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    The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
    The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
    The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

    Written by Bernard Bailyn

    Narrated by Tom Perkins

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    To the original text of what has become a classic of American historical literature, Bernard Bailyn adds a substantial essay, "Fulfillment," as a Postscript. Here he discusses the intense, nation-wide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution. This detailed study of the persistence of the nation's ideological origins adds a new dimension to the book and projects its meaning forward into vital current concerns.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 16, 2017
    ISBN9781541471344
    The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
    Author

    Bernard Bailyn

    Bernard Bailyn, Adams University Professor at Harvard University, is author of numerous books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Voyagers to the West: A Passage in the Peopling of America on the Eve of the Revolution.

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    Reviews for The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      In The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn argues, “The American Revolution was above all else an ideological, constitutional, political struggle and not primarily a controversy between social groups undertaken to force changes in the organization of the society or the economy” (pg. x). Further, “Intellectual developments in the decade before Independence led to a radical idealization and conceptualization of the previous century and a half of American experience, and that it was this intimate relationship between Revolutionary thought and the circumstances of life in eighteenth-century America that endowed the Revolution with its peculiar force and made it so profoundly a transforming event” (pg. xi). Bailyn links the Revolution to earlier ideas circulating in the English world. He writes, “The fear of a comprehensive conspiracy against liberty throughout the English-speaking world – a conspiracy believed to have been nourished in corruption, and of which, it was felt, oppression in America was only the most immediately visible part – lay at the heart of the Revolutionary movement” (pg. xii). Bailyn draws upon pamphlets and other popular print sources to make his argument.Bailyn writes, “Political writing was an uncommon diversion, peripheral to their main concerns. They wrote easily and readily, but until the crisis of Anglo-American affairs was reached, they had had no occasion to turn out public letters, tracts, and pamphlets in numbers at all comparable to those of the English pamphleteers” (pg. 14). He reiterates, “The primary goal of the American Revolution, which transformed American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty threatened by the apparent corruption of the constitution, and the establishment in principle of the existing conditions of liberty” (pg. 19). In the larger English tradition following the English Civil War and restoration, “the writings of the English radical and opposition leaders seemed particularly reasonable, particularly relevant, and they quickly became influential. Everywhere groups seeking justification for concerted opposition to constituted governments turned to these writers” (pg. 52). In this way, “everywhere in America the tradition that had originated in seventeenth-century radicalism and that had been passed on, with elaborations and applications, by early eighteenth-century English opposition publicists and politicians brought forth congenial responses and provided grounds for opposition politics” (pg. 53).According the Bailyn, “what gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or right” (pg. 57). In this way, “the colonists’ attitude to the whole world of politics and government was fundamentally shaped by the root assumption that they, as Britishers, shared in a unique inheritance of liberty” (pg. 66). He continues, “A wide range of public figures and pamphleteers, known and read in America, carried forward the cries of corruption that had been heard in earlier years and directed them to the specific political issues of the day” (pg. 133). Furthermore, “the conviction on the part of the Revolutionary leaders that they were faced with a deliberate conspiracy to destroy the balance of the constitution and eliminate their freedom had deep and widespread roots – roots elaborately embedded in Anglo-American political culture” (pg. 144). In this way, “this critical probing of traditional concepts – part of the colonists’ effort to express reality as they knew it and to shape it to ideal ends – became the basis for all further discussions of enlightened reform, in Europe as well as in America. The radicalism the Americans conveyed to the world in 1776 was a transformed as well as a transforming force” (pg. 161).Of the pamphlets, Bailyn writes, “All of these codes and declarations – whatever the deliberate assumptions of their authors, and however archaic or modern-sounding their provisions – were, at the very least, efforts to abstract from the deep entanglements of English law and custom certain essentials – obligations, rights, and prohibitions – by which liberty, as it was understood, might be preserved” (pg. 197). Bailyn argues that the Revolution was not intended as a social revolution. Despite this, “the views men held toward the relationships that bound them to each other – the discipline and pattern of society – moved in a new direction in the decade before Independence” (pg. 302). He concludes, “some, caught up in a vision of the future in which the peculiarities of American life became the marks of a chosen people, found in the defiance of traditional order the firmest of all grounds for their hope for a freer life. The details of this new world were not as yet clearly depicted; but faith ran high that a better world than any that had ever been known could be built where authority was distrusted and held in constant scrutiny; where the status of men flowed from their achievements and from their personal qualities, not from distinctions ascribed to them at birth; and where the use of power over the lives of men was jealously guarded and severely restricted” (pg. 319).
    • 4/5
      Through pamphlets and other written documents, Bailyn explores the ideas percolating in the American colonies—about the legitimate basis of authority, the nature of representation (whether it was local or general in nature, and thus whether an elected representative was supposed to work for the general good), and the appropriate division between king and legislature. Bailyn emphasizes that a lot of the men who ultimately became revolutionaries didn’t have a particularly well-worked out theory, but that they pushed theory in the direction of their concrete thinking about disobedience.
    • 4/5
      Contrasts other histories of the American Revolution (from Charles Beard onwards) which posit that the AR was solely an economic struggle of the landed gentry against taxes.

