The American Revolution

Referat
American Revolution The American Revolution, the conflict by which the American colonists won their independence from Great Britain and created the United States of America, was an upheaval of profound significance in world history. It occurred in the second half of the 18th century, in an Age of Democratic Revolution, when philosophers and political theorists in Europe were critically examining the institutions of their own societies and the notions that lay behind them. Yet the American Revolution first put to the test ideas and theories that had seldom if ever been worked out in practice in the Old World--separation of church and state, sovereignty of the people, written constitutions, and effective checks and balances in government. A struggle to preserve and later to expand the dimensions of human freedom, the American Revolution was also an anticolonial movement, the first in modern history. Before then, countries had usually come into existence through evolutionary processes, the result of tradition and history, geography and circumstance. The United States, on the other hand, had a birth date, 1776; it was the first new nation, a republic born in revolution and war, a pattern followed by scores of fledgling states since that time, especially in the so-called Third World areas of the globe since 1945. For many nation-makers the American rebellion has been a relevant revolution, offering insights and parallels that have aided them in their quest for ...