Hochgeschwender, Michael Die Amerikanische Revolution

Birth of a Nation 1763 - 1815 If you want to understand the USA and its specific sense of mission, you have to go back to its myth of origin: the American Revolution. Based on the latest research, Michael Hochgeschwender tells how the North American colonies broke away from the British mother country and paints a picture of the Revolution that questions the common notions of good and evil. History is usually written from the perspective of the victors. When you see Mel Gibson slaughtering British soldiers in the monumental epic "The Patriot", for example, it is clear that freedom-loving heroes were facing despotic occupiers. But in fact the story was more complicated. Quite a few of the later Americans were loyal to the British. The rebels were not only concerned with universalist ideals, but also with very tangible economic interests, such as smuggling or the theft of Indian land. Even at its birth, the American nation showed the world a Janus face that still shapes its politics today.

Michael Hochgeschwender is Professor of North American Cultural History, Empirical Cultural Research and Cultural Anthropology at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.