Dr. Fred Anderson, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Histories of the American Revolution tend to start in 1763, the end of the Seven Years War, a worldwide struggle for empire that pitted France against England in North America, Europe, and Asia. Among its surprising results was the disruption of the British empire as a political system; indeed, within a dozen years that empire fell into the civil war that produced in the American Revolution. Fred Anderson, Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder, will seek to explain the significance of the American phase of the Seven Years War commonly called the French and Indian War in American history, affirming that the best way to understand the Revolution is as part of a 40yearlong attempt to assert imperial control over the Forks of the Ohio, where Pittsburgh now stands. He will argue in favor of the perhaps surprising proposition that winning an imperial war in a decisive way may ultimately carry consequences more harmful to the victor than the vanquished.