The American Revolution at 250: Historians Discuss the Many Worlds of 1776

In conjunction with The Declaration of Independence Display we invite you to join us for a special event! Famously, in December 1773, over a hundred colonists snuck onto ships in Boston Harbor after nightfall, destroying chests of tea worth nearly $2 million today. Often portrayed as a local tax protest that helped spark a Revolution, this event raises all kinds of questions: How did others elsewhere in America and across the world see such an affair? Why were the protesters dressed as Native Americans? Where did all that tea come from in the first place? The "Boston Tea Party" was just one example of the many ways in which the American Revolution was a global phenomenon, whose causes and consequences reached from India and China to Indigenous nations across the North American continent. Join us as Duke historians Adriane Lentz-Smith and Philip Stern launch a year of discussions on these many different "Worlds of 1776," in conversation with UNC historian Kathleen DuVal, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Native Nations: A Millennium in North America. Brought to you by Durham County Public Library, Duke We the People: A Duke & Durham Initiative; The John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute; and the Duke University Department of History's 2026-2027 program on the "Worlds of 1776."