Alan Taylor: evaluation

Transcript context

…If we think of the American Revolution as at some point being a surprise, is there any evidence on how asset prices reacted to that surprise, which is the question an economist would ask? It’s a great question. Assets are greatly depreciated during the war because these colonies and the new United States [were] highly dependent on transatlantic trade. If you’ve got the Royal Navy, which for almost all of the war is dominating the Atlantic, it’s very difficult to send out American produce to European and West Indian markets, and it’s very difficult to import goods. Economists who’ve looked at the impact of the American Revolution on the economy in the short term, meaning essentially 1775 until 1790, estimate that the economy shrank by a third, which would make it the second-greatest depression in all of American history. Assets were greatly depreciated until there’s a new federal government and there’s peace, so that during the 1790s, there comes a boom which more than restores the lost property values of the 1780s. In general, why did the British find it easier to mobilize Native Americans as allies? Is it just because they were less expansionist?…

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