Reassessing Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution on the Occasion of its Jubilee

Abstract

This essay places Bernard Bailyn's The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution in its historiographical context, addresses its implications for the Constitutional settlement, and places it within current scholarly debates on the Revolution. In the last, it argues, the Ideological Origins offers a contrasting vision of history and the historian to the recent focus on issues of race, class, and gender and demand that history meet contemporary needs.