is what 20 million pounds in 1833? Even that seems low to me actually. But yes, the point is billion right now. So Britain takes out a loan so it can pay off any slave holder and say, okay, we're about to free your slaves, but here's a check for their cash value, so you don't feel out of pocket, okay? And you can see that there's obvious pragmatic reasons to do it that way, right? So valuable constituents in the British Empire who have lobbyists in London don't feel like they're getting screwed by this piece of radical progressive legislation. I mean, it's compromised for people's freedom. Hey, yeah, that's a worth it expense. Yeah, but the critique at the time by abolitionists was, but well, by paying those slaveholders off, we are validating their right to own property. We're giving them the market value. No, we should confiscate these things. They don't, these people, they don't own in the first place, right? You're not a slaveholder because you never were. You can't own a human being. So I don't know what the right way to do this is, but I will tell you that when the American Civil War comes around, Congress will abolish slavery in Washington, DC, the federal capital by copying that British playbook. Congress will pay off DC's slave owners about 300 of them and each give them a big cashier's check saying, you get a call, you get a call, you get a call, you get a call, but now we're going to free your enslaved people. It's, you know what? And I hear you too. It's like, how do you do it? There's almost no good way to do it unless it's in a perfect world. You just be like, all right, it's gone. Yeah, but I kind of, it's a different comparison, but it reminds me of equating it in the modern world to like warfare. For example, there's maybe just off the top, my head, 40, 50 countries around the world ranging from China to Iran, who may do some really bad things to their people or people that live among them or people around them or whatever, and who might also be like stated enemies of America, if you will. But like, unfortunately, the world kind of sucks. And you can't just go declare war on anyone you want. Otherwise, you know, we'd be invading China for, you know, killing the weekers off. But instead, we have a delegation of every CEO known to man with the president going over there to make trade deals because unfortunately, like, that's how the world works. And what I could see, because it reminds me what happens with the revolution where they ended up making the wrong decision, but like, you can't, you have such a large mathematical part of the population who's like in support of something, and you can't just be like, fuck you, you need to lose 100 to zero. You got to have that dirty word compromise. Yeah. And if it means that like people could go free, but you got to swallow your pride and pay the people who never should have owned them in the first place, that's a good deal to me. Yeah. So, I mean, I totally agree with everything you said there. And this is why, you know, historians don't make good policy makers. Historians are great armchair quarterbacks. You know what you should have done, right? What we didn't like about the thing you do, these are the three things. Historians are great at that, myself included. I can ruin anything you love, right? But it doesn't mean you should let me make any decisions. Yes. Yeah, they're, it's funny, you say that I wanted one of my favorite things to talk about is the fourth turning guys. You ever read that book? A little bit. I know what the fourth turning is, but I haven't read the stuff. So the reason they get so much credit, because I love history. I love reading historians like you, but the reason those guys get so much credit is because they were Strauss and how we're like historian sociologists and unlike a lot of historians who will pour through history so much that the natural human bias comes in that therefore they can predict the future or predict how it's supposed to be done. These guys just poured through the history and they went like this. They just said, okay, we're not going to change anything. We're just going to plop that down. That's what's happened, a bunch. So it'll probably happen now. They didn't inject like, well, this could change now, because we're doing this. And the reality is if you're studying it all the time, you are going most 99.9% of people no matter how talented they are as a historian, you're going to start to kind of inject that bias of like knowing so much about a topic that you're certain it could be this way, but you're absolutely right to be self aware on that that it's like maybe it actually biases you in the other direction of how to fix something. I want to make one point here, which is the closest maybe I'll make to a contemporary political point here because no one you know no one pays me for my political views here, which is that there's been a lot of attention in the last year or so on whether there are similarities between the eve of the American revolution, the early 1770s and the Patriots growing frustrations with a seemingly corrupt despotic administration and whether some Americans reactions to the current administration or echo those moves. And the clearest parallel people have drawn have been you know the grievances in the declaration of independence, you know, if you reread the declaration of independence, you know that after this sexy preamble staff, the highfalutin words, there's 27 grievances, specific grievances against King George III, painting him to be a tyrant who's done the 27 things that a tyrant would do, right? And there's been scholarship around the current administration, um, critiquing the current administration, saying, you know what, that that list of 27 things, you shouldn't see it as a to-do list, you need to check off today, right? We should try and actually not repeat the dissent into tyranny that drew the American revolution forward. And I think that's also actually the last part there. This is where I would disagree on on the back end with you. I think that we're in a moment now where we have to realize we've been fighting the wrong divide. We've been fighting the left right divide from administration to administration. I would argue the last five administrations, post Clinton. So you look, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump, there have been fissures of segments of the population who are so upset about the direction of things and so much of the population getting economically left behind and us losing some power in the world that it creates these revolutionary ideas, depending on who's in power. What I think a moment like, say, I don't know, the Epstein files could show us is that all of these people eat at the same stake houses. They commit, in some cases, the same awful horrific crimes, depending on who it is. It's not all of them, but you understand what I mean. And we've been so busy fighting over 5% this way or 5% that way. We don't like this policy or we don't like that policy. I mean, I heard people saying the same thing about Biden and the administration like this administration has taken away all our constitutional rights. Now they're saying about Trump. And I think they're right about all of it. I think it's birds of a different feather. And if we can learn something from the revolutionaries, it's that they understood what the power structure was. Guys, as we said earlier, who had a range of political beliefs agreed on one thing, which is that we need to be able to have our freedom here to be able to build ourselves and do what we want to do without having some boot up our ass or something like that. And to me, it's like, how many elections are we going to go in this country where people are like, well, what's the least worst option? You know? And when do you get to a point where it to be clear? I don't want any kind of revolution or anything like that in America. War is bad. And it's it's not something we should want. But like, how do we get to a point to where we learn from history and say, Hey, we we actually do control this system. How do we stop the system as it is so that we can avoid having to do something like this internally at home? We should learn that lesson in the civil war as well, but not that that was recently. But you know what I mean? I do know what you mean. I think the we and we could mean Americans, we could mean British people, we could mean humans. We are very bad at learning the lessons of history, right? And you know, we tell ourselves that that's why we study history to learn those lessons and yet somehow we continue to fail to learn them. Historians are guilty of that too, of course, or we can get stuck into patterns and can't see actually when things diverge from historical patterns that we've seen we've seen before. But I agree at that point you may you made it twice down. I think it's important, right? That the there isn't that much holding the Patriot Alliance together, except for a commitment to separation. Because the people who support the Patriot Cores in South Carolina are utterly different from the people in Massachusetts who support the the Patriots, right? They're different economically. We talked about their, you know, positionality, regards in cash crop agriculture earlier on, for instance, ethnically, they're sometimes quite, quite different, right? Where they came from in Western Europe and other places could be quite different. Their culture, their values, their way of living, how rural, how urban, et cetera. It's all quite different. Their religious affiliation could be different. You know, the Anglicans are the big church in Virginia, the Congregational Church, all the Puritans in Massachusetts, the Quakers in Pennsylvania. Lots of other places. It's a huge range, right? So what is the glue that binds them together? For a long time, you know, we've sort of trade in the idea that it's ideology, right? That it's slogans about liberty and freedom and self-determination, are the glue and only the glue. And I don't think that's wrong. I think that is powerful and a powerful set of ideas. And when they're brilliantly articulated by brilliant geniuses like Thomas Payne and Thomas Jefferson, you can really get fired up about ideas like that. I know I can, um, to be sure. But we've also seen, you know, more intensive scholarship in the last just, I would say, 20 years to see what other factors provide that adhesive mixture to hold the Patriot Alliance together. And I want to highlight the scholarship of a friend of mine, Robert Parkinson, who teaches at Binghamton, who wrote a prize-winning book about 10 years ago called The Common