|
Let me suggest John Phillip Reid's 4 volume Constitutional History of the American Revolution. I haven't read very much of it (yet), but interestingly it portrays the colonies as being in an intractable dispute more with the British parliament than with the king. Gross oversimplification: The English Civil War was not too far in the past, and the parliament was unwilling to consider what might otherwise have been an achievable resolution -- a commonwealth in which the American colonies were united to Britain by common allegiance to the king. Such a resolution would have given the king a new source of power independent of the British parliament, namely revenues from the American colonies that might be approved by an American parliament. Preventing the king from regaining power that had been taken from the Crown (during the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution) was parliament's overriding concern. If I remember correctly, Reid notes that at one point the American forces (surrounding the British forces in Boston) identified themselves as being on the king's side in a dispute with parliament.
There is a summary of Reid's thesis at the end (I believe) of volume 4.
Mark S. Scarberry Pepperdine University School of Law
-----Original Message-----
Can anyone
suggest scholarship describing the beginning
of the King's tyranny over the American colonies? (Alternatively, when
did the colonists begin to resent English rule? Was it a discrete event--such
as the Stamp Act--or, what seems much more likely, did it develop slowly?
If so, when did this process begin? I'm interested more in cultural history
than political history, but I'll take whatever I can get.) More importantly,
when did the colonists acquire (develop, create) the idea of a centralized government? Off-list replies
are fine. Thanks in advance. |
- Re: Centralized Government and Tyranny James Maule
- Centralized Government and Tyranny Robert Justin Lipkin
- Re: Centralized Government and Tyranny Parry, John
- Scarberry, Mark
