Don Johnson, NDSU associate professor of history, will present "The Popular Politics of American Independence," at the humanities colloquium on Thursday, Dec. 7, at 2:30 p.m. in Zandbroz Variety.
More than a year before the Second Continental Congress declared independence on July 4, 1776, popular revolutionary regimes seized control of small towns, counties and cities across North America. Headed by unelected committees of local farmers, merchants, clergy and artisans, these rough-hewn governments overthrew colonial rule, mobilized men and materiel for war, dispensed justice and established de-facto autonomy in their communities.
While the Revolution’s erstwhile leaders struggled to make sense of the unfolding conflict, ordinary people in towns and counties from Georgia to New Hampshire took control of the movement and became some of the fiercest advocates for national independence. Yet despite the important role they played in the founding of the United States, these people are largely absent from both popular and scholarly understandings of the Revolution. This presentation, adapted from a book project in progress, tells their story.
Johnson is the author of “Occupied America: British Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
The colloquium is sponsored, and opened to the public, by NDSU's School of Humanities, the home of the humanities on the northern plains. With the gracious hospitality of Zandbroz Variety, Fargo's fine independent bookstore on Broadway.
