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Hi, I’m John Green.

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This is Crash Course World History

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and today you AREN’T going to get a blow
by blow

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chronology of the American Revolution,

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and you AREN’T going to get
cool biographical details about

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Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.

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But you are going to get me
not wearing any pants.

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Mr. Green, Mr. Green!

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Did you know that

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George Washington might have had
slave teeth implanted into his jaw?

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Yeah, I did Me from the Past,

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and while it’s fun to focus on
metaphorically resonant details,

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what we’re concerned with here is
why the American Revolution happened

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and the extent to which it
was actually revolutionary.

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Plus,
for the first time in Crash Course history,

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I have a legitimate chance of
getting through an entire episode

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without butchering a single pronunciation.
[Wouldn't bet your Sword of Destiny on that]

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Unfortunately,

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next week we will be in France and

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je parle francais comme une idiot.

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[Intro music]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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[intro music]

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So, intellectual historians might put the
roots

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of the American revolution earlier,

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but I’m going to start with the end
of the 7 Years War in 1763,

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which as you will recall from last week was

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1. Expensive,

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and 2. A victory for the British,

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including British subjects living in America,
who now had more land and therefore more money.

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Right, so,

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in 1765 the British government was like,

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“Hey, since we went into this debt
to get you all this new land,

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we trust that you won’t mind if
we pass the Stamp Act,

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in which we place a fancy stamp on your
documents, newspapers, playing cards, etc.,

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and in return, you give us money.”

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Well,

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it turns out the colonists weren’t so
keen on this,

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not so much because the tax was high

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but because they had no direct representation

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in the parliament that had levied the tax.
[Some things never change, eh, Washington

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D.C?]

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And plus,

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they were cranky about the Crown keeping
large numbers of British troops in the colonies

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even after the end of the 7 Years War.
[Not going to touch that one…]

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And then the British government was like,

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“You are inadequately grateful,”

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and the colonists were like,

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“Shut up we hate you,”
[That old chestnut]

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and the British government was like,

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“As long as you live under our roof,
[This old chestnut]

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you live by our rules,”

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and so on,

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but eventually the British backed down
and repealed the Stamp Act.

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The repeal inspired a line of
commemorative teapots,

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thereby beginning America’s storied tradition

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of worthless collectible ceramics.
[atleast Beanie Babies double as cornhole

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bags]

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But, in the end,

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this only emboldened the colonists when the
British tried to put new taxes on the Americans

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in the form of the Townshend acts.

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These led to further protests and boycotts
and most importantly,

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more organization among the colonists.

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The protests escalated:
1770 saw the Boston Massacre,

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which with its sum total of
five dead was perhaps

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the least massacrey massacre of all time,

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and in 1773,

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a bunch of colonists dumped about a million
dollars worth of tea into Boston Harbor,

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in protest of British government decisions
that

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actually would have made British tea cheaper.
[some things seriously never change…]

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Oh it’s time for the open letter?

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[oh no! he's coming in hot!]
Ah…..oh,

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that did not go well.
[admittedly not your best work, John.]

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An Open Letter to Tea.

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But first, let’s see what’s
in the secret compartment today.

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Oh,

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it’s a gigantic teabag.
[not touching that either]

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Hm.
Let’s see what flavor it is...

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Bitter tyranny variety!
[SleepyTime sure ain't gonna keep the fires

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of rage a'burning]

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Dear Tea,

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Like all Americans who love
justice and freedom,

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I hate you.
[You're harshing my Mint Magic mellow, Bro]

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But I understand you’re quite popular in
the UK

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where the East India Company would
periodically go to war for you.

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But,

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what fascinates me about you, tea,

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I mean, aside from the fact that people
choose to drink you when

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there are great American refreshments available,

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like Mountain Dew,
[Hey, like on Mad Men!]

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is that even though you’re
stereotypically English,

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you’re not English.

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It’s Chinese,

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or Burmese,

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or Indian.

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No one really knows,

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but it’s definitely not English.

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You didn’t even have tea until,
like, the 1660s.

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Posers.

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Best wishes,
John Green

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So,

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The Boston Tea Party led
to further British crackdowns

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and then mobilization of colonial militias

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and then Paul Revere

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and then actual war, but you can hear all
about

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that stuff on, like,

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TV miniseries.

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I want to focus on one of the ways that
colonists protested unfair taxation.

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Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.
[Because Canadians are so unruly & disagreeable?]

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As previously noted,

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the English Crown benefited tremendously from
the import of consumer goods to the American

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colonies,

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and one of the most effective ways American
colonists could protest taxation without representation

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was by boycotting British products.

