His 4775, EIU Fall 1997, Newton Key

CH 222, Tues., Thurs., 2:00-3:15

Anglo-American Political Culture, 1600-1800

"History prefers the incipient to the vestigial." (Kishlansky, p. 105)

"What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected ...before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington." (John Adams, 1815, in Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 1967, p. 1)

This seminar examines politicization in England and its American colonial societies in the early modern period. What accounts for the changing practice of politics (the rage of party)? To answer this question, we will use new historical research into the relation between politics and society, as well as contemporary pamphlets. We will focus on the arenas and types of politics (riots, coffeehouses, role of women) rather than a narrative of political choices. Requirements include brief analytical papers.

A Political Narrative I: Divine Rights of the English

week 1

week 2

Gentry Politics "Parliamentary government based on the party-system, is not an ingenious device, the product of creative thought, for which credit is due to one set of men ....An electorate thinking in terms of nation-wide parties is its indispensable basis; and it is therefore at least as much in the constituencies as in parliament that the growth of these parties will have to be traced. --Sir Lewis Namier, "Monarchy and the Party System," Personalities and Powers (New York, 1955), 37.

week 3

week 4

week 5

The Rage of Party? "If a single short period of years is sought as the seedbed of the eighteenth-century ideology ...it is undoubtedly the 1670's and early 1680's." (Bailyn, p. 33n.)

week 5 (continued)

week 6

week 7

Popular Partisanship or the Triumph of Oligarchy?

week 8

week 9

week 10

A Political Narrative II: Colonial Concepts and Enthusiasms

week 11

An Anglo-American Political Culture?

week 12.

week 13

week 14.

week 15. Divergences.

The requirements for this course are: four brief (typed, double-spaced, four pages each) essays analyzing specific primary sources (except assignment 1). For each you must position yourself and at least two historians read for that section (you should choose a brief article relevant to the subject from the list to be distributed), use the contemporary source or data to prove your point, and suggest specific additional types of material that would help prove your point ([1] = 15%; [2] = 10%; [3] = 10%; 4 = 15%). Optional Mid-term exam replaces the lowest grade of any of these four papers as long as not F or Zero to begin, if higher. Final exam (15%). Historiography paper based on assignment [2] or [4] (depending on if you want European or American credit for the course), one reading for each section, and (for graduates) one extra article or chapter for each section (see below), as well as Bailyn (undergraduates) or Morgan (graduates) (20%). Intensive reading and discussion, and occasional in-class writings (15%). This is an upper division and graduate course; participation, not attendance counts.

Required texts:

Bailyn = Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics (New York, 1967) [Purchase this at the Union bookstore; at least one available at B.]

Black = Jeremy Black, The politics of Britain, 1688-1800 (Manchester, 1993)

Harris = Tim Harris, Politics Under the Later Stuarts: Party Conflict in a Divided Society, 1660-1715(London, 1993)

Kishlansky = Mark A. Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986)

Morgan = Edmund S. Morgan, Inventing the People: the Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, 1988) [Purchase at the Union bookstore; at least one available at B.]

Prall = Stuart E. Prall, Church and State in Tudor and Stuart England (Arlington Heights, 1993)

Reserve Readings

H.T. Dickinson, The Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York, 1995), "The People and Parliamentary Elections," 13-55, and "The Politics of the Crowd," 125-58 [copy and photocopy at B.; photocopy at G.].

Robert M. Calhoon, Dominion and Liberty: Ideology in the Anglo-American World, 1660-1801 (Arlington Heights, 1994) [photocopies at B. and G.]

Additional readings

Booth Library Reserve B, Booth Library Periodicals P, and Grad Room 227 CH G.

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