Conceived in Crisis

Conceived in Crisis PDF Author: Christopher R. Pearl
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813944554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Conceived in Crisis argues that the American Revolution was not just the product of the Imperial Crisis, brought on by Parliament’s attempt to impose a new idea of empire on the American colonies. To an equal or greater degree, it was a response to the inability of individual colonial governments to deliver basic services, which undermined their legitimacy. Factional bickering over policy, violent extralegal regulations, and the dreadful experiences of conducting an imperial war while governing a demographically growing and geographically expanding population all led colonists and imperial officials to consider reforming the colonial governments into more powerful and coercive entities. Using Pennsylvania as a case study, Christopher Pearl demonstrates how this history of ineffective colonial governance precipitated a process of state formation that was accelerated by the demands of the Revolutionary War. The powerful state governments that resulted dominated the lives of ordinary people well into the nineteenth century. Conceived in Crisis makes sense of the trajectory from weak colonial to strong revolutionary states, and in so doing explains the limited success of efforts to consolidate state power at the national level during the early Republican period.

Conceived in Crisis

Conceived in Crisis PDF Author: Christopher R. Pearl
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813944554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Conceived in Crisis argues that the American Revolution was not just the product of the Imperial Crisis, brought on by Parliament’s attempt to impose a new idea of empire on the American colonies. To an equal or greater degree, it was a response to the inability of individual colonial governments to deliver basic services, which undermined their legitimacy. Factional bickering over policy, violent extralegal regulations, and the dreadful experiences of conducting an imperial war while governing a demographically growing and geographically expanding population all led colonists and imperial officials to consider reforming the colonial governments into more powerful and coercive entities. Using Pennsylvania as a case study, Christopher Pearl demonstrates how this history of ineffective colonial governance precipitated a process of state formation that was accelerated by the demands of the Revolutionary War. The powerful state governments that resulted dominated the lives of ordinary people well into the nineteenth century. Conceived in Crisis makes sense of the trajectory from weak colonial to strong revolutionary states, and in so doing explains the limited success of efforts to consolidate state power at the national level during the early Republican period.

The Revolutionary Constitution

The Revolutionary Constitution PDF Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019991303X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The framers of the Constitution chose their words carefully when they wrote of a more perfect union--not absolutely perfect, but with room for improvement. Indeed, we no longer operate under the same Constitution as that ratified in 1788, or even the one completed by the Bill of Rights in 1791--because we are no longer the same nation. In The Revolutionary Constitution, David J. Bodenhamer provides a comprehensive new look at America's basic law, integrating the latest legal scholarship with historical context to highlight how it has evolved over time. The Constitution, he notes, was the product of the first modern revolution, and revolutions are, by definition, moments when the past shifts toward an unfamiliar future, one radically different from what was foreseen only a brief time earlier. In seeking to balance power and liberty, the framers established a structure that would allow future generations to continually readjust the scale. Bodenhamer explores this dynamic through seven major constitutional themes: federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. With each, he takes a historical approach, following their changes over time. For example, the framers wrote multiple protections for property rights into the Constitution in response to actions by state governments after the Revolution. But twentieth-century courts--and Congress--redefined property rights through measures such as zoning and the designation of historical landmarks (diminishing their commercial value) in response to the needs of a modern economy. The framers anticipated just such a future reworking of their own compromises between liberty and power. With up-to-the-minute legal expertise and a broad grasp of the social and political context, this book is a tour de force of Constitutional history and analysis.

Perfecting the Union

Perfecting the Union PDF Author: Max M. Edling
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197534716
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
"Habitually interpreted as the fundamental law of the American republic, the US Constitution was in fact designed as an instrument of union between thirteen American republics and as a form of government for their common central government. It offered an organizational solution to the security concerns of the newly independent American states. Confederation was an established means for weak states to maintain their independence by joining in union to manage relations with the outside world from a position of strength. Confederation also transformed the immediate international environment by turning neighboring states from potential enemies into sister states in a common union or peace pact. The US Constitution profoundly altered the structure of the American union and made the federal government more effective than under the defunct Articles of Confederation. But it did not transform the fundamental purpose of the federal union, which remained the management of relations between the American states, on the one hand, and between the American states and foreign powers, on the other hand. As had been the case under the articles, the states regulated the social, economic, and civic life of their citizens and inhabitants with only limited supervision and control from the federal government. Interpreting the Constitution as an instrument of union has important implications for our understanding of the American founding. The Constitution mattered much more to the international than to the domestic history of the United States. Its importance to the latter was dwarfed by that of state constitutions and legislation"--

