Events

One of the greatest obstacles that the Continental Army faced during its first two years was providing an adequate supply of firearms suitable for military service. Arms production in Revolutionary America never met the demand for weapons to fight the British. The timely influx of weapons captured from British ships and purchased from France saved the American cause from disaster. Independent curator and historian James L. Kochan illuminates how dependent the army was on foreign arms through the histories of two guns: a British Pattern 1756 light dragoon carbine and a French Model 1717 rampart musket. Both firearms are on loan from Mr. Kochan’s collection and on display in the current exhibition, A Revolution in Arms: Weapons in the War for Independence (through March 24, 2019).

The lecture will last approximately 45 minutes.

About the Speaker

James L. Kochan is a leading expert on American and British uniforms, accoutrements, martial arms and related military and maritime artwork and artifacts of the period 1700-1850. He spent nearly two decades as a museum director and curator, principally with the U.S. Army Museum System and the National Park Service. Kochan is the author of Don Troiani’s Soldiers of the American Revolution, Hearts of Oak & Yankee Pluck and a two-volume treatment on the early United States Army, 1783-1815, as well as the co-author of Insignia of Independence: Military Buttons, Accoutrement Plates & Gorgets of the American Revolution and Hessian Documents of the American Revolution, 1776-1783. Today he owns and operates James Kochan Fine Art and Antiques, specializing in American and British art, manuscripts, imprints and maritime and martial artifacts.