Product Description With these character sketches of key figures of the American Revolution and illuminating probes of its circumstances, Bernard Bailyn reveals the ambiguities, complexities, and uncertainties of the founding generation as well as their achievements.
Using visual documentation—portraits, architecture, allegorical engravings—as well as written sources, Bailyn, one of our most esteemed historians, paints a complex picture of that distant but still remarkably relevant world. He explores the powerfully creative effects of the Founders’ provincialism and lays out in fine detail the mingling of gleaming utopianism and tough political pragmatism in Thomas Jefferson’s public career, and the effect that ambiguity had on his politics, political thought, and present reputation. And Benjamin Franklin emerges as a figure as cunning in his management of foreign affairs and of his visual image as he was amiable, relaxed, and amusing in his social life.
Bailyn shows, too, why it is that the Federalist papers—polemical documents thrown together frantically, helter-skelter, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in a fierce political battle two hundred years ago—have attained canonical status, not only as a penetrating analysis of the American Constitution but as a timeless commentary on the nature of politics and constitutionalism.
Professor Bailyn concludes, in a wider perspective, with an effort to locate the effect of the Founders’ imaginative thought on political reformers throughout the Atlantic world. Precisely how their principles were received abroad, Bailyn writes, is as ambiguous as the personalities of the remarkably creative pro-
vincials who founded the American nation. [ ^Top ]
Tight and compelling
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I've long been a fan of Mr. Bailyn---Ideological Origins of the American Revolution was one of my first in-depth forays on the topic.
This is an interesting little book, very similar is some respects to Joseph Ellis' little book on John Adams called, Passionate Sage. Bailyn stays on topic and rolls back the ambiguities (although, I believe he's a little too fawning towards Jefferson, and little short on Franklin). The book answered many questions I'd had but never knew how to find. Especially interesting are the photos that depict topics germane---particularly to Franklin's cultivation of his "image" in pre-Revolutionary France.
The book earned 4 stars with the section on The Federalist Papers---his basic overview is illuminating and instructive (for the uninitiated, Mr. Bailyn's brief history would be invaluable). He provides several detailed objections by the Anti-Federalists (interestingly, most of the fears detailed in this book by the A-Fs have come to pass in the modern era) and provides much needed context to "why" the Papers were written in the first place.
Very good book. Recommended.
An Interesting Short Work, but Read "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" Instead
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For more than forty years no one has been a more persistent student of the ideology of the American Revolutionary generation than Bernard Bailyn. His Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" (1967), served as my entrée to his ideas and it remains a masterwork. In it he made the case that the nation's founders were radicals with a difference, committed to an ideology predicated on the radical social and political thought of the English Civil War and emphasizing the rights of the citizens and opposition to the abuse of authority. It was a breath of fresh air when I first read the book in graduate school in the early 1980s. "To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders" offers something of a coda to that seminal book. It is a fine work overall, but one that offers little that is new beyond his earlier efforts. It is, however, a wonderful short work that offers insight into discrete aspects of the revolutionary world of the founders.
In "To Begin the World Anew," really a collection of five essays prepared over several years, Bailyn continues to emphasize the power of the republican ideology to shape the course of history and lays out these themes in discussions of the American revolution as a creative enterprise, Thomas Jefferson and the paradox of freedom and slavery, Benjamin Franklin in Paris, the power of the "Federalist Papers," and the role of American revolutionary ideals on other democratic efforts worldwide. As always, Bailyn is fascinated by the delta that always exists between the ideal motivating action and the less than perfect implementation of it. Accordingly, the knife-edge dichotomy between the argument for the Constitution as a means of creating a stable and productive nation is balanced against very real concerns for the rights of individuals. Bailyn explicitly probes this problem in his essay on the "Federalist Papers" but also does so in his other essays in this volume.
