Description
Book SynopsisThis book presents the case that the origins of American liberty should not be sought in the constitutional-reformist feats of its “statesmen” during the 1780s, but rather in the political and social resistance to their efforts. There were two revolutions occurring in the late 18th century America: the modern European revolution “in favour of government,” pursuing national unity, “energetic” government and centralization of power (what scholars usually dub “American founding”); and a conservative, reactionary counter-revolution “in favour of liberty,” defending local rights and liberal individualism against the encroaching political authority. This is a book about this liberal counter-revolution and its ideological, political and cultural sources and central protagonists. The central analytical argument of the book is that America before the Revolution was a stateless, spontaneous political order that evolved culturally, politically and economically in isolation from the modern European trends of state-building and centralization of power. The book argues, then, that a better model for understanding America is a “decoupled modernization” hypothesis, in which social modernity is divested from the politics of modern state and tied with the pre-modern social institutions.
Table of Contents1. The American Revolution as the Last European Peasants’ Rebellion.- 2. Consent, Representation and Liberty: America as the Last Medieval Society.- 3. Shades of Anarchy: The Concept of Lawful Rebellion in America.- 4. Men of Little Faith Facing the Modern State: The Country Party Ideology in Great Britain.- 5. When in the Course of Human Events.- Hobbes, Locke and the Long Parliament against America.- 6. The Great Derailment: Philadelphia Putsch of 1787 and the Coming of the American State.- 7. 1776 Strikes Back – Antifederalist Critics of the Constitution.- 8. The Compact Theory of the Union – A Revolution within a Form.- 9. Free Market in a Small Republic – Economic Doctrines of Jeffersonians and Jacksonians.- 10. The Last Stand: John C. Calhoun.- 11. Conclusion.
