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Document Type

Article

Abstract

The history of the American Revolution which most Americans have learned and which is everyday reinforced in the public media is essentially but one of several competing interpretations of that conflict. We rarely think about this, so successfully has that particular history taken root in our culture. Common sense, however, should caution us that the British also possess a version or versions which differ in important ways from ours. The French, our allies during the Revolution, offer yet another construction, one stressing that war's place in their own long history of conflict with Great Britain. And had the northeastern American Indians possessed a written, instead of an oral, tradition, doubtless they would have recorded how their involvement in the war between the two English-speaking opponents hastened the destruction of their culture. [excerpt]

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