Colonial America: A problem of Historiography

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Colonial America A problem of Historiography
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What is Historiography?

• The study of historical methods used in the
  writing of history
• A study of how writing on historical topics has
  changed over time, e.g. slavery, role of women,
  the American Revolution, etc.

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Major Questionsto consider

• Where when should we begin the study of
  colonial American history? 1492? 1607?
• What do we include? Who matters in history? Who
  should be the focus?
• When do we end the history of colonial America?
  1776 or beyond?
• What should be the narrative structure of
  colonial America? (History as story/fiction?)

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The Old School

• Dominated American historical writing until the
  1960s
• The story of America is a story of progress
  constant improvement (Whig interpretation of
  history)
• Euro-centric emphasis (British)
• Homogeneity of professional historians
• Praising American institutions

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Old School (cont.)

• Considered Native Americans to be a single,
  non-diverse people, obstacles to progress,
  primitive, stagnant, non-changing.
• Africans were considered only as slaves. Slavery
  as a monolithic institution.
• The study of women was ignored.
• Dead-white men.

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New School

• Origins in the progressive school of American
  historians (1890s-1950s)
• Progressive Historians believed the promise of
  America had been broken the American dream
  shattered by industrialization, racism,
  class-struggle.
• Marxist-interpretation of history
• Conflict rather than continuity
• Historical Relativism
• Presentism the progressive era

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Consensus Historians, 1950s

• Reaction to progressive historians
• A new consensus
• Defense of the West and impact of Cold War
  Ideology
• History as complex and anti-heroic

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The New Left, 1960s-?

• Colonial American history as the complex
  interactions of three worlds red, white, and
  black.
• Focus on women gender
• History from the bottom-up
• Social history
• Influence of social ethnic movements

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Examining Colonial American Historiography

• The existence of an area of free land, its
  continuous recession, and the advancement of
  American settlement westward, explain American
  development.These areas influenced our economic
  and political history the evolution of each into
  a higher stage has worked political
  transformations. But what constitutional
  historian has made any adequate attempt to
  interpret political facts in light of these
  social areas and changes?
• Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of
  the Frontier in American History, (1892).

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Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of
the Constitution

• The formation of the Constitution were taken by
  a small and active group of men immediately
  interested through their personal possessions in
  the outcome of their laborers. No popular vote
  was taken directly or indirectly on the
  proposition to call the Convention which drafted
  the Constitution. The Members of the Convention
  derived economic advantages from the
  establishment of a new system. The Constitution
  was essentially an economic document based upon
  the concept that the fundamental private rights
  of property are anterior to government and
  morally beyond the reach of popular majorities
  (1912).

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Vernon L. Parringtom, The Colonial Mind, 1620-1800

• Large Property Interests, like all 18th century
  realists, exhibited a frank property-consciousness
  that determined all their moves. They were aided
  by two outstanding characteristics of the 18th
  century mind an aristocratic psychology deeply
  ingrained through the long unchallenged rule of
  the gentry and the universal belief in the
  stake-in-society theory of government, evidenced
  by the general disfranchisement of non-property
  holders (1927).

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Thomas Bailey, The American Pageant

• The American Revolution, in a broad sense, was
  not the same thing as the American War of
  Independence. The War itself lasted only eight
  years. But the revolution lasted over a century
  and a half, and began when the first permanent
  settlers landed on the shores of America.
  American was a revolutionary force from the day
  of its discovery (1966).

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Samuel Elliot Morison, The Oxford History of the
American People

• There was no American nationalism or separatist
  feeling in the colonies prior to 1775. Americans
  were proud to be part of the British imperial
  system. Thus, there was nothing foreordained
  about the American Revolution (1965).

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S.E. Morison on slavery slaves

• Sambo, whose wrong-doings moved the
  abolitionists to wrath and tears, suffered less
  than any other class in the South affected by its
  peculiar institution. The majority of slaves
  were apparently happy. There was much to be said
  of slavery as a transitional status between
  barbarism and civilization. The Negro learned his
  masters language and to some degree accepted his
  moral and religious standards. In return, he
  contributed much besides his labor, music and
  humor for example, to American civilization
  (1935).

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More Morison on black studies

• It is the fashion for Negro intellectuals to
  describe their forebears as the most oppressed
  and exploited labor force in modern history, held
  down by fear and force, constantly striving from
  escape from slavery. The colored intellectual of
  the 1960s knows less about the plantation Negro
  of the 1840s than did many white masters of that
  era (1965).

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James Brooks, Captives Cousins

• In the Southwest Borderlands, indigenous and
  colonial practices joined to form a slave
  system in which victims symbolized social
  wealth, performed services for their masters, and
  produced material goods under the threat of
  violence. Unlike chattel slavery elsewhere in
  North America, borderland slavery found affinity
  with kin-based systems motivated less by a demand
  for units of labor than their desire for
  prestigious social units (1996).

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Woody Holton, Forced Founders Indians, Debtors,
Slaves the Making of the American Revolution

• From 1763-1776, Indians, merchants, slaves, and
  debtors helped propel free Virginians into the
  Independence movement. In responding to
  opportunities and pressures, slaves and farmers
  challenged the authority of the provincial
  gentry. The challenges indirectly helped induce
  gentlemen to turn the protests of 1774 into the
  Independence movement of 1776 (1999).

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Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers The
Revolutionary Generation

• The central events and achievements of the
  revolutionary era and the early republic were
  political. These events and achievements are
  historically significant because they shaped the
  subsequent history of the United States,
  including our own time. The central players in
  the drama were not marginal or peripheral
  figures, whose lives are more typical, but rather
  political leaders at the center of the national
  story who wielded power. Whats more, the shape
  and character of the political institutions were
  determined by a relatively small number of
  leaders (2000).