Library Briefings

Popular Political Mobilization

Professor Timothy H. Breen to lecture on consumer politics and American independence

A decade before the Declaration of Independence, informed political commentators predicted that Americans were too divided and suspicious of each other to effectively confront the military might of Great Britain. This lecture explores how ordinary colonists, separated by religion, class, and geography, managed to overcome profound differences to create a new republic. Widespread political trust derived from a surprising source -- a shared experience as avid consumers in a vast imperial marketplace. The revolutionaries came to understand that their economic independence within the British Empire could be transformed into a political weapon, an insight that energized the first large-scale boycott movement in modern history.

Timothy H. Breen is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University. Breen has taught at Yale University, Cambridge and Oxford Universities, and the California Institute of Technology. He has been awarded numerous fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He is the author of eight books, including The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford University Press, 2004).

All faculty are invited to attend this lecture, presented by the Board of Governors of Northwestern University Library

Tuesday, May 25, 2004, at 6:30 p.m.
Hardin Hall, Rebecca Crown Center
A reception will follow the lecture.

Please respond by May 18, 2004 as seating is limited.
Call x7-5918 or send an e-mail to p-strait@northwestern.edu