National History Center

Timothy H. Breen, the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University, gives the next Washington History Seminar at the Wilson Center on Monday, October 25 at 4:00 pm with his presentation on “Ordinary People and the American Revolution.”

Unlike other revolutions that have transformed the modern world, popular narratives of the American Revolution focus commonly on a small group of Founding Fathers and on the political ideas they championed. Ordinary people resisted imperial rule, often without the support or knowledge of their leaders in the Continental Congress. This seminar presentation will explore a rumor that almost sparked revolution in 1774 and that nearly persuaded the Founding Fathers to adopt a more radical agenda.

T.H. Breen is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University. He is the author of eight books including American Insurgents- American Patriots: The Revolution of the People(2010), Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2005); Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (1985); and “Myne Own Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (with Stephen Innes, 1980). He is also the Director of the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern University.

Reservations are requested because of limited seating. To reserve a seat at the seminar, contact Miriam Cunningham at 202-544-2422 ext 103 or email. The seminar takes place at the Wilson Center, located in the Ronald Reagan Building at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.

The seminar is sponsored jointly by the National History Center (an initiative of the American Historical Association) and the Wilson Center. Wm. Roger Louis and Christian Ostermann are the co-directors. The seminar meets weekly during the academic year, January to May and September to December. Click here for the schedule, speakers, topics, and dates as well as videos and podcasts. The seminar is grateful for the support given by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

David A. Bell, Professor of History at Princeton University, explores “The French and American Revolutions and Modern Democracy” as part of the National History Center and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Weekly History Seminar series on Monday, April 26, 2010.

Today, men and women around the world hail democracy as an unquestioned good, and enthusiastically trace its modern history back to the great “democratic revolutions” of the late eighteenth century, especially in America and France. We forget that in both countries, leading revolutionaries actually had a profound distrust of democracy. John Adams said the word “signifies nothing more nor less than a nation of people without any government at all,” while Antoine Barnave, the French revolutionary, called it “the greatest of plagues.” This distrust has had extraordinary consequences for the present practice of democracy, as will be shown with particular reference to the French case.

Professor Bell is a specialist in the history of early modern and modern France, he has published books on the politicization of the legal profession under the ancien régime, on the origins of nationalism in France, and on the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars as the “first total wars.”

Click here to watch a video presentation of the seminar.

This is part of the weekly history seminar that aims to facilitate the understanding of contemporary affairs in light of historical knowledge of all times and places, and from multiple perspectives. Click here to see a complete listing of the schedule of speakers and topics, as well as videos of the presentations.