Occupied America

"This book reveals how the lived experience of military occupation shaped the outcome of the Revolutionary War. Using accounts of those who lived under military rule in the six American cities occupied by the British Army, this book demonstrates how, over the course of the eight-year conflict, military occupations slowly frayed and eventually severed the bonds of imperial authority. Although the experience of occupation differed from place to place and person to person, common themes persisted from Boston to Savannah and from the poorest wretch to the wealthiest member of the colonial elite. Despite the goals of British commanders for reconciliation and peace, military occupation served to muddy allegiances, fracture what economic ties remained between the colonies and their former mother country, and alienate civilians both inside and outside of the zones controlled by the British military. Yet occupied cities also provided spaces for individuals on both sides to make their own personal peace at the end of the conflict; they served as bargaining chips for both the republic and the empire in the formal peace process, and as rhetorical symbols of resistance in the face of oppression for those who sought to build a new national culture. The intimate experiences of those living under British occupation thus had a profound effect on both the American Revolution and the new world that it produced"--