Commonwealth Fund Lecture

In the United States, July 4 is Independence Day.  By the time Congress published the Declaration, however, the American Revolution was more than a year old.  Focusing on the “shot heard round the world” by Massachusetts minutemen on April 19, 1775, at Concord’s North Bridge, Eliga Gould will discuss the complicated legacy of the revolution’s origin as an act of armed rebellion.  From the moment the shot was fired, that rebellious origin was a source of embarrassment, an awkward fact to be managed and explained away.  But for Americans of all races, classes, genders, and political dispositions, from white nationalists on the far right to anti-war protesters on the left, the minutemen’s example was — and remains — fundamental to what it means to be a citizen.

This event is co-sponsored by the UCL Institute of the Americas.

Schedule

• 17:30-19:00: Lecture - Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre
• 19:00-20:00: Drinks Reception - IAS Common Ground, South Wing

About the Speaker

Professor Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire

Eliga Gould’s scholarship focuses on the American Revolution, with an emphasis on the entangled history that Americans shared with the rest of the Americas, as well as with Africa, Europe, and the wider world. His current book project, Peace and Independence (Oxford University Press), examines the least studied of the United States’ founding documents: the Treaty of 1783 that ended the American Revolutionary War. He is interested how the American quest to be accepted as a “treaty worthy” empire by Europe’s colonial powers shaped thinking about federalism, Native American treaty rights, and slavery and anti-slavery.