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In order to enforce these boycotts,

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the protesters created Committees of Correspondence,
which spread information about who was and

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was not observing the boycotts.

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And these committees also could coerce non-compliers
into compliance—which is to say that they

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were creating and enforcing policy,

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kind of like a government does.

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The Maryland Committee of Correspondence,
in fact,

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was instrumental in setting up the first Continental
Congress, which convened to coordinate a response

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to the fighting that started in 1775.

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This was back when congresses did things,
by the way.

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It was awesome.
[Like the weaponizing of the filibuster]

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Anyway,

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the Continental Congress is most famous for
drafting and approving

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the Declaration of Independence.

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No,
Thought Bubble.

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That’s the Will Smith vehicle
Independence Day.

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I mean the Declaration of Independence.

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Right,

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that one.

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It’s not your fault,

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you guys are Canadian.
[+ magnificently talented, ruly, agreeable]

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You’ve never declared independence.

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[faceplant]

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Worth noting, by the way,

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that the congress edited out more than a
quarter of Jefferson’s original declaration,

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and

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he forever after insisted they’d “mangled”
it.

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Anyway,

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I would argue the heavy lifting of
the American Revolution

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was already done by the Declaration.

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In truth,

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by the time the shooting started,

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most of the colonists were already self-governing
and had developed a sense of themselves as

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something separate and different from Great
Britain—

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as evidenced by these
"Committees of Correspondence,"

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which functioned as shadow governments—

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eventually reaching out to foreign governments,

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establishing an espionage network,

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tarring and feathering loyalists
and royal officials which,

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by the way is incredibly painful
and dangerous to the victim,

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and even recruiting physicians to
tell American men that drinking British tea

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would make them weak and effeminate.
[If only they had Dr. Pepper 10]

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Thanks, Thought Bubble.

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Now,
despite all this,

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about 20% of colonists remained loyal
to Great Britain throughout the war,

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especially in the major cities
that Britain occupied.

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Also lots slaves continued to
support the British,

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especially after Britain promised that any
slaves who fought with them would be freed.

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And it’s worth noting

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that while we generally celebrate the Revolution

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and see it as a step
toward justice and equality,

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the people who most needed the protection
of a government might have been better off

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and more free,

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if Britain had won.

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[whoops]

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Especially since Britain ended slavery
well before America did,

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and, you know,

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without a civil war.

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Also, even though most Americans had come
to see themselves as separate from Britain

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before 1776,

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the British certainly didn’t see it that
way.

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They continued to fight
either until 1781 or 1783,

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depending on whether you calculate
by when they actually gave up

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or when the peace treaty was signed.

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So you can’t really say the American Revolution
was won before the fighting even started.

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But the truth is, the American Revolution
and the war for independence

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weren’t like this.

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They were like this.

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So,

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here’s what was pretty revolutionary
about the American Revolution:

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The colonists threw off the rule of an imperial
monarchy and replaced it with a government

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that didn’t have a king,

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a radical idea in a world that didn’t feature
many non-monarchical forms of government.

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And,

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if you look at the explanations
for the revolution,

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especially those contained in,

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like, the Declaration of Independence
and in pamphlets,

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like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense,

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there’s definitely a revolutionary zeal
that’s informed by the Enlightenment.

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And that’s especially true if you focus
on the idea of liberty,

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as many of the pamphleteers did.

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That said,

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if you look at the actual
outcome of the revolution,

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aside from the whole no king thing,

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it wasn’t that revolutionary.

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Let’s look, for instance,
at two ideas central to the revolution:

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property rights and equality.

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So the Articles of Confederation
gave the government no power to tax,

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which had the effect of making sure that people
who had property were able to keep it

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because they never had to pay the
government anything in exchange for

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the right to own and use it.

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And that’s very different from
taxation systems dating all the way back to,

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like,
Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.

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And it’s probably not a coincidence that
most of the writers and signers of the Declaration

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of Independence were men of property,

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and they wanted to keep it that way.

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So, basically,

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the white guys who controlled the land and
its production before the American Revolution

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were the same white guys who controlled it
after the American Revolution.

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And this leads us to the second, and more
important way that as a revolution,

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the American one falls a bit short.

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So, if you’ve ever studied American history,

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you’re probably familiar with the greatest
line in the Declaration of Independence:

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal.”

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Sorry, ladies.
[some things never brickabracking change!]

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And,

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you also may know that at the time
those words were written,

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a large segment of the American population,
perhaps as much as 30%,

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were slaves of African descent who were held
as property and were definitely,

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100% not treated as equal to whites.

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In fact,
the guy who wrote those words held slaves,

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and was fighting against a government who
promised to free any slaves who supported

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it.

