‘How We Lost America’, an exhibition commemorating the 250th anniversary of American Independence through a British lens, is being held at a book shop in Richmond.
The exhibition is open until 21 September at Books on the Rise, hosted by Benjamin Franklin House.
On 17 September, historian Dr Tom Cutterham will talk with visitors to the exhibition about his new book, Empire Ablaze: The American Revolution and the Atlantic Working Class.
Reframing the American Revolution as a British civil war, Empire Ablaze offers a fresh account of the United States’ birth and the origins of radical politics in Britain, finding insights for the revolutionary struggles of our own crisis-ridden times.
Fifty days of American history on Richmond’s riverbanks
Visitors should be prepared to discover surprising information about Surrey’s influence on the events of 1776.
Organisers promise that visitors “will discover how Surrey’s influence on the American Declaration of Independence runs through military service, legal tradition, and the personal experiences of the Founding Fathers”.
Centuries before Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, a group of fed-up barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta in a muddy meadow at Runnymede, Surrey.
This local act of defiance didn’t just reshape English history — it laid the ideological basis for the American Revolution, through the principle that the monarch was bound by law.
“Sir Edward Coke’s reinterpretation of this tradition shaped the legal education of Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, and fuelled colonial claims to ‘English liberties’, invoked repeatedly during the revolutionary crisis,” the organisers explain.
The exhibition also highlights the role troops of the 1st and 2nd Royal Surrey Militia played in the American War of Independence, and shows the personal ties founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had to Surrey lands.
The story is told through banners, newspapers, and little-known letters of the time.
Future talks by historians and a play reading, running alongside the exhibition, are soon to be announced – all made possible through The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Check aurorametro.org.uk/how-we-lost-america-events for details.
‘How We Lost America’ then tours to:
- Hogarth’s House, Chiswick, London — 22nd September to 1st November
- Boston Manor House, Brentford — November & December
- Surrey History Centre, Woking — January 2027
Featured image credit: Lucinda MacPherson
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