American independence and the Revolutionary War that achieved it transformed the lives of countless Americans. The war lasted seven years, longer than any other of America's wars until Vietnam nearly two centuries later. And unlike the nation's twentieth-century conflicts, it was fought on American soil, among the American people, disrupting families, destroying communities, spreading disease, and making a shambles of the economy. The war also had far different consequences for men than women, black slaves than their white masters, Native Americans than frontier settlers, and overseas merchants than urban workers. This chapter examines each of these issues, as well as the war's military progress. The chapter also explains why America's struggle for independence became internationalized as France, Spain, and other nations, driven by their own imperial ambitions and the realities of European power politics, joined in the conflict against England. The war and the Treaty of Paris (1783) that ended it not only secured American independence, but also redrew the contours of imperial ambition in North America and recast relations between England and the nations of western Europe. More than that, America's fight for independence ushered in an extended Age of Revolution that over the following half century would see a king toppled and aristocratic privilege overthrown in France, political reforms erupt throughout much of Europe, and independence movements undercut European imperialism in Haiti and Latin America. As activity quickened under the pressure of war and revolution, the American people mounted a political revolution of profound importance, another important topic of Chapter 6. Politics and government were transformed in keeping with republican principles, the clash of opposing interests, and the rapidly changing circumstances of public life. How much power should the new state governments have, and how democratic could they safely be? Could individual liberty be reconciled with the need for public order? Should women as well as men, and free blacks as well as whites, be considered American citizens? And what should the national government be like? Seldom has the nation's political agenda been more important, or more sharply contested, than during these critical years. Our understanding of the experience out of which the American nation emerged must begin with the Revolutionary War.
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