Donald F. Johnson, "Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2020)

New Books in American Studies · Dec 28, 2020 · 34m

When we read the Declaration of Independence, what tends to jump off the page are the lofty propositions concerning natural rights. Yet over a third of the brief document is taken up with a set of charges aimed at George III, many of them relating to war - whether the maintenance of standing armies, the lack of civilian control over the military, or the forced quartering of troops who enjoyed judicial immunity. The King, it blared, ‘has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns and destroyed the lives of our people’. Two hundred and forty-four years on, historians of the…