Farmers vs. British King: USA's War of Independence

Presented by Tristan Palumbo and James

Hello, are you ready to improve your English today? This is the story of when farmers and volunteers beat the most powerful empire in the world. Presented by myself and James, two Cambridge certified English teachers.

Hello James.

Hello.

The year is 1763. America was part of Great Britain.

Britain had just won a long and expensive war against the old enemy France.

After this insane war, Britain needed money. Well, who should pay for the war? Maybe the Americans.

So new taxes came in. A tea tax. They had a paper tax, a glass tax. Tax after tax. But the problem is the Americans were not represented in the British parliament. Nobody asked their opinion. Nobody listened to their concerns. They had no choice in the tax. And they thought, well, Britain is 3,000 miles away. Why should we be paying tax to a place 3,000 miles away?

I think the Americans were right to be angry about that situation.

And the two peoples were maybe culturally growing apart. They were of different cultures at that point, really, because so many Americans were—they were Germans, they were Irish, Catholics, natives, Dutch, Spanish. They weren't necessarily British, right?

Well, that's true as well. Also, you have to bear in mind that many people left England because they didn't like living there.

Well, yeah, they went there to start a new life and to escape all of the bullshit from their previous life, right?

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And tensions grew. Probably, I imagine, in inns and printing houses, maybe in Philadelphia and New York, a kind of underground movement of "we don't want to live under the crown anymore."

The tensions grew.

And then on a freezing night in Boston in 1770, a crowd of Americans gathered around a group of British soldiers.

And there was anger in the air. They started throwing things at the British soldiers. They say snowballs and chunks of ice. They shouted insults.

Yeah, they did. Were they a threat?

Yeah.

Really, though?

Yeah. I mean, if a group of guys come up to you and start throwing blocks of ice or pieces of ice—let's say snowballs and then rocks and then—yeah, I mean, it's a threat. Stones can kill you. I think it's a threat enough.

And they did not have rubber bullets back then.

No, no. They only had real bullets.

And the redcoats, the Brits, shots rang out. Five Americans were dead.

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Three years later, something bigger happened. In fact, quite a famous event.

Americans dressed like Native Americans. They rode up to the British boats. They went on board the boats and they opened the chests of tea.

So tea would have been one of the biggest exports, I'm sure.

I mean, tea was a huge part of the economy. So there's a huge, huge tax levy on tea, which I believe is one of the reasons why they focused on destroying that tea.

But they threw it all into the sea. 342 chests of tea. It took them hours. They threw it all into the sea. The ocean around them would have literally turned into tea.

Did Britain have a response to that? Is that when they sent the ships?

And they were like, no more. No more playing around.

No, no more playing around is true. They started sending more soldiers with the idea of squashing the rebellion as quickly as possible.

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So the Americans had started—you know, the idea of fighting had got into their mind. And they had started collecting guns, right? Secretly.

Because there's one thing, having a protest and throwing snowballs at soldiers. It's another thing when those protesters start arming themselves.

I think the French were sending guns to them at this point.

No, not quite. So the French politicians were still a bit unsure about becoming involved if they could not guarantee a victory for the American rebels.

So America needed France's confidence in them to get their help. But they did not have France's confidence at this point.

So they were arming themselves. Arming means they were collecting their own guns.

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So the British heard of this, and they marched towards Concord to take away these guns and probably to punish those people who had collected the guns.

But Paul Revere, a famous American, he rode through the night around these villages and farms, telling everyone, "The British are coming! The British are coming!" so they could prepare.

And sure enough, the British did come. This guy rode in front of the British soldiers, warning the people that the British were coming to take away their weapons.

And so it was April 19th. The Americans got their guns and they lined up and they did not want to return or give back or give away their guns.

And they were facing professional soldiers. This was probably the height of the empire.

So at the time, the British army, British military—yeah, was the number one probably in the world.

Yeah, imagine America today is kind of how Britain was after the Seven Years War. They were far and away the strongest military power in the world. And they had half a million active soldiers at their peak.

Yeah, it is insane.

Across the world, yes. That's kind of what they do. Basically get people from around the world, put a red jacket on them and say, "You're fighting for the King now."

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So they faced each other, the British line, the American line.

One shot.

One shot rang out. Maybe a bird fluttered in the distance. And then a few shots. And then more than a few shots.

And that was the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

What chance did America have? And I mean, the farmers at this point, the Americans, they were just everyday people probably. Just, you know, people trying to make a life. Probably not soldiers.

Well, the strange thing is, they were a kind of mixture. A lot of them had served in the Seven Years War. A lot of them had worked with the British.

The most famous example being George Washington.

Whoa, I didn't know.

Yeah, George was a redcoat. So when I say redcoat, that's what they call the British soldiers, because they always had a big red jacket. So a redcoat is a British soldier. So George Washington was a redcoat.

The start of the Seven Years War was directly connected to George Washington.

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George Washington and some Native Americans defeated the French at one of these British forts. And the French commander surrendered. And this commander was killed.

And because of the death of this French commander in America, it started the Seven Years War.

Wow.

And George Washington, he owned a plantation. He did. He had slaves.

And dig this crazy fact. George Washington had dentures. Dentures is fake teeth—from his slaves. So he had his slaves' teeth in his mouth.

Did he really?

Yeah.

I knew he had wooden teeth. I didn't know he had slaves' teeth.

He had purchased them. I quickly went on AI to double check. There's no evidence that all his teeth came from his slaves. Some came from other sources, but most of them did.

It's not one, not all of them. A couple of them might have been, you know, somebody else.

A British redcoat who he killed in the heat of battle. He's just there removing his teeth casually with a chisel and hammer.

