Episode Details

BFW Revisited: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Published 3 weeks ago

Description

What caused the American Revolution?

Taxation without representation? Colonies that had outgrown their dependence on the British Empire? Or something harder to see: a quarrel about power itself and about what a government may rightly do to the people it governs?

In 1967, Bernard Bailyn published The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, a book he built out of more than 400 pamphlets, and one historians have been arguing with ever since.

In this revisited conversation from Episode 152, Professor Bailyn explains why he never accepted a purely economic explanation for the Revolution, where the revolutionaries' ideas actually came from, and why colonists rationally concluded that the British government was concealing a conspiracy against their liberties.

Bernard Bailyn’s Wikipedia Page | Book |

Show Notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/152

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