Dependence and Interest: The Political Economy of the First British Empire

Abstract

Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, eds. Essays on the American Revolution. Chapel Hill and New York: The University of North Carolina Press and W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973. 320 pp. Alison Gilbert Olson. Anglo-American Politics 1660-1775: The Relationship Between Parties in England and Colonial America. New York and Ox- ford: Oxford University Press, 1973. 192 pp. James A. Henretta. "Salutary Neglect": Colonial Administration under the Duke of Newcastle. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972. 381 pp. Joseph Albert Ernst. Money and Politics in America 1755-1775: A Study in the Currency Act of 1764 and the Political Economy of Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973. 403 pp. P. Langford. The First Rockingham Administration 1765-1766. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. 318 pp. Bernard Bailyn. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. 423 pp. The United States of America is about to celebrate its two-hundredth birthday, although there seems considerable uncertainty about the enter- prise. Unlike the Revolutionary Centennial of 1876 and the Civil War Centennial of 1961-1965, the Bicentennial of the American republic appears likely to pass virtually without notice, cynically ignored by pro- fessional historians and average citizens alike. The key to the apathy undoubtedly lies in the present mood of the American people. In 1876 the United States was in the first flower of a full-blown industrial revolution after the resolution of the searing divisions of Civil War. America was growing, prospering, and on the eve of appearance on the world stage as a first-rank power, capable even of its own colonial pretensions. In 1876, Americans were confident. They were complacent about their present (though some labelled it the "Age of Greed"), enthusiastic about their future, and secure in their past. The Revolution was accepted in 1876 by Americans for what Thomas Jefferson told the world it was in the Declaration of Independence - an attempt to achieve the high ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by overturning the despotism of a wicked monarch. Historians of the time substantiated such an interpretation. The ideals had been worth fighting for, and by and large, they were held to have been realized. Times have changed. Most Americans now wonder whether the revolutionary ideals have been attained, and debate whether recourse to violence can ever be justified.