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This past week at National Defense University, I had the chance to sit in on the American history course which the International Fellows take as part of their American studies certificate program. The first few weeks of the class are basically a crash-course in American history; this class, being the second, centered on the American revolution and the creation of the Constitution.  Having spoken to the American studies professor at the beginning of my internship, I already had a sense of how she structured the course. Because there are more specific and intensive courses available to the officers to study the military history of most American wars, she glosses over these incidents much more than one might expect from a military university, providing a few key details, and instead focusing on providing a greater understanding of the cultural, social, and economic fabric of each time period. Therefore, I wasn’t surprised when we sped through the bare bones of the Revolution.

Although surface level compared to what I have covered in my own, more intensive history classes at Penn State, sitting in on this class was still educational for different reasons. The dynamic atmosphere of the classroom allowed for much feedback from the officers, and on a humorous note, it was amusing to hear the British, German, Canadian, and French officers banters back and forth about subjects such as the Seven Years’ War. On a deeper level, it was particularly thought-provoking to listen to the feedback of some of the African and Middle Eastern officers that had also lived in countries which were once British colonies and fought their own battles for independence. Naturally, when the professor provided the historical context for the revolutionary war and its preceding events, she described those staples of any American revolution timeline — the Stamp Act, the Intolerable Acts, the Boston Tea Party. In response to these incitements, however, officers from some of the African colonies argued that from their perspective, the Americans revolted for reasons of economic freedom and essentially because they were greedy and wanted more money. They further contrasted this to independence struggles in their own countries, where they argued the population had suffered far more egregious levels of oppression which compelled their struggle for independence. Initially this was surprising to hear, because the story of the American revolution and our founding fathers’ bold search for freedom is so ingrained in the nationalistic mythology of our country that few Americans, no matter their political leanings, speak ill of it. While I would still contend that the struggle of the colonists to gain independence from Britain went beyond a bare level of greed, I would also concede that the American colonists certainly suffered a minimal level of oppression compared to peoples in other British colonies in Africa or Asia, where the populations were regarded as sub-human for racist reasons. In comparison to the injustice inflicted upon these populations, it is easy to see how our own “revolution” can appear much more tame. I was exceptionally grateful for the opportunity to sit in on this class because this was a perspective I never would have been exposed to in my usual history classes.