Ken Burns

It is a global war.

Preceding it by 20 years is what we are called the French and Indian War, which we see in our own way as our own story, our own battle with our then British allies against the French and Indians.

some of their Native American allies, and we had our own Native American allies, and we won for the prize of North America.

So the important thing is to rewind and say the prize of North America that then introduces an even more important thing.

If you're saying North America is a prize, you're saying that the land is a prize.

And that land has been occupied for millennia by other people.

And in 1776, 13 British colonies occupy the eastern seaboard.

which they've already superimposed over existing native lands, varieties of tribes, varieties of customs, not a single entity of them, but distinct states that have been on the world scene trading and diplomatically and militarily and have known nations.

the other empires, Britain and Spain and France, particularly Netherlands, for centuries.

And some of the people superimposed by those 13 colonies have assimilated.

Some are coexisting.

Some have moved west and are in those western territories that the colonists want to spread into and the British can't afford to protect them.

And so you have great tensions.

And so I think

If you're in the eighth grade and you're having a test about the revolution, you pass if you say taxes and representation.

But I think as we try to do, like the global dynamics, like the importance of the Caribbean, like the violence and bloodshed that attends.

this revolution, all of that is revelatory and new, I think, for most people.

For most of us, we think it's a bunch of guys in Philadelphia thinking great thoughts, particularly in 76 and then in 1787.

And it's true.

These are the newest and the greatest thoughts you could possibly imagine.