Cause, which everyone should go read and feel free to argue with if they don't agree. It's that sort of book, right? The Common Cause by Robert Parkinson, it's got a beautiful cover, by the way. And that book argues that if you go read all the newspapers, the ordinary people, loyalist, neutrals, patriots, red, yeah, pull up the cover, it's as gorgeous. Oh, you know what? I own this book. I hope so. Yeah, no, I haven't. No, I haven't read it yet. But I own this book. Yeah. It's a great door stop until you read it as well. Yeah, well. I'll turn my Kindle, so it's not a stop for those other words. Oh, that's good. So what we argue is if you read the newspapers that these ordinary folks actually read in the 1770s, if you reconstruct their media diet, like it's like, be like, if I looked at your feed, right? It's a historian. I won't, don't worry. But if I looked at your feed, then I would know, you know, what inputs you had, what cultural inputs you had, right? And given that we know what a cultural output is that we support the Patriot Cause, we can maybe draw some inferences there. And what Rob Parkinson finds is that the media diet consumed by most people in North America in the 1770s, and especially as the Patriot Cause is gathering steam, is obsessed with othering the King's allies. So it's full of concern that natives are in league with the British King and the natives are going to murder us in our beds. It's full of concern that enslaved people are being offered freedom by the British King and they're going to rise up and kill us in our beds. That was true that they were offered freedom to fight. Let's come back to it. Yeah, it's a good question. Let's hold that for one second. And thirdly, the King is sending rented German mercenaries who, when they get here, will kill us in our beds. And so, you know, anti-Indian, anti-Black and anti-German propaganda is a big part of the consumer diet, the media diet, the future patriots are consuming in this period. No wonder they're so engaged, they're scared, right? They're feeling anxiety about those external others. So what he's saying is that in addition to all the noble ideology, there's also xenophobia and racism and anti-Indian sentiment also mixed in here, which also helps to glue it all together. Some of that stuff is based on actual events that are happening. It is absolutely true that plenty of natives are allied with the King. We can talk about why that is if people are interested in it. It would love to. It's certainly true that the King is sending a German invasion forced to come here to Staten Island. Yes. Actually. And that's the modern equivalent of the troop surge I discussed from the previous war. This new troop surge will be German. Are you referring to the Prussians and all that? No, in the last war, when they sent the 16,000 and the 7 years war, this is the new troop surge with Hessians this time. So the Hessians are not Prussians, they're not Prussians. And it's certainly true that Lord Dunmore, the guy you're thinking of in Virginia, does promise lifelong freedom to enslaved men of fighting age who will desert their rebel master and come fight for his cause. So in each case, there's just enough sort of truth or near truth to make that fear feel real and grounded, even though, you know, skillful writers like your pull reviers and your Samuel Adams will stretch it way beyond what's actually true till it becomes this nightmare scenario that you must, you know, grab your musket and run off and point it at someone as quickly as possible. Yeah. And to see just a general generalize from like a strategy perspective where they're coming from again, like you said, you have maybe 40% of the country is into the revolution and they're trying to win that middle 40. And it's, I don't like this, but it's a tale as old as time. What's the best way to do that fear? You drive fear. Change one bit, right? I mean, yeah. Again, do you remember like, you know, four or five cycles ago, 10 years ago now, it was the fear that Sharia Law is taking over every jurisdiction in North America, right? And these sort of fear mongering tropes often come up right before elections in this country to mobilize a certain base, a certain way. And, you know, Rob Parkinson, I think, is saying that guess what? You know, what's old again? What's old is new? What new is old? We're doing some of that back then, right? Yeah. And the British are happy to demonize their enemies too. This is nothing specifically Patriot or American about this impulse, this move. This is a common move in pot geopolitics. Even when you look at like a totally fictional universe and show like Game of Thrones that's based on very, it's obviously like George R. Martin drew from all kinds of historical all, you know, in some cases, ancient and then medieval communities and worlds that existed. It's like the human nature aspects don't change. They just change the medium, or if that's the right way to put it, the form through which they're allowed to be fully enacted. It just tells us something about human nature. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, I've had this in the back of my mind the whole time because it's come up a few times with the French and Indian War. But would you mind just going through what, what officially like kick that off to where this happened? I'm going to do a bad job of this because it's not my period, right? I sort of start at the start of the revolution in my teaching and research and go on to the Civil War maybe. Right. Let's step outside of your period. I know, I don't like comfort zone. I don't like it, right? Feel free to fact check me at home, friends. So the seven years war is supposedly seven years long, but even that's a lie, right? If you look for chronology, you might see 1756 to 1763, which give or take his seven years, whereas in fact, the war begins in about the seven early 1740s, which is like 15 years. That's not horrible. Yeah, the 22 years war there, like the 40-year-old virgin, like we're getting up in that territory, right? Yeah, it's syllables, you know? And it begins actually as a contest between Britain and Spain for control of the Caribbean sea. Spain is at that point still the dominant imperial power in the new world, especially in the Caribbean sea. And Britain has been launching all sorts of what can only be described as pirate raids against Spanish treasures ships going from Peru and Mexico, filled with golden silver, back to Cadiz, which is how I say that town, in Spain. And Britain is trying to steal as much of their loot on the way as they can. That draws Spanish reaction, as you can imagine, and soon the Spanish navy and the British state are basically at war with each other. The Spanish government is ruled by a dynasty called the House of Bourbon. And Bourbon? B-O-U-R-B-O-N, Bourbon, Bourbon, Bourbon. I told you I was going to butcher Spanish and French words today, so there's one. And that ruling dynasty actually also controls the French throne, the French and the Spanish are related to each other at the royal level. I think they're cousins or something like that. They always are. Oh, they're damn famished. Well, yeah, the British royal family is famous for being, you know, related to everyone in power across the world. Yeah. Check those chins out. That's right. Sorry. Should I be offended all behalf of the American now? I'm pesting you. Yeah. This is a real decisive moment. I'm going to be able to make some. I want to say have at it. Yeah. Have at it. Although I thought King Charles mostly did a good job when he visited the US a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was surprised by how well he did actually, yeah. I'd not rated him. When he was, you know, Prince Charles for decades and decades, I just assumed his, you know, his time on the throne would be a bit of a disaster, but he didn't do too badly the other week. Anyway, what was the question? The fact that Spain is related to France and their both Catholic powers brings France off the sidelines into the war in give or take 1744, 1745, which expands the chess board even walk as where France is strong, brings Canada into the picture. You see colonists in colonies like Massachusetts and New York decide to do a solid for the British empire by using their own initiative to march up to a French fortress in Canada called Louisburg. I'm sure I butchered that, named after one of the King's Louis and take it from the French, which is not the instructions they've been given. They've been instructions they've been left by the British government was, you know, don't give up Massachusetts to the French, but instead they go further. They actually invade a part of Canada called Louisburg and they hold it. And at some point Spain drops out of this war leaving now Britain and France as the main contenders. Wash a young George Washington is going to wage a wage in as a, I think, a militia captain or something representing Virginia. He's going to do something's right and something's wrong. Some people say he started the seven years war with what happened at Jumanville Glen when someone died, but I think as I've already discussed, the war had begun really earlier. So pinning it all on Washington is probably one of those like America first sort of America is always at the center of the story sort of narratives. Well, you know how it is. I do know how it is. Yes. I've lived here for 25 years. I know exactly how it is. It's interesting, though, because study enjoyed it. Washington's life. You know, he was, I think he was a great president. I think he was an amazing founding father, like every other human being that's lived. He's imperfect. And one of the things about him that was always so fascinating is he was known as being this incredibly humble guy. Right? And like on the surface, meaning yes, he practiced this in things like saying, you know what, I'll leave office after eight years and set a precedent with that. No one should have absolute power. Don't call me a king, call me a president, stuff like that. That's true. But also he would act like I don't want the job or whatever. When in reality, like if he went, I think it was in 1775, when he got named General, the Continental Army officially, you know, he went there and they were going to nominate him. And he got up and gave a speech about how he doesn't deserve this. He doesn't want it. And someone else should surely do it. But he's wearing his like General's uniform, I can't possibly serve even though I already have the outfit. It's like, I kind of look like this on what a coincidence. But I bring it up because it's like, it seems to me the real if you look