Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century

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Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century

by David Womersley

3.00 · rating details · 1 rating · 1 review

Written by some of today’s premiere scholars of American history, Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century examines some of the central themes and ideologies central to the formation of the United States including:

• David Womersley’s introduction includes a discussion of Edmund Burke’s theories on property rights and government, setting the foundati...more

Paperback, 488 pages

Published July 1st 2006 by Liberty Fund Inc.

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Aug 01, 2010

Varad rated it

The essays in this collection deal with the political thought of the period of the American Revolution, especially the ways in which it conceived of liberty. The scholarship on display is overall quite good, but the book perpetuates the seemingly invincible canard that the American Revolution somehow was a conservative revolution, which is a non sequitur.

The standout essays are David Wootton's on the importance of mechanical metaphors to the constitutional theorizing of the eighteen...moreThe essays in this collection deal with the political thought of the period of the American Revolution, especially the ways in which it conceived of liberty. The scholarship on display is overall quite good, but the book perpetuates the seemingly invincible canard that the American Revolution somehow was a conservative revolution, which is a non sequitur.

The standout essays are David Wootton's on the importance of mechanical metaphors to the constitutional theorizing of the eighteenth century. No one who reads it will think of the idea of "checks and balances" in the same way again. It is a model of intellectual history. Also good are John Danford's essay on David Hume's importance to the Enlightenment debate on the morality of commerce and luxury; Robert Ferguson's explanation of how the language of law supplanted that of religion in providing philosophical backing to the American concept of rights in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution; and Ronald Hamowy's discussion of the disagreement between Adam Ferguson and Richard Price on the justice of the American cause.

The remaining essays are a mixed bag. Lance Banning makes some important insights about the origins of constitutional "construction" in the party conflicts of the 1790s. R.G. Frey's essay on the tension between moral sense theory and natural rights theory seems to miss the point. The two may be incompatible, but that does vitiate the latter; it merely suggests that the latter must find other grounds for support than in the former. Gordon Wood's essay on the "James Madison 'problem'" is schematic; it surveys the problem without really analyzing it or adding anything new. Jack Greene's essay on the colonial/metropolitan conflct between Jamaica and London in the 1750s is well researched and richly detailed, but seems out of place with the rest.

By far the worst essay is Barry Shain's, which attempts to argue that far from being inspired by various ideals of individualism, Americans on the eve of the Revolution were Protestant communitarians. The importance of Protestantism to the colonies goes without saying. The problem is that in trying to repel the specter of liberalism from colonial America, Shain surrenders all effort to try to explain its formation and development. If individualism didn't exist in colonial America, where on Earth did it come from to triumph so easily in the first decade or two after the Revolution? Shain succumbs to the same antinomian thinking of which he accuses his scholarly opponents. There is a wealth of scholarship which explains at great length just how modern and individualistic the colonies were, often from their very inception. Shain so distorts the historical record that he becomes almost as great a fabulist as John Pocock, whose labors to situate the American Revolution within the paradigm of classical republicanism reach the boundaries of falsification. In a word, Shain's essay is nonsense. There is no other way to describe it; alright, partial and tendentious would also do.

Shain's essay certainly fulfills the editor's remit to portray the American Revolution as a conservative one. Fortunately, there are any number of other books which one can consult to find truer, more accurate portraits of it. Ones which do not forget that the American Revolution was just that; not only American, but also a revolution.(less)

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Apr 20, 2011

Michael J. added it

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