This 30-credit module explores the political, imperial and cultural contexts of the American Revolution. It surveys the causes, consequences and meanings of the struggle for American independence. It offers an overview of the myriad growing tensions within the British Empire, especially after 1763; it considers the consequences of independence for slaves, women, Native Americans, Loyalists and other Americans; and it examines the political and ideological clashes over the form that republican institutions of self-government would take. It examines the Enlightenment ideas that animated the revolutionary generation and the political institutions they built, as well as what these meant for the lives of ordinary Americans. Examining the rise of both Jeffersonian democracy and Hamiltonian federalism in the new Republic, followed by the spread of liberalism leading to the War of 1812, the module ends by reflecting on cultural representations of the nation’s founding since 1776.