Progressive Historiography
This paper will focus on progressive historians of the American war for independence. The wording of the title foreshadows my conclusions, but please bear with me nonetheless; for I had to call this paper something...
Another word of introduction: this paper is written with a specific focus. That is, one must decide the meaning of "progressive historiography." It can mean either the history written by "progressive historians," or it can mean history written by historians of the Progressive era of American history and shortly after. I have chosen a focus more in keeping with the latter interpretation, if for no other reason than it provides a useful compare-and-contrast "control" literature. Moreover, it allows me to duck the knotty problem …show more content…
He claimed that the geography of New England made for revolutionary thought among small-holders and freemen that was not so evident among those in the tidewater South. But the colonists were "different sorts" to begin with; the Pilgrims and Puritans of the North were outcasts before they came across the Atlantic. The middle-staters of Pennsylvania�--the Quakers�--and especially Maryland�--Catholics, Huguenots, and Presbyterians�--were already in search of a place where they could be different and be at least quasi-independent. To lay the responsibility for the revolution on mountains and streams, thereby ignoring the nature of the people before they arrived, is a bit much to swallow. Were the colonists changed by the land, or were the human changes to the land merely a reflection of the ideas the colonists had with them already, and of the institutional-cultural heritage of these people? At the very least, it is a chicken-and-egg question, but to me it seems that the latter argument is the accurate one.
In this same vein, Jameson cites the end of primogeniture as a social-revolutionary aspect of the war. To illustrate the inaccuracy of this interpretation, one need only mention that primogeniture was abolished in Britain over time without a war at all. It seems that the trend away from primogeniture was already afoot in the British world (of which the colonists were a part, and of which even in 1776 most wished to remain). War or no war, primogeniture would almost certainly have receded, as it did, and has, in virtually all European
Another word of introduction: this paper is written with a specific focus. That is, one must decide the meaning of "progressive historiography." It can mean either the history written by "progressive historians," or it can mean history written by historians of the Progressive era of American history and shortly after. I have chosen a focus more in keeping with the latter interpretation, if for no other reason than it provides a useful compare-and-contrast "control" literature. Moreover, it allows me to duck the knotty problem …show more content…
He claimed that the geography of New England made for revolutionary thought among small-holders and freemen that was not so evident among those in the tidewater South. But the colonists were "different sorts" to begin with; the Pilgrims and Puritans of the North were outcasts before they came across the Atlantic. The middle-staters of Pennsylvania�--the Quakers�--and especially Maryland�--Catholics, Huguenots, and Presbyterians�--were already in search of a place where they could be different and be at least quasi-independent. To lay the responsibility for the revolution on mountains and streams, thereby ignoring the nature of the people before they arrived, is a bit much to swallow. Were the colonists changed by the land, or were the human changes to the land merely a reflection of the ideas the colonists had with them already, and of the institutional-cultural heritage of these people? At the very least, it is a chicken-and-egg question, but to me it seems that the latter argument is the accurate one.
In this same vein, Jameson cites the end of primogeniture as a social-revolutionary aspect of the war. To illustrate the inaccuracy of this interpretation, one need only mention that primogeniture was abolished in Britain over time without a war at all. It seems that the trend away from primogeniture was already afoot in the British world (of which the colonists were a part, and of which even in 1776 most wished to remain). War or no war, primogeniture would almost certainly have receded, as it did, and has, in virtually all European