Summary[]
Examining the various pamphlets that were published in the lead up to the Revolutionary War, Bailyn’s book looks at the ideological origins of the revolution. He argues that these pamphlets confirm the view that “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.” (vi) Further, he contends, the intellectual developments in the decade before the Revolution re-interpreted the previous century and a half of American Experience and “it was this intimate relationship between revolutionary thought and the circumstances of life in 18th century America that endowed the Revolution with its peculiar force” and made it such a transformative event. He points to various strands of intellectual legacies (classical antiquity, Enlightenment rationalism, English common law, New England Puritans), but for him the most important was a strain of anti-authoritarian, Whig opposition political thought that originally stemmed from the period of the English Civil War and resulting Commonwealth in the 1640s-1650s. Colonists interpreted British actions through this lens and saw them as a conspiracy against liberty. This was the heart of the Revolutionary movement. Colonists then faced the challenge of transforming this legacy to fit their circumstances. First, through representation and taxation, colonists challenged the idea of virtual representation, one that Bailyn says originated from their long-standing experience of decentralized local autonomy. Second, they had to reconfigure an older idea of the constitution, moving away from an abstract system of how a society was ordered to one that specifically placed limits and boundaries on different spheres of government. Finally, they had to make the most radical departure with the idea of sovereignty. This posed the greatest challenge for colonists, as they had to overturn a longstanding orthodoxy about the absolute and final authority of Parliament and move towards the idea of imperium in imperio, or having separate spheres - for example, the growing idea of "internal" vs. "external" taxation. These ideas thus spilled over in the areas of slavery, religion, democracy, and equality.
Example: Commonwealth and Radical Whig Opposition writings such as those of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon (oppositional/libertarian ideas from English Civil War). He argues that these thinkers provided a framework in which “Enlightenment abstractions and common law precedents … could all be brought together into a comprehensive theory of politics.” (54)
See also: Gordon Wood, Daniel T. Rodgers, David Armitage