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“America's Revolution as a World Revolution,” an electrifying global history of a not-so-local war, with Richard Bell
Profs and Pints DC presents: “America's Revolution as a World Revolution,” an electrifying global history of a not-so-local war, with Richard Bell, professor of history at the University of Maryland at College Park and author of the new book The American Revolution and the Fate of the World.
When we think of the American Revolution, we often picture a parochial drama: thirteen colonies squaring off against the British Crown in a spirited bid for independence. But this version of the story is only half the truth—and perhaps not even the most interesting half.
Join historian and author Richard Bell for an evening in which you’ll rediscover the Revolution as a world war, one that unleashed chaos, opportunity, and transformation across six continents.
You’ll learn how, from the sugar fields of the Caribbean to the court of the King of Mysore, from refugee camps on the Canadian frontier to political uprisings in Sierra Leone and Peru, the war that gave birth to the United States was never simply America’s own. It was a seismic global event that redrew maps, toppled hierarchies, catalyzed migration, and accelerated new movements for liberty—and for empire.
Professor Bell, whose many excellent previous talks have earned him a loyal following among Profs and Pints fans, will trace the far-flung reverberations of the war through the lives of the people it displaced, empowered, or destroyed. You’ll encounter a Native matriarch struggling to preserve a transatlantic military alliance, a Prussian officer reinventing himself in a foreign army, and a Boston schoolteacher shipwrecked thousands of miles from home.
Along the way, Dr. Bell will explore how the Revolution stirred a transoceanic refugee crisis, ignited antislavery activism, and inspired uprisings from Ireland to India. He’ll provide you with a bold new framework for understanding the Revolutionary War not as a tidy founding moment but as a sprawling, high-stakes struggle fought on land and sea, shaped by commerce, diplomacy, propaganda, and contingency.
This is the American Revolution as you’ve never seen it before: complex, global, and astonishingly relevant to the modern world. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Simón Bolívar, who led the fight for independence from Spain throughout South America, as painted by José Hilarión Ibarra in about 1826.
