Please join CENFAD for the first lecture of our Fall 2023 Lecture Series!

How do we categorize the peoples and loyalties of the American Revolution? Who supported the move toward independence, who opposed it, and how do we identify a people’s allegiance? Dr. Sullivan encourages us to reconsider these questions and to look more closely at the many Americans who strove to disengage from either side in the imperial dispute. Set during the British invasion of Pennsylvania and the ensuing occupation of Philadelphia, Sullivan’s 2019 book, The Disaffected, notes that both the redcoats and the patriots believed the local population was strongly opposed to them. In unraveling this apparent contradiction, he finds a significant but often overlooked population for whom the war for independence was neither a glorious cause nor an unnatural rebellion but a tragic disaster, best avoided. The plight of these people highlights the dangers of neutrality and the ways in which the quest for government by consent can, paradoxically, encourage tyrannical acts of oppression.

Aaron Sullivan is an author and historian living near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his amazing spouse, two inexhaustible children, and very neurotic dog. He serves as a professor of history at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ, and his book The Disaffected (Penn Press, 2019), received the Book of the Year Award from the American Revolutionary Roundtable of Philadelphia. Sullivan received his Doctorate in History from Temple University in Philadelphia in 2014 and his Bachelors in Computer Science from LeTourneau University in 2004.

Also available via Zoom.