This course interprets the American Revolution as a global event, tracing its complex international and imperial origins and analyzing the War of Independence as a world-wide conflict, in which Great Britain, France, the Dutch Republic, and Spain as well as their empires were involved. It also examines the role and fate of Native Americans, African Americans, and Loyalists in the struggle and investigates how influences from abroad shaped the federal constitution and early American political culture. Finally, it scrutinizes how the American Revolution was received outside North America assessing its impact on the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American Revolutions of the early 19th century. The course hence covers not only the years of the actual rebellion in Britain’s North American colonies, but takes a long-range perspective on the global political, social, economic, and cultural preconditions and repercussions of the American declaration of independence.