at the origin story of George Washington, like him having so much combat experience and strategy experience in the seven year war is really what set the table for him eventually being like a pretty amazing commander in chief for the Continental Army. I certainly agree with that last part, right? There's Commander in Chief. We the future residents of the United States, we were lucky to have him, right? So I like that you're using way. We there, right? Try to use it the right way, right? I've chosen my team. Because I honestly think when confronted at the start of the American Revolutionary War with the largest Navy in the world, battering the East Coast, trying to do shock and awe to shell people into submission, when the British Army arrives and it's brought, you know, 20,000 rented German soldiers with them. There's a hell of a troop surge there. You would think that the tiny rag tag fledgling Continental Army that didn't exist, you know, just a few months earlier would fold and crumble. And I honestly think a lesser commander would have folded and crumbled at some point earlier in that in the war, 75, 76, 77. George turns out, I think, I'm no Washington expert, by the way, but I think George is a realist. He knows that he's not going to get up one day in 1776 or 1777 and win the war. But that is beyond his control. But what is within his control is getting up every day and not losing the war. What is within his control is not getting cornered Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, every day he gets up not getting cornered today. So he realizes that pretty early. And so what some people have critiqued him as sort of a hit and run, sort of defensive strategy strike quickly, then run away, which I don't think is a fair characterization, even, even the way I just said it, is actually his brilliant way to keep extending the war by another 24 hours, by another 24 hours, because he knows that in every war, one side is going to lose the stomach for it. Right. And it doesn't want he doesn't want it to be his side. Right. He knows that Britain is fighting a war, which is hugely expensive. Remember, they just almost went bankrupt fighting another global war that they're fighting at 3000 miles away that British sons and fathers and brothers are being sent off to die for no obvious good reason that the British public can understand. The British public cannot make sense of the fact that we are sending our men folk to die in a war against our own people. What the fuck are we doing is one of the messages on the home front? What the fuck are we doing? And that way you looked into where you're looking into the opinion. That's how I came to this whole project. Right. So a lot of people are like, what's going on? So British public opinion utterly divided about whether prosecuting George's war against George Washington is a good idea or not. Some of them are sympathetic to the Patriots actual ideas and causes. Maybe they should have their own government. Maybe we have treated them shabbily. Others though say that this war is costing us British people in Britain way too much and we can't bear it. That cost is being felt in lives, blood and treasure. Yeah. Kids are dying every day. It's also being felt economically. The British economy goes into the shatter because Britain is at war with its major trading partner, which is itself on the other side of the Atlantic, right? Britain's economic free trade area just sets fire to itself in 1775, right? Because all those industrial agriculture crops we talked about earlier, the tobacco, the rice being sold to British consumers on British ships and you can't do that when there's a fucking war on, right? And Britain can't sell its manufactured goods to its American customers while there's a fucking war on it. Everyone in Britain knows that because their pocket books are telling them that everything is more expensive, all the goods we'd love to export, we can't get through, people are losing their jobs, all because Britain's waging a war against its own people. To most British people, it makes no fucking sense. Did they even increase those tax laws in Britain that you had referred to in the bill up to the war so they're paying even more taxes now in the war? Right. Yeah. So all of this seems to be a bunch of America problems. So why don't we just let them have their independence? Because then we can at least start trading with them again, right? Even if we're separate countries now, they still need our manufactured goods, we still need their rice, their tobacco, their wheat, etc. So why don't we just give them what they won't walk away and pick up the trade again tomorrow? That's one of the primary dissenting messages being flooding the zone in Britain. I say flooding the zone. You can see it in British newspapers which are famously independent and free-spirited, right? British newspapers love to critique the monarchy and the prime minister, open a tabloid today. It's the same thing in the future. Oh yeah. But back then they were doing it all day. Oh, it's hardcore, hardcore. But it has a free press back then. And you'll also see that in cartoons, making fun of every decision the king and his government has ever made, some of them valorizing George Washington, some of them not. And then you can also see this through petitions, peace petitions. Petitions are a brand new technology of political action in the 18th century. And British people love a petition. And so you see, we know through the work of the scholar James Bradley that before the French get into the war and make it much more complicated, that British people are sending huge numbers of petitions with massive numbers of signatures in either to the king or to parliament saying stop this fucking war. It is disastrous for us and for you and also the Americans, but mostly us. So let's stop this right away. How early were they doing that 1775s when you start to see the first as soon as Lexington Concord, they say no, no, no, let's not do this. Don't escalate, deescalate. And even after like 76 where they had until the crossing of the Delaware, they had a lot of victories. Things were looking. That's right. That's right. So this is why this is maybe swap some of the reason why those petitions don't gain traction, because the British ministry can point to one victory after another in 75 and 76 to say, look, we're going to win this. And the kids will be home by Christmas. Have you ever heard that phrase in American history before? You know, I feel like I'm hearing it right now. The troops will be home before Christmas. Don't worry. Yeah. Four week war. Then we'll be done, right? It's never fucking true. And it wasn't true then either. The war becomes a quagmire to use a Vietnam era expression. And those petitions keep on coming. We know from James Bradley that the ones aimed at the king never reached the king. They get intercepted by government ministers. So the king who lives in a bit of a bubble never never never learns just how anti this war his own people are. Maybe if he'd heard those petitions, he would have been less gung-hoed to keep prosecuting it. And those petitions can't get them bad press though. So you can't get them bad press. He's going to get upset. You know, you can't handle that. Yeah. Although he's a bit it's a bit more of a stable genius than we give him credit for because you know, our view of the king today us here in America is colored by two things. It's colored by let's get them in the right chronological order. The Declaration of Independence from 1776, which says the king is an absolute not job or wacko. Look at the 27 things he did. If your neighbor did these 27 things, you call him a tyrant. Well, guess what? Your king did these things. So he must be that was the original right. Author before. The original what? The original author. I don't know what that means before Nas wrote it 200 years later. He lost me right away though. Okay. Yeah. I am 48 years old. I'm a 48 year old white man. So I have no idea what you just said. I'm an introducing Nas. I look forward to that day. Okay. So the first way that we think about the king comes through Jefferson's caricature of him in the Declaration of Independence, right? And the second way that us modern Americans think about the king comes through the musical Hamilton, right? If you've seen that musical I heard the song, right? The king comes on. He's like the worst boyfriend you've ever had. He's a psychopath who will quote kill your friends and family to remind you of his love. That's a line from the show. And that's drawing on the Thomas Jefferson version of the King as an out of control psycho, right? Breaking news. The actual King George was not now out of control psycho. He was a pretty boring man who no one really respected very much. He was made fun off and not even having a mistress. That's how boring he was in the 18th century made fun off for his tasteless dad jokes, which I can relate to as a tasteless dad joke, my self. He's just not that interesting. And until the Tea Party. He'd been telling his ministers who have way more autonomy than you may assume. To ease up on the old tax hikes, he's just going to piss people off. He's saying after the Stamp Act and the Townshend duties, those are blunders. Those are abundant in absurdities. They're going to come back and bite us in the ass. We should treat our American subjects not as a cash cow, but as people we actually respect. It's only the Tea Party that changes his mind. When 150 men loot private property and dump 10,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor, he's like, holy shit. That's goddamn right. He would have not liked you. I don't think so. He said, maybe I've been too flexible. Maybe I've been too leaning. Maybe I've got these guys wrong. Maybe they're a bunch of a holes. They need to be taught a lesson. That's when he at least doubles down on the idea of demanding subordination, but he's in control of his faculties. He's not a madman. He's not a psycho. He's someone who thinks he's been who's misunderstood his colonists and they need to be taught a lesson. It's been a while. So there's something floating around in my head that I could be mixing up the timelines and the person. But was it this same King George III who earlier on in his reign? I want to say maybe after the Seven Years War, due to some financial constraints and debts of the royal family had to seed some of the, I guess, like governmental power that the monarchy had within UK and basically trade some of the debt for Parliament instead holding some of those powers. So that may be true for George's reign. He's on the throne