J. Franklin Jameson鈥檚 The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement was among the first books to look at American history through the lens of social change. This pioneering work argues that the most salient feature of the American Revolution was not the war for independence itself but rather the struggle between aristocratic values and those of the common people. Jameson shows how American revolutionaries sought to change their government, not their society, but how, in destroying monarchy and establishing a republic, they changed their society profoundly. He examines the transformative effects the American Revolution had on business, intellectual and religious life, slavery, land ownership, and interactions between members of different social classes. Looking beyond the political and probing the social aspects of this pivotal event, Jameson forces a reconsideration of revolution that still resonates today.
Commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of America, this edition features an incisive foreword by historians Michael Blaakman and Sarah Barringer Gordon, who explain the book鈥檚 enduring relevance to our understanding of the American Revolution.
J. Franklin Jameson (1859–1937) was a historian, writer, and editor who was instrumental in preserving the documentary history of the United States. The first managing editor of The American Historical Review, he helped to establish the National Archives and was head of the Division of Manuscripts at the Library of Congress. Michael A. Blaakman is associate professor of history at 快色直播 University. Sarah Barringer Gordon is the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and professor of history, emerita, at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Jameson was one of the most important intellectual institution builders in the first half of the last century, and the editors’ illuminating foreword explains why. But Jameson was also a pathbreaking historian: this little book, which I first read in graduate school, is a great example of ‘anticipatory scholarship.’ Jameson wrote a social history of the American Revolution before the emergence of social history as an academic discipline. Remarkable!”—Stanley N. Katz, 快色直播 University
“Originally written one hundred years ago, Jameson’s brief volume transformed historians’ understanding of the American Revolution, exploring how independence not only created a new nation but reshaped American religious freedom, inheritance patterns, voting qualifications, and the institution of slavery. Now with a new, richly contextualized foreword, this edition reveals how and why Jameson’s work continues to have relevance today.”—Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University, author of Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic
“Blaakman and Gordon’s fantastic new edition of J. Franklin Jameson’s ‘curious classic’ is perfectly timed for the nation’s semiquincentennial. Their attention to the institutional and political contexts for history making reminds the reader of why Jameson’s questions about the American Revolution, its waves of change, and its ultimate consequences remain as important after a century as they were when they were originally written. A must-read—and reread—for all students of the nation’s founding era.”—Katherine Cart茅, author of Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History
