Declarations of independence are the defining legal documents of the Age of Revolutions in the Americas. The very first declaration of independence in world history—the U.S. Declaration of Independence—appeared in British North America in July 1776. The global history of the Declaration of Independence is a story of the spread of sovereignty and the creation of states more than it is a narrative of the diffusion and reception of ideas of individual rights. Armitage examines the Declaration as a political, legal, and intellectual document, and is the first to treat it entirely within a broad international framework. He shows how the Declaration arose within a global moment in the late eighteenth century similar to our own. David Armitage's new book, The Declaration of Independence, sets forth the controversial argument that by far the most important original purpose of the Declaration was to “express the international legal sovereignty of the United States,” not to establish universalistic claims for individual rights, set forth the conditions of legitimate Enhanced Document Preview: 11/9/2017 The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective | The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective Print this Page by David Armitage No American document has had a greater global impact than the Declaration of Independence. It has been fundamental to American history longer than any other text Thomas Paine, no fan of aristocracy, argued in his bestselling pamphlet Common Sense, published in early 1776, not only for the independence of the American colonies, but for a change in the rules between the governed and the government. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, was a son of the Enlightenment. In The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, David Armitage brings original insights and a global perspective to bear on a 1776 Declaration that has become misleadingly familiar. Furthermore, “the great majority of the unilateral declarations of independence issued after 1776 made no direct reference to the American Declaration” (From Armitage's The Declaration of Independence in World Context). Then what is the true global legacy of the United States Declaration of Independence? This history of the Declaration of Independence has traced the international origins and global afterlives of a single pointed and eclectic document. e consent o rst successful declaration of independence in world history, its example helped published in Philadelphia dence, self-determination, and revolution after 1776. One of its most enthusiastic admirers was the nineteenth-century Hungarian nationalist, Lajos Kossuth: for him, the Declaration was nothing less tha Not only did the Declaration announce the entry of the United States onto the world stage, it became the model for other countries to follow. This unique global perspective demonstrates the singular role of the United States document as a founding statement of our modern world. Not only did the Declaration announce the entry of the United States onto the world stage, it became the model for other countries to follow. This unique global perspective demonstrates the The Declaration of Independence was primarily a declaration of interdependence with the other powers of the earth. It marked the entry of one people, constituted into thirteen states, into what we would now call international society. The global history of the Declaration of Independence is a story of the spread of sovereignty and the creation of states more than it is a narrative of the diffusion and reception of ideas of individual rights. Armitage, David. 2008. “The Declaration of Independence in World Context.” In America on the World Stage: A Global Approach to US History, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 17-28. “More than half of the 192 countries now represented at the United Nations have a founding document that can be called a declaration of independence” - David Armitage in his essay The Declaration of Independence in Global Perspective In June 1826, two weeks before his death and in anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of the first July 4 th, Jefferson characterised the Declaration of Independence as an instrument, pregnant with our own fate and that of the world. In his new book David Armitage investigates the inward- and outward-looking sensibilities of Jefferson's claim, and argues for the need to distinguish between An informative set of perspectives on the German reception can be found (in English) online at . A fuller account of the Declaration of Independence in world context will appear in David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (forthcoming, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). An eye-opening list of declarations of independence since 1776 is compiled here for the first time. This unique global perspective demonstrates the singular role of the United States document as a founding statement of our modern world. David Armitage's book is a fascinating account of the international implications and reception of this most American of political documents whose central message, he argues, was “the assertion of sovereignty as independence” (p. 22). He also stresses the fact that sovereignty as independence was declared for an international audience. In 1776, this was certainly an innovative idea and, in
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