78 JULY-AUGUST 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL themselves and all men to be born equal, with rights no one could take away. Government, they said, exists to secure those rights, and exists with the consent of the governed. These truths needed no proof: They were—they are— self-evident. As Secretary Rubio notes, this strain of political thought has ancient roots, but as proclaimed by the American revolutionaries, and by America’s early diplomats, it came as a thunderclap. A Europe still governed by monarchs and divine right was transformed by America, not the other way around. Views of America, like America’s Collection, invites the reader to spend time in pleasant contemplation of the elegance, beauty, and craftsmanship of the founding era, the very best work of a turbulent time. Like the Declaration of Independence—a rare copy of which entered the collection in 2025—the Diplomatic Reception Rooms reflect American aspirations and nobility of spirit. If only our diplomacy would do the same. Harry W. Kopp, a Foreign Service officer from 1967 to 1985, was deputy assistant secretary of State for international trade policy in the Carter and Reagan administrations. He is the author of The Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of the American Foreign Service Association at 100 (2nd edition, 2024) and co-author with John K. Naland of Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the U.S. Foreign Service (4th edition, 2021). One Revolution’s Global Impact The American Revolution and the Fate of the World Richard Bell, Riverhead Books, 2025, $35.00/hardcover, e-book and audio book available, 406 pages. Reviewed by Ásgeir Sigfússon Was the American Revolution an event that sparked momentous geopolitical and societal changes far from our shores, as distant as India and Africa? That is the thought-provoking thesis of Richard Bell’s new book, The American Revolution and the Fate of the World. A professor of early American history at the University of Maryland, Bell addresses this book to a general audience. No stodgy scholarly work that some might find too dense to wade through, it is highly readable, despite the fact that Bell seems to have been the victim of an unfortunate trend in book publishing called “title bloat,” where the corporate requirement for catchy and unnecessarily dramatic book titles sometimes overpromises on the cover but underdelivers in actual content. This is not to say that this new work isn’t worth reading—on the contrary, particularly for those with an interest in U.S. history. The problem is that Bell’s overarching thesis struggles to come together into a coherent whole. For me, the structure of the book added to this difficulty. Rather than writing one narrative that flows through the work, Bell has written 14 distinctive, separate chapters that focus on one country or area at a time, explaining how the revolution reverberated there, and positing that momentous events in each place might not have occurred without the contemporaneous conflict in the western hemisphere. Although the material is well written, not much will surprise anyone who regularly reads the history of this period. Most would agree that the revolution did have effects in England, France, Spain, and the Caribbean, most obviously. Bell opens the book with what I find to be its weakest chapter, an attempt to connect the revolution to China, because the tea that ended up in Boston Harbor originated there. This was a confounding beginning, but Bell follows up with several stronger chapters that shed light on lesser-known parts of this period. The most compelling geographic chapters focus on Sierra Leone and India. The British colonies in Africa are generally tangential to accounts of the American Revolution, so the focus on Sierra Leone was both illuminating and informative. Pulling in a cast of characters from the deep back benches of history and telling their stories should always be a goal of new historical writing, and Bell succeeds in this chapter. He does the same in the India chapter, which spotlights local rulers and endows them with agency, especially in the case of the former kingdom of Mysore. Bell also does a strong job of connecting the revolution to events in India, Ceylon, and the surrounding waters. The reader can clearly follow the cause-and-effect history, made easier by the fact that some of the players in this particular drama also have significant
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