Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination

by Joyce Appleby

Like dye cast into water, liberal assumptions colour everything American, from ideas about human nature to fears about big government. Not the dreaded L word of the 1988 presidential campaign, liberalism in its historical context emerged from the modern faith in free inquiry, natural rights, economic liberty, and democratic government. Expressed in the nation-building acts of revolution and constitution-writing, liberalism both structured and limited Americans' sense of reality for two centuries.

363 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1992

About the author

Joyce Oldham Appleby, Ph.D. (Claremont Graduate School, 1966; B.A., Stanford University, 1950), is professor of history at University of California, Los Angeles. She previously taught at San Diego State University, 1967–1981. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993, and was president of the Organization of American Historians (1991) and the American Historical Association (1997).

Reviews

[Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As much a meditation on historiography as it is scholarly history, this collection of essays published in a variety of journals over a period of fifteen or so years escapes the usual problems associated with such volumes. It is not just a grab bag of recycled hits. Rather, Appleby's collection is a sustained argument about the roots of liberalism and republicanism in early American history. There are a handful of themes that pop up across the collection that give it unity and clarity--the rejection of the revisionist view that Federalist-Republican debates simply reprised early eighteenth-century British arguments between Court and Country; the insistence that Jefferson's so-called agrarian politics was saturated with a forward-looking conception of man as an economic animal whose trade made him free rather than corrupted him; the excavation of an economic stream of thought that was forced underground in late seventeeth-century England, only to flower in the writings of Adam Smith--to name three. There are other themes that carry across the volume, in particular Appleby's careful thinking about the progress of historiography as it concerns republicanism in America. Her thoughts here on the work of Gordon Wood, J. G. A. Pocock, and Bernard Bailyn (and her nuanced rejection of Lance Banning's work) are incredibly useful. The writing throughout is clear and shows broad but lightly worn erudition. Unlike many essay collections, this one stands as a volume worth reading in its own right from cover to cover, especially for anyone concerned with the issues laid out in the title.