Virtually all modern accounts of the Revolution begin in 1763 with the Peace of Paris, the great treaty that concluded the Seven Years’ War. Opening the story there, however, makes the imperial events and conflicts that followed the war — the controversy over the Sugar Act and the Stamp Act crisis — into precursors of the Revolution. No matter how strenuous their other disagreements, most modern historians have looked at the years after 1763 not as contemporary Americans and Britons saw them — as a postwar era vexed by the unanticipated problems in relations between the colonies and metropolis — but as what we in retrospect know those years to have been, a pre-Revolutionary period. By sneaking glances, in effect, at what was coming next, historians robbed their accounts of contingency and suggested, less by design than by inadvertence, that the independence and nationhood of the United States were somehow inevitable.
Wayne, Anthony
Manalapan, NJ — Marks the site of the 1778 Battle of Monmouth; includes hiking and horseback riding trails and two houses from the period.
Stony Point, NY — Site of the victorious 1779 battle led by American General Anthony Wayne, the 87 acres includes an earthen fort and a visitors center with a museum.
Paoli, PA — Home to the Wayne family from 1724 to 1965, including General Anthony Wayne who led troops in the battles of Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Stony Point.
Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754 - 1766 (2000)