If the article below is for real – as in presenting “true facts” versus the “alternative facts” we’ve learned to live with since 2016 – then I’m either a naive fool or generations of historians and history teachers have betrayed not only me but almost all of us.
In other words, for me, this long-ignored worldview not only is fascinating, it’s also terrifying.
Whatcha think?
Was the last battle of the American Revolution fought in India? A growing number of historians think so
By Brad Lendon, CNN
(Updated 9:40 AM EDT, Tue July 4, 2023)
The answer is: The last battle of America’s war of independence was fought on this continent.
Cue the familiar music, and write down your response.
If you said “What is North America?” and wagered your entire pot, you’ve lost. At least that’s what a growing number of historians will tell you.
They’ll say the correct response should have been, “What is Asia?”
Ummm, what?!
Listen to Kathleen DuVal, professor of history at the University of North Carolina (one of the 13 original states, just saying).
“Americans and almost all historians of the United States until just recently focused almost exclusively on the Revolutionary War within the 13 colonies that rebelled against the British. The focus was almost all on Massachusetts and Virginia,” she says.
“But in just the past decade or two, historians have broadened their focus and started to write about the Revolutionary War as being, as you say, a world war,” DuVal says.
Scholarly works back that up. In 2018, Smithsonian Books published “The American Revolution: A World War,” a collection of essays from 17 authors from eight countries that gives “a multifaceted but coherent account of the American Revolution’s international geopolitics,” according to a review in the Journal of American History.
DuVal and others say two key protagonists of the Revolutionary War – Britain and France – actually fought the final battle of the conflict in Cuddalore, India, in June of 1783….
LYMI,
LB
