iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Well, this story took an unexpected turn.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I think I'll just have a scone, thank you very much.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Reading @rparkinson.bsky.social on my (long) journey back from Philadelphia to Lyon after #SHEAR2026. Understanding the Declaration's grievances through those associated with them is a brilliant, innovative, and truly enlightening approach--even if he's wrong about the number of grievances :)

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Another highlight of #SHEAR2026 was seeing and posing for a photo with the amazing Nadine Zimmerli of @uvapress.bsky.social, who did so much to help bring my book (The Course of Human Events: The Declaration of Independence and the Historical Origins of the United States) into being.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I'll just stick with the Butter Pecan, thank you very much.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

These days, if you say you're a Viking, the Police will arrest you and put you in prison.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

On the Road Again. Not quite as happy as Willie Nelson about it, but going to the Science Museum in London to record a video for their forthcoming exhibition on the Declaration of Independence. Which is pretty nice :)

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Visited Independence Hall this morning. The 250th anniversary of the Lee Resolution proposing American independence.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Plenary panel at the American Philosophal Society conference on "America's 1776." Me, Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, and Annette Gordon-Reed being interviewed by APS CEO Patrick Spero. Which is nice.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

When will Sadiq Khan do something!?

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

At first I thought this was just another home-town moment, but as I read through I realised that it's actually a rather brilliant piece of avant garde poetry.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Happy Birthday to the great James Garner. Would have been 98 today.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

I used to think Dubya was an insult to the office of President. Turns out I had noooooo idea.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

Thank you to Lige Gould, Hannah Grieving, Patrick Griffin, and Adam Smith for organizing a wonderful conference on “The American Revolution in a Global Context, 1776-1826" at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. And the dinner at Queen's College certainly added to the experience 😋

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Banjo vs Billy in shelf-space face-off.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Very happy to be heading to Ireland today for a talk tomorrow on "The Original Declaration of Independence" at University College Cork 😀

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

Good morning from St Cyr au Mont d'Or.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Lovely sky in St Cyr tonight :)

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Extremely looking forward to going to University College Cork for a book talk--the Irish launch of The Course of Human Events :)

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Beautiful weird sky over Lyon tonight.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

Well, that's toold me. I am noow convoonced that I was wroong.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

I am being admonished by Billy for having a bath on #Caturday

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

I'm doing a course this semester about Thomas Paine and tomorrow I'll be talking about his statue in his birthplace of Thetford. So, obviously, I have meticulously prepared an improvisation about the same town's Captain Mainwaring statue and Dad's Army Museum.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

I am declaring that the war on sandwiches is over.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

One of the great things about living in France is the New Year tradition and month-long ubiquity of the galette des rois #PieJanuary

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

How the original DoI envisioned an exclusivist “natural law republic” in which certain people could be treated unequally & even deprived entirely of their rights, but how reformers, esp black abolitionists, revised & created the universalist, creedal Declaration we celebrate today.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

How those outside the DoI’s “one people” could be deprived of their rights—how the DoI’s “Course of human events” & “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” esp the historic “circumstances of emigration and settlement” and natural right of self-preservation, rationalized slavery & westward expansion.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

How the DoI’s principles required a republic—govt of laws and representation of “the people”—but not a Republic (without monarchy) or a Democracy (universal suffrage). How “created equal” did not mean *are equal* but instead allowed for unequal treatment of women, poor men, free black people.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

How the grievances related to colonists’ inherent rights as “men,” inherited rights as Englishmen, & acquired rights as Americans, how they mapped onto the preamble’s justification of historical revolutions, & how petitions proved a “design” to impose tyranny--essential to justifying independence.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Explores how rights established by DoI’s emigration/settlement continued to apply, despite certain disruptions, how the Glorious Revolution differed in England from the colonies & set the scene for American Revolution, & why colonists appealed to but then blamed the king in the grievances.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

How colonists argued from 1660s on that emigration/settlement (“the pursuit of Happiness”) established rights to property and self-govt by colonial assemblies under the crown, not parliament, & how emigration/settlement helped create the DoI’s “one people”—excluding Indigenous & enslaved people.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

The natural law basis of political/historical thought from Cicero to Locke, the DoI’s preamble as a general history of humankind from Creation & state of nature to origins of govt & occasional revolutions, & not abstract theory. Explores meanings of “equality” in state of nature & civil society.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Argues that the DoI is defined by its 1st paragraph more than by its 2nd one—by “the Course of human events” & “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” more than by its self-evident truths. And looking at history and natural as its framing concepts changes our interpretation of the rest of the DoI.

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Steve Sarson @stevesarson.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

If you’re teaching university-level US history next semester or any after in courses that include the Declaration of Independence, American Revolution, and early republic, this thread is so you can see if my new book is, or if certain chapters in it are, useful to you and your students.