As we head towards America 250 on 4 July 2026 (website here), I'm expecting that most of the commemorations and narratives will be - lazily - framed as being about forms of nationality, whereas in fact the story should be about liberty.
The people of the 13 British Colonies sought the full reinstatement of their legally-entitled liberties. London refused. Independence was a last resort in pursuit of those liberties. The American Revolution of 1776 was the natural outworking of the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Some months ago my friend Dr Jonathan Mattison asked me to pull together the mountain of sources I had been reading on the subject over the past year or two (many of which have appeared here as individual posts) for a detailed article that went online last week in the Journal of Orange History, which is published by the Museum of Orange Heritage. It's on this link, from pages 17 - 49. It's just over 11,000 words, including the footnotes.
It’s about as comprehensive as I could make it. As a collection of sources I hope it's of benefit to some people out there.
My final quote is from Michael Barone’s 2008 book –
“Americans were thus not rebelling against the Revolutionary settlement. They were seeking to preserve in their own states what they believed the Revolution of 1688-89 had established.”
Or, as Winston Churchill wrote in 1956 –
"The Declaration (of Independence) was in the main a restatement of the principles which had animated the Whig struggle against the later Stuarts and the English Revolution of 1688, and it now became the symbol and the rallying centre of the Patriot cause"
• Feel free to share with others you know who might be working on ‘America 250’ projects.
0 comments:
Post a Comment