Washington and the American Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the first President of the US, George Washington, and the people and ideas that caused the American Revolution. In 1774 a tobacco farmer from Virginia with nice manners and a quiet lifestyle was moved to put himself forward as the military leader of the most massive rebellion the British Empire had ever suffered. George Washington had been a stout upholder of the status quo, regularly lending money to his ne’r-do-well neighbour simply to keep him in the plantation to which he had become accustomed. He even wrote a book on how to behave properly in polite society.What drove mild mannered George Washington to revolution? Washington may have been a moral man, but by anyone’s account he was no scholar, so who provided the intellectual inspiration behind that grandest of Enlightenment documents, the American Constitution.
Guests
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Carol Berkin No other episodes
Professor of History at The City University of New York - Simon Middleton
3 episodes
Lecturer in American History at the University of East Anglia -
Colin Bonwick No other episodes
Professor Emeritus in American History at Keele University
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Programme ID: p004y28v
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y28v
Auto-category: 973 (History of the United States)