Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution

by Kathleen DuVal

Overview

A rising-star historian offers a significant new global perspective on the Revolutionary War with the story of the conflict as seen through the eyes of the outsiders of colonial society

Winner of the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award • Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey History Prize • Finalist for the George Washington Book Prize

Over the last decade, award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal has revitalized the study of early America’s marginalized voices. Now, in Independence Lost, she recounts an untold story as rich and significant as that of the Founding Fathers: the history of the Revolutionary Era as experienced by slaves, American Indians, women, and British loyalists living on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

While citizens of the thirteen rebelling colonies came to blows with the British Empire over tariffs and parliamentary representation, the situation on the rest of the continent was even more fraught. In the Gulf of Mexico, Spanish forces clashed with Britain’s strained army to carve up the Gulf Coast, as both sides competed for allegiances with the powerful Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creek nations who inhabited the region. Meanwhile, African American slaves had little control over their own lives, but some individuals found opportunities to expand their freedoms during the war.

Independence Lost reveals that individual motives counted as much as the ideals of liberty and freedom the Founders espoused: Independence had a personal as well as national meaning, and the choices made by people living outside the colonies were of critical importance to the war’s outcome. DuVal introduces us to the Mobile slave Petit Jean, who organized militias to fight the British at sea; the Chickasaw diplomat Payamataha, who worked to keep his people out of war; New Orleans merchant Oliver Pollock and his wife, Margaret O’Brien Pollock, who risked their own wealth to organize funds and garner Spanish support for the American Revolution; the half-Scottish-Creek leader Alexander McGillivray, who fought to protect indigenous interests from European imperial encroachment; the Cajun refugee Amand Broussard, who spent a lifetime in conflict with the British; and Scottish loyalists James and Isabella Bruce, whose work on behalf of the British Empire placed them in grave danger. Their lives illuminate the fateful events that took place along the Gulf of Mexico and, in the process, changed the history of North America itself.

Adding new depth and moral complexity, Kathleen DuVal reinvigorates the story of the American Revolution. Independence Lost is a bold work that fully establishes the reputation of a historian who is already regarded as one of her generation’s best.

Praise for Independence Lost

“[An] astonishing story . . . Independence Lost will knock your socks off. To read [this book] is to see that the task of recovering the entire American Revolution has barely begun.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“A richly documented and compelling account.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“A remarkable, necessary—and entirely new—book about the American Revolution.”—The Daily Beast
 
“A completely new take on the American Revolution, rife with pathos, double-dealing, and intrigue.”—Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400068951
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Kathleen DuVal teaches Early American history and American Indian history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her previous books include The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent, winner of the J. G. Ragsdale Book Award from the Arkansas Historical Association. She is also co-editor of Interpreting a Continent: Voices from Colonial America.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One
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Excerpted from "Independence Lost"
by .
Copyright © 2016 Kathleen DuVal.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Maps xi

Introduction xiii

Part I The Place and Its People

Chapter 1 The Gulf Coast 5

Chapter 2 Payamataha 11

Chapter 3 Alexander McGillivray 24

Chapter 4 Oliver Pollock and Margaret O'Brien 35

Chapter 5 James Bruce and Isabella Chrystie 44

Chapter 6 Petit Jean 57

Chapter 7 Amand Broussard 65

Part II What to Do About This War?

Chapter 8 Independence in Creek and Chickasaw Countries 75

Chapter 9 To Fight for Britain? 100

Chapter 10 To Fight for Spain? 116

Part III The Revolutionary War

Chapter 11 Inspiring Loyalty 135

Chapter 12 A Wartime Borderland 160

Chapter 13 The Spanish Siege of Pensacola 188

Part IV The Paradox of Independence

Chapter 14 Nations, Colonies, Towns, and States 223

Chapter 15 Independence Gained or Lost? 270

Chapter 16 Confederacies 292

Conclusion: Republican Empires and Sovereign Dependencies 340

Acknowledgments 353

Notes 357

Index 425

Editorial Reviews

05/04/2015
Focusing on the frontier struggle in the Gulf of Mexico region, DuVal (The Native Ground), a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, illustrates how multipronged the American Revolution was. It involved three empires (Britain, France, and Spain), several major Native American peoples, and both free and enslaved Africans. DuVal personalizes the conflict by tracing the fates of eight individuals: two tribal leaders, a loyalist couple, a merchant couple backing the colonists, a transplanted pro-colonist Acadian, and a slave who served as a cattle driver and later as a courier for the Spanish. She argues that the American struggle was almost a sideshow to “the real war... between Britain and its French and Spanish enemies.” Her eye-opening discussion of diverse Native policies reveals, for example, that the Chickasaw adhered to a policy of strict neutrality while the Creek resisted the colonists’ expanding settlements and achieved a measure of “interdependence” with Spain. By the mid-1780s, the Americans had moved from seeing Natives as sovereign people with treaty rights to mere inhabitants with “no independent sovereignty.” DuVal’s fine scholarship and colorful presentation reveals that, as the European colonists won independence, they deprived many others of power, autonomy, homelands, and prosperity. Agent: Jill Kneerim, Kneerim Williams & Bloom. (July)

