The Biggest Myth About The American Revolution | BBC Timestamp

But the Americans didn't have enough arms and ammunition to win a war by themselves. So to get rid of one king, they turned for help to another. King Louis XVI of France. Within a week of signing the Declaration of Independence, the American revolutionaries sent a copy to the French monarch. The British were France's greatest enemy. In 1756, Britain and France had gone to war over territories in North America. This became known as the Seven Years' War. It was a battle for imperial supremacy. But the British came out on top, and the French weren't happy about it. France lost all of its Canadian colonies to Britain, as well as parts of the Caribbean. All they had to show for their efforts was crippling debt. Imperial France saw the American War of Independence as the chance to get its revenge. In 1776, it began smuggling arms to support the Patriot cause. Then in 1778, the French joined the United States as official allies. The main thing that changed was the introduction of the French Navy into the force. The British were always dependent upon their Navy to keep themselves supplied from London, to move troops around from place to place. And with the French Navy now on American shores, all of that was cut off. Britannia no longer ruled the waves. And for them, it changed completely the nature of the war. Do you think that America could have won without this help from France? No, absolutely not. America could never have won the war without France. This is not the story of the plucky little Americans with their muskets and their plows going out and having a go against the mighty evil British, is it? And it never was true, and it was never a good fit. The Americans could never have brought themselves up by their own bootstraps. In fact, the real story of the American Revolution is that the United States became the centrepiece of an international coalition, which together fought to achieve a common purpose, to defeat a common adversary. The last major land battle of the Revolutionary War was in 1781. In Yorktown, Virginia, the British surrendered to George Washington's army of American and French troops. But the decisive role of Imperial France in the American victory was very quickly played down. The war was over, yet the battle to control the story of the Revolution was just getting started. The early histories of the Revolution told the story almost as a morality tale with good triumphing. And that's because the new nation was still finding its feet. It needed stability and purpose. Meanwhile, the French, well, they were now having a violent revolution of their own. They were busy chopping each other's heads off. Emerson wrote his Concord Hymn in 1837. By this time, Americans saw themselves as triumphant underdogs. His Embattled Farmers was celebrated in poetry set to the tune of an old psalm. The Revolution was becoming remembered as a sacred story, outlining America's God-given destiny to lead others towards liberty. In the 1840s, its conquest of Mexican and Native American territory was presented as the divine destiny of an exceptional nation. The idea that we controlled our own destiny did not fit very well with the idea that we depended upon European powers to support our birth. And so that part of the story became left out over time. In the first half of the 19th century, the nation's patriotism was growing ever stronger. People were eager to tell stories of America's revolutionary heroes.