Rethinking the Age of Revolution

In the last twenty years, scholars have rushed to re-examine revolutionary experiences across the Atlantic, through the Americas, and, more recently, in imperial and global contexts. While Revolution has been a perennial favourite topic of national historians, a new generation of historians has begun to eschew traditional foundation narratives and embrace the insights of Atlantic and transnational history to re-examine what is increasingly called ‘the Age of Revolution’. This volume raises important questions about this new turn, and contributors pay particular attention to the hidden peoples and forces at work in this Revolutionary world. From Indian insurgents in Columbia and the Andes, to the terror exercised on the sailors and soldiers of imperial armies, and from Dutch radicals to Senegalese chiefs, these contributions reveal a new social history of the Age of Revolution that has sometimes been deliberately obscured from view. This book was originally published as a special issue of Atlantic Studies.

Michael A. McDonnell is Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, and books on the American Revolution and early American history, including The Politics of War (2007), Remembering the Revolution (2013), and Master of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America (2015).