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Furthermore,

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women couldn’t vote,

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and neither could white men who didn’t
own enough property—

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meaning that the government
of, for, and by the people

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was, in fact

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of, for, and by about 10-15% of the people.

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But here’s the real question:

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Was the American Revolution what the
historian Jonathan Israel called

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“a revolution of mind?”
[Like in the Matrix?]

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Did it change the way we think
about what people are

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and how we should organize ourselves?

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Addressing those questions will involve a
brief foray into the history of ideas.

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Let’s study the Enlightenment!

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The Enlightenment was primarily a celebration
of humans’ ability to understand and improve

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the natural world through reason.

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The Enlightenment had a number of antecedents,

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including the European Renaissance and
the Scientific Revolution,

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but what made it special was that some
of its more radical proponents—

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like, Immanuel Kant, for instance—

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went so far as to argue that human reason
rendered a belief in God unnecessary and,

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by extension,

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proclaimed that any belief in divine
intervention or a divine plan for humanity

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was just superstition.

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Given that this was coming out of an
overwhelmingly Christian Europe,

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this was a pretty controversial suggestion,
[our atheist pals- always left out in the

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cold.]

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and not all Enlightenment thinkers
would go that far.

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And more moderate Enlightenment thinkers

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were also more willing to countenance
hierarchical social and political structures.

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Like John Locke,
a major Enlightenment thinker,

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formulated his version of inalienable rights
as life, liberty, and property.

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And that’s much more traditional than arguing,

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for instance,
that property should be held communally.

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[is there an easier target than hippies?]

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And it’s no coincidence that
the more moderate Enlightenment thinkers,

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like Locke and Adam Smith,

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happened to be British,

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and the real radicals were French.

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And the founders of the United States,
were far more closely linked

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to those British Enlightenment thinkers
than to the French,

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who influenced the French Revolution,
which as we will see next week,

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goes swimmingly.

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But even if the government that America’s
revolutionaries came up with

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didn’t overturn privilege
or tear apart the social order

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as the French Revolution tried to do,

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it did make significant changes.

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America made sure that there would
never be a formal nobility,

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except for the Count of Chocula.
[and Gene "Duke of Earl" Chandler in the 60's]

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And,

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it recognized the equal rights of
daughters and widows,

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when it came to inheriting and possessing
property. [Downton Abbey wishes]

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Also,

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it created a world in which
future countesses could rehabilitate

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their reputations in New York.
[shame: extinct since end of the 20th century]

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But,

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the real seismic change was
that after the Revolution,

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Americans came to view themselves
as equal to each other.

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And,
in the context of the 18th century,

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that was pretty radical.

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“Ordinary Americans came to believe that
no one in a basic down-to-earth and day-in-and-day-out

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manner was really better than anyone else.
That was equality as no other nation had ever

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quite had it.”

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And in the end,
the ideas of the American revolution—

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ideas about property and equality
and representation—

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are still hugely important in shaping
political discourse around the world,

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and particularly in America.
[particularly in an election year]

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And by America, I mean the United States.

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I’m sorry Canadians and Mexicans and
Central Americans and South Americans.

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We’re provincial, okay?

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I mean, here in the United States,

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our Presidential candidates must know both
how to wear a suit and how to bowl.

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[and most egregiously, to pander!]

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But the American Revolution also reminds us—

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as the French one will next week—

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that revolutionary ideas and values
are not always easy to live up to.

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Nothing challenges one’s belief in equality
quite like becoming rich and powerful.

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Indeed,

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rare is the revolutionary who doesn’t become,

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on some level, like Orwell’s pigs,

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insisting that while all
animals were created equal,

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some were created more equal than others.

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[at the very least tastier than others?]

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In short,

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if you’re going to base
your new society on philosophy,

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you should try to found it on ideals that
are as inclusive and humanistic as possible—

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because the people executing those ideas
will never be ideal.

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Thanks for watching.

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I’ll see you next week.

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Crash Course is

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produced and directed
by Stan Muller,

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our script supervisor is
Danica Johnson, [hello]

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the show is written by my high school
history teacher Raoul Meyer and myself,

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our graphics team is Thought Bubble,

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and we are ably interned by Meredith Danko.
[dba: The Interness or M,TVCS]

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Last week’s phrase of the week was
"Historian Feuds."

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If you want to suggest
future phrases of the week,

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or guess at this one
you can do so in comments,

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where you can also ask questions
about today’s video

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that will be answered by our team of historians.

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Thanks for watching Crash Course,

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and as we say in my hometown,

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don’t forget That's how you get ants!
[Do you want ants, John?]

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[slides away into the white-walled abyss]

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[music outro]

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[music outro]