The Zuckerman Thesis and the Process of Legal Rationalization in Provincial Massachusetts

Abstract

Among the recently published research on the colonial New England town few have so compellingly described the subtle workings of this institution as has Michael Zuckerman in his Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Eighteenth Century.' Since its publication most reviewers have accepted his basic findings, entertaining only an infrequent doubt in response to some narrow aspect of his wider thesis. Authors of articles and books on collateral subjects have been much less willing to accept his views, but they have made little effort to expand their thoughts by presenting alternative explanations or evidence that question his general conclusions. Intensive reexamination, however, of Zuckerman's own documentation suggests that those conclusions apply in reality only to some Massachusetts towns for part of the provincial period. Additional information from other sources only strengthens this impression and illustrates that after i69i the towns became part of dynamically changing society. Briefly, Zuckerman begins by seeking a context for the eighteenthcentury town and its emergence as the locus of effective authority in the