for so long. Yeah. And things possible. And I'm not an expert. So he comes to power 1760, midway through the Seven Years War, inheriting the throne. I think from his father or grandfather or George, it doesn't really matter. And he's still in the throne 60 years later. He dies in 1820. One of the longest reigns before Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria. He was the top dog in terms of, yeah, he saw a lot. So he God knows how many Prime Ministers that man that man saw. And the last 10 years of his reign, he was incrementally incapacitated and his son ruled for him. So that comes later. But you're absolutely right to say that the relationship between the crown and Parliament and who's wearing the pants is changing in the 18th century. And the thing that jumps to mind actually comes from the 17th century. There's an English Civil War in the 1640s. Well, this is taking me back to like high school history right here. There's an English Civil War between the Crown and Parliament and the King at the time Charles I is suspected of being a Catholic Parliament, the Protestant Parliament. You can't have it. In fact, you can't have it so much. You've got to chop his head off. So he chop his head off in 1649. And Parliament becomes a Britain becomes a Republic run by Parliament for 10 years. They put up a guy called Oliver Cromwell as their sort of Lord Protector. Think of President. He's not very not great. And then when he dies, he lets his son think of the son of a, you know, a recent president being put in charge. Not a great idea. Messes it up. And they go back to monarchy. That's how bad that brief experiment with republicanism is they go back to monarchy. But when they go back to monarchy in 1660, it's on new terms and conditions. The new monarch who's going to be ironically Charles II is told, okay, your king now, we're going to put a throne on your head and it's going to be really pretty and made of gold. But actually, you've got far fewer powers now than Charles I had because we don't trust anyone with that sort of power anymore. So Parliament is going to have more of the power that the monarchy used to have. And then you'll see that exact same thing play out again round two in 1688 in something called the glorious revolution. That rings a bell. Same thing again, but more peaceful, no one gets beheaded. The current king who is suspected of being a Catholic or is a Catholic, I can't remember James II. Parliament takes the crown off his head and says no more crown for you. We don't trust you anymore. We're going to give it to your daughter. You know why? Because she's a Protestant. And she promises to tow the line. And guess what, she's married to the Protestant king of the Netherlands. His name is William. This is William and Mary. Oh, and you get to wear the crowns now. But again, you have even less power than the last guy did. Parliament, how has even more power? So in various iterations and you may be naming a third one that I'm less familiar with, you're seeing Parliament take up more and more power and the crowns seed more and more power. Did you find someone that thief that was really vague? What I had, I saw you typing in something, but like if George III ceded any power of the monarchy to Parliament, because it's been a while, it's one of those books. Yeah, but it could. I could be a hundred years off. And it's a different George. And it's a different country. But you, but you see it, you see it now where the monarch is like the figurehead ruler. This is where it comes from. Right. So this is a process. Yeah, there it is. What you got. Wait, I got it right. Yes. King George III surrendered significant financial control and power to Parliament upon his ascension in 1760. Surrender of hereditary revenues in 1760. George III surrendered the control of the crown lands and hereditary revenues to Parliament in exchange. He received a fixed annual payment known as the civil list to cover the cost of the royal household and civil government. So this is when effectively, Julian, the king becomes an employee of the British government, right? And here's a stipend to be king, don't spend it all in one place. That's what the civil list is and it still exists today. So meaning the easy way to get the common man in America to understand the problem here is to say there's a king. He's a problem. Just keep it right there. So awful King George's head. Yeah. When in reality, yes, he's the king. Yes, he has power. Yes, he influences some of these things. But there's a whole parliament. There's an entire system here. But it doesn't sound as good to be like, yeah, the king and the parliament and some of the part of I'm going to make up words. Some of part of the Congress and this party over here, they think this legislation should go through the causes. Instead, it's like off with his head and people are like, I get behind that. Exactly, right? So in the 1760s and early 1770s, the people doing the things that Americans don't like are the prime minister and the finance ministers in Britain, right? And Britain goes through a succession of them because they're all terrible at their jobs, right? So the names don't matter very much. The Earl of Rockingham, for instance, Lord Chatham, whatever does that make them all sound so hard, Lord butte, yeah, butte or the chatting him like, come on, right? I can come up with a rap name, that good if I try. The Earl of Bridgerton, I think, is involved somewhere there. I'm pretty sure. So you're absolutely right to say it's the ministry, the ministers, the administration, the cabinet, we'd call them today, who are making the decisions that are pissing people off in America. And so we're actually seeing a lot of Americans who are upset about these things, complaining to the king, saying, you know, reel in your boys, right? They're making you look bad, George. We love you, George. It's your, it's your boys we don't like. Can you get some new boys? And even though that's a much more accurate way to frame your protests, it's just not sexy in terms of messaging, right? To blame a bunch of anonymous officials, most people have, excuse me, never seen a picture of and barely know the names of because they change every two years, is not great for a unified message of resistance. So one of the big breakthroughs in the anti-government protest movement is when Patriot radicals zero in on the king as the problem, which is a new development. And a couple of things happen. Number one, after the Tea Party, the king does take a more personal interest in directing strategy and does become more actively the face of this policy. So it's actually partly true. But also we see Thomas Payne and then Thomas Jefferson work to personify the enemy in the form of the king. So if you read Common Sense and everyone watching and listening should go read Common Sense because it's amazing. By Thomas Payne comes out January 9th or 10th, 1776, published by my namesake, Arbel. I'm Richard Bell. The publisher of Common Sense was Robert Bell. So it says Arbel, just like my name on every. On that side note, I'll never forget this one of my best friends from all my life. Andrew Barkstale had to give a report on Common Sense one time and he like passed out against the wall for five minutes and the teacher didn't know. Do you want to tell me that story? He passed out against the wall and the teachers like we're waiting on you. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure he's knocked out right now, but he was like still standing up. Feel right? And so that yeah, now he was good afterwards like they give him a little small insults and it was fine. But then I read Common Sense afterwards is he has some bars in there for sure. Yeah, some balls. I don't know what that means, but yes, that's a good statement. He spit. You're not helping. All right. So yeah, so in Common Sense, Thomas Payne becomes one of the first Patriot writers to lay all of this stuff at the feet of one individual. An individual everyone knows and can picture in their mind, King George the third. And he calls the British King a royal brute, a sullen, tempered Pharaoh. He calls them other names. This is I'm going to try and be cool here. It's like some sort of one-sided rap battle, right? That's where I was going with the knives. Thank you for the help. Yes. Yes. My wife, it's going to be embarrassing when my wife listens to this. So I think that's a very successful move to personify your enemies. You need to imagine who you are angry against and that person needs to have a face and a name. It can't be ministers or the ministry, right? And Thomas Jefferson while trying to make him his own declaration of independence sound much more above the fray than common sense. which was down in the sewers throwing mud. One thing Thomas Jefferson will take from having read common sense is that move of personifying the enemy. So when you read the Declaration of Independence's grievances, they're not against the British state or the British government or the British Ministry or the British Prime Minister, they're against King George III. Here's the only person referred to as a person personified in that document. Each of the 27 grievances, most of them begin he has, not Britain has, he has, he is George, right? He has a name. So that's an incredibly important move of giving some focus to that very diffuse, nebulous, disparate, anti-crown movement. Yeah, again, right back to the human nature things, though. I want you to tell me more about rap battles because I don't know. Yeah, now you were doing okay with it. So we'll just leave that part there. But yeah, you see it today. Like that's how things get sold. Like whether it's propaganda, real or a mix therein, wherever it is in the world. Like they'll create like the figurehead for a country or something like that. And that is therefore who everyone is. And it also like, you know, when you're fighting a war, you got to be able, for better or worse, it's just what it is. You got to have men go on a battlefield and ready to be ready to kill other men. And if you start having them think of those people as human beings, individuals rather than a part of a machine that operates at the direct orders of the head that you know and have characterized, then maybe they won't do it. You know, which is kind of sinister. Think about. But this is really important. This is why, you know, what Rob Parkinson says in the Common Cause book we were talking about earlier on is that's why, you know, demonizing the Hessians and the natives and a black folk as the king's evil proxies is so powerful. So when these Hessians are flooding Staten