Against All Odds
Recognizing Spain as a crucial contributor to the United States’ successful bid for independence
Historians increasingly recognize the global dimensions of the American Revolutionary War, and the essays in this indispensable collection highlight the pivotal role played by Spain in the US bid for independence. Together, they cover the unheralded role of Native Americans and Spanish Black militias in the conflict, reveal new insights into the war’s naval and military engagements, and assess the subsequent impact of the new United States on the Spanish American empire. In this volume, Spain emerges as a decisive rather than a declining power in a late eighteenth-century world of revolutions, one whose impact on the American Revolution is only now fully coming to light.
Contributors: José María Blanco Núñez, Real Academia de la Historia (Spain) * Douglas Bradburn, George Washington’s Mount Vernon * Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina * Larrie D. Ferreiro, George Mason University * Eliga H. Gould, University of New Hampshire * José Manuel Guerrero Acosta, Academy of Military Science and Art * Agustín Guimerá Ravina, Spanish National Research Council * Sylvia L. Hilton, Complutense University of Madrid * Richard L. Kagan, Johns Hopkins University * Jane Landers, Vanderbilt University * Manuel Lucena Giraldo, Spanish Council for Scientific Research * Gabriel Paquette, University of Maine * Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia, Real Academia de la Historia * Juan Luis Simal, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
- John Ferling, author of Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary WarFrance has gotten most of the attention, and credit, for helping the United States secure independence. But Spain also played a significant role, as this rewarding collection of essays ably demonstrates. Against All Odds shows how and why the Spanish saw the Revolutionary War as an opportunity to further their national interest, the steps they took to aid the American rebels, and how the role they played in the global conflict was crucial in America’s achievement of independence. The essayists, a veritable who’s who of scholars in the field, have produced concise, well-written, and informative articles that are essential reading for those wishing to understand the global war touched off by the American Revolution. After reading, you can gauge the editor’s conclusion that the British surrender at Yorktown would never have occurred had it not been for Spanish assistance.
- Thomas E. Chávez, former director of the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, and author of Revolutionary Diplomacy: Spanish Connections and the Birth of the United StatesAn invaluable contribution to the historiography of Spain’s relationship to the United States at the moment of its founding, and beyond.
Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia, PhD, SJD, a senior Spanish diplomat, is the author of Bernardo de Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution and El enemigo de mi enemigo: España en la Guerra de Independencia de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica (1775-1783).