      Textual analysis of pamphlets, which were popular during the pre-revolutionary era. These were not as well-written as their English contemporaries Swift or Addison or Defoe, but they were popular and influential among colonial citizens, and that's what counted.

      First, Bailyn begins with ideological and historical analysis. These pamphlets have a large number of references to classical authors (Livy, Polybius, Plutarch, Cicero) on an ideal Republic, but also to the thought of the Enlightenment (Locke, Rousseau).

      The main body of the argument is the struggle of Power vs. Liberty in early thought, and external vs. internal rule, more clearly defined powers and roles of government, and later the idea of popular sovereignty. Too much power lead to a tyrannical system, and too much liberty leads to anarchy, so the proper balance is between them both.

      He also expands upon the early colonial belief in 'conspiracies' of corrupt ministers and the extractive colonial bureaucracy as a pretext for freedom. Once the revolution was accomplished, however, the catchy phrases of 'liberty' and 'personal freedom' expanded into new spheres, and shortly after, there were already heated discussions on abolition.

      A contrarian view, but an interesting and well thought-out one.
    • 5/5
      The road to the writing of this Pulitzer Prize winning book began when Bailyn was asked to prepare a collection of pamphlets of the American Revolutionary War era. In doing so he began to see connections, common sources, and particularly how the American colonial experience transformed a strand of British libertarian opposition thought into a uniquely American ideology that caused an intellectual revolution as to the basis for sovereignty, rights and representation and consent that led not only to the colonies declaring independence but shaped our constitution and led to the undermining of slavery, the disestablishment of religion and an entirely new and radical social relationship. I have my doubts that a general readership would find this book interesting: although I sure did. An ordinary reader not grounded in this period might find this rather dry reading. But for someone who has enough interest in American political thought this is illuminating. I have to concur with the New York Times reviewer who that one "cannot claim to understand the American Revolution without reading this book." Or at least, it would be much harder: you'd have to undertake the same study Bailyn did and read thousands of 18th century pamphlets--which would be formidable enough. The book is logically organized and lucidly written and I found that even for someone like myself who thought I knew a lot about the founding, who has read Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence and Hamilton, Madison and Jay's Federalist Papers there are some surprises. I took for granted the influence of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, it's not really surprising to learn that a tradition of covenant theology was one strand of thinking nor classical Latin works of or about the Roman republic such as by Cicero, Livy and Tacitus. It was a bit surprising to learn the British common law tradition had a large part in this political thinking--but particularly surprising was learning the role of relatively obscure opposition Whig writers. And Bailyn also examines how the practical experience of colonial government, from charters to town halls to provincial legislatures shaped the way the founders saw and used this legacy to create a new kind of government. If you want to go deeper into the foundation of American political thought, I'd say this book is invaluable.
    • 5/5
      The book is well written, original, and a classic. It could only be 5 stars. Prior to Bailyn's groundbreaking work, Charles Beard's economic theory of the American Revolution was the standard. With Bailyn, the emphasis became the ideology behind the revolution. This book, then, explores the literature, the sources of the ideas, and the transformations that the fundamental ideas of government were undergoing at the time of the revolution.Generallly, I hate highlighting or making notes in books. In the case of this book, I bought a second copy so I could highlight and still read the clean copy. I still have both, one upstairs and one downstairs that I use for references when I'm reading about the ideology of the American Revolution.This book won a Pullitzer Prize and the Bankroft award.
    • 5/5
      Professor Bailyn's work had a tremendous impact on me. I read him for the first time as I began my work for a Master's in History. His work established the benchmark.
    • 5/5
      A classic examination of the Revolution and its causes, drawing largely on the pamphlet literature from the pre-Revolutionary period and recognizing the key influences of English Whig rhetoric.
    • 4/5
      This is a great exploration into how the thinking of the founding fathers and those around them influenced and shaped the revolution.