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. In this course, we rediscover the Revolution as a world war that unleashed chaos, opportunity, and transformation across six continents. We trace the far-flung reverberations of the war through the lives of the people it displaced, empowered, or destroyed. We 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, we explore how the Revolution stirred a transoceanic refugee crisis, ignited antislavery activism, and inspired uprisings from Ireland to India. This presentation offers 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 we’ve never seen it before: complex, global, and astonishingly relevant to the modern world. This course uses the Hybrid format which allows students to participate remotely and/or in the classroom. This course will be recorded. Students will have access to videos for 30 days.