Revolutionary War: The American Revolution

Revolutionary: to be engaged in or promoting change, usually political. Countless times this word has been used to describe a vast number of things. Revolutionary products, revolutionary ideas; do we really know what the word means, and when it could and should be used? The Revolutionary War was fought over change, between fledgling America and England, for freedom. In 1775, the first shots of the war were fired at Lexington and Concord. Several years before the Revolutionary War began, in 1763, the end of the French and Indian War, or the Seven Years War, came, halted by the Treaty of Paris. The British, who had assisted the Americans throughout the war thought that they rightly deserved payment for their the troops and supplies they lent

The tension grew between the opposing two parties (the Whigs and Tories), like slowly filling a large balloon with water, until at last the balloon burst. The most famous of these acts was the the Tea Act, which resulted in the Boston Tea Party, in which Americans snuck on board british cargo ships disguised as indians, and threw all of the tea overboard, and into the Boston Harbor. Another well known occurrence leading to the start of the Revolutionary War was the Boston Massacre, when a scuffle between the some Americans and a group of British soldiers got out of hand, and resulted in five American deaths, and six injured. Feeling threatened and very much provoked, the Americans attacked the British, and thus the Revolutionary War began. This war would produce several well known names, such as General George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, along with the other Founding Fathers who helped to write the famous Declaration of Independence. The war at long last ended in 1781, when the British troops surrendered at Yorktown, granting Americans the independence they went to war for. The Arab Spring, which occurred much more recently, at the end of 2010, was similar in idea

The former dictatorship had been cast aside, and was replaced with a democracy lead by a prime minister, and presidents governing smaller states. “Democracy had finally arrived in the Middle East, but it has quite literally had a torturous journey. Many of the leaders of these new democracies were subjected to sadistic brutality simply because of their religious beliefs.” (Danahar, pg. 21). So, not everyone was thrilled with this new government, especially those who had power before the Arab Spring. Those running for president, however, mostly upper class men, decided to take advantage of the lower classes. “‘Take a sheep and give me your vote,’...They assumed the poor were gullible enough to swap their votes for livestock.” (Danahar, pg. 19-20). By by taking advantage of the lower classes lack of food and proper resources, the candidate who proudly conceived this idea thought he was the surefire winner. The candidate, however, may be forgetting that their run is the result of Mohamed Bouazizi’s, a poor fruit vendor, anger. He was the one to ignite the outrage that swept throughout Middle East, and resulted in the overthrow of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, of Tunisia. Before this intifada, he (Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali) wielded an extreme amount of dictatorial