Title: Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution
Abstract: F any catch phrase is to characterize work being done on I American Revolution by this generation of historians, it will probably be the American Revolution considered as an intellectual movement.' For we now seem to be fully involved in a phase of writing about Revolution in which thought of Revolutionaries, rather than their social and economic interests, has become major focus of research and analysis. This recent emphasis on ideas is not of course new, and indeed right from beginning it has characterized almost all our attempts to understand Revolution. The ideas of a period which Samuel Eliot Morison and Harold Laski once described as, next to English revolutionary decades of seventeenth century, most fruitful era in history of Western political thought could never be completely ignored in any phase of our history writing.2 It has not been simply inherent importance of Revolutionary ideas, those principles of freedom,3 that has continually attracted attention of historians. It has been rather unusual nature of Revolution and constant need to explain what on face of it seems inexplicable that has compelled almost all interpreters of Revolution, including participants themselves, to stress its predominantly intellectual character and hence its uniqueness among Western revolutions. Within context of Revolutionary historiography one great effort to disparage significance of ideas in Revolution-an effort which dominated our history writing in first half of twentieth century-
Publication Year: 1966
Publication Date: 1966-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 71
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