Do you think the most important people from literature and history were fully respectable, dull people? Then you were fooled.
Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and Walt Whitman were tangled in a love-triangle. Lord Byron is responsible for Twilight and his...
Okay, we all heard about 'Hamilton', haven't we? Or even listened to it. With the state the US is in at the moment, it might be a good moment to go back to the beginning and see where that whole American freedom actually comes from.
And while I will not lose myself in criticism of the musical or the American Revolution, I must still say that the musical and most textbooks leave out one of the funniest bits about American independence. And I don't mean the bit where Alexander Hamilton was such a hoe that he wrote love letters to other Congress members.
Now, how did it actually come to the American Revolution?
(Attention here, I am not American, so my knowledge may not be as thorough as that of my American readers - correct me if something is incorrect.)
It's the 1770's and the North-American colonies are controlled by the British crown - colonialism has already taken over most of the continent, much to the damage of native peoples. But the mostly European immigrants settling in the Eastern colonies have already been living there for several generations now and feel less and less like inhabitants of a British colony, but like a new nation: the Americans. Demands for independence begin - Common Sense is written, and so on.
Hearing the demands of their very profitable colony, the Commonwealth does what it always does: it just ignores them. Because why should you lose a colony that brings you so much wealth?? Exactly. King George III doesn't even for a second consider giving the North-Americans what they which for.
Oh, the contrary, to make North America more dependent on England, new taxes are imposed - even though the very self-confident Americans protest with the slogan "No taxation without representation".
The rest is history. Some people throw tea into the harbour of Boston to protest against the new taxes, and the English parliament begins to understand: Those Americans are being serious. Well, shit.
Consequently, they go the most logical way that has always worked: supressing violence with more violence.
Spoiler: it doesn't work.
By now, the American colonies are boiling with hate for England and demands for Independence. First armed conflicts mark the beginning of what both sides had tried to avoid at the beginning: A revolutionary war, Americans versus English. On both sides, troops are gathered.
On 16th June 1775, George Washington, who has no idea that he's going to become president yet, is made commander-in-chief of the revolutionary army. The English troops are trained professionals, well equipped and under experienced command - the American army consists of volunteers, most of them without any military training, armed with pitch-forks or stolen pistols. It's not looking good. Theatre kids, you know what come now -
Because how does a ragtag volunteer army in need of a shower somehow defeat a global superpower? How do they emerge victorious from the quagmire? Leave the battlefield waving Betsy Ross' flag higher?
Yo. Turns out they have a secret weapon! An immigrant you don't know yet, who's unafraid to step in! He's constantly confusing, confounding the British henchmen:
Everyone give it up for America's greatest gay German!
The Baron von Steuben!
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