Friday & Saturday, November 6 & 7, 2026
The Huntington
1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA
Ahmanson Classroom
9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. (PT)
See the conference program for the full schedule.
Register to attend by October 30.
Organizing committee:
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (USC)
Christopher L. Brown (Columbia)
Brian DeLay (UC Berkeley)
Elizabeth Ellis (Princeton)
Sarah Pearsall (Johns Hopkins)
The American Revolution was an international event. Its causes, origins, consequences, and trajectory all had roots in places beyond the thirteen colonies, from neighboring Indigenous nations to Asian cities thousands of miles away. Over the last few decades, there has been increasing scholarly attention to the United States in the world and an enlarged geography for early America. Yet, beyond works specifically on international diplomacy and war, the American Revolution has been largely resistant to such treatment, remaining sturdily provincial especially in popular understandings.
This conference will consider the challenges and advantages of making the American Revolution international in ways that move beyond simply European high politics and diplomacy. The Revolution was at the center of a number of global processes, from colonialism to Enlightenment. The interplay of these dynamics and the specific American trajectory furnishes an excellent avenue of approach to re-invigorate and widen perspectives on older stories about colonial resistance, unity, and war.
Participants
“The Auxiliary Origins of the American Revolution: Enslaved, Indigenous, and German Forces in the Fracturing of Colonial America”
“The Impact of the American Revolutionary War on the Slave Trade to the Spanish Americas”
“Weather the Global American Revolution: Climate, Food, and War in Quebec and the Carnatic”
Organizer
“The Age of Revolutions in the Texas-Louisiana Borderland: Comanches, Jacobins, and Maroons, 1790-1811”
“Rethinking the Elizabeth Freeman Case: The Ancient Common Law in the New American Nation”
“‘Their Own Country’: Traditions of Sovereignty and Revolutionary Visibility in Blackwater Carolina”
Organizer
“Early Local Tests of the Peace of Paris”: Contests over Population, Property, and Authority during the ‘Dual Governorship’ of East Florida, 1784-1785″
“Origins: The Geopolitics of Hunting and Cherokee Migration, 1760-1810”
“‘A Tragi-Comedy in the Face of Common Sense’: The Revolutionary Honor of George Mathews”
“The Death of King George II, Colonial Time-Consciousness, and the Coming of the American Revolution”
Image Credit: Enoch Wood & Sons, Tea Service depicting Lafayette at Benjamin Franklin’s Tomb, c. 1824, earthenware. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Gift of Jonathan and Karin Fielding. © Courtesy of The Huntington Art Museum, San Marino, California.
