1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910337864303321

Autore

Jankovic Ivan

Titolo

The American Counter-Revolution in Favor of Liberty : How Americans Resisted Modern State, 1765–1850 / / by Ivan Jankovic

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2019

ISBN

3-030-03733-9

Edizione

[1st ed. 2019.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XI, 279 p. 1 illus.)

Disciplina

320.973

323.44097309033

Soggetti

America - Politics and government

World politics

Political science

American Politics

Political History

Political Theory

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

1. The American Revolution as the Last European Peasants’ Rebellion -- 2. Consent, Representation and Liberty: America as the Last Medieval Society -- 3. Shades of Anarchy: The Concept of Lawful Rebellion in America -- 4. Men of Little Faith Facing the Modern State: The Country Party Ideology in Great Britain -- 5. When in the Course of Human Events -- Hobbes, Locke and the Long Parliament against America -- 6. The Great Derailment: Philadelphia Putsch of 1787 and the Coming of the American State -- 7. 1776 Strikes Back – Antifederalist Critics of the Constitution -- 8. The Compact Theory of the Union – A Revolution within a Form -- 9. Free Market in a Small Republic – Economic Doctrines of Jeffersonians and Jacksonians -- 10. The Last Stand: John C. Calhoun -- 11. Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

This book presents the case that the origins of American liberty should not be sought in the constitutional-reformist feats of its “statesmen” during the 1780s, but rather in the political and social resistance to their efforts. There were two revolutions occurring in the late 18th



century America: the modern European revolution “in favour of government,” pursuing national unity, “energetic” government and centralization of power (what scholars usually dub “American founding”); and a conservative, reactionary counter-revolution “in favour of liberty,” defending local rights and liberal individualism against the encroaching political authority. This is a book about this liberal counter-revolution and its ideological, political and cultural sources and central protagonists. The central analytical argument of the book is that America before the Revolution was a stateless, spontaneous political order that evolved culturally, politically and economically in isolation from the modern European trends of state-building and centralization of power. The book argues, then, that a better model for understanding America is a “decoupled modernization” hypothesis, in which social modernity is divested from the politics of modern state and tied with the pre-modern social institutions.