Armitage, David. The Declaration of Independence: A Global History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. This excellent, short book examines the global influences on the Declaration of Independence and how the Declaration has influenced other countries’ independence movements ever since. The volume also contains copies of various declarations of independence from around the world from 1776 to 1993.
Elliott, J. H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. This sweeping history contrasts the development of the British and Spanish colonies in North America over the course of more than 300 years. Elliott’s book provides a good basis to compare how England and Spain dealt with resistance in the 1760s differently.
Fenn, Elizabeth. “Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst.” Journal of American History 86 (March 2000): 1552–1580. This important article examines the claims that British general Jeffrey Amherst intentionally traded small-pox infected blankets to Indians during Pontiac’s rebellion and places the act in the context of other instances of germ warfare in the eighteenth century.
Young, Alfred F. The Shoemaker and the Tea Party. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999. Young traces the life story of shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes, who participated in the Boston Tea Party, and looks at how his memories of resistance and revolution shaped history into the 1830s. Young also charts the history of the term “Boston Tea Party,” and looks at what the term tells us about the use of historical memory in U.S. culture.
From Oxford University Press
Breen, T. H. The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence. Argues that American colonists forged a shared identity as consumers that empowered them and led to their political organization during the imperial crisis.
Egerton, Douglas R. Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America. Shows the fundamental place of slavery within the society and political thought of Revolutionary Americans and the ways the Founders failed to provide for gradual emancipation.
Ferling, John. A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic. Offers a sweeping history of the Revolutionary era from the 1750s to 1800 and shows the slow emergence and acceptance of the idea of independence.
Isaac, Rhys. Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginian Plantation. Explores the struggle for independence and the concomitant upheaval in social relations on a Virginian plantation.
Kenny, Kevin. Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment. Traces the breakdown of Quaker Pennsylvania and the consequences for Native Americans during the eighteenth century.
Middlekauff, Robert. The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763–1789. Provides a narrative history of the Revolutionary Era in this contribution to the Oxford History of the United States series.
The Price of Freedom: Americans at War. From the Smithsonian Institute, this web site includes timelines, short educational movies, artifacts, documents, and much more detailing American Wars including the American Revolution, Indian wars, War of 1812, War with Mexico, and Civil War.
Africans in America. Accompanying the PBS series of the same title, this web site provides information and various primary materials on African American life and culture from the 1400s to the end of the Civil War.
The Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary. Offering up a host of information and sources about Franklin’s life and time, this web site provides an in-depth perspective into the late colonial and Revolutionary eras.
The Coming of the American Revolution, 1764–1776. From the Massachusetts Historical Society, this web site brings together primary materials and interpretation to provide a intriguing look at the growing conflict between the colonies and England after the French and Indian War.