“Poland was but a breakfast”: or, why 1772 helps us to understand 1776 – The George Rousseau Lecture 2026 with Professor David Armitage

You are invited to join us on Wednesday 13 May in the Magdalen Auditorium for the George Rousseau Lecture 2026. Professor David Armitage will be discussing how Poland’s partition in 1772 can be used to reframe and reinterpret the American War of Independence.

Admission is free but please book your tickets using the link below. The talk will be followed by a drinks reception.

The American Revolution is now widely accepted to have been the last civil war within the British Empire of the Atlantic world. However, British, imperial, and Atlantic contexts do not exhaust the historical frames essential to understand the Revolution or, more specifically, 1776. For contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic, Europe—particularly the European balance of power—was the most important setting for the fears raised by the American War. The greatest assault on that balance of power had occurred only four years before 1776 in 1772 with the first Partition of Poland by Austria, Prussia and Russia. This lecture shows how fears of partition, “Poland like”, drove the decision for American independence and how the Polish response to partition shaped the British counterblast to the Declaration of Independence.