Those Damned Rebels; The American Revolution As Seen through British Eyes
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1972. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. 446, [2] pages. DJ is worn, torn, soiled/stained and chipped. Top of a few pages stained/soiled. Pencil erasure residue on page 56. Includes twelve Contemporary maps, and 7 black and white illustrations. Foreword, Notes, Bibliography, Index, and Illustrations. Using firsthand journals, letters from British officers in the field, reports from colonial governors in the colonies, and documents in the Public Record Office in London, Michael Pearson provides a "contemporary" report of the Revolution. Seen from this perspective, some of the major events of the war are given startling interpretations. Michael Pearson not only examines the military side of the Revolution in detail, but traces the reactions to the ebb and flow of war in the courts and capitals of Europe. He describes the abrupt swings from euphoria to despair in London, outlines the policy of the French (at the time of Yorktown, they had decided further support of the rebels was futile), explains the use of Hessian soldiers in George III's army, and tells how Catherine the Great in far-off St. Petersburg figured in British calculations. A brilliant re-creation of the American Revolution--exclusively from the British point view--that gives a dramatically different picture of the birth of a nation. Those readers who are not historians may not fully appreciate the fact that by the second half of the eighteenth century the British had an established military, naval and colonial government organization. It was under great pressure, for the Empire had outgrown it; certainly it had never attempted to conduct overseas operations on the scale deployed in America from 1776. More