Unit 3: Revolutions

Chapter 5

Historians Read Historians:

Revising the Interpretation of the American Revolution

Assignment 3: Worth 15%, due in tutorial on 22, 23 or 24 October 2002.

The American Revolution remains a fundamental event in the history of America and, it can be argued, of the world. While historians can recount the main events leading up to the revolution, they have more trouble explaining how those events added up to produce a revolution. As American colonial historian T.H. Breen explains in the following essay, those who sought to explain the revolution in the 1960s and 1970s revised older accounts by concentrating on developments within the American colonies prior to the revolution, and debated the relative importance of politics, ideas and social change. Breen suggests it is time for a new focus, to revise the story once again, by situating the American revolution in a broader context, to combine an attention to internal developments with a look at the larger world in which the colonies participated.

What does it mean to situate the American Revolution in its wider global context? In the following article, T. H. Breen provides one possible answer by situating the American revolution in the context of what recent British historians have been writing about England and the British Empire in the eighteenth century.

As a result of previous chapters, students may have the impression that historians simply immerse themselves in various kinds of documents, and then emerge with a story or argument based only on a reading of those original documents. This article by Breen suggests something else about the way in which historians work. They read and respond to one another, as well as to documents. Historians put their own mark on their work by revising the ideas of others. In this case, Breen is seeking to revise the story of the American revolution as it has been told for the past thirty years, in part by thinking about how historians of Britain and her empire have been revising their story.

As you are reading, try to identify the main elements of Breen's challenging argument, by considering the following questions:

• What developments identified by recent historians of eighteenth-century Britain does Breen consider important for understanding the American revolution?
• Which of those developments form the main focus of this essay?
• Why does Breen examine the Scottish and Irish experience? What question interests him about their experience? What is to be learned by those interested in explaining the American revolution?
• How did American colonial ideas change between 1760 and 1776? Given his earlier arguments, what kinds of ideas interest Breen? How does Breen account for the increasing popularity of "rights talk" on the eve of the revolution?

Assignment 3: Doing an Outline and Beginning to Write

Assignment 3: Worth 15%, due in tutorial on 22, 23 or 24 October 2002.

Now that you are familiar with Breen's argument, you can approach a standard set of documents related to the American revolution with a new set of questions. The first two documents are pamphlets written at the time of the Stamp Act crisis by an English Member of Parliament, Soame Jenyns, and a moderate spokesman of the Boston merchants, James Otis. The third document is the "Declaration of Rights" adopted by a special intercolonial congress convened to consider a unified response to the Stamp Act. The fourth document is the influential Virginia Declaration of Rights, adopted on the eve of the revolution.

Assignment Question:

To what extent and in what ways do these documents -- the 1765 pamplet exchange between Soame Jenyns and James Otis, the 1765 Declarations of the Stamp Act Congress, and the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights -- illustrate T.H. Breen's argument about the role of "British" identity during the revolutionary debate?

To complete this assignment, you must submit:

1. A complete, formal outline of your answer to this question:

Thesis sentence: In a full sentence, state your thesis. Be sure that your thesis statement offers an answer to the assignment question.

Supporting Argument 1: Write a complete, topic sentence for your first argument. Be sure that this statement clearly supports the overall thesis of the essay.

Example or illustration: in point form, indicate 2-4 specific examples you plan to use to support, clarify and illustrate your supporting argument.

2. You should have 3-4 supporting arguments, and 2-4 reasons, examples or illustrations for each. The introduction to your essay fully written out. Begin by briefly outlining the basic problem you are discussing. In the same paragraph, state your thesis: what is your answer to the question you are posing? If you want, you also can include in your introductory paragraph the specific subjects you intend to discuss to support your thesis statement.

The introduction should be about one-half to two thirds of a page (125-200 words).

3. One of your supporting arguments, fully written out. Use your outline to structure one or two paragraphs developing each of your first two supporting arguments.

The supporting argument should be no more than 3/4 to 1 page (200-250 words) in length. Make sure that you have a clear and central controlling idea, and that you use specific evidence from Breen and/or the pamphlets to support your ideas.

4. Use endnotes where necessary, but no bibliography is required.

Suggestions for reading the documents:

1.  Make sure you have a clear sense of Breen's argument first.

2.  In the pamphlet exchange, avoid becoming entangled in the detailed arguments over taxation without representation. Instead think about the significance of James Otis' question "Who are WE?" What do these pamphlets tell us about what it means to be "British"? Who does Jenyns and Otis think is "British"?

3.  Think about the two declarations of rights. What rights did the colonial leaders who wrote these documents think they have, and where did those rights come from? To what extent did the colonists who wrote these declarations think of themselves as "British"? To what extent and in what ways are the 1765 and 1776 documents different?

Documents

• T. H. Breen, "Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising", Journal of American History (1997): 13-39.
• Soame Jenyns, "Objections to the Taxation...Briefly Considered", James Otis, "Consideration on Behalf of the Colonists", in Frank Freidel and Norman Pollack, eds., Builders of American Institutions (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), 55-61.
• "Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress, October 19, 1765", "The American Revolution - an .HTML project", 27 May 1997, <http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1751-1775/stampact/sa.htm> (15 June 2002).
• "The Virginia Declaration of Rights", "The American Revolution - an .HTML project", 13 May 1997, <http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/D/1776-1800/indepedence/virdor.htm> (15 June 2002).