The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding - Rilegato

Nelson, Eric

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 067473534X ISBN 13: 9780674735347

Casa editrice: Belknap Pr, 2014

Riassunto

Generations of students have been taught that the American Revolution was a revolt against royal tyranny. In this revisionist account, Eric Nelson argues that a great many of our “founding fathers” saw themselves as rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. The Royalist Revolution interprets the patriot campaign of the 1770s as an insurrection in favor of royal power—driven by the conviction that the Lords and Commons had usurped the just prerogatives of the monarch.

Leading patriots believed that the colonies were the king’s own to govern, and they urged George III to defy Parliament and rule directly. These theorists were proposing to turn back the clock on the English constitution, rejecting the Whig settlement that had secured the supremacy of Parliament after the Glorious Revolution. Instead, they embraced the political theory of those who had waged the last great campaign against Parliament’s “usurpations”: the reviled Stuart monarchs of the seventeenth century.

When it came time to design the state and federal constitutions, the very same figures who had defended this expansive conception of royal authority—John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, and their allies—returned to the fray as champions of a single executive vested with sweeping prerogatives. As a result of their labors, the Constitution of 1787 would assign its new president far more power than any British monarch had wielded for almost a hundred years. On one side of the Atlantic, Nelson concludes, there would be kings without monarchy; on the other, monarchy without kings.

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Recensione

The unseen author of American independence, it turns out, was King George III, who chose to remain a parliamentary monarch, and declined (if he ever understood) the American invitation to become an emperor ruling through several independent parliaments. He obliged Americans to pursue a democratic empire and rethink the role of monarchy in their republic. Eric Nelson's brilliant revision displays both American and British history in their exceptionalisms. --J.G.A. Pocock

"Eric Nelson's new book advances the royalist reinterpretation of the 18th-century America a crucial state further. [...] The Royalist Revolution provide[s] a powerful double-barrelled challenge to historiographical orthodoxy."" -- London Review of Books

"for anyone interested in the founding of the American Republic it is indispensable reading." - Standpoint

"[Nelson] is able to flesh out his account in interesting ways, as well as take it in new directions, not least of all by extending it to the 1780s, where, he argues, royalist revolutionary thinking led to a presidency with far more power than any English monarch had wielded since William of Orange landed at Torbay in 1688 . The book is skilfully written, weaving together a thorough knowledge of primary and secondary sources: from seventeenth-century English constitutional theorists; to eighteenth-century American pamphleteers; to historiography of the American Revolution, old and new. Nelson s argument is clear [...] Nelson is at his best when it comes to documenting and explaining the evidence that Americans drew from seventeenth-century British political thought. [...] One of the real strength of The Royalist Revolution is that it takes the history of ideas seriously. [...] Eric Nelson s book is a welcome voice to add to the mix." -- Times Literary Supplement

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Belknap Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2014
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 067473534X
• ISBN 13: 9780674735347
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 390
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile