The bulk of the American Revolution started and occurred in the colony of Massachusetts which played an important role in the emergence of the American radical movement towards independence during the revolutionary era. To which level did the economic factor of taxation affect the people of Massachusetts, and how did it mobilize people to resist? How did the crisis outbreak in Lexington and Concord? Although focusing on the history of the American Revolution in Massachusetts, Boutkhil Guemide not only studies the specific case of the third oldest British colony in North America but also reveals the whole background and process of the American revolutionary movement that would emerge in a snowball effect after the Boston Massacre and the famous battles of April 19, 1775. Greatly documented, a gripping chapter of history.

This collection of documents, including many previously unpublished, details the role of the Army engineers in the American Revolution. Lacking trained military engineers, the Americans relied heavily on foreign officers, mostly from France, for sorely needed technical assistance. Native Americans joined the foreign engineer officers to plan and carry out offensive and defensive operations, direct the erection of fortifications, map vital terrain, and lay out encampments. During the war Congress created the Corps of Engineers with three companies of engineer troops as well as a separate geographer's department to assist the engineers with mapping. Both General George Washington and Major General Louis Lebéque Duportail, his third and longest serving Chief Engineer, recognized the disadvantages of relying on foreign powers to fill the Army's crucial need for engineers. America, they contended, must train its own engineers for the future. Accordingly, at the war's end, they suggested maintaining a peacetime engineering establishment and creating a military academy. However, Congress rejected the proposals, and the Corps of Engineers and its companies of sappers and miners mustered out of service. Eleven years passed before Congress authorized a new establishment, the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers.

The three essays and the collection of documents focus on the nature of the revolutionary process in North America between 1774 and 1776. Both suggest that this process was the work of Committees of Inspection and Observation founded in 1774/75 in all colonies and dissolved after the passing of the Declaration of Independence. These committees were founded as a result of associations in which colonists pledged their acceptance of the resolves of the Continental Congress. Associations defi ned revolutionary values as well as pre-national concepts, the committees supervised the trade boycott as well as the adherence to these revolutionary values. Those who broke the boycott or rejected the values were declared [alpha]enemies of liberty± or [alpha]enemies of the American cause±. As a result, American colonial society was divided into Revolutionaries and "enemies of liberty". The documents - texts of associations and resolutions of the committees of inspection and observations all published in colonial newspapers - illustrate this new interpretation of the nature of revolutionary process of the American Revolution.

Recounts the events leading up to the Revolution and discusses the major leaders, campaigns, and battles of the war.

In this superb volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series, Colin Calloway reveals how the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had a profound effect on American history, setting in motion a cascade of unexpected consequences, as Indians and Europeans, settlers and frontiersmen, all struggled to adapt to new boundaries, new alignments, and new relationships. Most Americans know the significance of the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the Treaty of Paris. Yet 1763 was a year that shaped our history just as decisively as 1776 or 1862. This captivating book shows why.