After 1776: Opportunities, Shocks, and Dangers
Join us for a two-day program hosted by the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies and organized by Professors Linda Colley of Princeton University and Eliga Gould of New Hampshire University.
Registration is required and free. Lunches and coffee services included in registration.
Conference Overview
Featuring a distinguished gathering of international scholars, the "After 1776" conference at Monticello will provide an in-depth conversation on the "age of revolutions in favor of liberty" - a phrase coined by Thomas Lee Shippen in a 1789 letter to Thomas Jefferson.
This was a turbulent age of revolutions, violence and reassessments, with major global upheavals occurring in the Americas, Britain, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific World. Many of these convulsions, however, had important features in common - among the most striking and contested in certain regions was the naively optimistic belief that these "revolutions for liberty" were changing the course of history for the better.
With an emphasis on the years between the Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, conference presenters will examine the hopes, fears, arguments and de-stabilizations of the time. Presenters will address the political, constitutional, cultural, and scientific innovations that marked the period, and will investigate the era's shocks, violence and flaws. Challenges included the continued survival of chattel slavery, intensification of indigenous dispossession, continued marginalization of women, and the mounting costs of global warfare.
Event Schedule
Join us on Monticello's iconic West Lawn for a vibrant conversation between New York Times opinion columnist and public historian Jamelle Bouie and Princeton scholar Dame Linda Colley, moderated by Monticello's president Dr. Jane Kamensky.
As the 250th anniversary of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence approaches, and in the midst of a charged presidential election, Americans are thinking deeply about the relationships between our founding documents and our peoplehood. This conversation asks how - and whether - declarations and constitutions make nations.
Bouie, Colley, and Kamensky will explore volatile moments, both past and present, in the political lives of Americans and Britons. Both are polities in process. How can attention to our historical and constitutional foundations inform our present and guide our future?
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm: Happy hour with food and beverages available for purchase
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm: Panel discussion and Q&A session
War & Enlightenment
- Eliga Gould (University of New Hampshire)
"'As Far as the Canaries': Longitude, Prize Law, and the Anglo-American Armistice of 1783” - Asheesh Siddique (The University of Massachusetts Amherst)
"Competing Visions of Archival Politics in the British Empire" - Ali Yoycioglu (Stanford University)
"War, Reform, and Radicalism in the Ottoman Empire in the Long 1780s"
Politics and Creativity
- David Armitage (Harvard University)
“Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro Between Revolutions” - Paris Spies-Gans (Independent Scholar)
“Stifled Promises: Maria Cosway and the Quandary of the Woman Artist” - Linda Colley (Princeton University)
“Ancient Worlds, Modern Worlds: Edward Gibbon and Time in the Long 1780s”
Trade
- John Shovlin (New York University)
“The Atlantic Revolutions and the Problem of Protection” - Fidel Tavarez (Queens College, CUNY)
“The Slave Trade and the Unravelling of Spain’s Closed Commercial Empire, 1778-1791” - Jennifer Anderson (Stony Brook University, SUNY)
“The Hessian Invasion: Negotiating Environmental Crisis in the 1780s”
Slavery, Power and Freedom
- M’hamed Oualdi (European University Institute in Florence, Italy)
“Freeing Muslim Slaves Across Mediterranean Europe and the Americas: The Revolutionary Policy of Moroccan Sultan Muhammad ibn ‘Abdallah (1757-1789)” - Chernoh Sesay (DePaul University)
“From Patriot to Federalist?: Black Political Thought and Freemasonry in Post-Colonial America” - Julia Gaffield (The College of William & Mary)
“The Plantation Economy After Abolition: French Republican Labor Codes in the Haitian Revolution”
Empires and Reform
- Matthew Mosca (University of Washington)
“Locating Qing China in the Age of Revolution: Three Perspectives” - James Stafford (Columbia University)
“'The Mart in Europe for the Trade of America’: Irish Speculations After 1776’” - Rosemarie Zagarri (George Mason University)
“Consolidating Empire: Thomas Law in Colonial British India and the Early United States”
Distance & Revolution
- Sujit Sivasundaram (University of Cambridge)
“1776 and 1788: The American Revolution and the Indian and Pacific Oceans” - Brooke Bauer (The University of Tennessee)
“Women of the Catawba Nation in the 1780s and 1790s” - Michael Blaakman (Princeton University)
“Counterrevolution in Favor of Liberty: Abolishing Slavery in Loyalist Upper Canada”
Lawfare
- Robert Travers (Cornell University)
“Impeachment in the Age of Revolutions” - Hannah Farber (Columbia University)
“Common Pleas: Protest and Reform at the County Courthouse, 1765-1800” - Paul Halliday (University of Virginia)
“Boxing the Jury: Exclusionary Rules and Principles of Inclusion”
Wrap-up Panel Discussion
- David Armitage (Harvard University)
- Linda Colley (Princeton University)
- Eliga Gould (University of New Hampshire)
Conference Presenters
Photos & Bios
Directions, Parking, and Cancelations
The conference will take place at the Repose conference center on Montalto, overlooking Monticello. Use GPS address Montalto Loop Road, Charlottesville, VA 22902. Parking available onsite
Space for this event is limited and expected to sell out. For cancellations, please call Monticello Reservations at (434)984-9800 as soon as possible so others may enjoy the event.