Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast · Alycia Asai

Entangled Alliances: The Global Roots of American Freedom with Dr. Ronald Angelo Johnson

·1 hr 10 min·4 clips

Paul Caranelle was nearly sold back into slavery until his wife pleaded with the governor.

1. Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast centers this episode on Entangled Alliances and the global roots of American freedom. 2. Host Alicia interviews Dr. Ronald Angelo Johnson, a historian at Baylor University specializing in early America, the African diaspora, and Haiti. 3. Johnson uses the book to ask what the American Revolution looks like when Saint-Domingue, France, and the Caribbean are put in the frame. 4. MacAndal, a Black man born in Africa and enslaved in Saint-Domingue, opens the book because he escaped slavery and taught others to take pride in being Black. 5. Johnson says white slaveholders treated MacAndal's message as an insurrection and executed him. 6. Johnson calls that execution a creation of a martyr whose teachings helped feed the Haitian Revolution. 7. He links MacAndal's story to the 1804 Declaration of Independence in Haiti and to freedom claims that predate Lexington and Concord. 8. Johnson argues that the 250th anniversary, which he calls the semi-quincentennial, is a useful moment to rethink the American Revolution. 9. He says the revolution was more than war and should not be reduced to Boston or Philadelphia. 10. Johnson places his book between the Treaty of Paris in 1763 and the Treaty of Paris in 1783. 11. He cites John Adams's line that "the revolution was affected before the war commenced" and says the revolution lived in "the minds and the hearts of the people." 12. The 1763 treaty expanded the British Empire and required more forts, more troops, and more money. 13. Johnson traces that fiscal pressure to the Stamp Act of 1765 and the protests that followed. 14. He says French officials in Saint-Domingue faced their own tax demands in 1764, including a levy of $4 million. 15. In Saint-Domingue, white colonists could avoid military service by paying the tax, while Black men carried the burden of defense. 16. Johnson says the first revolt of this period occurred in Saint-Domingue in 1765, not in North America. 17. He highlights Foreign Minister Chausseau as a secretive strategist who used agents to explore rebellion in North America. 18. Johnson says the exchange of information between the New York Gazette and A Fiche Americane turned newspapers into tools of diplomacy. 19. The conversation is analytical and personal, with Johnson using stories from his own work in diplomacy and CIA analysis to explain the archive. 20. Anyone interested in the American Revolution, Haiti, Atlantic diplomacy, and Black freedom will get the most from this episode.

As heard by us

A transnational Revolution conversation that treats diplomacy as part of the story, not a footnote.

Dr. Ronald Angelo Johnson recasts American independence as part of a wider Atlantic story, while Alicia keeps the focus on diplomacy, information flow, and the cross-border ties that made that argument persuasive.

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Why you'd press play

You want the American Revolution linked to Haiti, France, and diplomacy.

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