trying to see how people at the time understood the events

试图弄明白当时的人们
unfolding around them.

如何看待身边仍未完全显露的事件
How did the colonists understand themselves as British subjects?

殖民地居民怎样看待他们的英国臣民身份
How did they feel about the British empire or about the King

他们对大英帝国国王以及议会
or about Parliament?

又有什么看法
How did they come to put American-ness in the foreground?

他们如何成功突出了美国性
How did rebelling against their own country make sense?

怎样使反叛国家正当化
And that's something I think we also tend to forget about the revolution.

这也是关于革命我们也常常忘却的一点
We think of it as our war; it's us against them and them

那就是我们把这视为我们的战争我们和他们
equals the British, but of course we were the british.

和英国人的战争其实当时我们也是英国人
So it's something that you don't think about but people at

因此虽然你不曾想过但在当时
the time, certainly in the 1790s,

也就是十八世纪九十年代