By William Anthony Hay

The American Revolution pitted colonists against the British Empire in a struggle that resembled David's stand against Goliath, but it also became a global war in which Britain defied an allied coalition alone. In his international history of the Revolutionary War written for the 250th anniversary of its outbreak, John Ferling brings Europe and its rivalries into the familiar story of American independence. With "Shots Heard Round the World," Mr. Ferling, a professor emeritus of history at the University of West Georgia, shows not only why nations fought but also how they waged a protracted struggle whose outcome remained in doubt to the end.

Foreign assistance was critical in what the author calls "America's longest war before the Vietnam conflict." Absolutist monarchs in France and Spain aided rebellious Americans, and the unruly colonists eagerly looked to them for help. The explanations for this odd coupling lie in the earlier Seven Years' War (1756-63). Britain had won a victory at stupendous financial cost, which prompted its efforts to tax and regulate the colonies. Americans, free of danger on their frontiers, now defied encroachments on their self-government by the mother country. Many colonists, as Mr. Ferling notes, believed France would give help in any confrontation.

Indeed, after France and Spain's humiliating defeat, the two empires set out on a path to revenge. British victory had disrupted the balance of power beyond Europe in ways that irked other powers. Noting Britain's insults to France, the Comte de Vergennes, who advised Louis XVI on foreign policy, described the empire as "greedy, restless, [and] more jealous of the prosperity of its neighbors than awake to its own happiness." Spain felt its American colonies were threatened by Britain's increased power in the New World, and other European states resented how Britain used dominance at sea against their trade. Ruling the waves allowed Britannia to waive the rules for its own advantage. The tyranny of what Austria's emperor, Joseph II, called British "despotism at sea" grated on Europe as much as taxation or regulation did on the colonies.

Britain, for its part, saw America as essential to its prosperity. Losing the mainland colonies, many believed, would create a domino effect, costing it the West Indies and then Ireland. This assumption fueled intransigence among ministers and George III, who believed concession brought more defiance. The decision to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party in 1773 began an escalating cycle that led to the shots fired at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. A colonial rebellion quickly turned into a civil war across British America. To defeat and dismantle the regime that the Continental Congress and the Patriots had established, large-scale action would be required. George III had already told his prime minister, Lord North, that "blows must decide" how the quarrel would end.

In 1775 New Englanders besieged a British army at Boston, with George Washington bringing reinforcements -- along with the Continental Congress's authority to lead an American army. Turning militia into soldiers tested him as much as the lack of weapons and equipment. Mr. Ferling stresses European support as essential to effective resistance. The British lacked allies, beyond German princes who rented out their troops in the "soldier trade" to bolster George III's forces in America. Diplomatic isolation would complicate Britain's efforts from the start. For its part, Congress framed a model treaty with foreign governments alongside the Declaration of Independence addressed to "a candid world."

Mr. Ferling casts Vergennes as a character equal in importance to the colonial leaders and the British generals, presenting much of the struggle through the Frenchman's point of view. More than any other individual, even George Washington, the author claims, Vergennes shaped the war and "did the most to contour hostilities and make possible the decisive events" that settled the war in the colonists' favor.

The author describes Vergennes as a man "on a tightrope" during 1777; he sought to avoid war with England but keep the American conflict going. British defeat at Saratoga and a stalemate after capturing Philadelphia forced North's government to offer the colonists terms in early 1778 that they had refused before. By then, however, Americans had secured a French alliance. Mr. Ferling points out that a French expedition sought to repeat the coup at Saratoga by capturing the British army and fleet at New York in a blow that would end the war on humiliating terms. The French failure turned the conflict into a struggle of attrition. France had made American independence a condition for peace and added the potential acquisition of the British possession of Gibraltar by Spain as an incentive to join the war. That step tied the allies to their new partner's agenda.

Mr. Ferling brings diplomacy into focus alongside the back and forth of fighting in America. Spanish and later Dutch intervention expanded the war, but Britain kept fighting even when a League of Armed Neutrality was formed to oppose its naval efforts to curtail enemy trade. Victories in Georgia and South Carolina opened British prospects of recovering the colonies below Virginia. The U.S. government faced national bankruptcy while its citizens suffered grinding impoverishment. In France, the author writes, "Vergennes was awash with problems." His nation's economy was under strain and its financial situation had become, in the diplomat's words, "truly alarming."

In early 1781 Austria joined Russia in offering to mediate the international conflict; the proposal they offered clarified dynamics that most histories have neglected. Peace negotiations, the author makes clear, meant restoring a colonial balance of power that likely would have partitioned America according to the territory that armies were holding at that point. While Vergennes welcomed an escape from the war, John Adams, who would negotiate for the United States, believed mediation more dangerous than fighting. British leaders also refused to compromise, anticipating gains that year, which Mr. Ferling deems a mistake. "There would be no Congress of Vienna in 1781," he writes. "Hope of a favorable outcome yet existed in every camp." But someone's hopes would soon be dashed.

In 1781 the war took another turn. France sent a second expedition to America with money and equipment for Washington's army. Lord Cornwallis failed to secure British control over the Carolinas and marched into Virginia. Aided by a French fleet that had briefly secured naval control over the Chesapeake, Washington's Franco-American army trapped the British at Yorktown to force their surrender. Repeating the Saratoga debacle broke the political will in London to continue fighting for America. "Infant Hercules in his Cradle has now strangled his second Serpent," Benjamin Franklin declared.

The war continued at sea, away from the America continent, along with diplomacy in Europe. British naval victories in the Caribbean evened the score and Spain's failure to capture Gibraltar forced its leaders to yield to French pressure for a settlement. New British ministers had offered Americans a separate peace, which Franklin negotiated without consulting Vergennes. The favorable terms justified the wily Philadelphian seeking forgiveness rather than permission. Negotiations among European belligerents brought a preliminary agreement, and, after formal recognition by George III, the U.S. won the independence it had claimed in 1776.

America had baffled the British efforts to defeat it, albeit with vital help from abroad. The British, however, also thwarted their European foes, and kept their empire. Losing the mainland American colonies did not set dominoes falling or depose Britain from its perch as a great power. Britain held on to Gibraltar, and British power recovered by the late 1780s, as France fell into crisis. The main losers in the American War for Independence, as Mr. Ferling shows, were the other European powers as well as the Native Americans, whom the peace weakened in different ways.

After 250 years, some points everyone at the time understood have been forgotten. The American Revolution was a global event, with global consequences. What began as a struggle over self-government by colonists and a bid for revenge by the French and Spanish turned into a transformative conflict that reached well beyond the Western Hemisphere.

--Mr. Hay, the author of "Lord Liverpool: A Political Life," is a professor and associate director at Arizona State University's School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.

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March 28, 2025 11:47 ET (15:47 GMT)

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