| Descript |
xi, 407 pages ; 25 cm |
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text txt rdacontent |
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unmediated n rdamedia |
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volume nc rdacarrier |
| Note |
Includes bibliographical references |
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"This volume brings together Murrin's seminal essays on the American Revolution, the United States Constitution, and the early American Republic. Collectively, these essays rethink fundamental questions regarding American identity, and the myriad ways that the American Revolution produced a profoundly transformative change in those who lived through it. They reconsider questions that have shaped the field for several generations and connect those questions to issues of central interest to historians working today. The essays gathered here argue that the great historiographical schools that have long competed to explain the American Revolution must move towards a synthesis. The essays show how high politics and the study of constitutional and ideological questions--broadly the history of elites--must be considered in close conjunction with issues of economic inequality, class conflict, and racial division. By bringing together a variety of perspectives in both Britain and the North American colonies, Rethinking America explains why what began as constitutional argument that virtually all expected would remain contained within the British Empire exploded into a truly subversive and radical revolution that destroyed monarchy and aristocracy and replaced it with a rapidly transforming and wildly pulsing republic. The essays examining the period of the early American Republic discuss why the Founders' assumptions about what their Revolution would produce were profoundly different than the society that emerged. In many ways, the American Revolution put the new United States on a path to a violent and bloody civil war. A much anticipated work, this volume offers groundbreaking and timeless analysis of the nation's critical first decades as it moved from empire to republic"-- Provided by publisher |
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Introduction: The revolutionary republic of a radical, imperial, whig: the historical and historiographical imagination of John M. Murrin / Andrew Shankman -- The great inversion, or, court versus country: a comparison of the revolution settlements in England (1688-1721) and America (1776-1816) -- No awakening, no revolution: more counterfactual speculations -- The French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the counterfactual hypothesis: reflections on Lawrence Henry Gipson and John Shy -- Feudalism, communalism, and the Yeoman freeholder: the American Revolution considered as a social accident / with Rowland Berthoff -- 1776: The countercyclical revolution -- A roof without walls: the dilemma of American national identity -- Fundamental values, the founding fathers, and the Constitution -- The making and unmaking of an American ruling class / with Gary J. Kornblith -- Escaping perfidious albion: federalism, fear of aristocracy, and the democratization of corruption in postrevolutionary America -- War, revolution, and nation-making: the American Revolution versus the Civil War -- Conclusion: Self-immolation: schools of historiography and the coming of the American Revolution |
| Subject |
United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783
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| Alt Author |
Shankman, Andrew, 1970- writer of introduction
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