Revolutionary Currents: Ireland, Ulster, and the American Revolution

Join us at PRONI to hear Joel Herman explore the points of connection between Ireland and the American War of Independence. In the late summer of 1776, anyone picking up a newspaper in Ireland would have read about the intensifying American conflict on the other side of the Atlantic, especially as news of the ratification of the US Declaration of Independence on the 4 July spread across the British Empire. Some in Ireland, were sympathetic, viewing the American Revolution as parallel to their own struggle against a wave of new British imperial policy. Others were skeptical; one writer in Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal commented on the recent Declaration: ‘Once united to us as dear brethren … They now declare themselves to be Free Independent States’. Join historian Joel Herman, Trinity College Dublin who will use records from the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland to show how diverse communities in cities like Dublin and Belfast responded to revolutionary events, and ideas flowing from across the Atlantic, during the American War of Independence.