Frank Cogliano is Professor of American History in the School of History, Classics, & Archaeology. A specialist in the history of the American Revolution, he has taught at the University since 1997. On 9 June he published his most recent book (with Peter S. Onuf), 'Thomas Jefferson Survives: American Independence in His Time and Ours'. We share an extract below. On 4 July 2026 the United States will celebrate 250 years since the Continental Congress declared independence from Britain. In anticipation of this anniversary I invited two dozen historians, in the United States and beyond to reflect on the meaning of the anniversary. This is adapted from the Introduction to The American Revolution at 250: Twenty-Four Historians Reflect on the Founding, published with permission from the University of Virginia Press. The volume is available here. Part one 1776 and all that Some of the readers of this book might remember 'Bicentennial Minutes' which were broadcast on CBS, sponsored by the Shell Oil Company, during prime time between 1974 and 1976. Others may recall 'Operation Sail' and the visit of the Tall Ships to the East Coast during the summer of 1976. I went to see the Tall Ships when they arrived in Boston Harbor on July 10. For me, growing up in eastern Massachusetts in the 1970s, the memory of the American Revolution was ever present. Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Burns, was a Minuteman. Well, actually, he was an airline pilot who participated in re-enactments on weekends. It was Mr. Burns who, when I told him that Esther Forbes’s Johnny Tremain was my favorite book, encouraged me to read the novels of Kenneth Roberts. Overall, the bicentennial was characterized by a lot of what the radical historian Jesse Lemisch described as 'bicentennial schlock,' patriotic-themed ephemera -- I have a distinct memory of McDonald’s placemats that illustrated key moments from the War of Independence. Schlock it might have been, but I’m quite certain that exposure to this material stimulated my interest in the period. I started graduate school at the end of the 1980s, just as a decades’ long debate between historians over whether ideas or material interests motivated the American revolutionaries was petering out. Then I went to the United Kingdom in 1992 and have now spent more than three decades researching and teaching about the American Revolution outside of the United States. My time in the UK coincided with the Atlantic (latter global) turn in early American history. The stories historians tell about the Revolution now include the Caribbean, Europe, West Africa and South Asia, as well the whole of the North American continent, not just the Atlantic coast. As I write this I can see Edinburgh Castle. In 1780 an American sailor imprisoned in the fortress carved an American flag on one of the castle’s inner doors in defiance of his imperial captors. My title for this introduction is a nod to 1066 and All That, by W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman. Sellar and Yeatman presented an irreverent look at British, especially English, history as indicated by their subtitle, A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates. Originally appearing in the satirical magazine, Punch, and first published as a book in 1930, they challenged traditional patriotic pieties that often characterized the history of their nation. Almost 900 years after the event, Sellar and Yeatman used 1066, a foundational date in the history of England as jumping off point to offer a critical (and amusing) view of English history and the rise of the British Empire in the wake of the First World War. My title acknowledges the value of challenging received historical pieties while reminding readers that, in the global historical terms, the United States remains a relatively young nation. At a mere 250 years Americans may not feel irreverent about their history. Perhaps it’s too soon to do so (especially at a moment of intense political partisanship, social and ethnic conflict, and international tension), but it is worth marking this significant anniversary by asking what the founding of the nation means. My understanding of the American Revolution has been shaped by my study of the subject as well as my life experience. (After all, outside of the United States the American Revolution appears different than it does within the country. For one thing, non-Americans are not as invested in the meaning of the Revolution as US citizens are.) The same is true for the contributors to this volume. With the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence approaching, each of them, all experts on the period, grappled with a simple question: 'What does the American Revolution mean to you?' Perhaps it will come as no surprise, given the diverse perspectives represented in this volume, that there is no single view on what the founding of the United States means to the experts who study it. We historians are trained not to write in the first person (and certainly not to write about ourselves!), nor to explicitly address contemporary concerns. Yet historians are aware that, like all people, we’re creatures of particular moments in time. Certain broad themes do emerge, notably uncertainty about whether the principles of the Revolution bind Americans together and whether its legacy speaks to the experiences of all Americans. We are aware that there are numerous local, state, and national efforts -- both public and private -- to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Like the commentary in this volume there is no single interpretation or message behind these events. We hope that readers will discover that among the people who study the late eighteenth century for a living, there are diverse voices and viewpoints over the founding of the United States, and we also hope that these viewpoints might inform readers’ own thinking and discussions about the American Revolution in 2026 and beyond. Continue to Part Two This article was published on Friday 11 April 2025