Island, they've been the subject of two, three months of Patriot propaganda depicting them as killing machines here who are coming for your wives and kids. And so of course that gets militiamen to leave their houses and pick up their muskets and run outside or join the Continental Army. And it turns out, of course, that the actual Hessian soldiers sent to America are not superhuman cyborgs who want to, you know, slit your throat for a six months or something like that. They're just ordinary dudes, just like you, right? If you're an ordinary Patriot dude who's taken up a musket to go fight this war, you're now facing off against an ordinary German dude who's been paid to go fight this war or he doesn't give two shits about who needs the paycheck, right? And so the actual Hessians are much, you know, more mundane and less fearsome than the actual propaganda about them. And an ordinary Patriot's only discover this when they defeat some Hessians and take them capture. And you know when that happens, because it's on the cover of my book right after Washington crosses the Delaware, he's on his way to Trenton, right? Where, however many, five, six, 10,000 I can't remember, Hessians are holed up for the winter and because he comes at them in the middle of a snowstorm, when they do not expect any sane person to be attacking them, he's on Christmas too, right? It's on Christmas, yes. Christmas, no more on Christmas Eve or something like that. Yeah. And there's a rumor that they're all drunken passed out. That's not really very true. That's like the drunk history version of American history. It's a better story. It's a better story. But the point is while Washington's troops do defeat these fearsham Hessians, now that should be impossible given all the propaganda, right? How do you defeat the cyberwalks? You can't, but they do. And when they take them prisoner, they start spending time with their POWs and talking to them and realize they're just ordinary guys. Just like you and me, right? And so that helps to really bury the myth of like Hessian invincibility after Trenton. So Trenton, at least for Patriot Morale, it's a big breakthrough. It doesn't change the overall military strategy, but you no longer is quite so scared of your enemy. I've never heard someone talk about that specific example with the Hessians and how what the interactions were after the battle of Trenton. That was obviously pretty quick, but like, even in World War I, when you think about it, they had that agreement when there were too many wolves to not fight. And suddenly you have the separate German and French armies, and British, I think, playing soccer with each other. But then two days later, they're going to go back to killing each other. There's something really dark about human nature that, again, it goes back to like some cognitive dissonance to where you've been trained to think one thing so much that even then when you are shown to, "Hey, that's not actually what it is. You still have a job to do." And that job involves like either I die or he dies. - It's wild. - Yeah, absolutely wild. And there's a great book that I learned a lot from about the experience of being a Hessian POW behind Patriot lines after the Battle of Trenton. And George Washington has a pretty clever strategy. He's got a plan for these Hessian POWs. He sends them all to be garrisoned under armed guard in one place, a town just west of Philly called Lancaster Pennsylvania, which is famous for having a German-American population. So there are plenty of German-American patriots in Lancaster Pennsylvania. And they're now basically standing guard over these German-Hessian enemy soldiers. And then Washington and his leaders start renting out the Hessian POWs to local German-American farmers as extra-subsidized labor, which means if you're a Patriot German farmer, your hired help is a Hessian POW. And after your initial great hesitation about having a fearsome warrior around your wife and kids, you realize they're just men. And Washington's plan is that these Hessian POWs will see how good German-Americans have it compared to German peasants back in Germany, how large their farms are, how prosperous they can be on land. And that those Hessians, when they're inevitably exchanged back to British lines because prisoners get exchanged all the time in the 18th century, that they'll go back feeling far less allied with King George than before. And they'll start to desert in large numbers. They might even defect theoretically to the Patriot side and pick up Patriot arms. That is Washington's cunning plan. And I talk in the book about whether it works or not. But you can see him thinking about constantly playing with people's assumptions and prejudices for the benefit of the Patriot Corps. It's a pretty smart guy. Oh yeah. And you're highlighting something we really haven't talked about a ton today, which is like you talked about it in the context of the way propaganda was put out and publications. But from a general perspective, like from the military perspective, the psychological war among the people that it was in the sense that you don't know who's a spy, you don't know who's not, you don't know who can't have their opinions turned. And it's all being fought on your land. So you're constantly looking around to see where there's a new opportunity or someone you got to be suspicious of. I mean, I've always been really fascinated by like the culpris firing and all that. You've seen Turnum guessing on AMC? Yes, I have. Yes. And I've read some books on it as well. Like that effectively like kind of won the war. And this is like a ring. I don't know if it actually would be great if you could tell some people about it out there who aren't familiar. But it's a ring of spies that Washington created separation between him, almost like the CIA would today between sources to get information and eventually use it against the British to entrap them at Yorktown as it would turn out. Yeah. Now I won't go too deep on this because I'm not an expert on that. But yeah, I agree that there's been great scholarship with very limited sources, by the way, about what these military intelligence folks did at the start of the dawn of the intelligence and modern intelligence age. And I was glad to see that they did try to popularize that through the TV show. The first season of which is really damn, damn good, AMC. And I'm a fan of British musicals and Broadway stuff and stuff like that. And there's a musical I really like Billy Elliot. You might have heard of it. I don't know. It's about a little boy who likes to dance. So it's the Rick Bell story, except with dancing. And it was based on a movie which didn't have songs in it. And the guy who played the kid, Jamie Bell, played the main guy in turn. Oh, really? Yeah, Abram Woodhull. I think it's his name. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so that's always had a, turns always had a special place in my heart for its connection to Billy Elliot. Anyway. So yeah, military intelligence is a big deal and siop is a big deal in this war, which is another reminder, this is a civil war among Americans and a war for hearts and minds. And you can't tell from looking at someone who is a civilian, whether they're a loyalist or a patriot or a neutral, right? So you're constantly having to make judgments and presuppositions. And it also happens on the global stage as well. You know, I end this book about the sort of global history of the matter revolution by taking readers over to the peace treaty in Paris in 1783, where our friend Ben Franklin pops up again, because he's been over the whole damn time, the whole whole damn time. Michael Douglas has been waiting there the whole damn time. That's right. Um, he was, he had nice extra curricular. He got up to a few things. I think we all know what those things were. Yeah, to be clear, he missed some other stuff too. His wife was dead by the way at the time. So he was like, I don't think that even mattered. Just said. So, uh, where was I going with this? Who knows? Oh, yeah, I remember. So military intelligence and spying. Um, even at the Treaty of Paris, the spying doesn't stop. Oh, yeah. So you remember from the Franklin show with Michael Douglas that, um, Franklin's American secretary, I think his name was Edward Bankroft. Mm hmm. He's a British spy. Right. And Franklin knows that. And knows it from the get on. Yeah. There's this levels of chess, these people are playing here. So there's so much drama at the Treaty of Paris, even outside the intelligence stuff. Because diplomats are always playing the intelligence game, whether they're literal spies or not. They're always trying to outwit and outthink and stay a couple of steps ahead of the people they might regard as their adversaries. And we all know that, of course, that the Americans led by Franklin and John Jay and John Adams will be the big victors at the Treaty of Paris. They will get almost everything Team USA wants from these negotiations, including extending the boundaries of the US all the way out to the Mississippi, which is crazy because the previous boundaries were basically Appalachia. But what folks may not know, which I talk about in the book, is that two of the big losers in the Paris Peace talks are America's primary allies, France and Spain, arguably two of the biggest losers. Maybe the Dutch will be the third there who get frozen out of what was supposed to be multilateral talks with all the allies on one side and Britain on the other, and what ends up being as bilateral talks with Britain on one side and the US on the other. And everyone else down the hall, not knowing there are private discussion going on. And so that's how Ben Franklin and his team get so much better deal for the US than they would if they'd have to carve up the spoils with their allies as well. I forget the specifics, what specifically were the French really pissed off about in the final deal that was made outside of being iced out, obviously. So being iced out is one big part of it, right? So Vergen, who's the French Foreign Minister, he's basically the French Prime Minister. He thought that this would be the moment in his career when he emerges on the world stage as the great negotiator, right? And he would be the power broker at the center of the most important multilateral negotiations in all of world history, and it would be his fingerprints on this that would be determined the fate of the world, right? He gets iced out, like you said, and he is pissy about that, never forgives anyone. When he finds out Franklin and the British guy, Oswald, have been negotiating behind his back, he