audiobook The Young Lords: A Reader by From Brand: NYU Press in History

Description

Of crucial strategic importance to both the British and the Continental Army; Staten Island was; for a good part of the American Revolution; a bastion of Loyalist support. With its military and political significance; Staten Island provides rich terrain for Phillip Papas's illuminating case study of the local dimensions of the Revolutionary War.Papas traces Staten Island's political sympathies not to strong ties with Britain; but instead to local conditions that favored the status quo instead of revolutionary change. With a thriving agricultural economy; stable political structure; and strong allegiance to the Anglican Church; on the eve of war it was in Staten Island's self-interest to throw its support behind the British; in order to maintain its favorable economic; social; and political climate. Over the course of the conflict; continual occupation and attack by invading armies deeply eroded Staten Island's natural and other resources; and these pressures; combined with general war weariness; created fissures among the residents of “that ever loyal island;” with Loyalist neighbors fighting against Patriot neighbors in a civil war. Papas’s thoughtful study reminds us that the Revolution was both a civil war and a war for independence—a duality that is best viewed from a local perspective.