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
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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, 17481765 (15 vols.)
Progressive School
• Self-interests compelled Revolution: “Conflicts between
merchants and farmers, easterners and westerners, citydwellers 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-