This two-day event was organized in Lyon by Agnès Delahaye (Lyon 2) and Steven Sarson (Lyon 3) in collaboration with Patrick Spero then at the American Philosophical Society, with the aim of bringing together European and American scholars who are particularly concerned with the historiographic shifts recently undergone by early American history and the history of the American Revolution. The conference was hosted at Lyon 3 on the first day and by the Academies des Sciences, Belles Lettres et Arts de Lyon on the second day, among the impressive 18th-century collections of this venerable organization. Panels were dedicated to the political traditions that emerged during the American revolution, recent transatlantic perspectives on the event, and the contested memory of revolutionary moment and its leading actors. There were also four plenary sessions: by Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (Paris 8) on the anticolonialism of the late 18th century, by Jack Greene (Johns Hopkins) on the established and emergent elites in the British empire and the United States during the same period, by Serena Zabin (Carleton College) on gender and the Revolution, and by the late and much regretted Trevor Burnard (Hull), who passed away in July 2024, on the recent historiography of the American Revolution, to which he dedicated one of his last publications (T. Burnard, Writing Early America, UVA Press, 2024).