In general, "To Begin the World Anew" is a respectable restatement of ideas previously well expressed in Bailyn's writings. If one wants to read only one work by Bernard Bailyn for a sense of his thought on the Revolutionary era, however, the appropriate book remains "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution."
not a classic, but solid
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While not groundbreaking or monumental, To Begin the World Anew is still a nice little book that offers some keen insights into the American Revolution, particularly at Bailyn's familiar level of ideas. Perhaps better than any other living historian (at least that I've read), Bailyn is particularly good at fleshing out themes. If there's a single historical theme to this work, it's the contrast, and sometimes competition, between idealism and realism, between the lofty ideas that animated the Revolution and putting them into practice in a way that works. The theme of the book, however, Bailyn's reason for writing it is to encourage a continued examination of the nation's founding.Bailyn opens with an essay on provincialism. America, he argues, was a provincial backwater, distant from more cosmopolitan Europe but still somewhat connected to continental culture. Hence, America was more receptive to experimental and new political ideas. Bailyn uses, to wonderful effect, the homes of the period as well as portraits to highlight these contrasts between Americans and Europeans. From there, Bailyn offers two essays: one on Jefferson and the other on Franklin. In both, the idealism-realism dichotomy is present. For Jefferson, it is in the sphere of domestic politics and institutions (and, indeed, within his very character). Bailyn uses Franklin to show how it played out in foreign policy; he also includes European portrayals of Franklin in art to show how he was received there.The fourth essay is on The Federalist, about the context of its writing by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay and particularly about how the papers have been used over the centuries by the Supreme Court--ever increasingly, as it turns out. (The essay on the same topic in Bailyn's Faces of Revolution is much better.) The final essay completes the trajectory of the book; where things began with American provincialism, they end with American constitutionalism and related ideas fanning out into Europe (and Latin America). While this last essay gives the book a nice sense of closure, it is the weakest of the lot and does little beyond drop the names of Europeans who were writing about American political ideas and adopting--or trying to--them in their native countries.Overall, this is a solid collection of essays that contributed to my understanding of the period. It is a worthwhile read.
Meditations
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Bernard Bailyn is an important scholar of the American Revolution, and most anything of his is worth checking out. His "Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" is immensely valuable, but I have also enjoyed his smaller collections of essays, including "Faces of the Revolution" and this new title, "To Begin the World Anew."In this book, Bailyn offers meditations on a number of different Revolution-related subjects, including very interesting pieces on Benjamin Franklin's manipulation of his own image in pre-Revolutionary France, the challenges Jefferson faced in applying pure political theory to the give-and-take of daily politics, and the impact of the American Revolution on Europe and Latin America (it's greater, Bailyn argues, than many people believe it to have been).Most interesting to me, and perhaps most immediately applicable to modern politics -- if that's something you're looking for -- is his chapter on "The Federalist Papers." Bailyn notes that "The Federalist Papers" have acquired a level of sanctity approaching even that of the Constitution itself. They are often cited in Supreme Court decisions, and are seen by many as perhaps the definitive explication of what the Founders truly intended the Constitution to mean and achieve. And yet, as Bailyn points out, "The Federalist Papers" were newspaper columns, written in haste and for polemical purposes by a group of men who themselves didn't agree on a number of important matters. Bailyn's narrative of how these writings were elevated from political journalism to secular Scripture is very interesting. The implications of the ways today's government has veered far from the intention of the Founders should set us all to thinking, as should the author's clear rejection of the modern (and Lincolnian) argument that the nation preceded the states and not vice-versa (p. 114).Bailyn also has a number of larger themes that are touched on, to a greater or lesser degree, in each of these essays. One is the influence on the Founding generation of occupying the political, social, and geographic periphery of the Western world, and how that both fueled and emphasized the divisions between colony and metropolis. In a day when the Founders are often attacked and derided -- or worse -- for the ways in which they failed to anticipate twenty-first century political and social sensibilities, Bailyn again urges us (as he has elsewhere) to recognize the Founders' energy and imagination. We should be willing to give them credit for being able to step as far outside the orthodoxies of their time as they in fact did.As ever, Bernard Bailyn's writing is both thought-provoking and entertaining. Readers who already have a certain familiarity with the Founding and the Constitution will, I think, enjoy and appreciate these meditations.
How the North America provicials created a new world order.
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This is a hard read for such a short book. The subject matter in these essays show how the provicials (Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton) created a new world order with their ideas and writings. Such writings as the Federalist papers are now more quoted today than they were when they were created. These ideas revolutionized how other countries changed their societies. That is the essence of this book.
Bailyn describes these ideas in this short book. The concepts are good in terms of how the founders poured the foundations which the United States stands on today. What is missing is how other events (the American and French Revolutions) also changed the Atlantic states. Ideas can help change societies, but force and political power have more relevance in change.
I would not suggest this book to the average reader interested in the American Revolution. These concepts are perhaps too deep for the average reader. Bailyn is writing for the academic audience.
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