The beginnings of national politics: An interpretive history of the Continental Congress

by Jack N. Rakove

The author's thesis is that the members of the Continental Congresses made political decisions based on the limited alternatives available to them at the time. This theory is intended to disprove more popular views such as the one asserting that the Continental Congresses were driven by radical, ideological members.

Genres: History, American Revolution, American History

Hardcover

First published August 1, 1982

About the author

Jack Rakove is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies and professor of political science and (by courtesy) law at Stanford, where he has taught since 1980. His principal areas of research include the origins of the American Revolution and Constitution, the political practice and theory of James Madison, and the role of historical knowledge in constitutional litigation. He is the author of six books, including Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (1996), which won the Pulitzer Prize in History, and Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America (2010), which was a finalist for the George Washington Prize, and the editor of seven others, including The Unfinished Election of 2000 (2001). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and a past president of the Society for the History of the Early American Republic.

Reviews

[Stan Lanier · Rating 4 out of 5]

A major re-interpretation of the history of the Continental Congress, Jack Rakove sees, in the midst of different regional interests, a set of pragmatic problems that goes further to explain the actions of the Continental Congress than mere conflicting interests. What becomes the role of this Congress when the colonies, perforce, move from maintaining a program of resistance to the need to build a nation state? How can a national Congress exact taxes from colonial state governments and peoples who, heretofore, understood their sovereignty to reside in themselves; a sovereignty for which they were fighting a war to break free from a unified power, at times, signified by Parliament and, at other times, by monarchy? How could a Continental Army be maintained when the only resources to draw upon were those of the disparate states? How could individual states conduct foreign policy? How was commerce to be regulated? How could a union be forged through which a unified nation rather than a mere confederation could be sustained?

Rakove produces an intriguing synthesis from a massive amount of original documents and of scholarship to give a cogent interpretation of history and actions of the body responsible for keeping the colonies from imploding into chaos and, thus, disintegration.

As an interpretive history, this project martials evidence to make an argument rather than only telling a story. Hence, it may not be everyone's cup of tea. If the reader persists,the rewards are satisfying.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Rakove's interpretative history of the Continental Congress is original -- or, was original, as it was published in 1979. I needed to read this -- because so much of what's in here had faded from my memory re: the Revolution. Rakove's treatment of the decision-making process and train of events leading to the formal declaration in July 1776, is superb. Pragmatic, prosaic concerns were as or even more important as ideology when it came time for the final break with the crown.

The politics and repeat failings of the Congress and Articles of Confederation from the late 1770s to the gathering of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 are not front of mind, either. I hadn't realized -- or even given much thought to -- the fact that few politicians and thinkers (Madison being an exception) had considered creating a truly national government framework based on national (rather than parochial or state) interests, until the period immediately before the 1787 convention.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb study of the Continental Congress from its beginnings in 1774 to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.