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So the first battles, how did it proceed? The early years of the war. How did it go for you, Brits?

Pretty well. Pretty well, yes, absolutely pretty well.

The British were winning battle after battle, more or less. Most of the battles were won by the British. And they captured New York. The British captured Philadelphia, which was the capital at the time.

So George Washington, the great general, he kept retreating. Retreating means he kept moving back and moving back.

And people started to lose faith in the American army. They were deserting. They were just going home. They're like, "What are we doing? Fighting this incredible fighting force. We have no chance."

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And the darkest hour was 1777.

George Washington's troops—troops means soldiers—George Washington's soldiers were starving. Very hungry. They had no warm clothes. Many had no shoes even. It was in the winter.

At this place, Valley Forge, is where they retreated to. 12,000 men were left. And that was basically the whole army. Just 12,000 men.

Unfit. Unfit for duty, meaning not in good enough condition to fight. About three to four thousand of the 12,000 had disease, had no shoes, were malnourished. Malnourished meaning didn't have the right vitamins and proteins and minerals. Were just underfed.

And 2,000 of them died in the winter. So their fighting strength was just 8,000 people.

And that's it. The war could have easily gone the wrong way.

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So George Washington, he trained the soldiers over many months. He completely retrained all of them to turn them into a disciplined fighting force.

George Washington took his newly trained troops to a place to fight the British. And they had to win this battle. I mean, their whole army was there, basically.

And it was the Battle of Saratoga.

And the Americans surrounded 5,000 British soldiers. And they managed to get all 5,000 soldiers to surrender. To put down their guns.

The moment that the war turned around. Their first major victory.

In winter. Just horrendous conditions in terms of ice and snow. And then, yeah, an unexpected victory, to be honest. And something which caused a great feeling of optimism for the American troops.

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Optimism. But also the French, who weren't sure if they should support America before.

After this victory, they were like, "Oh, America—they have a chance now."

And that is when French money, French weapons, French ships—probably la France cuisine, some frog legs, some snails—started to cross the Atlantic to help America.

And suddenly the impossible was becoming possible.

And the French, which before had been helping, but maybe not as much as they could have been, decided to go full in. And they declared war with the Americans against the British.

And at the same time, people in Britain are still being heavily, heavily taxed. It's not as if they stopped taxing British citizens because of the American Revolutionary War. If anything, people were being taxed even more within Britain.

That's what I think sometimes. Sometimes you speak to Americans and they're like, "Yeah, we whooped your ass, Boston Tea Party and all of this." But Britain had an empire that covered like a third of the world that they had to police and manage and fight for at the same time as the American Revolutionary War.

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And then the war started to change.

In Virginia, the French allies had come. French ships, French weapons. And they were all fighting together. And they had trapped the British army against the sea.

There's no escape. They were trapped on the coast.

General Cornwallis. Probably like a cornered animal. But he had a fancy white wig.

Yeah, you're right. So General Cornwallis was trapped between American soldiers and the French fleet and was in dire straits. In a particularly difficult situation.

There was another British general called Clinton who was in the North, and he was in New York. He had decided not to come to the aid of Yorktown because he was all but certain the Americans would try to recapture New York.

This, however, was incorrect. Because George Washington had decided to put all of his eggs into one basket and focus on Yorktown.

So you had General Cornwallis isolated and alone for too long. Basically, for too long.

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Well, he waited it out. Cornwallis, he tried to wait for British ships to arrive. And for three weeks they just waited in the American and French cannons. Like the big guns were just—without stopping—for three weeks.

I see. The British troops were just hiding there with all these cannonballs landing on them.

Probably, you know, one person will be standing in front of you and then his leg gets blasted off by a cannonball. And as Cornwallis tries to drink his tea, just—his tea cup just smashes out of his hand.

I mean, I don't think we can understand what it must feel like to be in a city under siege. When you have just weeks and weeks and weeks of continuous bombardment and fear. And just the lack of resources. And knowing that every single day you wait is a day you become weaker and a day your enemy becomes stronger.

And every night is one that you don't know if you'll wake up or if the roof will collapse onto you.

Absolutely. Or a fire will break out. So many different things.

I mean, and as a soldier, as a normal person, you would think to yourself, "Why am I here? Why am I here? Why am I in this tiny town, you know, like two, three thousand miles away from my home, fighting my cousins? What am I doing here?"

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So finally, Cornwallis—he had no choice. He surrendered the entire British army.

Surrender means to accept defeat. To say, "Okay, you win."

And the most powerful military in the world at that time was defeated.

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So in Paris, they signed a treaty. A treaty is like an official document. A contract between countries.

It said that the United States of America was now an independent and free nation.

With this treaty being signed in Paris, we can see very clearly that the French involvement was much more than sending a couple of soldiers. We can see that it was the French, in a way, trying to humiliate the British at this point.

However, there is something, in my opinion, quite poetic about the end of this. As the American Revolution directly influenced the later French Revolution. Where a group of people, where a population, overthrew another tyrannical king.

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And a large number of people, especially after the independence of America, who went to America, shared similar ideals and shared similar values and wanted to live those ideals and values out.

And they are good ideals. They're good values. Ideas of liberty. Ideas of freedom. Ideas of justice for all.

These are things which nowadays are seen as normal. However, at that period, as we see in Europe with the British king, with the French kings, it was maybe not as given as it is today.

And you make a very good point that these ideas influenced the French Revolution as well.

Most definitely. Well, it showed the French people that it was possible to overthrow a government or a system which is overbearing, let's say.

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James, my dear friend, thank you so much for joining today.

Absolute pleasure, as always.

And the transcript is on my site. Tap the link. And James will be joining me for some future podcasts to give you guys amazing stories that have changed the world in simple English.