Freedom round the globe : a world history of the American Revolution / Sarah M.S. Pearsall.

By:

Pearsall, Sarah M. S [author.]

Material type: Text

TextPublisher: New York : Doubleday, 2026Edition: First Doubleday hardcover editionDescription: xi, 419 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cmContent type:

text

Media type:

unmediated

Carrier type:

volume

ISBN:

9780385548717
0385548710

Other title:

World history of the American Revolution

Subject(s):

LOC classification:

E209 .P35 2026

Contents:

A Gallows in Bkejwanong : Unity -- A Tavern in St. Kitts : Consent -- A Street in Kolkata : Governments -- A Society in Edinburgh : Happiness -- A Castle in Anomabu : Liberty -- A Wall in Québec : Independence -- A Village in Hessen-Kassel : Civility -- A Hall in Versailles : Respect -- A Cornfield in the Six Nations : Security -- A Rock in Gibraltar : Life -- A Cabaña in Havana : Honor -- A Mansion in Guangzhou : Fortunes -- A Settlement in Sierra Leone : Equality.

Summary: "A groundbreaking global exploration of the ideas that drove the American Revolution, showing how widespread revolutionary impulses actually were in the 18th century, and shining a light on the defiance of marginalized peoples all over the world. While the American Revolution is often celebrated as the birth of American 'exceptionalism,' historian Sarah Pearsall argues against the idea that the Founding Fathers had a unique claim on the revolutionary spirit. The thirteen colonies that became the United States were just half of the British colonies that existed in the 18th century, and in this unique history Pearsall uncovers events and people in India, Scotland, Ireland, Georgia, Florida and the islands of the West Indies that had great bearing on the path of the American rebellion. Pearsall uses a clever organizing device, borrowing 13 ideals plucked from the Declaration of Independence, and finding the spark of each value in far-flung places. In a club in Edinburgh where women were first invited into philosophical conversations, she explores what the pursuit of happiness meant to married women and the enslaved. She traces the New England poetry of African-born Phillis Wheatley to a castle in Ghana where new forms of slavery created new ideas about liberty. On a Kolkata street where starving Indians protested ruthless taxes with their ebbing strength, Pearsall finds a critique of fair governement. In rural Germany, boy soldiers sent abroad to die for Britain complicate who can lay claim to principle in an uncivilized war. And in a Six Nations cornfield, we learn that security for one rising nation can mean extirpation for another. In this fresh and surprising history, Pearsall restores Friends of Liberty from around the world--women, South Asians, Native Americans, the enslaved-- to their rightful place in the American story"-- Provided by publisher.

List(s) this item appears in: New Adult Nonfiction

Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Shelving location	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Adult Book	Phillipsburg Free Public Library	Adult Non-Fiction	New Books	973.3 PEA	Checked out	07/20/2026	36748002652792

Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE * In a groundbreaking global exploration of the ideas that drove the American Revolution, a prize-winning historian shines a light on the defiance of marginalized peoples all over the world.

In her powerful new history of the American Revolution, Sarah M. S. Pearsall argues that the American Founding Fathers did not have a unique claim on the revolutionary spirit. The thirteen colonies that became the United States, she reminds us, were not even half of the British colonies that existed in the eighteenth century. In her sparkling and original Freedom Round the Globe , Pearsall uncovers the insurgents, freedom lovers, and dreamers in India, West Africa, North America, Europe, China, and West Indian islands who shaped the nature of American rebellion and nationhood.

In each fresh and compelling chapter of Freedom Round the Globe , Pearsall plucks a keyword from the Declaration of Independence--security, happiness, respect-- finding its spark in a far-flung place. In an Edinburgh club where women were first invited into philosophical conversations, she explores what the pursuit of happiness meant to women and men of all sorts. She traces how novel forms of slavery provoked a new use of the word liberty in Connecticut petitions as well as in cries of "liberty or death." On a Kolkata street where Indians protested relentless taxes, Pearsall finds a critique of oppressive imperial government that galvanized Americans in their protests and parties against the tea of the English East India Company. In rural Germany, boy soldiers sent abroad to die for Britain complicate who can lay claim to being civilized in a brutal war.

