Former President Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence, hoped that Americans would commemorate the day they broke from British rule. Writing to a friend in the last few weeks of his life, Jefferson observed that the declaration was “ pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world .” That might sound like hubris, something America’s third president was known for. But in its day, America’s revolutionary stance was a global event. Its Declaration of Independence from the British Crown, approved on July 4, 1776, reverberated around the world and gave rise to a global war that redrew boundaries and balances of power.  Richard Bell, a Revolutionary War scholar at the University of Maryland, says that the American revolution became four distinct wars rolled into one. It was a war of independence against Britain. It was a war by France against Britain to upset the balance of power in Europe. It was a war by Spain to recover lost territory from Britain.…