In Beyond 1776, ten humanities scholars consider the American Revolution within a global framework. The foundation of the United States was deeply enmeshed with shifting alliances and multiple actors, with politics saturated by imaginative literature, and with ostensible bilateral negotiations that were, in fact, shaped by speculation about realignments in geopolitical power. To reanimate these intricate and often indirect connections, this volume uncovers the influences of people across disparate sites both during and after independence. The book centers first on the migration of ideas across the Atlantic, particularly among intellectuals and through print. In this section, scholars focus on how various European countries or cliques appropriate the Revolution to reanimate an array of national, local, or cosmopolitan affiliations. The essays in the second section articulate how revolutions fostered surprising exchanges in, for example the West Indies and in the first penal colonies of Australia, along the Celtic fringe and Pacific Rim, and in the vast territories through which goods circulated. Taken as a whole, this collection answers the persistent calls from scholars to move beyond the boundaries defined by the nation-state or periodization to rethink narratives of U.S. foundations. The contributors examine a range of texts, from novels and drama to diplomatic correspondence, letters of common sailors, political treatises, newspapers, accounting ledgers, naval records, and burial rituals (many from non-Anglophone sources). Beyond 1776 will appeal to scholars seeking to understand contact and exchange in the late eighteenth century. It indexes how different intellectuals in the period deployed the Revolution as a point of connection; follows the dispersal of print books, guns, slaves, and memorabilia; and evaluates literary responses to the new republic. The book puts in conversation scholars of literature, theater, history, modern languages, American studies, political science, transatlanticism, cultural studies, women’s studies, postcolonialism, and geography. Contributors: Jeng-Guo Chen, Academia Sinica, Taiwan * Matthew Dziennik, United States Naval Academy * Miranda Green-Barteet, University of Western Ontario * Carine Lounissi, Université de Rouen-Normandie * Therese-Marie Meyer, Martin-Luther-University of Halle- Wittenberg * Maria O’Malley, University of Nebraska, Kearney * Denys Van Renen, University of Nebraska, Kearney * Ed Simon, Bentley University * Wyger Velema, University of Amsterdam * Leonard von Morzé, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Bestselling author Lauren Tarshis tackles the American Revolution in this latest installment of the groundbreaking, New York Times bestselling I Survived series. Bestselling author Lauren Tarshis tackles the American Revolution in this latest installment of the groundbreaking, New York Times bestselling I Survived series. British soldiers were everywhere. There was no escape. Nathaniel Fox never imagined he'd find himself in the middle of a blood-soaked battlefield, fighting for his life. He was only eleven years old! He'd barely paid attention to the troubles between America and England. How could he, while being worked to the bone by his cruel uncle, Uriah Storch? But when his uncle's rage forces him to flee the only home he knows, Nate is suddenly propelled toward a thrilling and dangerous journey into the heart of the Revolutionary War. He finds himself in New York City on the brink of what will be the biggest battle yet.

From 1776, when Citizen Tom Paine declared, "The birthday of a new world is at hand," America was unique in world history. A nation suffused with the spirit of explorers, constantly replenished by immigrants, and informed by a continual influx of foreign ideas, it was the world's first truly cosmopolitan civilization. In Beyond the Revolution, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian William H. Goetzmann tells the story of America's greatest thinkers and creators, from Paine and Jefferson to Melville and William James, showing how they built upon and battled one another's ideas in the critical years between 1776 and 1900. An unprecedented work of intellectual history by a master historian, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of our national culture.

Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies—a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.

Examines the critical role of urban taverns in the social and political life of colonial and revolutionary America From exclusive “city taverns” to seedy “disorderly houses,” urban taverns were wholly engrained in the diverse web of British American life. By the mid-eighteenth century, urban taverns emerged as the most popular, numerous, and accessible public spaces in British America. These shared spaces, which hosted individuals from a broad swath of socioeconomic backgrounds, eliminated the notion of “civilized” and “wild” individuals, and dismayed the elite colonists who hoped to impose a British-style social order upon their local community. More importantly, urban taverns served as critical arenas through which diverse colonists engaged in an ongoing act of societal negotiation. Inn Civility exhibits how colonists’ struggles to emulate their British homeland ultimately impelled the creation of an American republic. This unique insight demonstrates the messy, often contradictory nature of British American society building. In striving to create a monarchical society based upon tenets of civility, order, and liberty, colonists inadvertently created a political society that the founders would rely upon for their visions of a republican America. The elitist colonists’ futile efforts at realizing a civil society are crucial for understanding America’s controversial beginnings and the fitful development of American republicanism.

This panoramic account of 1776 chronicles the other revolutions unfolding that year across North America, far beyond the British colonies. In this unique history of 1776, Claudio Saunt looks beyond the familiar story of the thirteen colonies to explore the many other revolutions roiling the turbulent American continent. In that fateful year, the Spanish landed in San Francisco, the Russians pushed into Alaska to hunt valuable sea otters, and the Sioux discovered the Black Hills. Hailed by critics for challenging our conventional view of the birth of America, West of the Revolution “[coaxes] our vision away from the Atlantic seaboard” and “exposes a continent seething with peoples and purposes beyond Minutemen and Redcoats” (Wall Street Journal).