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The American Revolution was a rebellion and political revolution in the Thirteen Colonies, which saw colonists initiate a war for independence against the Kingdom of Great Britain. Colonial separatist leaders who had originally sought more autonomy within the British political system as British subjects, assembled to establish a new national government following the recognition of their independence which resulted in the creation of the United States of America.
A republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica, is a state in which political power rests with the public through their representatives—in contrast to a monarchy.
In political philosophy, Republicanism is a western political ideology that encompasses a range of ideas from civic virtue, political participation, harms of corruption, positives of mixed constitution, rule of law, and others. Historically, it emphasizes the idea of self-governance and ranges from the rule of a representative minority or aristocracy to popular sovereignty. It has had different definitions and interpretations which vary significantly based on historical context and methodological approach.
The Whigs were a political party in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and the 1850s, the Whigs contested power with their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the Liberal Party with the Peelites and Radicals in the 1850s. Many Whigs left the Liberal Party in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Conservative Party in 1912.
James Harrington was an English political theorist of classical republicanism. He is best known for his controversial publication The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656). This work was an exposition of an ideal constitution, a utopia, designed to facilitate the development of the English republic established after the regicide, the execution of Charles I in 1649.
Bernard Bailyn was an American historian, author, and academic specializing in U.S. Colonial and Revolutionary-era History. He was a professor at Harvard University from 1953. Bailyn won the Pulitzer Prize for History twice. In 1998 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected him for the Jefferson Lecture. He was a recipient of the 2010 National Humanities Medal.
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Whiggism is a political philosophy that grew out of the Parliamentarian faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651). The Whigs advocated the supremacy of Parliament, tolerance of Protestant dissenters, and opposition to a "Papist" on the throne, especially James II or his descendants. It is associated with early conservative liberalism.
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John Trenchard was an English writer and Commonwealthman.
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The Patriot Whigs, later the Patriot Party, were a group within the Whig Party in Great Britain from 1725 to 1803. The group was formed in opposition to the government of Robert Walpole in the House of Commons in 1725, when William Pulteney and seventeen other Whigs joined with the Tory Party in attacks against the ministry. By the mid-1730s, there were over one hundred opposition Whigs in the Commons, many of whom embraced the Patriot label. For many years, they provided a more effective opposition to the Walpole administration than the Tories were.
The Hutchinson letters affair was an incident that increased tensions between the colonists of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and the British government prior to the American Revolution.
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution is a 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning book of history by Bernard Bailyn. It is considered one of the most influential studies of the American Revolution published during the 20th century.
Country Party was the name employed in the Kingdom of England by political movements which campaigned in opposition to the Court Party.
A revolutionary republic is a form of government whose main tenets are popular sovereignty, rule of law, and representative democracy. It is based in part on the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers, and was favored by revolutionaries during the Age of Revolution. A revolutionary republic tends to arise from the formation of a provisional government after the overthrow of an existing state and political regime. It often takes the form of a revolutionary state, which represents the will of its constituents.
Caroline Robbins or Caroline Herben was a British historian who was a professor at Bryn Mawr College.
References
- ↑ Caroline Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development, and Circumstance of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies (1959)
- ↑ Thomas L. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the America Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 30.
- ↑ Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Cambridge MA, 1967).