The road to the American Revolutionary War
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Welcome to the History Extra podcast. This year marks 250 years since the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence, the nation's founding document and a key moment in the American Revolution. Over the next four weeks in this new Sunday series, Eleanor Evans will be talking to Professor Adam Smith about this foundational moment, beginning today with a look at the road to the Declaration. The United States of America looms large as one of the most powerful countries in the world, politically, culturally, and economically. It dominates headlines, shapes global debates, and through the story of its birth,
often presents itself as the natural inheritor of liberty and democracy. But like any origin story, the history of the American Revolution is not a straightforward one. What's often told as a clear-cut battle between freedom and tyranny becomes, on closer inspection, a story of confusion, miscalculation and division, a messy and uncertain conflict fought by people who didn't all want independence, didn't all agree on what liberty meant, and didn't all benefit from the outcome. I'm Eleanor Evans, and today I'm joined by Professor Adam Smith, Osborne Professor of United States politics and political history at the University of Oxford and director of the Rothermere American Institute. Welcome, Adam.
Thank you so much for joining me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's lovely to have you. And I want to start by referring to your own podcast, The Last Best Hope, which looks back at American history through the lens of today. And I hope we'll be doing this a lot through the four episodes we've got ahead of us.
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