Becoming Maine: A Bicentennial Presentation

Becoming Maine: A Bicentennial Presentation with Liam Riordan, Professor of History, University of Maine.

The Belfast Free Library and the Belfast Historical Society and Museum present a Bicentennial Lecture with Liam Riordan about Monday July 6th at 6:30 pm. The talk will be live-streamed on the Belfast Free Library’s Face Book page from the Abbott Room of the library.

Riordan will give an illustrated presentation exploring the long statehood process in Maine that culminated in 1820 with separation from Massachusetts. That struggle engaged a range of challenging public issues that are still recognizable today. Four broad themes that bridge 200 years in telling ways include:the “two Maines” and sharp partisan conflict, the explosive place of slavery vis-a-vis the Maine-Missouri Crisis, Wabanaki sovereignty, the uncertain location and meaning of the international border.

Liam Riordan received his bachelor’s degree in history at the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a faculty member in the Department of History at the University of Maine since 1997. He is a specialist on the American Revolution — especially the religious, racial and ethnic diversity in the Philadelphia region from 1770 to 1830. He has an ongoing research project about the Loyalists who opposed the American Revolution.

Riordan has done considerable Public History work to commemorate the bicentennial of the state of Maine in 2019-2020 and organized the Maine Bicentennial Conference on the statehood era and its legacy (May 31-June 1, 2019). For more info and related resources, please visit: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/me200/