“Revolutionary War SECRET!” - The Lost Jewel, Spanish Invasion & Franklins in Paris | R. Bell • 453
Julian Dorey · 24 Jul 2026 · 2h 54m
Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
A British-born historian who teaches at the University of Maryland lays out the argument from his new book that the American Revolution was actually a global war, not a simple two-sided contest between rebels and redcoats. The conversation traces how France's foreign minister Vergennes spent years secretly rebuilding the French navy after its defeat in the Seven Years' War before committing to the American cause, and how the myth that the Battle of Saratoga alone triggered French intervention gets debunked. The guest walks through Spain's separate calculations, including its failed attempt to broker peace in exchange for Gibraltar, its invasion attempts against Britain, and its military campaigns in Florida and the Great Lakes region that pulled British forces away from the thirteen colonies. Other threads include the role of religion and anti-Catholic propaganda in selling the French alliance to American colonists, the scale and brutality of British slave-trading operations tied directly to the royal family, the split loyalties within colonial society (patriots, loyalists, and a large neutral middle), Ben Franklin's transformation from loyalist to committed revolutionary after a public humiliation in London, and the naval mathematics that made combined French and Spanish sea power decisive once Spain joined the war. The host and guest also compare 18th-century propaganda tactics to modern political fear-mongering, and discuss how patriot leaders deliberately globalized their strategy from the earliest days of the Continental Congress rather than stumbling into foreign alliances by accident.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Guest's path to studying American history
- Origins of the global-history book project
- French debt and naval rebuilding after Seven Years' War
- Saratoga myth debunked
- News delay and the Battle of Cuddalore in India
- Ben Franklin and Silas Deane in Paris
- American Revolution as a civil war
- Anti-Catholic propaganda and religion in the war
- Slavery, Jamaica's sugar economy, and royal family involvement
- British abolition and its compromises
- Patriot strategy as deliberate globalization from the start
- Post-war instability and the Constitution's role
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“the story goes, the myth goes that it's only when uh George Washington's uh soldiers win the battle of Saratoga in what, October of 77 or something, that France goes, "Oh, these guys can win now. We're going to help them." That is hot garbage u in terms of explanatory power.”
“Jamaica and places like it, they are slaughter houses for black people.”
“only 30% can actually try and tangle with George, which means that George has a chance of winning.”
“So I say we've got the receipts which say as early as June 1776, this is the plan.”