Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description

dissolving the political bands: the american revolution from the british perspective

Instructor(s): Beau Breslin, Political Science

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..." So began the words of America's birth certificate, America's call to independence, liberty, and self-determination. So began the Declaration of Independence.  Those twenty-four words signalled the end of an old world order and the dawn of an entirely new period of political evolution; they essentially changed the world.  Centuries—indeed, millenia—of political conventions were discarded in a single moment...and by a group of impatient, ornery, and essentially unsophisticated traitors. This course will examine the historical movement for American Independence from the side of the loser. The course combines history, political science, economics, sociology, cultural studies, literature, and more. It also uses London as a laboratory/studio with which to experience life in the eighteenth-century, as well as the important locations, ideas, and writings that impacted one of the most consequential events in all of world history.

Course Offered

• Fall 2022