American Revolution: A Visual History

The American Revolutionary War was fought from April 1775 to September 1783 between Great Britain and its thirteen North American colonies, which declared independence in July 1776 as the United States of America. What began as a dispute over taxation without representation became a war for independence and, after 1778, a world war when France, Spain and the Dutch Republic joined against Britain. George Washington's Continental Army survived more than it won, but the surrender of a British army at Saratoga in 1777 brought in France, and the surrender of another at Yorktown in 1781 ended serious fighting. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 recognised the United States.

When it was fought: the era ribbon

The bold bar is American Revolution. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Estimated deaths by cause and side

Approximate figures; American disease deaths include prisoners who died on British prison ships in New York harbour, perhaps 8,000 to 11,000.

Timeline of the American Revolution

1. 1765
   Stamp ActThe first direct tax on the colonies; repealed 1766.
2. 1770
   Boston MassacreBritish troops kill five colonists.
3. 1773
   Boston Tea Party16 December.
4. 1775
   Lexington and Concord19 April; the shot heard round the world. Bunker Hill in June.
5. 1776
   Declaration of Independence4 July; New York lost; Trenton at Christmas.
6. 1777
   SaratogaBurgoyne surrenders; Valley Forge winter.
7. 1778
   France enters the warTreaty of Alliance signed in February.
8. 1780
   Charleston fallsThe southern campaign.
9. 1781
   YorktownCornwallis surrenders 19 October.
10. 1783
    Treaty of Paris3 September; independence recognised.

Taxes and tea

Britain emerged from the Seven Years' War in 1763 victorious and deeply in debt, and Parliament decided the colonies should help pay for their defence. The Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend duties and the Tea Act provoked boycotts, riots and the slogan 'no taxation without representation'. British troops fired on a Boston crowd in 1770, and in December 1773 colonists dumped 342 chests of East India Company tea into Boston harbour.

Parliament answered with the Coercive Acts, closing Boston's port and curbing Massachusetts self-government. The colonies convened a Continental Congress in 1774. On 19 April 1775 British troops marching to seize arms at Concord exchanged fire with militia at Lexington, and the war had begun.

Independence and survival, 1775-1777

Congress appointed George Washington to command the Continental Army in June 1775. Bunker Hill showed the militia could fight, and the British evacuated Boston in March 1776. Thomas Paine's Common Sense made the case for independence, and on 4 July 1776 Congress adopted Jefferson's Declaration.

Then things fell apart. A huge British force under William Howe took New York in the summer of 1776 and chased Washington across New Jersey. His Christmas night crossing of the Delaware and victories at Trenton and Princeton saved the cause. In 1777 Howe took Philadelphia, but John Burgoyne's army, invading from Canada, was surrounded and forced to surrender at Saratoga in October, the victory that persuaded France to enter the war.

A world war, 1778-1781

France declared war in 1778, Spain in 1779 and Britain declared war on the Dutch in 1780. Britain now had to defend the Caribbean, Gibraltar, India and the home islands, and the Royal Navy could no longer dominate the American coast. Washington's army endured Valley Forge and was drilled into shape by the Prussian officer von Steuben.

Britain shifted its effort south, taking Savannah and Charleston and winning at Camden in 1780. But Nathanael Greene's campaign wore down Cornwallis, who marched into Virginia and fortified Yorktown. In September 1781 a French fleet under de Grasse beat the Royal Navy off the Chesapeake, and Washington and Rochambeau's combined army besieged Cornwallis, who surrendered 8,000 men on 19 October 1781.

Peace and a new nation

Yorktown broke Parliament's will to continue in America, though the war went on at sea and in India for two more years, and Gibraltar withstood a great siege. The Treaty of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783, recognised American independence with generous borders to the Mississippi. Britain kept Canada and gained an unexpectedly resilient empire elsewhere.

The revolution created a republic under the Articles of Confederation and, from 1789, the Constitution, with Washington as first president. Its ideas inspired the French Revolution six years after the peace and independence movements across Latin America. Its contradictions, above all slavery in a nation founded on the proposition that all men are created equal, would take a civil war to confront.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• United States (1776 to present)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Dutch Empire (1602 to 1975)
• First French colonial empire (1534 to 1814)
• Danish colonial empire (1536 to 1953)

Wars of the same era and region

• Seven Years' War (1756 to 1763)
• French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792 to 1815)
• American Civil War (1861 to 1865)
• War of the Austrian Succession (1740 to 1748)

10 surprising things about the American Revolution

1. More Americans died on British prison ships in New York harbour than in every battle of the war combined.
2. About a third of the 'British' troops were German auxiliaries, mostly from Hesse, hired by treaty; hence 'Hessians'.
3. The Declaration of Independence was signed by most delegates on 2 August 1776, not 4 July, and John Adams thought 2 July would be the great anniversary.
4. France spent so much on the war that the resulting fiscal crisis helped bring on the French Revolution in 1789.
5. Benedict Arnold was one of the war's best generals, and the hero of Saratoga, before he tried to sell West Point to the British.
6. The war's last major battle was fought at Cuddalore in India in 1783 between British and French forces, weeks after peace had been signed in Paris.
7. George Washington lost more battles than he won, and his army was often close to dissolving; his real achievement was keeping it in existence.
8. Britain kept Canada partly because the American invasion of Quebec in 1775-1776 was defeated in a snowstorm on New Year's Eve.
9. The Continental Army's drillmaster, von Steuben, spoke almost no English and swore at the troops in German and French, with an aide translating the curses.
10. The Treaty of Paris gave the United States a border on the Mississippi even though American forces had barely reached the Ohio, thanks to skilful diplomacy by Franklin, Jay and Adams.

Sources

• American Revolution Encyclopaedia Britannica
• American Revolutionary War Wikipedia
• Revolutionary War Facts American Battlefield Trust
• Treaty of Paris, 1783 US Department of State, Office of the Historian
• Gordon S. Wood, The American Revolution: A History (2002) Modern Library
• Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming (2019) Henry Holt

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