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> By 1775, however, sporadic rioting and violence in and around taverns transitioned into outright war when a group of ‘minute men’ gathered at the Buckman Tavern in Lexington, Massachusetts on 19 April 1775, just before murdering more than 70 British troops.
Murder of the British is a strange take on the events of Lexington and Concord. The author appears to be scraping.
Is the assertion that the taverns caused public life to take a different course than it would have otherwise, or just that they were the place where public life occurred?
> Murder of the British is a strange take on the events of Lexington and Concord.
The outbreak of the American Revolution in 1775 can fairly be called an act of violence. The American colonies in the early days of the conflict were pretty evenly split between loyalists and revolutionaries. The latter ultimately won the day in large part by burning down loyalists’ houses or tarring and feathering them, sending some of the loyalists into exile in Canada or the Caribbean and encouraging others to stay low lest they be attacked, too.
These facts don’t get talked about much in the American school system, because like in most countries the public school system seeks to perpetuate a national mythology for the sake of civic unity. However, revolutions anywhere in the world tend to initially play out as a civil war of sorts among the country’s own people, and the American Revolution was no exception.
Nobody is doubting it was an act of violence. The oddity is that they're calling it an act of murder as opposed to an act of war. Murder sounds like a bunch of criminals, which is a really one sided take. The british soldiers were there to destroy colonial military supplies. It may be technically correct, but you don't hear about how the GIs murdered a bunch of Nazis on the beaches of Normandy or whatever other war suits your fancy. Save for the particularly one sided conflicts.
I got history from american public education, and while half of it was garbage, and half of it was dull internal politics of isolationism, there was no ambiguity that the revolutionary war was a bloody conflict.
I'm not a historian but isn't there some ambiguity here? If war hadn't already been declared by the relevant governments, you can't be killing in the name of war.
> It may be technically correct, but you don't hear about how the GIs murdered a bunch of Nazis on the beaches of Normandy or whatever other war suits your fancy. Save for the particularly one sided conflicts.
That's because the nazis lost. If they had won, as Robert McNamara said, we'd be called murderers and criminals and our leaders would have been hanged for crimes against humanity.
Not only did the british call the revolutionaries murderers, they also called them terrorists since the revolutionaries were attacking and terrorizing the loyalists. Ironic huh? One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.
As strange as it sounds, in an alternate universe where the brits won, the history books probably describe the revolutionaries as murderers and terrorists. Can you imagine how odd it would be to view Benedict Arnold as a hero and George Washington as the villain?
> there was no ambiguity that the revolutionary war was a bloody conflict.
And there certainly was no ambuigity about who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.
History is just one part of nation building propaganda. The people in charge ( usually the winners ) get to write it. Fundamentally, there are no good guys or bad guys, just winners and losers in history.
As a Canadian: A tar and feather illustration is among the most memorable from my childhood.
Yes, important to keep in mind that revolutions always have their roots in civil war, and that's always brutal.
They were presented in my education, though mine wasn't a public education.
> As is still so often the case when white, powerful men felt threatened, they banded together to create, and separate, the other.
What, this is a behavior specific to white, powerful men?
What went down in and around Lexington and Concord was a more serious crime than murder, it was an act of rebellion.
The author appears committed to a particular affect which seems out of context with the history he presents.
It’s not. In Bangladesh, we precisely identify the town or village ethnic Bangladeshis come from, but have a single word to refer to all non-Bangladeshis (“bideshi,” meaning “foreigner”).
The article reads like the author wrote it, and then sprinkled in “white men” randomly wherever it fit grammatically. Maybe it helped get the thing published.
Maybe a better qualifier is dominant culture men in a society because I’ve seen that across the world. Rarely do non dominant cultures band together effectively. But this is all anecdote and conjecture on my part.
It's odd how many people who share this anti-Whitism express this sentiment in the very same breath in which they denigrate, demonise or humiliate Whites.
Either they don't actually believe it and are just zealously taking the opportunity to revel in their socially-acceptable racism, or they're supporting this trend I'm seeing of Whites becoming ethnically conscious and collectivising in the face of the hostility they are being exposed to.
It's probably the former, but the latter is the effect regardless.
He has some, ah, unique takes scattered throughout:
> American forces – well, the French and Spanish forces, along with the sputtering Americans – managed to win the American Revolution in 1783.
Make no mistake, the French forces were key, but to lay the victory at the feet of the Spanish ahead of the Americans throws the whole piece into question.
With the Spanish getting a mention, it seems odd that the Germans/Hessians don't. They were very nearly as numerous as soldiers from the British Army and were more numerous than Loyalist american troops.
wait till you learn how the same stories are told in different countries. its different everywhere.
By 1780 it was a matter of when and not if. The American people had been so thoroughly brutalized by the British at that point that there was certainly going to be ongoing violence as long as there were British soldiers around to shoot at. So then the British options are genocide or wash their hands of it. And the Bible says you're not supposed to commit genocide against other Christians let alone people who might be British subjects (also you need them alive to work to pay taxes and the population needs to exist as a hedge against French influence) so since that option isn't really on the table the question at that point is at what point do the British wash their hands of it.
