{"id":13365,"date":"2016-04-05T11:28:41","date_gmt":"2016-04-05T16:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/college.unc.edu\/?p=13365"},"modified":"2024-07-02T16:28:05","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:28:05","slug":"duval-independencelost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/?p=13365","title":{"rendered":"What you didn\u2019t learn about the American Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kathleen
Kathleen DuVal with her new book, Independence Lost, a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. (photo by Jon Gardiner)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I<\/span>n 1776, how many colonies did Britain have in North America? If you said 13, you\u2019re only half right. The number is actually 26.<\/p>\n

Any graduate of a high school U.S. history class can tell you the basics of the American Revolution, how 13 British colonies declared their independence and fought a war to win it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But most Americans, and even some historians, have no idea what was happening in Britain\u2019s other 13 colonies at the same time and what effect that had on the revolution. Who knew that Revolutionary War battles were fought in Pensacola, Mobile and New Orleans? American historians often neglect the battles in the Gulf region, where the British were fighting on a second front with the Spanish, and the impact of alliances of American Indians with either the British or rebel forces.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kathleen DuVal, history<\/a> professor and adjunct professor in American studies<\/a>, sought to fill that gap in knowledge with Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution<\/i><\/a> (Random House).<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to write about the revolution in a place that people didn\u2019t usually think of as being part of the revolution because that wasn\u2019t where the action was,\u201d DuVal said.<\/p>\n

Both mainstream book critics and historians have praised her book. \u201cIndependence Lost<\/i> will knock your socks off,\u201d raved The New York Times Book Review.<\/i> \u201cTo read [this book] is to see that the task of recovering the entire American Revolution has barely begun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Independence Lost<\/i> was named the Journal of American Revolution<\/i> 2015 Book of the Year and winner of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey History Prize.<\/p>\n

Now it is a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize, one of the nation\u2019s largest and most prestigious literary awards. The $50,000 prize recognizes the past year\u2019s best-written work on the nation\u2019s founding era. The winner will be announced at a gala dinner at Mount Vernon in May.<\/p>\n

DuVal\u2019s reasons for writing the book were the same that first drew the scholar to early American history. \u201cI was interested in the different ways that history could have gone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Knowing how the Revolutionary War turned out, many Americans assume that the rebel victory was inevitable. But not DuVal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy did we come out on top? In some ways it\u2019s the least likely outcome,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I\u2019d been a betting person, I would have bet on the British. If I\u2019d been a colonist, I wouldn\u2019t have been a rebel. It was crazy. They had a pretty good deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knowing the sad fate of American Indians and the relentless expansion of settlers onto their lands, Americans tend to discount the role indigenous people played in the revolution. But in 1776, the continent was still mostly populated with American Indians, different tribes in different alliances: some with the colonists, some with the British, some with the French, some with the Spanish and some desperately trying to remain neutral.<\/p>\n

Slaves and women also played roles in the revolution, stories that are seldom told but remain tangible reminders of the hypocrisy of the Founders\u2019 flowery language about \u201cindependence\u201d and \u201cequality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is such a complicated story,\u201d DuVal said. To tell it, she decided to approach it more like a novel, finding historical characters with interesting stories of their own who could also stand in as representatives of certain groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like reading fiction more than I like reading history,\u201d she said, adding, \u201cmost history.\u201d<\/p>\n

She settled on eight people readers could follow through the book: a Mobile slave seeking his freedom, a diplomatic Chickasaw Indian trying to avoid conflict, a young Cajun militiaman, one married couple in New Orleans who allied themselves with the rebels and the Spanish against the British, the son of a Creek mother and a Scottish trader trying to rally the Creeks to support the British and a West Florida couple loyal to Britain and under attack from Spain and the rebels.<\/span><\/p>\n

DuVal\u2019s topic brought specific challenges. White, literate males left behind plenty of documents to study \u201cif you can read French and Spanish and bad handwriting,\u201d and she can, she said. But the women, slaves or American Indians she was most interested in left little documentation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe women wrote letters that weren\u2019t the kinds of things that families saved,\u201d she said, acknowledging that even mundane missives about the weather, fashion, furnishings, customs and food would be a treasure trove for historians.<\/p>\n

And most slaves were illiterate and kept that way by law. But she found that the Spanish left several records about Petit Jean, a slave that they recruited to spy on the British.<\/p>\n

Through these real-life characters, DuVal immerses the reader in a part of Revolutionary War history that is unfamiliar territory. The convincing way she tells her story makes the reader almost as surprised today by the rebel victory as the rest of the world was in 1783.<\/p>\n

By Susan Hudson, <\/em>Gazette<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI wanted to write about the revolution in a place that people didn\u2019t usually think of as being part of the revolution because that wasn\u2019t where the action was,\u201d said history professor Kathleen DuVal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-sciences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47650,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13365\/revisions\/47650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/collegearchive.unc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}