No Turning Point: The Saratoga Campaign in Perspective

Campaigns and Commanders Series, Book 32

De: Theodore Corbett

Narrado por: Scot Wilcox

The Battle of Saratoga in 1777 ended with British general John Burgoyne’s troops surrendering to the American rebel army commanded by General Horatio Gates. Historians have long seen Burgoyne’s defeat as a turning point in the American Revolution because it convinced France to join the war on the side of the colonies, thus ensuring American victory. But that traditional view of Saratoga overlooks the complexity of the situation on the ground.

Setting the battle in its social and political context, Theodore Corbett examines Saratoga and its aftermath as part of ongoing conflicts among the settlers of the Hudson and Champlain valleys of New York, Canada, and Vermont. This long, more local view reveals that the American victory actually resolved very little.

In transcending traditional military history, Corbett examines the roles not only of enlisted Patriot and Redcoat soldiers but also of landowners, tenant farmers, townspeople, American Indians, Loyalists, and African Americans. He begins the story in the 1760s, when the first large influx of white settlers arrived in the New York and New England backcountry.

Ethnic and religious strife marked relations among the colonists from the outset. Conflicting claims issued by New York and New Hampshire to the area that eventually became Vermont turned the skirmishes into a veritable civil war. These pre-Revolution conflicts - which determined allegiances during the Revolution - were not affected by the military outcome of the Battle of Saratoga.

The book is published by University of Oklahoma Press.

Praise for the book:

"There is no study to match No Turning Point, whether for its social precision or for its military account." (Edward Countryman, author of A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790)

©2012 Theodore Corbett (P)2020 Redwood Audiobooks

Civil war in the north during the revolution

An extensive argument made that considerable war for independence in New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire a Civil War existed during the American revolution between loyalists and patriots. Very well documented somewhat dry, but did a good job, placing the Saratoga campaign in context with other events in the area before and after the American revolution.