Eliga H. Gould is a professor and chair of the history department at the University of New Hampshire. His most recent book is Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (2012). Named a Library Journal best book of the year, it received the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Best Book Prize and was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. A Japanese-language edition was published in 2016. His current book project, "Crucible of Peace: The Treaty of Paris and the Founding of the American Republic," considers the least examined of the nation's founding documents.
What does it mean to be a treaty-worthy nation? No question mattered more to Americans in 1776. This lecture will discuss the manifold ways in which quest for international recognition shaped the United States' early history -- from the drafting of the Constitution, to relations between settlers and Indians, to the looming debate over slavery.