Revolutions: a Very Short Introduction

Revolutions: a Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Jack A. Goldstone
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197666302
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
"In the 20th and 21st century revolutions have become more urban, often less violent, but also more frequent and more transformative of the international order. Whether it is the revolutions against Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR; the "color revolutions" across Asia, Europe and North Africa; or the religious revolutions in Iran, Afghanistan, and Syria; today's revolutions are quite different from those of the past. Modern theories of revolution have therefore replaced the older class-based theories with more varied, dynamic, and contingent models of social and political change. This new edition updates the history of revolutions, from Classical Greece and Rome to the Revolution of Dignity in the Ukraine, with attention to the changing types and outcomes of revolutionary struggles. It also presents the latest advances in the theory of revolutions, including the issues of revolutionary waves, revolutionary leadership, international influences, and the likelihood of revolutions to come. This volume provides a brief but comprehensive introduction to the nature of revolutions and their role in global history"--

Common Sense

Common Sense PDF Author: Thomas Paine
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description


The U.S. Constitution

The U.S. Constitution PDF Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195378326
Category : LAW
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
The U.S. Constitution: A Very Short Introduction explores the major themes of American constitutional history-federalism, the balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. Informed by the latest scholarship, each theme illustrates how the Constitution has served as a dynamic framework for legitimating power and advancing liberty.

The Creation of America

The Creation of America PDF Author: Francis Jennings
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521664813
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This alternative history of the American Revolution, first published in 2000, shows the colonists as empire-building conquerors rather than democratic revolutionaries.

The Counter-Revolution of 1776

The Counter-Revolution of 1776 PDF Author: Gerald Horne
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479808725
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Illuminates how the preservation of slavery was a motivating factor for the Revolutionary War The successful 1776 revolt against British rule in North America has been hailed almost universally as a great step forward for humanity. But the Africans then living in the colonies overwhelmingly sided with the British. In this trailblazing book, Gerald Horne shows that in the prelude to 1776, the abolition of slavery seemed all but inevitable in London, delighting Africans as much as it outraged slaveholders, and sparking the colonial revolt. Prior to 1776, anti-slavery sentiments were deepening throughout Britain and in the Caribbean, rebellious Africans were in revolt. For European colonists in America, the major threat to their security was a foreign invasion combined with an insurrection of the enslaved. It was a real and threatening possibility that London would impose abolition throughout the colonies—a possibility the founding fathers feared would bring slave rebellions to their shores. To forestall it, they went to war. The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their right to enslave others. The Counter-Revolution of 1776 brings us to a radical new understanding of the traditional heroic creation myth of the United States.

True Version of the Philippine Revolution

True Version of the Philippine Revolution PDF Author: Don Emilio Aguinaldo y. Famy
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781375740432
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Book Description


The American Revolution

The American Revolution PDF Author: Gordon S. Wood
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 1588361586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “An elegant synthesis done by the leading scholar in the field, which nicely integrates the work on the American Revolution over the last three decades but never loses contact with the older, classic questions that we have been arguing about for over two hundred years.”—Joseph J. Ellis, author of Founding Brothers A magnificent account of the revolution in arms and consciousness that gave birth to the American republic. When Abraham Lincoln sought to define the significance of the United States, he naturally looked back to the American Revolution. He knew that the Revolution not only had legally created the United States, but also had produced all of the great hopes and values of the American people. Our noblest ideals and aspirations-our commitments to freedom, constitutionalism, the well-being of ordinary people, and equality-came out of the Revolutionary era. Lincoln saw as well that the Revolution had convinced Americans that they were a special people with a special destiny to lead the world toward liberty. The Revolution, in short, gave birth to whatever sense of nationhood and national purpose Americans have had. No doubt the story is a dramatic one: Thirteen insignificant colonies three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization fought off British rule to become, in fewer than three decades, a huge, sprawling, rambunctious republic of nearly four million citizens. But the history of the American Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed simply as a story of right and wrong from which moral lessons are to be drawn. It is a complicated and at times ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not blindly celebrated or condemned. How did this great revolution come about? What was its character? What were its consequences? These are the questions this short history seeks to answer. That it succeeds in such a profound and enthralling way is a tribute to Gordon Wood’s mastery of his subject, and of the historian’s craft.