HISTORIOGRAPHY of the American Revolution

Debates, Ideas, and the Quest for Understanding, 1793-2012

So what the !@#$ is Historiography

• The study of the historical writing on a particular subject.

• A cure for insomnia

So what?

• History is “a set of lies agreed upon by historians.” -Bonaparte

• We’re all historiographers—struggle for control of official memory.

• Are the colonists “rebels”, “patriots”, “freedom fighters,” or “self-interested elites?”

• “Just the facts, mam.”—even straight narrative is an interpretation. Focusing on the origins of the American Revolution exclude much important stuff from consideration

Basic Interpretations of the American Revolution

• Comparative School• Whig School• Imperial School• Progressive School• Consensus School• Neo-Whig School• Neo-Progressive

School

• Recent Trends and Notable Books

Comparative School• R. R. Palmer, The Age of

the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 (1959 and 1964)

• Mlada Bukovansky, Legitimacy and Power Politics: the American and French Revolutions in International Political Culture (2009)

• Willem Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History (2009)

Whig School

• American Revolution was “a movement for liberty in opposition to British tyranny.”

• David Ramsay—History of the American Revolution (1793—2 vols.)

• Mercy Otis Warren—History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the Revolution (1805—3 vols.)

• George Bancroft—History of the United States (1834-1874—10 vols.)

Mercy Warren and Geo. Bancroft

Imperial School• Britain never intended to impose tyranny—

Revolution was a function of trans-Atlantic misunderstandings, bureaucratic bungling, and Parliamentary mismanagement.

• Herbert Levi Osgood—American Colonies in the 17th Century (1904-1907—4 vols.); American Colonies in the 18th Century (1924—4 vols.)

• George Louis Beer—Colonial Policies (1907)• Charles McLean Andrews—The Colonial

Background of the American Revolution (1924)• Lawrence Henry Gibson—British Empire, 1748-

1765 (15 vols.)

Progressive School• Self-interests compelled Revolution: “Conflicts between

merchants and farmers, easterners and westerners, city-dwellers and country folk, aristocrats and democrats, creditors and debtors” . . . “not so much home rule as who should rule at home.”

• Charles A. Beard—An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913)

• Carl Lotus Becker—The Declaration of Independence (1922)

• Arthur Meier Schlesinger—The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 1763-1776 (1918)

• Merrill M. Jensen-- The Articles of Confederation : An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774-1781 (1959)

Consensus School

• Differences among white male colonists were minor—founders all supported a “liberal, Lockean ideal of a republic grounded on widespread property ownership and a state committed to fosterin individual rights and opportunities.”

• Louis M. Hartz• Richard Hofstadter

Neo-Whig School

• Ideology was not pretextual; it was the real prism through which colonists interpreted the New Imperial Policy.

• Bernard Bailyn—The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967)

• Gordon S. Wood—The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (1969)

Neo-Progressive School

• Despite a republican consensus, struggles between popular and elite forces drove the events of the era.

• Gary Nash—Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America (1974)

Some among Many Notable Newer Books

• Joyce Appleby, Capitalism and a New Social Order (Anson G. Phelps Lectureship on Early American History) (1984)

• Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992)

• Marjoleine Kars, Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina (2001)

• T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution : How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (2004)

• Alfred & Ruth Blumrosen, Slave Nation: How Slavery United the Colonies and Sparked the Revolution. (2005)

• Colin Calloway, A Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (2007)

• Joseph J. Ellis, First Family: Abigail and John Adams (2010)• Michal Jan Rozbicki, Culture and Liberty in the Age of the

American Revolution (2011)• Patrick Griffin, America's Revolution (2012)

“Gotta say something about Gordon”

1933-