The American Revolution

Essays on the Founding Era

Nicholas Popper

• Publisher: Omohundro Institute and UNC Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781469695129
  9781469695112
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469695136
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

The long conflict that culminated in the American Revolution and the founding of the U.S. Republic upended the lives of men and women throughout the colonies. In a time of upheaval and uncertainty, they reinvented their lives, their communities, and their vision of the world.

Drawing from the pathbreaking scholarship published by the Omohundro Institute over the past fifty years, these essays reflect on the experiences and legacies of the struggle for American independence, from the first inklings of the imperial crisis through the war’s global aftershocks.

Contributors include David Armitage, Christopher Leslie Brown, Katherine Carté, Eliga H. Gould, Woody Holton, Rhys Isaac, Michael J. Jarvis, Maya Jasanoff, Linda K. Kerber, Cynthia Kierner, Michael A. McDonnell, Johann N. Neem, Mary Beth Norton, Robert G. Parkinson, Benjamin Quarles, John A. Ruddiman, Manisha Sinha, and Alfred F. Young.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Editor’s Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Prologue to Revolution
• From Deference to Defiance: A Boston Shoemaker and the American Revolution
• Catalysts of Revolution: Delaware and Shawnee Diplomats versus Patriot Land Speculators
• The Seventh Tea Ship: Aftershocks of the Boston Tea Party
• Part II Galvanizing Patriots
• Eyewitness to Revolution: A French Spy in the House of Burgesses
• Revolution from the Pulpit: Religion and the First Years of Imperial Crisis
• The Burning of Norfolk: Patriot Leaders Become Reluctant Revolutionaries
• The Lifeblood of Revolution: Newspaper Networks and the Movement for Independence
• Part III Life during Wartime
• Behind the Man behind the Gun: Black Spies, Servicemen, and Enslaved Laborers
• Women Invited to War: Sacrifice, Service, and Survival
• Disciplined by Orderly Books: Negotiating Power in the Continental Army
• Part IV International Dimensions of the Revolution
• Navigating Revolution: Bermudian Allegiance in an Atlantic World at War
• The Declaration of Independence: International Law and the American Revolution
• The Other Side of Revolution: Loyalists in the British Empire
• Part V Legacies of the Revolution
• Contested Legacy: Black Radicalism in the Age of Revolution
• Moral Capital: Emancipation in the Age of the American Revolution
• Independence and Interdependence: The American Revolution and the Problem of Postcolonial Nationhood
• Further Reading
• List of Contributors
• Index