America’s grand anniversary: the rise of the Indispensable Nation - A midweek symposium

A mere 250 years ago in the summer of 1776, after a series of colonial conflicts and the Revolutionary War between the American colonies and the British government, the Declaration of Independence was signed by the Thirteen Colonies. The United States of America as an entity was born.

The ideals enshrined in the Declaration: equality, rights, liberty, opportunity and democracy, became the watchwords that underpinned American governance and Western ideology – at least in theory – as the United States reached the apex of world power over the next two centuries. More recently, the economic and political tectonics have shifted. The 10 talks we present here offer history, insight and analysis, as we consider America and what it signifies for the rest of us – past, present and future.

We venture to the leafy fringes of Bath for this symposium. Our venue is the MacDonald Bath Spa, a comfortable, traditional hotel set in beautiful grounds a mile outside the town centre, with free parking, a pool and spa facilities.

Speakers include David Armitage*, Kathleen Burk, Nigel Bowles, Mario Del Pero, David Ellwood, Susan-Mary Grant, Jacqueline Fear Segal and a curator-led talk at the American Museum in Bath. Final programme to be confirmed.

*(based at Harvard, his talk will be given over Zoom)

The Speakers

David Armitage

Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History and former Chair of the Department of History at Harvard University, where he teaches intellectual history and international history. He is also an Affiliated Professor in the Harvard Department of Government and an Affiliated Faculty Member at Harvard Law School. Before joining Harvard in 2004, he taught for eleven years at Columbia University. His books include The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007), which was chosen as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year. In 2015, he received Cambridge University’s highest degree, the LittD, for “distinction by some original contribution to the advancement of science or of learning”.

Nigel Bowles

Former Director of the Rothermere American Institute; Senior Research Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was Tutorial Fellow in Politics at St Anne’s College, Oxford for over 20 years. He was previously a staff member in the House of Commons before being appointed a Lecturer in Politics at the University of Edinburgh. His intellectual interests lie in American political history and, in particular, in the history of the US Presidency. Among his publications are The White House and Capitol Hill, an exploration of the politics of presidential lobbying; and Nixon’s Business: Authority and Power in Presidential Politics.

Kathleen Burk

Professor Emerita of Modern and Contemporary History at UCL. Her general field is international history, concentrating especially on politics, diplomacy and finance. Kathleen specialises in the 20th century, although also publishes on earlier periods. Her primary area of research is Anglo-American relations, on which she has published three books and a number of articles. Her most recent history book is The Lion & The Eagle: The Interaction of the British and American Empires 1783-1972, (2018). Kathleen also writes and lectures on wine and its history.

Gareth Davies

Professor of American History, University College London, Institute of the Americas. An environmental and political historian, Gareth Davies first two books explored the political legacy of the 1960s, the first in relation to Lyndon Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty’, the second with respect to the federal role in education. As with much of his research, each book sought to understand the circumstances under which governmental power increases in American political culture, despite the persistence of a strong tradition of anti-statism. Professor Davies forthcoming publication is entitled A Nation at Risk: America’s Three Disaster Regimes and the Roots of Environmental Crisis.

Mario Del Pero

Professor of International History at the Center for History at Sciences Po–Paris (CHSP), where he teaches courses on global history, transatlantic relations, and the United States in the world. A historian of the Cold War and US foreign relations, he is the author of numerous articles and books. His most recent works are Buio Americano. Gli Stati Uniti e il Mondo nell’era Trump (Il Mulino) and In the Shadow of the Vatican: Texan Evangelical Missionaries in Cold War Italy (Cambridge University Press).

David W. Ellwood

Senior Associate Fellow at the Bologna campus of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced international Studies. He was Associate Professor of International History at the University of Bologna until 2012. His most ambitious book is The Shock of America. Europe and the Challenge of the Century, (Oxford 2012). Today he studies the impact of 'soft' American power, hence his latest article: 'The politics of food in Italy' Modern Italy, (Nov.2025).

Jacqueline Fear-Segal

Emeritus Professor of American and Indigenous Histories at the University of East Anglia. She specialises in the social history of the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, and is the co-founder and co-director of the Native Studies Research Network UK. With postgraduate degrees from University College London and Harvard, she has been a visiting lecturer at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris, and Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Susan-Mary Grant

Professor of American History at Newcastle University. She is the author of several books, including a study of nationalism in pre-civil war America – North over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era – a biography of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and the Cambridge Concise History of the United States of America. She is an expert on the American Civil War and the emotional and medical history of the conflict, and is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Elizabeth Ingleson

Associate Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. She specialises in the histories of US foreign relations, US-China relations, capitalism, and labour. Her first book, Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade, was published in 2024 by Harvard University Press. She is currently writing her next book with Bloomsbury Academic entitled, China and the United States since 1949: From Cold War to Trade War.