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Bailyn's Book
Bernard Bailyn
1. Note on Historiography
2. Sources and Traditions
3. Power and Liberty
4. Transformation of Ideas:
i. Representation and Consent
ii. Constitution and Rights
iii. Sovereignty
5. The Logic of Rebellion
6. Conclusion
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John Locke
Baron de Montesquieu
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Sir Edward Coke
Glorious Revolution 1688
Fears of Corruption
Power has two main properties:
1. Power is aggressive.
2. Power desires to expand.
What is 'liberty'?
1. Liberty is the 'freedom to do things without interference.
2. Liberty is a 'Natural Right'
3. Liberty is passive.
People constantly feared government grabs for power which would see the loss of their liberty. This explains why the American reaction to seemingly harmless Acts was so dramatic.
The Ideology of the American Revolution was also marked by transformations to three key ideas:
1. Representation
2. Constitution
3. Sovereignty
The American understanding of representation came to differ from those of the British parliamentarians
Non-Virtual Representation!
Virtual Representation!
"The position that we are bound by no laws to which we have not consented either by ourselves or our representatives is a novel position unsupported by any authoritative record of the British constitution, ancient or modern. It is republican in its very nature, and tends to the utter subversion of the English monarchy" (Samuel Seabury, 1774)
Ambiguity in the English Constitution would form the basis for the misunderstanding that would lead to the American Revolution
"[The British and the Americans] understood the word 'constitution' not as a written ... design of government and a specification of rights; ... rather as the ... existing arrangement of governmental institutions, laws, and customs together with the principles and goals that animated them"
Based on this guy's ideas!
The Nobility
The Royalty
The Commons
If the estates are put in competition with one another, liberty for all will be maintained.
"But if the theory was evident and unanimously agreed on, the mechanics of its operation were not. It was not clear how the three social orders were related to the functioning branches of government" (Bailyn, B. Chapter 3)
"The transition to more advanced ground was forced forward by the continuing need, after 1764, to distinguish fundamentals from instutions and from the actions of government so that they might serve as limits and controls" (Bailyn, B.)
Sovereignty refers to the nature and location of the ultimate power in a state.
Monarchism: Absolute but not Arbitrary
Glorious Revolution!
Arbitrary power in some form is necessary, but it is dangerous (particularly in the hands of an individual)
Parliament can minimise arbitrary power
Parliament should be the source of centralised, undivided, final power.
"The power of taxing ... had been exercised by the representative Assemblies of the various colonies ... The condition of British America by the end of the Seven Years' War was therefore anomalous: extreme decentralisation of authority within an empire presumably ruled by a single, absolute, undivided sovereign" (Bailyn, B.)
This "absolute and arbitrary" sovereignty of parliament was in fact divisible!
Monarchism
Parliamentarianism
Imperium in Imperio (Federalism)
"[The Colonists] saw in the measures taken by the British government ... something for which their particular inheritance of thought had prepared them only too well ... what appeared to be evidence of nothing less than a deliberate assault launched surreptitiously by plotters against liberty both in England and America" (Chapter 4)
"Nothing is wanted at home but a precedent, the force of which shall be established by the tacit submission of the colonies" (John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania)
Five main causes:
"The beliefs and fears [of the Americans] were [sincere]. The result ... was an escalation of distrust towards a disastrous deadlock"
Infringement on Intellectual Liberties
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Two other less-noteworthy causes:
1. Manipulation of Judges (particularly in Admiralty/Navy courts)
2. Restructuring of the American administration
The climax of the American conspiracy:
"The Tea Act was passed, not to gain revenue, but ... to provoke a quarrel. The ministry wished "to see America in arms ... because it furnished them with a pretense for declaring us rebels; and persons conquered under that character forfeit their all ... to the crown"
(Chapter 4)
Unifying Ideological Narrative!
1. Representation and Consent
non-virtual vs. virtual representation
2. Constitution and Rights
the constitution as an institution vs. the constitution as a guarantee of rights
3. Sovereignty
all power belonging to parliament vs. imperium in imperio (federalism)
"The details of this new world were not as yet clearly depicted; but faith ran high that a better world than any that had ever been known could be built where authority was distrusted ... It was only where there was this defiance ... that institutions would express human aspirations, not crush them" (Bailyn, B.)
Thank you for listening!