2024-07-24
57 分钟Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real world problems.
Learn more@mercatus.org dot for a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com.
hello, everyone, and welcome back to conversations with Tyler.
Today I'm chatting with Alan Taylor, who's professor of history at the University of Virginia.
He could plausibly be considered America's greatest living historian.
He's written numerous books on colonial America, Native Americans, the revolutionary period, the early, now mid, and partly latter part of the 19th century.
He is one of the only very few people to have won two Pulitzer prizes.
Let me stress the new book.
Publication date, May 21 is American Civil Wars a Continental History, 1850 to 1873.
I enjoyed reading this very much, learned a great deal from it.
Alan, welcome.
Well, thank you, Tyler.
I really appreciate having the chance to talk with you.
Let's start with the revolutionary period.
We will work up to the topics in your book, but initially, why did only the 13 colonies declare independence?
So there's this thing we later call Canada to the north.
Why aren't they part of this?
Well, it's also all these british colonies in the West Indies, like Jamaica and Antigua and Barbados.
If you look at the population figures, the places that rebel are the places that have the largest populations, and they're connected with each other.
So there is a greater confidence that you can resist militarily.