Chapter in Perspective

It was British attempts to consolidate political control over their American empire that pushed their colonials toward independence. After finally driving France from North America, the British policymakers initiated a decade of crisis and confrontation with their fellow subjects there. Many Americans slowly came to embrace independence as the way to preserve their rights. Misunderstanding and suspicion on both sides gave rise to the American Revolution, a complex conflict that was at once a colonial war of liberation, a civil war among loyal and rebel Americans, and a renewal of the struggle for global supremacy between England and France.