The American Revolution

Abstract

This chapter explores the last thirty years of revolutionary historiography. The vast literature on the subject can be divided into three approaches: first, the Atlantic interpretations, by which is meant studies of the ‘big picture’ — the internal and external workings of the British Empire: secondly, the New Social History and its efforts to locate the origins of the American Revolution in colonial structures and processes; thirdly, the heated historiographical debate over the ideological interpretation which emphasizes the role of the republican tradition. Categorizing historians under one approach or another is a matter of emphasis. Most of the historians described consider the Revolution's imperialism, and its socio-economic and ideological contexts. Scholars such as Jack P. Greene, Edmund S. Morgan, and Bernard Bailyn have made significant contributions to all three approaches. This chapter challenges exclusive monocausal interpretations of the Revolution, and suggests that the event is best explained by effective integration of all three approaches. These approaches of modern historiography seek to explain how and why seemingly manageable political and constitutional disagreements between the colonists and the British government shattered the Empire.