just fucking goes mental to use my language here, right? He screams of Franklin. Franklin basically shrugs, says, "What do you want me to do? I'm here to do a job. I did my job. What do you want me to do?" But then, speaking of France more broadly, some people say that France hoped to get Quebec back from Britain. I think that's nonsense. But France may have hoped to pick up a couple of Caribbean colonies, or at least hold on to a couple of the British Caribbean colonies it captured during the war. Instead, it's made to give them back. France had hoped to dislodge Britain from its three essential trading posts in India, Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, France has five bases of its own. It wants to have all eight. It fails to get those three, so it's back to where it started in India. And fundamentally, it does not see Britain knocked down nearly as many pegs as it had expected. Because Spain also gets iced out, which means that the only power to which Britain actually loses meaningful territory is the United States. It does not lose meaningful territory to France or Spain or the Netherlands. So Britain is knocked down by 13 colonies, but not by 10, not by 15, not by 20, not by 26, only 13. And France doesn't really gain. France gains nothing. Territory speaking, France gains nothing of substance. Yeah. That's tough. Yeah. So if you are King Louis, you're like, why did we do this? Why did we just dig ourselves into the deepest puddle of debt we've ever been in? You already remember giving up 60% of our revenues to pay interest on the lost debts. Now we're in deeper debts. If you're not careful, my head's going to be in a basket pretty soon. And then it was. Yeah. And that's a story for another day. It's a suck. But we actually, we've held off the Spain part all day. So let's get to that. Just real quick, I got to go to the bathroom and we'll go through that in a couple other things. We'll be right back. All right. So Spain, this is what we kind of bookmarked all day. When, what was the involvement and when did they get involved? I think you said it was right after the French did. What were the dominoes to fall there, if you will? Yeah, the dominoes. The dominoes are called France. When France gets in, the calculus of the Spain changes. Spain has a massive new world empire. As I think many people know, territorial is the largest European empire in the new world by, I think it's like five times bigger than the British empire in the new world. It's huge. So territory from, you know, San Francisco all the way down to like Teorodilfwego down there. Mexico City is like five, 10 times larger than Philadelphia. It's just, it's just a beast. But it's also stretched in and underpopulated at the same time. Spain is not going to tangle with Britain on its own because historically that's been a recipe for losing previous global wars. Spain only likes to tangle with Britain when it has a friend, a buddy, and that buddy's usually called France. And so in France goes first, that creates a clock, a permission structure under which Spain is much more likely to get involved than if France had not got involved. And remember, the two dynasties is one dynasty, the house of Warbonne, is on the throne of France and Spain. They're both Catholic nations as well. They have a lot in common. However, Spain also does not want to potentially lose to Britain, even with French help and worries that it could end up waiting into another war that cost it too much money and it walks away from empty handed. So Spain's first move when France says to Spain, we've just joined the Patriots. Will you come and join us is to say, nope, we won't. Instead, what we're going to do is we are going to use our geopolitical power to mediate a global peace. We're going to become the United Nations briefly. And we're going to get all the powers, Britain, France and these rebels to the table. And Spain will be the power broker deciding who gets what. And Spain offers that to Britain as basically a bribe. If you want to keep us out of the war, you better let us negotiate a peace. But the price for us negotiating a peace with you, Britain, is we want Gibraltar back before we get started. Gibraltar, for everyone who remembers, if you're fun to see this on a map, actually, Gibraltar is this rocky outcrop at Spain's southern tip, but the very gates of the Mediterranean, right? So if whoever controls the fortress at Gibraltar controls access to the Mediterranean sea, which ship goes in, which ship goes out, that's determined by who controls Gibraltar. And the British have owned that rock of Gibraltar at Spain's very southern tip. It's about 14 miles from North Africa since the early 1700s, when they stole it from Spain in some previous war, Spain desperately wants it back. And it says, if you want us to not wait in with France and destroy you guys at war, you better give us Gibraltar now and let us be the ones who negotiate this peace. And King George, in his infinite wisdom, says no deal, no deal to that. And George Washington is like, George Washington said, George, King George did what? When George Washington hears that King George said no to that peace deal in 1778, he says that is the most, I'm paraphrasing here, the craziest shit Britain's ever done, right? You could have ended this war, we could have all gone home, what the fuck are you doing, George? And it's the first time George Washington ever casts any aspersions on the mental faculties of King George, the third right, saying it's tinctured with insanity, which is ironic, of course, because King George will have several mental health crises later in life. Those haven't happened yet. So Spain will instead go from being the potential arbiter of a peace deal to actually pivoting and say, well, if you don't want a peace deal then fuck you, we're getting in. And Spain does get in on the French side, which is effectively the Patriot side. Now Spain is too high and mighty, too aristocratic to actually sign a peace, to actually sign a military alliance with the Patriots, because the King of Spain takes the view that they're a bunch of upstart Protestant rebels, insistent on bringing down monarchy and empire. Of course, I'm not going to put my name on the same document, George Washington or John J or someone like that has signed. So technically speaking, the King of Spain only aligns with the King of France, the King of France has signed such a deal with Franklin. So by the transitive pop properties of France, Spain is effectively allied with the Patriots. Because of let's make up a month, April of 1779, give or take a month or two. And this matters because Spain has one of the largest armies in the world. It also has the third largest navy in the world. And that naval part is going to match for a big deal. Right. That was going to be my question. Did we end up seeing like infantry, Spanish on the battlefields or was it pretty much the naval support? Yeah, so it depends who the we is and that did we see an infantry because if you're asking did Spanish soldiers serve in the 13 rebel colonies, the answer is no. There are no Spanish troops that sent by the King of Spain at the Battle of Yorktown. Right. For instance, right? There are no Spanish troops at Newport, Rhode Island or in New Jersey or wherever else it might be. But Spain will send Spanish troops almost everywhere else around the world where there are British people to fight. you will sense. troops from Spanish New Orleans, from Spanish Louisiana, into British West Florida, and to beat the shit out of the British soldiers there. You never hear about this. Yeah. Well, yes, yes, I know. You don't. And that's because it's not, well, Florida's not one of the 13 rebel colonies. That's the only reason, right? But the British soldiers are there, so it's resources there. There are British soldiers there. It's a part of the war. You know how this is going, right? Yeah, you are occupying British military, tangling them up in a costly and distracting operation, which the British will lose, by the way. And the Spanish will make Florida Spanish again as a result of that conquest of places like Pensacola. And the Spanish will also push into other places where there are British assets, even if they're not part of the I-95 corridor. So the Spanish will push into the Great Lakes region. They will try and take Chicago land. The Spanish will try and take Chicago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Chicago, St. Joseph, which is close enough to say Chicago land, right? Yeah. Yeah. The Spanish will push into those logging colonies in Central America. Those two specks of pink on the isthmus of Panama, like Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras. They will try to make Central America Spanish again. And they will try and invade Britain in 1779, which is wild. That's a naval campaign to be clear. Wait, the Spanish navy tried to invade. The Spanish navy. Now, let's use the word armada here, because we see where this is going. Yeah. There's already been a first Spanish armada back in 1588, which got blown back by bad winds. There'll be a second Spanish armada where the Spanish navy and the French navy coordinate to invade southern Britain to take the big ports at Portsmouth and Plymouth dockyards and blow them to bits and take all their ships. And bad winds and the defense of a British admiral whose retirement age actually pushed the second armada back. The second armada was also a failure in 1779. God, the British, they have to fight this everywhere. They're fighting off of India. They're fighting on their own shores. They're fighting in the middle of these colonies. They're fighting in the things that aren't the colonies. It's crazy. This is the thesis of my book, right? Yeah. That is Patriot strategy to bring in foreign partners, to push the British in too many directions, to try and hold on to too many places around the Global Enta until they can't do it and they're stretched too thin. That is Patriot strategy and it fucking works. It's a good fucking strategy. It's a good fucking strategy, right? Just to jump to the headline here, you know, by the end of the war, Britain controls about 100,000 soldiers and sailors around the world. But they're all now fighting too many other fires against too many other people. French, Spanish, Dutch, Indian, the Kingdom of Mysore, in India, the only 30 percent of those 100,000 are free to fight George Washington in North America. That's the success of Patriot strategy in one statistic, right? Only 30 percent can actually try and tangle with George, which means that George has a chance of winning. So there's this, I