The Royalist Revolution
Monarchy and the American Founding
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati History Prize, Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey
Finalist, George Washington Prize
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2015
Generations of students have been taught that the American Revolution was a revolt against royal tyranny. In this revisionist account, Eric Nelson argues that a great many of our “founding fathers” saw themselves as rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. The Royalist Revolution interprets the patriot campaign of the 1770s as an insurrection in favor of royal power—driven by the conviction that the Lords and Commons had usurped the just prerogatives of the monarch.
“The Royalist Revolution is a thought-provoking book, and Nelson is to be commended for reviving discussion of the complex ideology of the American Revolution. He reminds us that there was a spectrum of opinion even among the most ardent patriots and a deep British influence on the political institutions of the new country.”
—Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Wall Street Journal
“A scrupulous archaeology of American revolutionary thought.”
—Thomas Meaney, The Nation
“A powerful double-barrelled challenge to historiographical orthodoxy.”
—Colin Kidd, London Review of Books
“[A] brilliant and provocative analysis of the American Revolution.”
—John Brewer, New York Review of Books
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This deeply scholarly book from Nelson, professor of government at Harvard, continues in new dress an argument that's existed since the 1770s: whether the United States came into existence in opposition to Parliament and its ministers or in opposition to the King. If the former, then there was little worry about a strong executive in the revolutionary era, and by extension the argument would follow that there shouldn't be a worry today. Embroiling himself in an active debate among scholars, Nelson comes down squarely on the side of those who argue that the American Revolution was a "revolution against a legislature, not against a king." Because the Whigs of 1776 were opposing the British legislature, he argues, the Founders never turned their backs on the executive function. Instead, they argued over what powers to give it. Accordingly, the debates over the Constitution in 1787 and 1788 were about the American version of the royal prerogative what became the American presidency. The result was, and is, an executive branch whose powers are enshrined in the Constitution itself the "successful conclusion of a twenty-year campaign in favor of prerogative power." Sure to fire up an old debate, Nelson's book constitutes an important contribution to the literature on early American constitutionalism.
