The World of the American Revolution

To most Americans, the Revolution’s main significance is its impact on the thirteen colonies that became the United States.  Yet the American Revolution was also an international transformation of the first importance, both for Britain and the British Empire, and for Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean.  These wider, trans-Atlantic ramifications form the theme of this seminar.  Topics will include European involvement in the Revolutionary War, the Revolution’s impact on African American slavery and the slave trade, the Revolution in Indian country, and the implications for Latin American independence.  We will also discuss the United States’s origins as a confederation of sovereign states, whose relations with each other were often as fluid and contested as relations between the United States and foreign countries in Europe and, eventually, the Americas.