hesitate to call it, but maybe it is the way you should say it. Like hindsight, 2020 view of the revolution where, I've heard this before, where historians will say, really, the revolutionaries had the advantage the whole time and it was their war to lose. And the way that I've heard it explain in most contexts is not because they had a bigger army or whatever or because they knew that they were going to successfully get all of these other global powers to cause problems around the world and divert attention. But literally because the age old military idea of like you're fighting on your own land and so you have some geographical advantage over your opponent, that's why they were going to eventually just be able to win the war of attrition and outlast a foreign invader if you will. My only question to that, I guess like devil's advocate and looking at it, is how can you say that when there was such at least some significant part of the population that literally lived among everyone and wanted to support those quote-unquote invaders? Yeah, you put your finger on the problem with that, you know, attrition versus counter-insertions and sort of thesis there. So the presence of a civilian population in which more than half 60% are not patriots means that the idea that the home team have home advantage is fictitious because there is no home team, right? Right, right. Two or three home teams. Or there's a home team of loyalists, there's a home team of patriots and there's a bunch of neutrals up the grabs as well. So it's a civil war. So that idea of home field advantage can very quickly get overblown. Now I do subscribe to a version of that which says that the patriots know that the longer they can draw out this war, the less and less popular that war is going to be back in Britain, right? Right. And that the British public are going to get sick and tired of all the price hikes at the gas pump, the hyperinflation, the lack of jobs, the raising unemployment, right? People being sent off to fight and die in a stupid war that no one understands, right? At least we love those times behind us. So that is part of patriots strategy, right? To make this war such a quagmire that they can see no no strategy for British military success. And it's also true that from the British military's point of view, the actual British military from Britain, they are fighting 3000 miles away from home. Their supply chains are going to be stretched thin logistics as an absolute nightmare when you're 3000 miles from home. And so it's likely they're going to fail to meet some of their objectives and any counter insurgency strategy is always requires you to put the genie back in the bottle, right? How do you stop people wanting to be free? How do you stop them? You can sit on them, but eventually you have to go home and then they'll stand up and want it again, right? So there is something to that thesis. But then the other part of the thesis, the piece we've forgotten about this thesis is the other part of patriots strategy is to pair that with distracting campaigns against other opponents around the world. So Britain can't even throw everything it's got at the patriots in the first place in North America. You put that together. And yes, over the long term, it seems obvious that the patriots are eventually going to win. But to be clear, day by day, that's not how it feels, right? In 75, 76, 76, no patriots gets up thinking today is the day we win the war because they don't write it for eight years, 400 weeks. What's crazy is, so this wall over here, where I have the wallpaper up the other side of the sky. I thought that was a window. That's not a window. You know what? Shout out to my boy William who put this up. He's a G like you can't this is actually 11 pieces that he put together and you can't even see the lines. He did an amazing job. But what I love about it is literally the actual skylines on the other side of this wall right there on the river. And every day when I go for a walk to take my phone calls and stuff, I'm walking on the river and it's crazy to think about this giant, you know, all these huge buildings and all this stuff. This was literally no pun intended here, like ground zero of the revolutionary war in America. This is where everything like kind of made or broke, including, because it's kind of related to that last question of like, yeah, on hindsight, they were going to win the whole time, including the fact that Washington and the continental army at the very beginning in the summer of 1776, barely made it out of Brooklyn and Manhattan to back into Jersey without being captured that would have effectively ended the war right there. It was pretty much the weather like the fog that was allowed them to get out, you know, and escape the British army like things were so tight whether it was there or then some of the battles they were losing and also in 76 and 77 that like this thing didn't really turn. Obviously they had the moment in 76 where they were they crossed the Delaware and get one victory. This thing didn't really start to turn till maybe like if I remember correctly late 77 78. So you have a two to three year period there. If you're going back to 75 pre declaration where they're on their back heel, they're trying to formulate an army like you said, they have no navy and everything. So that's where I feel like and you made a great argument there as to how this actually played out. That's where I feel like that hindsight 2020 is like you kind of ignore in the first three years there because a lot of things had to go just right for them to be able to even last in the first place. Yeah. So that's absolutely right. Folks may have seen the big Ken Burns documentary that's on PBS before Christmas. Everyone over a certain age I think over 45 years old was required to watch Ken Burns documentary right otherwise they lose their benefits. And so I watched it and it's six episodes each one's two hours it's 12 hours of your life over six hours right. And if you're a revolutionary guys I know you are I think you would you would enjoy it. I've been checking that out. I feel very cool watching it. No. No. I feel cool watching it. And but what you see is that you know it's I think it starts on like a Sunday night and then it goes through Friday six days. And if you're watching it live every night, the Patriots lose until Thursday right. So they lose on Sunday. They lose on Monday. They lose on Tuesday. They lose on Wednesday. Then they start to not lose quite as badly on Thursday. And then suddenly they win on Friday right. So there is no one turning point I mean you can point to different turning points of different significance. One is a morale boost like Trenton at some morale boost right. Moral boost. Doesn't change the military calculus. Saratoga break the track record over you know defeats and retreats for a hot second. Good morale boost. Good for recruitment. Adventure Alliance big fucking deal Spain getting in big fucking deal. And when when Spain joins France, let's just finish the thought about the naval power that you were talking about earlier on. If we drew up. up like a table on the screen right now. You can't actually do this, Joey. I'm just a thought experiment. Of ships of the line, the big fucking ships, the destroyers of the aircraft carriers of the 18th century. Why, what do we say? Like 100 guns on the first class ones, right? The big ships, we would see that the rebels have zippo. The British have about between 60 and 90, depending on the year. That's a load of really massive ships. Spain has about, excuse me, France has about 50 or 60 and Spain has about 50 or 60. So what really matters is when the British Navy is up against the rebels who have zero aircraft carriers, France, which has about 50 aircraft carriers, and Spain, which has about 60 aircraft carriers, 'cause when you put France and Spain together, they are bigger than Britain at sea in terms of raw naval power. And that means that Britain's long-lasting supremacy against the rebels at sea ends as soon as Spain joins the war. It doesn't mean the war is over, and they're obviously gonna win, but it's totally changed the military calculus for the first time. When France and Spain are finally on the same side of the rebels, the military numbers, the balance is totally shifted. - You also have like a complete shift in rules of warfare, too, in the sense that British always follow like, this is how the petrol happens in wheels. - Is that a British accent? Is that a very shitty British accent? - Let's hear more of that, please. That was my best, but they get up and they say, "This is the honor of war," right? And then the Americans-- - I didn't realize you watched down to Nabi. I would not have guessed that I'd have that. - I didn't really watch down to Nabi. I know my mom had that on in the background. I did watch the crown. That's a very well-known country of that, right? - For sure, but like, they say more like, "Eens," you know? - That's Prince Philip, right there, right? - Yeah, like the kings, they speak, whatever that is. But like, just listen to Robert Maxwell, that's how he talked. But, you know, they followed these rules of war, and you step up and then you aim, you shoot, you fire. But you have like the rebels where you'll have people down south like the swamp fox who were just going in the middle of the woods and ambushing people. So in some ways, it's also like the revolutionaries were willing to just break every quote unquote code of which I'm glad they did. Of war to just totally change the comfort of how the British were gonna fight the war in the first place to make it a total war at home. And I feel like that's also something that over time kind of turned the war because the whole, like, this is the strategy, we'll fight on this battlefield, that's what it is. There was so many other things going on outside that besides the World War aspect, just from like the way that they fought it, that, you know, it ended up kind of, it did them in in the long run. - Yeah, so the fighting against every possible opponent, and as you point out, every possible sort of strategy and tactic as well. And it's definitely sort of some sort of gorilla fighting in the south that you're alluding to that gets a lot of play, right? In the popular sort of mythology about the revolution 'cause it's real, but also, it often comes at the exclusion of things we should also notice, which are also happening at the same time. So people probably have heard of Baron Stuban or Baron Stoieber to use the sort of vaguely German pronunciation he would have recognized. He's one of this class