• American Revolution Round Table of Philadelphia

Live Meeting at Stone & Key Cellars 435 Doylestown Rd, Montgomeryville, PA 18936

We recommend that you get here before 6:30pm to order your food and drinks before the lecture.  Program begins at 7:30pm.

Winner of the 2020 American Revolution Round Table of Philadelphia Book of the Year!!
Redcoats. For Americans, the word brings to mind the occupying army that attempted to crush the Revolutionary War. There was more to these soldiers than their red uniforms, but the individuals who formed the ranks are seldom described in any detail in historical literature, leaving unanswered questions. Who were these men? Why did they join the army? Where did they go when the war was over?
In Noble Volunteers: The British Soldiers Who Fought the American Revolution, Don N. Hagist brings life to these soldiers, describing the training, experiences, and outcomes of British soldiers who fought during the Revolution. Drawing on thousands of military records and other primary sources in British, American, and Canadian archives, and the writings of dozens of officers and soldiers, Noble Volunteers shows how a peacetime army responded to the onset of war, how professional soldiers adapted quickly and effectively to become tactically dominant, and what became of the thousands of career soldiers once the war was over.
In this historical tour de force, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson, Hagist dispels long-held myths, revealing how remarkably diverse British soldiers were. They represented a variety of ages, nationalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds, and many had joined the army as a peacetime career, only to find themselves fighting a war on another continent in often brutal conditions. Against the sweeping backdrop of the war, Hagist directs his focus on the small picture, illuminating the moments in an individual soldier’s life—those hours spent nursing a fever while standing sentry in the bitter cold, or writing a letter to a wife back home. What emerges from these vignettes is the understanding that while these were “common” soldiers, each soldier was completely unique, for, as Hagist writes, “There was no ‘typical’ British soldier.”

Book Purchase: To purchase this book please click on this link: https://www.amazon.com//dp/1594163499

About Don Hagist:

Don N. Hagist is an avid historical researcher and has spent much of his life studying and researching the history of the American Revolution, focusing on the British soldiers who served in America during that war. Besides several books, he has published numerous articles on the subject. He gives lectures in America and Great Britain, and is available for speaking engagements.

Don is an engineering consultant, and also writes humor material for cartoonists whose work appears in national magazines and newspapers. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Live Meeting at Stone & Key Cellars 435 Doylestown Rd, Montgomeryville, PA 18936

We recommend that you get here before 6:30pm to order your food and drinks before the lecture.  Program begins at 7:30pm.

Between 1776 and 1783, Britain hired an estimated 30,000 German soldiers to fight in its war against the Americans. Collectively known as Hessians, they actually came from six German territories within the Holy Roman Empire. Over the course of the war, members of the German corps, including women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada in the North to West Florida and Cuba in the South. They shared in every significant British military triumph and defeat. Thousands died of disease, were killed in battle, were captured by the enemy, or deserted.

Collectively, they recorded their experiences and observations of the war they fought in, the land they traversed, and the people they encountered in a large body of letters, diaries, and similar private and official records. Friederike Baer presents a study of Britain’s war against the American rebels from the perspective of the German soldiers, a people uniquely positioned both in the midst of the war and at its margins. The book offers a ground-breaking reimagining of this watershed event in world history.

Book Purchase: To purchase this book please click on this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0190249633

About Friederike Baer: Friederike Baer is Associate Professor of History and Division Head for Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, Abington College. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Brown University. Her research focuses on the experiences of German-speaking people in North America from the Revolutionary period to the late nineteenth century. Her publications include the books “Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War” (New York, 2022), and “The Trial of Frederick Eberle: Language, Patriotism and Citizenship in Philadelphia’s German Community, 1790-1830,” (New York, 2008). Please visit https://friederikebaer.com/ for additional information.

Online Meeting  (7:00pm Zoom opens) (7:30pm Lecture begins)

America’s War for Independence dramatically affected the speed and nature of broader social, cultural, and political changes including those shaping the place and roles of women in society. Women fought the American Revolution in many ways, in a literal no less than a figurative sense. Whether Loyalist or Patriot, Indigenous or immigrant enslaved or slave-owning, going willingly into battle or responding when war came to their doorsteps, women participated in the conflict in complex and varied ways that reveal the critical distinctions and intersections of race, class, and allegiance that defined the era.

This collection examines the impact of Revolutionary-era women on the outcomes of the war and its subsequent narrative tradition, from popular perception to academic treatment. The contributors show how women navigated a country at war, directly affected the war’s result, and influenced the foundational historical record left in its wake. Engaging directly with that record, this volume’s authors demonstrate the ways that the Revolution transformed women’s place in America as it offered new opportunities but also imposed new limitations in the brave new world they helped create.

Contributors: Jacqueline Beatty, York College * Carin Bloom, Historic Charleston Foundation * Todd W. Braisted, independent scholar * Benjamin L. Carp, Brooklyn College * Lauren Duval, University of Oklahoma * Steven Elliott, U.S. Army Center of Military History * Lorri Glover, Saint Louis University * Don N. Hagist, Journal of the American Revolution * Sean M. Heuvel, Christopher Newport University * Martha J. King, Papers of Thomas Jefferson * Barbara Alice Mann, University of Toledo * J. Patrick Mullins, Marquette University * Alisa Wade, California State University at Chico

Book Purchase: To purchase this book please click on this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0813948274

About Dr. Holly A. Mayer:

Holly A. Mayer is Professor Emerita of History at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and the author of Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community during the American Revolution. Holly A. Mayer is an historian of early America. She taught at Duquesne for decades enlightened by many super students and colleagues. Her positions included History Department chair between 2007 and 2013 and Interim Associate Provost for Academic Affairs from 2017 to 2019. Dr. Mayer was also the visiting Harold K. Johnson Chair of Military History at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, in 2016-2017.  She continues to be actively engaged with history as a researcher, editor, and author. Her primary interests include the social, cultural, and military histories of late eighteenth-century North America.

Online Meeting  (7:00pm Zoom opens) (7:30pm Lecture begins)

In Past and Prologue, Michael Hattem shows how colonists’ changing understandings of their British and colonial histories shaped the politics of the American Revolution and the origins of American national identity. Between the 1760s and 1800s, Americans stopped thinking of the British past as their own history and created a new historical tradition that would form the foundation for what subsequent generations would think of as “American history.” This change was a crucial part of the cultural transformation at the heart of the Revolution by which colonists went from thinking of themselves as British subjects to thinking of themselves as American citizens. Rather than liberating Americans from the past—as many historians have argued—the Revolution actually made the past matter more than ever. Past and Prologue shows how the process of reinterpreting the past played a critical role in the founding of the nation.

Book Purchase: To purchase this book please click on this link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300234961

About Michael D. Hattem

Michael D. Hattem earned his PhD in History from Yale University and BA in History from the City College of New York. He is Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute and has taught a wide variety of early American history and American Studies courses at Knox College and Lang College at The New School. His research interests include the American Revolution, historical memory, colonial New York City, and eighteenth-century political culture and intellectual history. He is the producer of “The JuntoCast,” the first podcast devoted to early American history and was a founding member and contributing editor of “The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History.”