Until 1775, no colonial population in the Western Hemisphere had enough guns or ammunition to achieve independence through war. Yet over the next fifty years war material poured across the Atlantic, and Europe lost most of its American possessions to anti-colonial violence.

In this free public lecture, Professor Brian DeLay explains why war material was so scarce in the colonial period, how insurgents in British North America secured access to guns, and how the newly independent United States then became the hemisphere’s arms dealer, outfitting revolution in Saint-Domingue and Spanish America.

Brian DeLay is Preston Hotchkiss Chair in the History of the United States at the University of California at Berkeley and a Faculty of Arts Visiting Scholar. His first book, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (Yale, 2008), won more than half a dozen prizes. Rated a History News Network “Top Young Historian” in the United States, he will in this lecture be talking about his new book project on “Guns, Freedom, and Domination in the Americas, 1774-1934,” under contract with W. W. Norton.

Admission is free, but seating is limited.

Bookings are required, via: http://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/DeLay