of out of work European officers who end up fighting in George Washington's army. Stoieber is the drill master at Valley 4, do you remember? And then Lafayette, Dakar, Duportet, Kazamir Pulaski, Thales Chuchusko, there's a whole bunch of these. Didn't Stoieber have like a fake resume too? - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's just fascinating. People need to write like, I would say an opera about him or a great reason, yeah. Anyway, he's an amazing guy. I could talk forever about Stoieber. But there's a whole class of out of work European officers who are recruited, recruited by Silas Dean Benjamin Franklin in Paris, who know that the continental army, this brand new army, needs to level up. - Right. - Meaning professionalize and meaning Europeanize. The big goal of the continental army in 75, 6 and 7 is not to teach guerrilla tactics for everyone to hide behind trees like snipers. It's to stop behaving like a proper European style army when they're but just a bunch of farmers from Massachusetts and other places. So that's why they bring in these European guys with decades of experience in things like artillery and engineering and drilling to get these people to act like a proper army as they would have seen it. So that's at odds with the sort of ambush portrait of, you know, militia in the South, but both the true simultaneously, right? So the British army is fighting effectively two different sort of sorts of opponents among the Patriots. The discipline European style folks who now have European officers in their ranks and the swamp fox, Francis Marion, I think his name is, right? The swamp fox and those folks as well. So which way do you turn? How do you know how to behave when they're constantly changing the game around you? - You got your general patent and mel Gibson and they just kinda. - It's amazing how many times mel Gibson will come up in a conversation with you. - He's always gonna come up with this one, yeah. This is a great movie and all that. But at what point did the revolutionaries understand and do we have primary sources where they really talk about this at all? I'm not really sure that this was in fact like, hey, this is literally a world war. This is not just us trying to get the French in this and whatever, this is affecting all kinds of shit around the world. - Yeah, so I argue that the globalization of this war is not something that happens to the Patriots and that they respond to is that they make it happen. That it's Patriot strategy from basically the very beginning and there's a paper trail. We got the receipts for this. We can prove this as I do in the book, right? So let's take the Continental Congress for instance. Everyone knows that in early July, there will be a vote in Congress on independence. - 76. - 76. And the vote happens on July second for the record, not on July fourth. - Yeah, four sounds better than that. - It does sound better. That's what it says on the press release. So that's why I remember it that way. But the vote on July second is to declare independence, right? And resolve that these colonies should be free and independent states. What people may not know is the guy who introduced that a month earlier, who put the motion on the table of a genuine name Richard Henry Lee. He proposed three motions on that day in June. One was for independence, one is to build a confederation to become a treaty-making state. And the third was to seek foreign alliances. And this was a three-part package. It's one thought with three prongs, right? So the stool, the stool, is called how do we win the war? The three legs of the stool, are we win the war? By announcing our intentions to seek independence to the world, by gluing ourselves together into one mega-govment that can make treaties with other powers and then to seek military alliances with these other powers. Those are the three legs of the stool to win the war. And they debate this in Congress. And everyone agrees, yes, this is the plan that's going to win the war. They bicker about which one of these things is their first priority, second priority, third priority, which one's going to get voted on first? That's Congress messes around. But the point is they all agree there's three prongs to win the war, and declaring independence is just part of that three-part strategy. Forming a foreign alliance and becoming a treaty-making state of the other two. So I say we've got the receipts which say, as early as June 1776, this is the plan. And that's why they deputized John Adams in July to come up with talking points for treaty negotiations with France and Spain. It's why they translate the declaration into foreign languages and send it out on ships addressed to King Louis and King Carlos of Spain on Monday morning, July the 8th. And it's why they put their very best man in Congress on a ship to France, that fall. Ben Michael Douglas, Ben Franklin, right? I like that. You send your A-team right to get that job done, right? Gordon Gecker. Yeah, where do you put your. Who's your favorite quarterback? I don't know sports. My favorite quarterback of all time, my favorite eagle is Jalen Hertz, delivered us a Super Bowl. But probably favorite quarterback to watch ever is Brady. I have open to kind of words because I don't know who these people are. Yeah, it's all right. But your MVP, where do you move him on the chess board? If Franklin is your most talented individual who's not a soldier, which he is, where do you put him? And the answer is obvious. You put him in France, right? Because that's what you need next. So I think we have the receipts. It's pretty well documented. This is Patriot Strategy. But we've written that strategy out of the story because it requires us today in America to acknowledge that it was a multi-state coalition that the Patriots built. And that it was the fighting of people who weren't necessarily American in places all across the world, both in America and outside of America that made the difference. That's a complicated story to tell. And fundamentally, we all like simple stories. So Rebels vs. Redcoats just goes down easier. So we forget to do the thinking. And that's why you write the book. But when you look at the context of the history of revolutions around the world, the reality is that all the ones that work usually end up going really bad after it works. The day after the revolution is like, oh, shit, this is actually worse than the problem we had. What made the American revolution in this experiment of a country that we've been able to put together? What made this one different and unique to where it's like, oh my god, like we actually got it? I was just saying America's working. Is that right? I think it's working. What's got its pain? But we've been doing pretty fucking well around here. I certainly chose this country. So I voted with my feet on this to be clear. But yes, when the war is won in 1783, it is not clear that this revolution has turned out to be a winning idea because the country that emerges after independence is battered and ruined and. fragile beyond our wildest imagination today. We think of America as fundamentally, despite our divisions as strong and centralized, right, with a very powerful central government today that's in the driving seat. That is not the country that emerged in 1783. The 13 rebel states were glued together and actually a very weak confederation, a very weak glue binding those 13 sovereign countries together. Think of it like more like NATO or the European Union. There was a weak glue holding them together and those 13 states wanted 13 different things and had 13 different ideas about how to go about it. So each had their own foreign policy effectively. They each had their own fiscal policy. They made their own laws and taxes and currencies. It was a fucking disaster in the mid-1780s. There is hyperinflation and those government policies are only making things worse and worse and worse because each state starts printing money to solve all their problems. There are uprisings in places like North Carolina, the famous in Massachusetts with Shays Rebellion. Yeah, that's the famous one. That's like the old, the old Continental Army guys weren't getting paid. Yeah, that's right. They were mired in debt and they're like we fought for this shit. And so to put a lid on all of those problems, there were national leaders who said we need to assert ourselves. Their names are Alexander Hamilton and George Washington and James Madison and they call this constitutional convention which will try to bind these 13 states into a much stronger centralized union. You could argue for all that the subsequent constitutions, many problems and I could go to town on the floors of the constitution. It succeeds in binding those 13 states into one country for the first meaningful time and providing a level of governmental clarity and stability that set this revolution on a path to something that looked a bit more like success and a bit less like failure. But I think it's been a work in progress ever since. For sure. Yeah. For sure. But I like how you put that because there's nothing that's ever been created that's perfect and all seeing in the future. But the some of the core tenets of the constitution, these guys were able to foresee in some cases that are being tested now that we'll need to look at there is truly amazing because you're absolutely right. In my opinion, one of the most under reported parts of American history is those years between the constitution being ratified and the war being over because like you said, it was extremely tenuous. And I know when I have HW in here, we're going to be talking about like what happened to all the loyalists after the war in question 12 skim. Yeah. Oh my God. It's like crazy in all this. But hey, I'm glad we got we got something together and you know, we've been able to have some a lot of cool history since then. Certainly some things we always want to improve on. But coming up on the 250, it's it's really exciting for me to have in guys like you to discuss where we're at in this beautiful experiment we got here and the guys who started it. So thank you so much for coming Rick. It's my pleasure. And everyone can get your book in the link down below. I'm looking forward to reading this Memorial Day weekend for sure because we are recording this podcast ahead of time. It's coming out around July 4th, but cool as cover I've seen in a long time. So everyone go check it out. Thanks Ben. All right, everybody else you know what it is. Give it a thought. Keep back to me. Peace. Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge help. Thank you.