Historian Abby Chandler, associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, explores, the complex local and transatlantic tensions which infused the early imperial crisis, arguing that colonial responses to the Stamp Act were rooted in local tensions and that the Regulator Rebellion was fueled by trans-Atlantic tensions. These two paradoxes, a local crisis cast as imperial affair and an imperial affair cast as local crisis, tell a very different story than the one to which we are accustomed. Without pre-existing local tensions, the fury of the Stamp Act crisis might not have spilled over during the summer of 1765, and, without the added strains of the imperial crisis, the Regulator Rebellion might not have lasted for five years. The questions about the intersecting roles of local and imperial/federal interests and identities raised during both the Stamp Act crisis and the Regulator Rebellion would also continue to inform political thought in Rhode Island and North Carolina in the coming decade as both colonies had long histories of challenges to their autonomy and their residents embraced the coming revolution before many of their counterparts, but they were also reluctant participants in the rising union envisioned by the framers of the Constitution.

About the Speaker

Abby Chandler is an associate professor of early American history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Having earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maine at Orono in 2008, her research focuses on political movements in eighteenth-century British North America and protest in the long-eighteenth century. She has published several articles for publications such as Maine History, the North Carolina Historical Review, and Early Modern Women, and the North Carolina Historical Review. She also currently serves on the 250th American Revolution Anniversary Commission in Massachusetts.

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