As part of the Colloquium Series Political Imaginaries Across Latin America and the Caribbean, CLACS at NYU is hosting a lecture by Joshua Simon, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.

Between 1776 and 1826,​ the​ dissident inhabitants of colonial cities from Boston to Buenos Aires condemned, fought, and finally overthrew the European empires that had ruled the New World for more than three centuries, creating new, sovereign states in their stead. These American independence movements emerged from distinctive settings and produced divergent results, but they were animated by strikingly similar ideas. Patriotic political theorists throughout the Americas offered analogous critiques of imperial rule in the years leading up to their rebellions, designed comparable constitutions immediately after independence had been won, and expressed common ambitions for their new nations’ future relations with one another and the rest of the world. This book adopts a comparative perspective on the revolutions that liberated the United States and Latin America, offering a unified interpretation of their most important political ideas. It argues that the many points of agreement it describes amongst revolutionary political theorists in different parts of the Americas can be attributed to the dilemmas they encountered in common as Creoles, that is, as the descendants of European settlers born in the Americas.

Joshua Simon is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. His research focuses on American and Latin American political thought, especially the ideas underlying the Americas' revolutions, constitutions, and approaches to foreign policy. Professor Simon is currently completing work on a book, Imperialism and Independence in the Americas: The Ideology of Creole Revolution, which demonstrates that the ideas of the British and Spanish American independence movements were much more similar than has usually been acknowledged. He has published articles related to this topic in History of Political Thought and Perspectives on Politics.

This event is free and open to the public. ID required for entry.