In telling the extraordinary tales of Friends of Liberty protesting tyranny around the world, Pearsall restores these individuals and movements to their rightful place in the vital story of the American Revolution and the nation it created. The result is a stirring and surprising revisioning of our history.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"A groundbreaking global exploration of the ideas that drove the American Revolution, showing how widespread revolutionary impulses actually were in the 18th century, and shining a light on the defiance of marginalized peoples all over the world. While the American Revolution is often celebrated as the birth of American 'exceptionalism,' historian Sarah Pearsall argues against the idea that the Founding Fathers had a unique claim on the revolutionary spirit. The thirteen colonies that became the United States were just half of the British colonies that existed in the 18th century, and in this unique history Pearsall uncovers events and people in India, Scotland, Ireland, Georgia, Florida and the islands of the West Indies that had great bearing on the path of the American rebellion. Pearsall uses a clever organizing device, borrowing 13 ideals plucked from the Declaration of Independence, and finding the spark of each value in far-flung places. In a club in Edinburgh where women were first invited into philosophical conversations, she explores what the pursuit of happiness meant to married women and the enslaved. She traces the New England poetry of African-born Phillis Wheatley to a castle in Ghana where new forms of slavery created new ideas about liberty. On a Kolkata street where starving Indians protested ruthless taxes with their ebbing strength, Pearsall finds a critique of fair governement. In rural Germany, boy soldiers sent abroad to die for Britain complicate who can lay claim to principle in an uncivilized war. And in a Six Nations cornfield, we learn that security for one rising nation can mean extirpation for another. In this fresh and surprising history, Pearsall restores Friends of Liberty from around the world--women, South Asians, Native Americans, the enslaved-- to their rightful place in the American story"-- Provided by publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

This sprawling, immersive account from historian Pearsall (Atlantic Families) explores "the effect of the world on the American Revolution" rather than the "too often" emphasized opposite. The book opens with a reflection on colonial militiamen's powder horns, which were typically carved with "European symbols" (such as patterns derived from women's embroidery) and Native American and African motifs (in one case, "a Maori war party canoe copied from a British magazine"). Much like the decorations on the humble powder horn, the colonists' "demands for liberty emerged out of a wider world," Pearsall argues. Though these "global claims of freedom... had roots in classical and biblical worlds," they took on "novel resonance in a period of accelerating rates... of slavery." In a roving narrative that ranges from European power politics to resistance movements of Indigenous and enslaved peoples, Pearsall spotlights many fascinating figures and milieus, among them women of the Scottish enlightenment who debated whether the pursuit of happiness "could be a radical act of equality"; the Indigenous leader Pontiac, who led a 1763 rebellion against the British in the Great Lakes region; the period's many enslaved and indentured people convicted of murdering their masters; German peasants indentured to the British military; and American investors who looked to Guangzhou, China, for investments to shore up their fledgling nation's economy. The result is a remarkably clarifying picture of the revolutionary spirit that swept the world in the 1770s. (May)

Booklist Review

The American Revolutionary War did not only occur in the 13 British colonies that became the United States. Its principles of freedom, liberty, and equality, immortalized in the Declaration of Independence, were fought for in many places around the world, and each fight for independence was influenced by others in this global movement. Historian Pearsall pegs each of the book's 13 chapters to a key word from the Declaration: unity, consent, governments, happiness, liberty, independence, civility, respect, security, life, honor, fortunes, and quality. And each chapter tells the story of a quest for freedom in a different place, from Canada to the Caribbean, Indigenous lands in North America to China, India, Scotland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Cuba, and Sierra Leone. Pearsall creates unique slices of life in each place, focusing on the history of each location, its culture, and the individuals involved in the uprising. The connections she reveals to the American Revolution are surprising and intriguing and will greatly alter readers' understanding of the ideas that fueled American independence and the emerging nation's influence on other lands.

Kirkus Book Review

History of the American Revolution as it played out in other theaters around the world. "The American Revolutionary War was in fact a Russian doll of a war, with wars nested in other wars, far beyond the thirteen colonies," writes Johns Hopkins history professor Pearsall. Indeed, she notes, Britain's colonies in North America included 13 others besides the 13 that would rebel--and it's a matter of some curiosity that while there were plenty of stirrings, those other 13 remained under the British aegis. Some of the extraterritorial rebellions that figure in Pearsall's account are those mounted by Indigenous peoples west of the Appalachians, who had stronger ideas about liberty, as one British observer noted, than any other "people on the face of the earth." That demand for liberty was well matched elsewhere in the world, when another revolutionary war broke out in India, one that "ended in a stalemate in 1784." Bernardo de Gálvez, a renowned Spanish soldier and Apache fighter, helped divert British resources in Florida; French and Spanish forces did the same at Gibraltar, tying down a garrison and war matériel that might otherwise have been sent to the American colonies; French fleets made a failed attempt to invade Jamaica, but all the same kept the British defenders busy. Pearsall's narrative extends even to China, with American traders making the case for an extension of credit that Alexander Hamilton would run with. Pearsall herself does good work in chronicling that "a revolutionary spirit was alive across the British Empire," one that accused the empire's leaders of being enslavers--and that would play out in later abolitionist movements. Less smoothly integrated into the narrative, but provocative, is her suggestion that the revolutionary spirit inspired colonial women to practice birth control "because these revolutions unleashed a sense that women, too, should be able to pursue life, liberty, and happiness." A revealing study of the global dimensions of America's war for independence. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.