On Virginia Avenue NW in Washington, DC, there is a statue of one Galvez, who led Spanish forces in the Mississippi Valley area, fighting against the British. But that was a long way from the main theatre of operations.
Agree. Remember the British were already under order to raid the towns for supplies ('powder and ball'). In Lexington, the militia had made a show of force, following which gunfire was exchanged, and the British officers authorized a "huzzah" in celebration of the death of several militia members.
Quite a stretch to call resisting an army under orders to seize munitions by force "murder" per say, this was a clear act of self defense.
Even if you don't side with the militia, by any reasonably modern code of ethics and rules of engagement "resisting a uniformed army by force" is completely and totally fair game. Armies exist to project state violence. Sometimes people take them up on the offer.
> As is still so often the case when white, powerful men felt threatened, they banded together to create, and separate, the ‘other’.
This was gratuitous too. Out-group formation happens across all cultures regardless of ethnicity or sex.
This even online where sex and ethnicity have no value but where topic groups or online clique’s are formed.
One of my great-grandfather's stories was that soon after immigrating from Poland he and his father found work mining coal in Indian Country (soon to become Oklahoma). The family lived in a shack abutting the local tavern. Everybody (including at least 3 children) slept on the floor due to the frequent bullets coming from the tavern.
I've been reading The Big Bonanza by Dan De Quille, and he relates how early miners at the Comstock Lode would surround their beds with stacks of sandbags to protect themselves from stray bullets.
TBH in many places in the US you still have regular shootings, and bullets also do get into homes. Residential homes are also built way more crappily now than the log cabins of old times. So nothing much changed about the shooting part. Compare it to Europe which has deweaponized itself.
This isn't true. Shootings are very, very rare. And they are concentrated in certain types of places (e.g., poor urban ghetto) such that the parts of the country that aren't these places have vanishingly small probabilities of being hurt by a shooting.
Gun murders in the U.S. are a very low percentage of deaths (0.39%) and preventable deaths (~1.1%, there's some disagreement about what's "preventable"). That's 0.0036% of the population per year gun-murdered. That this statistic is 3x some other country's is irrelevant because 3x a small number is still a small number. If your goal is to prevent untimely deaths, focus on boring things like falls, car accidents, and diabetes.
Compare it to what? People are going to people. Just because your continent doesn't have the same gun laws as the US doesn't mean there's any less crime - gun related or otherwise. There are quite a few Europeans that wish they had guns so they weren't stabbed, dashed with acid, or beheaded.
Europe! Deweaponized! HAH!
Compare the murder rates of Detroit MI, Cheyenne WY, London, and Shanghai, and then tell me which city has a weapon problem and which city has a culture problem, or both!
Incidentally, if you think all this moralistic hand-wringing was centuries ago, famed SF nightclub DNA Lounge was in 2009 charged with, and I quote, "running a disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals".
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/02/13.html
(Note: jwz doesn't like HN referrers, so c&p into a separate tab)
> famed SF nightclub DNA Lounge
For those not familiar with the DNA Lounge story:
- jwz was an early programmer at Netscape who made several million
- he wanted to get into entertainment, but when you buy a bar in SF, it comes without any permits, so you essentially have to rebuild and re-permit everything
- the SF Police doesn't want to bother policing bars, so the Chief fights you tooth and nail at every city council meeting. Because lazy.
- meanwhile, the property is in an industrial area, so the early closing times and noise ordinances are specious.
You can read his web site for the full story, but after reading it you will never want to open a business in SF.
> but when you buy a bar in SF, it comes without any permits, so you essentially have to rebuild and re-permit everything
I remain forever amazed that SF manages to retain the aura of coolness, while being anything but.
My first thought was NIMBYs as I used to live somewhere where people started buying properties near the college bar scene and then trying to find ways to get them shut down, but this makes sense as well.
i would enjoy a VR game where i could sit in an old tavern while i drink an actual beer
I mean that sounds pretty easy to set up on your own. Just some VRML or VRchat plus one of the "pub" discord servers (with VRchat you wouldn't need the discord part.)
I can confirm that drinking together in VR pub worlds is a very popular activity in VRChat.
This is basically Westworld
Cal Newport recently talked about this feeling on his blog [0]. These 'ambient' experiences have the power to be very deep with VR/AR.
[0] https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2020/11/23/on-technology-and...
Even better, just make a beer hat add on for your VR headset
I believe this was referenced as a VR game demo in the show Silicon Valley.
Which one?
if I can have a scotch, I'm in!
Not too far from where I grew up in Downeast Maine is a Tavern in that was built in 1770. It's where some locals planned to capture a British Lt., which ultimately led to the first naval engagement of the Revolutionary war. [1]
It's website is.... nostalgic....[2]
I read this article while drinking a Samuel Adams American IPA. Sweet, sweet, hoppy irony.
Pardon my pedantry, but that’s coincidence, not irony.
Rebel scum!
/S