Publishers Weekly

★ 05/01/2015
Declaring that the American Revolution was fought in the name of empire almost seems blasphemous. However, DuVal (history, Univ. of Carolina, Chapel Hill; The Native Ground) excellently details how the event was actually a war for empire along the Gulf Coast of the United States. The author addresses how French, Spanish, British, and American forces contested the region for economic and military dominance between the 1760s and 1790s, noting how traders, Native Americans, and even slaves were shaped by this contest of empires. By describing these lives and how the revolution affected them, DuVal accurately theorizes that independence was lost by many, and that the idea of "empire" was often a place of security and affluence. This book adds to the literature of the period, fitting nicely with Colin G. Calloway's The American Revolution in Indian Country, Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy's An Empire Divided, and Claudio Saunt's West of the Revolution. VERDICT Highly recommended for students and scholars of the revolution, American South, borderlands, and forgotten theaters of war; along with those looking for a solid read in history. [See Prepub Alert, 1/5/15.]—Jacob Sherman, John Peace Lib., Univ. of Texas-San Antonio

Library Journal

2015-04-12
An informative and disturbing account of a little-known campaign during the Colonial rebellion. Invited to the First Continental Congress in 1774, the British colony of West Florida declined, remaining loyal until conquered by Spanish forces in 1781. "The American Revolution on the Gulf coast is a story without minutemen, without ‘founding fathers,' without rebels," writes DuVal (Early American History and American Indian History/Univ. of North Carolina; The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent, 2006). "It reveals a different war with unexpected participants, forgotten outcomes, and surprising winners and losers….On the Gulf Coast…the Revolution seemed to be just another imperial war, another war fought for territory and treasure." The author builds her story around a handful of participants. Revolutionary leaders dealt with Oliver Pollock, a wealthy New Orleans businessman who bankrupted himself supporting the revolution, as well as Payamataha and Alexander McGillivray, spokesmen for Chickasaw and Creek tribes. Less well-known are Petit Jean, a slave, and Amand Broussard, a refugee from French Canada. Both helped Spain (who ruled New Orleans) when it joined France to aid the Colonies. Representing Britain was James Bruce, an official in Pensacola, the capital of West Florida. Popular histories trumpet American rage at taxation, but more probably raged at Britain's proclamation forbidding settlers west of the Appalachians. Despite ongoing incursions into their territory, Indians continued to focus on tribal rivalries and trade. Readers will share DuVal's frustration at their leaders' futile efforts to deal with whites. The colonies won, but few readers will feel patriotic pride as the author describes how, over the next generation, the U.S. harassed Spain until it ceded Florida and brutally expelled the Indians from their lands. An illuminating history of events, many barely mentioned in history books and none, unlike our Revolution, with happy endings.

Kirkus Reviews

[An] astonishing story . . . Paint yourself a mental picture of the American War of Independence. If all you see are British redcoats battling minutemen and Continentals, Kathleen DuVal’s Independence Lost will knock your socks off. . . . To read [this book] is to see the task of recovering the entire American Revolution has barely begun.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“[DuVal] has produced a richly documented and compelling account . . . to form a layered history of connected, sometimes shared, experiences.”—The Wall Street Journal
 
“A remarkable, necessary—and entirely new—book about the American Revolution. DuVal’s history reminds us that if we celebrate a more inclusive vision of the United States this Fourth of July, one that seems ascendant these days, it is not the one the founding generation had in mind.”—The Daily Beast

“Declaring that the American Revolution was fought in the name of empire almost seems blasphemous. However, DuVal excellently details how the event was actually a war for empire along the Gulf Coast of the United States. . . . Highly recommended for students and scholars of the revolution, American South, borderlands, and forgotten theaters of war; along with those looking for a solid read in history.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“With deep research and lively writing, Kathleen DuVal musters a compelling cast to recover the dramatic story of the American Revolution in borderlands uneasily shared by rival empires, enslaved people, and defiant natives. She deftly reveals powerful but long-hidden dimensions of a revolution rich with many possible alternatives to the triumph of the United States.”—Alan Taylor, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Internal Enemy
 
“In a completely new take on the American Revolution and a riveting contribution to history, Kathleen DuVal explains how an unexpected cast of Gulf Coast characters fought for their own version of self-determination. The story is gripping, rife with pathos, double-dealing, and intrigue. The outcome is compelling, reverberating through American history to the present.”—Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Encounters at the Heart of the World
 
“Independence Lost is an extraordinary achievement. Rooting compelling personal stories in deep original research, Kathleen DuVal brings to life a war for American independence that will be utterly new to most readers.”—Daniel K. Richter, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Before the Revolution
 
“Kathleen DuVal has found an exciting and accessible way to convey this history without sacrificing the richness and intricacy of a part of North America where multiple Indian nations—as well as Britain, France, Spain, and the emerging United States—competed with one another for power.”—Andrés Reséndez, author of A Land So Strange
 
“A superb example of how the familiar becomes unfamiliar when viewed from a fresh angle, Independence Lost is a work of stunning scholarship with which anyone interested in the origins of the United States will have to contend.”—Andrew Cayton, co-author of The Dominion of War
 
“With stirring prose and through inventive, indefatigable research, Kathleen DuVal recovers a place in time and a cast of compelling characters that seldom feature in our accounts of the wars that created the United States. The result is an important, original, and entirely unforgettable book.”—Jane Kamensky, author of The Exchange Artist

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