From “Great Men” to “We the People”: Surveying the Shift from a Focus on “Heroes” to the Inclusion of All Citizens in the Writing of Revolutionary History (original) (raw)

A people's history of the American Revolution

's critical history of the American Revolution against British rule and its impact on ordinary people. Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies made a discovery that would prove enormously useful for the next two hundred years. They found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from favorites of the British Empire. In the process, they could hold back a number of potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership. When we look at the American Revolution this way, it was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers deserve the awed tribute they have received over the centuries. They created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.

Considering the Revolution: The Identities Created by the American Revolutionary War

The Public Historian, 2023

The closing public plenary at the May 2022 virtual conference of the National Council on Public History (NCPH) and the second in a series of five annual scholarly roundtables considering the origins and legacies of the American Revolution, dialogues which will contribute to larger discussions during NPS's commemorations of the American Revolution's 250th anniversary about its changing interpretation and its continuing relevance to the American people. These discussions will be used by NPS staff in their interpretive work with the public regardless of their geographic location or primary interpretive focus, by NCPH members as they prepare themselves and their students for the 250th commemorations, and by members of the public as they consider the relevance of the Revolution to their own lives. The American Revolutionary War was a seminal event that created new identities, new borders, and new realities for the British, French, African, and Indigenous inhabitants of North America. While the war was foundational in the formation of what became modern American identity, its repercussions go well beyond the citizens of the new republic. The events of 1776 to 1783 not only divided the continent between American and British interests, they also divided families and communities between "Patriots" who supported the Congressional Army and "Loyalists" who supported the British Crown. The establishment of the US-British (later Canadian) border not only defined the territories of the new United States -- without any consideration of Indigenous rights or interests -- it also divided the peoples of North America into American citizens or British subjects, while imposing a new settler-colonial construct upon Indigenous nations.

Cultural Politics and Political Thought: The American Revolution Made and Remembered

American Studies, 1979

Historians have recently written prolifically about the sources and interpretations of the American Revolution. The various interpretations of the Revolution and its political ideas convey a variety of political teachings; they can also serve as indices, at any given time, of the political commitments and cultural visions of the interpreters. This study explores these differing interpretations by showing how the materials used in writing histories of the American Revolution reflect long-standing patterns of cultural-political conflict. The books and broadsides used by historians today are themselves interpretations of history, containing canons of selection, causality and political value. Moreover, because these source materials imply systematic ways of interpreting history, the histories in turn serve as forms of knowledge used in subsequent cultural-political conflicts. Little wonder, then, that American political thought so often takes the form of history and that the conflict of...

Citizenship and the Memory of the American Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Political Culture

New York History, 2020

The memory of the Revolution is the American origins myth. For many Americans, the idea of a collective historical memory of the Revolution might bring to mind what could be called the "schoolbook narrative. " In this all-too-familiar narrative, the American colonists, motivated by high-minded ideas of liberty and equality, bravely resisted attempts by the power-hungry tyrant King George III to tax them unreasonably by declaring independence. To secure that independence, American farmers took up arms to defend their homes and, directed by exceptionally virtuous leaders, defeated the combined military forces of the largest and most powerful empire since Rome. This narrative is a constructed memory of the Revolution that has roots dating back to the very first histories written of the Revolution by men and women who lived through it and has served ever since to inculcate a sense of national identity and patriotism in the nation's schoolchildren. For centuries, American schoolchildren have learned a version of this narrative and many have carried it with them throughout their lives. Indeed, historians who currently teach the American Revolution in colleges and universities can feel as though no small part of their work is devoted to complicating this narrative that was ingrained in students at a young age. Yet, the story of our national collective memory of the American Revolution is not primarily one of the development and perpetuation of this simplistic narrative. Rather, it is a story of construction, contest, and conflict composed of a continuous, many-sided struggle

The American Revolution: a bibliographic and historiographic introduction

The American Revolution: a historiographical introduction he literary monument to the American Revolution is vast. Shelves and now digital stores of scholarly articles, collections of documents, historical monographs and bibliographies cover all aspects of the Revolution. To these can be added great range of popular titles, guides, documentaries, films and websites. The output shows no signs of slowing. The following guide is by no means exhaustive, but seeks to define some of the contours of this output, charting very roughly the changing ways in which the Revolution has been understood or used by writers from the Revolution to recent times.