Award-winning historian and author Richard Bell will visit Kalamazoo College on Tuesday, October 27, to deliver the 2026 Edward Moritz Lecture, offering a fresh perspective on the American Revolution as a global conflict that reshaped the world.
Hosted by the Department of History and the American Studies program, Bell’s lecture, “The American Revolution and the Fate of the World: An Electrifying Global History of a Not-So Local War,” will be at 5:30 p.m. in Dewing Hall, Room 103. The event is free and open to the public.
Bell, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, challenges traditional narratives that frame the American Revolution primarily as a struggle between the 13 colonies and the British Crown. Instead, he examines the conflict as a world-changing event whose effects reached far beyond North America.
Drawing on stories from six continents, Bell will explore how the war transformed lives across the globe, from the Caribbean and Canada to India, Sierra Leone and Peru. His presentation will highlight the Revolution’s role in reshaping political alliances, fueling migration, inspiring movements for liberty and empire, and creating far-reaching social and economic upheaval.
Through the experiences of individuals caught in the conflict’s wake, Bell will trace the Revolution’s global consequences, including the displacement of populations, the rise of antislavery activism and political uprisings that stretched from Ireland to India. The program offers audiences an opportunity to reconsider the Revolutionary War not simply as the nation’s founding moment, but as a complex international struggle with lasting relevance.
Bell is the author of several books on early American history, including Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home, which was a finalist for the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has received major research fellowships from Yale University, the University of Cambridge, and the Library of Congress, and he has received both a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Award and an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.
His latest book, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World, was published by Penguin and recently received the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award and the 2026 George Washington Prize.
The Edward Moritz Lecture annually brings distinguished scholars to Kalamazoo College to share research and insights that deepen understanding of history and its continuing impact on contemporary life. It was founded in honor of Professor Edward Moritz, who taught at K from 1955–88. For more information about the lecture, contact Larry J. Bell ’80 Distinguished Professor in American History Charlene Boyer Lewis at Charlene.BoyerLewis@kzoo.edu.