BFW Revisited: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
About this episode
Professor Bernard Bailyn discusses the ideological origins of the American Revolution and critiques purely economic explanations.
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 RECOMMENDED NEXT EPISODES 🎧 Episode 294: 1774: The Long Year of American Revolution 🎧 Episode 311: Religion and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 307: History and the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 325: Everyday People of the American Revolution 🎧 Episode 407: Patrick Henry 🎧 Episode 434: The Frank Borthers: Freeborn Black…
People in this episode
Host: Liz Covart
Guest: Bernard Bailyn
Topics covered
- American Revolution
- ideological origins
- historical analysis
- colonial America
- government power
Keywords
- American Revolution
- Bernard Bailyn
- ideological origins
- taxation without representation
- colonial dependence
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Ben Franklin’s World
Books & works: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
More episodes of Ben Franklin's World
- 450 Whose Revolution? The Delaware and the War for Independence
- BFW Revisited: The Brafferton Indian School, Part 1
- 449 Stealing America: Indigenous Slavery and the American Revolution
- BFW Revisited: American Expansion & the Political Economy of Plunder
- 448 The Declaration of Independence as American Scripture
- BFW Revisited Threads of Power
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