Reviving a revolution: Producer talks about Ken Burns’ new project

From a small spark kindled in America, a flame has arisen

What do you hope this unvarnished look at our nation's founding brings to the American people

Because like you said, you spent a decade diving into the research and it's not just kind of

you know, the elementary school line of this, you know, small rabble fighting against the

British Empire. It's so much. But it is that too. It's, it's, it's, uh, I don't think that there's

there's a part of us that's trying to, you know, dispel myths. We're not, we're not myth busters

out there to make you poke holes in your understanding of the American revolution

In fact, what we're doing is taking what you already know, really rebooting it. So just

you don't forget entirely what you knew going in the door, but what you knew going in the door is

going to be supplemented by all sorts of other information that's going to make what you already

know make much more sense. I think all of us, before we even have conscious memories, have some

concept of the American Revolution. You know, George Washington is on our currency, the flag

It's all there for us, right? Fourth of July. But, and then we learn about it in elementary school

we learn about it again, maybe in middle school and high school, and then we don't really learn about it. So the only way that we've really discussed it is in those elementary school ways

or maybe in middle school or high school, we get a little bit more time with it, but your teacher's

worried that, you know, this is a survey course on American history. They're worried they're not

going to get to the 20th century, much less the 21st century, if they spend the time that they

that it deserves to spend on the American Revolution I think also a lot of us are hungry for curious for history and knowledge

and miss being able to dive into this sort of history. So for adult learners like you and me, here's an opportunity

And yeah, there's just a lot more out there than the stuff that we learned when we were kids

but the stuff that we learned when we were kids is still very much part of this story. I think that people are going to come away with this with different interpretations

I am grateful for that. I welcome that for sure. Our intention is not to make you think a certain way

It's definitely not to make you feel a certain way. But maybe we can give you something to think and to talk and to feel about and to communicate

with other people and find out how they did the same. So I'm glad that you had good experience with it

And we kind of touched on this a little bit too, but, you know, the war is, you know, a war for independence, but it's also a civil war and a world war. How does the series address its magnitude

so you know one of the things that i feel like i should have known this but was surprising to me

when making this film is the the american revolution while it absolutely did win

american independence of course and unite the states and create the republic that you know we

still live under um none of those were on the table at the start those weren't war objectives

on april 19 1775 they they became necessary to win the war they're kind of outcomes of the war

rather than goals um what they were really trying to do at the start was to liberate boston and to um

and to you know get a redress of grievances and to bring things back to the way they were under the british Empire when things worked out the way that they did But in order to win the war they had to involve all sorts of American people who otherwise might not get along

And coalition building made it a war about liberty, made it this fight for union

And it just gets bigger and bigger. And then in order to win the war, they had to involve foreign powers

The French came in, the Spanish came in as the allies of the French

The Dutch declared war on the British. And the war ends up being fought not just, you know, it begins on Lexington Green

It spreads all throughout not just the original 13 colonies, but over the mountains to the Ohio River country, along the Gulf Coast, even out to the Mississippi River

It's also in the Caribbean. It's fought off of England with John Paul Jones at Flamborough Head

It's fought in the Atlantic Ocean. It's fought along the coast of France, fought along the coast of Africa

It's even fought in the Indian subcontinent. And that's just the war

The ideas just grow and grow and inspire revolutions and have inspired revolutions for the past 250 years all throughout the world

Ho Chi Minh, when he declared Vietnamese independence, had two United States OSS officers standing next to him and was quoting in Vietnamese Thomas Jefferson

And then kind of turning more towards the war itself, you know, the revolution is almost kind of the definition of when Ulysses S. Grant, one of my favorite scenes is we'll look them tomorrow. And we lose a majority of the battles against the British, yet we emerge victorious. This is a broad question, but how

Yeah I mean well okay so my previous experience studying war was with the Vietnam War So I would I could be colored by that interpretation where it just you know this is an insurgency an insurgency just has to outlast the counterinsurgency outlast the counterinsurgency

But I don't think George Washington realized that at first. And so it's something that he learned through the war

Initially, when his Continental Army forces were ringing Boston, he proposed going across the ice of the Charles River and invading Boston, occupied Boston

That very likely would have been bad. and he took good counsel and they told him you know don't do that and he agreed with them didn't

do it but then the next year after they had taken Boston he put armies on Long Island and Manhattan

in a time when Britain rules the waves you know this is rule Britannia the British Royal Navy is

the the best military force in the world probably at that time just completely supreme on the high

and New York is surrounded by water. Horrible mistakes were made in the Battle of Long Island

in the lead up and after. So how there, I mean, I think that if you take

the Vietnam interpretation, it's hard to imagine Britain ever beating a united insurgency

in the face of this. But it wasn't that united in 1776. There's still very strong loyalist presence and also lukewarm patriots

And Washington, if he had been captured at the Battle of Long Island, it could have been a completely different story