Bonwick brings together related elements that have been treated separately on previous occasions--English radicals as personalities, their relations with one another, their connections with Americans; the imperial controversy between England and the colonies; the movement for parliamentary reform in England; and the campaign for civil rights for Dissenters. The study brings fresh meaning to English radicalism and ideas about liberty during the revolutionary era. Originally published 1977. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than a break from England, rather it transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes baffled and disappointed its founding fathers.

In a grand and immemsely readable synthesis of historical, political, cultural, and economic analysis, a prize-winning historian describes the events that made the American Revolution. Gordon S. Wood depicts a revolution that was about much more than a break from England, rather it transformed an almost feudal society into a democratic one, whose emerging realities sometimes baffled and disappointed its founding fathers.

Though little known to most students of the American Revolution, the British Radicals of the 1770s championed the rights of Americans while advocating parliamentary reform and denouncing British colonial policies. Outspoken, eloquent, and innovative, the Radicals encouraged the American cause. They voiced ideas on liberty and empire that would echo through American revolutionary documents. Liberty and Empire focuses on five British Radicals. The farsighted John Cartwright's ideas of reformation anticipated the Commonwealth of Nations. James Burgh's treatise on parliamentary reform became a classic text for both English and American reformers and an influence on the thinking of successive generations. The venerable Dr. Richard Price wrote one of the era's most eloquent statements on human liberty and the meaning of the American Revolution. Granville Sharp's advocacy of legislative rights for Ireland and America prophesied later principles of responsible government and home rule. Catharine Macaulay, fervent and notorious, urged the people of Great Britain to side with America. In this first comprehensive study of the British Radicals, Robert Toohey provides an overview of their political milieu and a synthesis of their ideas about the American crisis and related issues. Toohey outlines the ideological relationships among Radicals of diverse background and character. He discusses their impact on American thinking through their writings and their associations with Benjamin Franklin and others. And he reveals that Americans held no monopoly on enlightened concepts of human liberty, empire, and reformation.

A bold transatlantic history of American independence revealing that 1776 was about far more than taxation without representation Revolution Against Empire sets the story of American independence within a long and fierce clash over the political and economic future of the British Empire. Justin du Rivage traces this decades-long debate, which pitted neighbors and countrymen against one another, from the War of Austrian Succession to the end of the American Revolution. As people from Boston to Bengal grappled with the growing burdens of imperial rivalry and fantastically expensive warfare, some argued that austerity and new colonial revenue were urgently needed to rescue Britain from unsustainable taxes and debts. Others insisted that Britain ought to treat its colonies as relative equals and promote their prosperity. Drawing from archival research in the United States, Britain, and France, this book shows how disputes over taxation, public debt, and inequality sparked the American Revolution—and reshaped the British Empire.

In the transatlantic world of the late eighteenth century, easterly winds blew radical thought to America. Thomas Paine had already arrived on these shores in 1774 and made his mark as a radical pamphleteer during the Revolution. In his wake followed more than 200 other radical exiles—English Dissenters, Whigs, and Painites; Scottish "lads o'parts"; and Irish patriots—who became influential newspaper writers and editors and helped change the nature of political discourse in a young nation. Michael Durey has written the first full-scale analysis of these radicals, evaluating the long-term influence their ideas have had on American political thought. Transatlantic Radicals uncovers the roots of their radicalism in the Old World and tells the story of how these men came to be exiled, how they emigrated, and how they participated in the politics of their adopted country. Nearly all of these radicals looked to Paine as their spiritual leader and to Thomas Jefferson as their political champion. They held egalitarian, anti-federalist values and promoted an extreme form of participatory democracy that found a niche in the radical wing of Jefferson's Republican Party. Their divided views on slavery, however, reveal that democratic republicanism was unable to cope with the realities of that institution. As political activists during the 1790s, they proved crucial to Jefferson's 1800 presidential victory; then, after his views moderated and their influence waned, many repatriated, others drifted into anonymity, and a few managed to find success in the New World. Although many of these men are known to us through other histories, their influence as a group has never before been so closely examined. Durey persuasively demonstrates that the intellectual ferment in Britain did indeed have tremendous influence on American politics. His account of that influence sheds considerable light on transatlantic political history and differences in religious, political, and economic freedoms. Skillfully balancing a large cast of characters, Transatlantic Radicals depicts the diversity of their experiences and shows how crucial these reluctant émigrés were to shaping our republic in its formative years.

Maintaining that the outbreak of revolution in 1775 was not the result of secret planning by radicals but rather the end product of years of painful evolution, Pauline Maier brilliantly traces the American colonists’ road to independence from 1765 to 1776 and examines the role of popular violence as political allegiances corroded and once-loyal subjects were gradually transformed into revolutionaries. Mrs. Maier presents a view of the American leaders different from that which prevailed a generation ago, when historians saw them as lawless demagogues who, already set upon independence at the outset of the conflict with England, manipulated the public toward their goal through propaganda and mob violence. She shows that none of the men in the forefront of American opposition to British policies favored independence when the colonies blocked England’s efforts to impose a tamp Tax upon them in 1765. Their love of British institutions was undermined gradually and for reasons beyond their opposition to legislation affecting American interest. Developments in England itself, in Ireland, Corsica, and the West Indies also fed American disillusionment with imperial rule, until leading colonists came to believe that just government required casting loose from Britain and monarchy. Indeed, Mrs. Maier demonstrates that participants saw the American Revolution as part of an international struggle between freedom and despotism. Like independence, violence was a last resort. Arguing that colonial leaders, like many present-day “revolutionaries,” quickly learned that popular violence was counterproductive, Mrs. Maier makes it clear that they organized resistance in part to contain disorder. Building association to discipline opposition, they gradually made self-rule founded upon carefully designed “social compacts” a reality. Out of the struggle with Britain emerged not merely separation, but the beginnings of American republican government.