Local historian Fred Zilian will give a talk on the Rhode Island Campaign and Battle of Rhode Island (1778) at the Tiverton Public Library on Wednesday, Dec. 11, at 6:30 p.m.
The program is free and open to the public. The library is located at 34 Roosevelt Ave. in Tiverton.
During the Revolutionary War, Newport County was a war zone, and in December 1776, British-German forces occupied Aquidneck Island for almost three years. In the summer of 1778, American forces launched a Rhode Island Campaign, culminating in the Battle of Rhode Island on Aug. 29. This was the largest and final battle of the war in New England and the first operation jointly planned with America’s French allies.
Zilian will detail the campaign’s background, execution, and Rhode Island battle’s outcome and significance.
After serving 21 years as an infantry officer in the Army, Zilian taught history, ethics and German at Portsmouth Abbey School and was an adjunct professor of history and politics at Salve Regina University. He currently lectures on various subjects, performs literature and poetry readings, and offers tours of Newport, the Battle of Rhode Island (1778) and Boston.
Zilian has a Ph.D. in international relations/strategic studies from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of numerous articles, essays and book reviews and has published a book, “From Confrontation to Cooperation: The Takeover of the National People’s (East German) Army by the Bundeswehr.”
Zilian performed as Abraham Lincoln in his one-man play, “Honest Abe,” for two decades.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) assisted a What’sUpNewp journalist with the reporting included in this story.
