Research

Richard Bell discusses his book “The American Revolution and the Fate of the World” and how it situates the American Revolution within a broader global context. The conversation explores Bell’s approach to structuring large historical narratives, developing vivid characters from archival sources and shaping complex research into accessible storytelling. He also reflects on the writing and research practices that help transform expansive historical material into compelling books.

Listen to Richard Bell on "Drafting the Past"

Historian and British native Richard Bell, talking about his new book, “The American Revolution and the Fate of the World,” which offers a global perspective on the American independence movement. Bell puts the Revolution at the center of an international web, and his narrative ranges from Canada to the Caribbean, from India to Central America, and from West Florida to Australia. As his lens widens, the War of Independence becomes a sprawling struggle that upended the lives of millions of people on every continent and fundamentally transformed the way the world works, disrupting trade, restructuring penal systems, stirring famine and creating the first global refugee crisis.

Listen to Richard Bell on "Off the Deaton Path"

Piotr Kosicki published an op-ed, "Trump Is Putting Venezuelan Democracy on Hold," in Project Syndicate in January 2026. 

In this episode, Richard Bell talks about the American Revolution on the international stage. He discusses the American Revolution in a global context, Boston Tea Party, East India Tea Company, British citizens' opinions of the American Revolution and the Irish perspective of the American Revolution. He also discusses the Hessians, Native peoples during the American Revolution, French alliance, Spanish involvement, British loyalists and many more topics.

Listen to Richard Bell on "Converging Dialogues"

Richard Bell discusses his new book, “The American Revolution and the Fate of the World,” which reframes the Revolution as a global, transnational conflict with consequences stretching far beyond North America—from Spain and the Caribbean to Indigenous nations and British India. Bell challenges familiar myths about the Revolution, including the simplistic portrayal of King George III as a tyrant, the mythologizing of the Battle of Trenton and the idea that the conflict was merely Patriots vs. Loyalists. He explores how propaganda and a vibrant revolutionary press shaped public opinion, how Indigenous peoples acted as crucial political and military players and why Spain’s role in undermining British power has been largely forgotten. This conversation shows why challenging national myths is essential to understanding what the American Revolution really was—and why it mattered to the wider world.

Listen to Richard Bell on “Civics & Coffee.”

Piotr Kosicki published an op-ed, "María Corina Machado’s Catholic Revolution," in Project Syndicate in December 2025. 

The Celluloid Atlantic changes the way we look at American and Italian cinema in the postwar period. In the thirty years following World War II, American and Italian film industries came to be an integrated, transnational unit rather than two separate, nation-based entities. Written in jargon-free prose and based on previously unexplored archival sources, this book revisits the history of Neorealism, World War II combat cinema, the "Western all'Italiana," and the career of John Kitzmiller, the African American star who made Italy his home and was the first person of color to win the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival.  Giovacchini argues that the waning of the Celluloid Atlantic in the early 1970s was due to the economic policies of the first Nixon administration, specifically its important, but largely neglected, Revenue Act of 1971, as well as to the ideological debates between Europeans and Americans that intensified during the American intervention in Vietnam. 

Richard Bell talks about his book “The American Revolution and the Fate of the World,” in which he argues that the American Revolution was much more than a fight between Great Britain and thirteen of its North American colonies. Instead, Bell asserts, the Revolution was part of a worldwide struggle, influencing the histories of many nations.

Listen to Richard Bell on “Key Battles of American History.”

Join host Robert Allison, professor of history at Suffolk University, for a fascinating conversation with historian Richard Bell, author of “The American Revolution and the Fate of the World.” Together they explore how the struggle for American independence reverberated far beyond the thirteen colonies—reshaping politics, empires, and ideas of liberty around the globe. Bell reveals how revolutionaries from Boston to Bengal, Paris to Port-au-Prince, drew inspiration and warning from the events of 1776, and how the American Revolution’s legacy became a test case for freedom in an age of empire. This episode connects the local to the global, asking what the Revolution truly meant for the fate of the world.

Listen to Richard Bell on “Revolution 250 Podcast”

Richard Bell talks about his fascinating new book, “The American Revolution and the Fate of the World”—a work that completely rethinks the Revolution as a global story, not just an American one. As the 250th anniversary of the Revolution heats up, Bell’s book stands out for how boldly it connects the struggle for independence to events unfolding in places like China, India, Ireland and West Africa. We talk about the Hessian mercenaries who fought for the British and later settled in America, the Catholic monarchs who backed a generally Protestant rebellion, and why understanding the Revolution in this wider context changes how we think about what it really was and who it was for.

Listen to Richard Bell on 'Think Back'