Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

Last week, I reviewed the new detective series, Patience on PBS. Marg hosted a blog tour stop for the book Once Upon a Thyme by Jane Lovering, set on an herb farm in rural England. She enjoyed the humor and the growth of the main characters.

Today is the 249th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The war between the colonies had been going on for more than a year before that event, so we’re already into the 250th anniversary of major events like:

• Battles of Lexington and Concord — April 19, 1775
• Battle of Bunker Hill — June 17, 1775
• Olive Branch Petition — adopted July 5, 1775 and signed July 8, 1775

I’ve been looking for a fun way to explore this history from the British perspective and found it in an old series called Rebels & Redcoats: How Britain Lost America. It was developed by WGBH Boston and two British production companies to air on BBC Two and PBS in 2003. I got a DVD from the library, but only because my library recently joined a state-wide network and one of the smaller libraries still had a copy.

I could tell that I found what I was looking for when they described, in the first two minutes, the war as less revolution and more bloody civil war. I’ll admit that I wasn’t quite as ready to hear this story from the British perspective as I thought. Some things made me say “ouch” because I’d never thought of it that way before.

It turns out, for example, that Boston was one of the richest cities in the world in the 1770s and Bostonians had a much greater quality of life than Londoners. It’s not hard to imagine why the English might be saying “What do you have to complain about?”

I’m not fully buying the British bias but it was helpful to illuminate my American one.

The version of history that I learned about the War of Independence told me that Crispus Attucks, a black man, was the first American to be killed in the war. No one pointed out that the original of the famous print by Paul Revere depicting the Boston Massacre didn’t portray a black man — presumably to improve the propaganda value.

My history texts neglected to mention Dunmore’s Proclamation that promised freedom to enslaved people who fought for the British. This was an effective message in the southern states. In other parts of the country, things were more complicated. Many black Americans then (and now–this was a major theme of the 1619 Project) were inspired by the words of the Declaration of Independence and wanted to work with their fellow Americans to make them the reality of a new nation.

John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, issued Dunmore’s Proclamation on November 7, 1775

I don’t recall ever learning about the complicated decisions that had to be made by American Indians living in or near the fighting. Both British and Americans enlisted their support. It was not at all clear which side, if either, would treat the indigenous people as equal custodians of the land.

Rebels & Redcoats also proved to be a good overview of the events of the war. That’s going to be helpful as we encounter the 250th anniversaries over the next few years. I’m sure that I understood the significance of Washington crossing the Delaware at some point in my life, but I’d long ago forgotten it. Now, I have the facts fresh in my mind and will have a good understanding when Christmas of 2026 arrives.

Rebels & Redcoats covers the battles and strategies on the ground. That was very helpful, but I’m still missing a piece of history that interests me.

If I were a Londoner in 1775 with a habit of reading the newspapers, how would the war look to me? What would I have known about the Olive Branch Petition, adopted 250 years ago tomorrow? Would it have rung hollow, given the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms adopted by the Second Continental Congress the very next day?

Does anyone know of a resource that looks at the actions of the Parliament and the King during the Revolutionary War period? How did the war impact domestic politics in Britain?