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