Customer Reviews

To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Forty years ago, when I was squandering my education as a Harvard undergraduate, Bernard Bailyn was a rising star in that university's history department faculty. His immediate predecessor as the dean of Harvard's American studies scholars had been Perry Miller, an intellectual historian who, before his death in 1963, remade the study of American colonial history with his analyses of Puritan ideas gleaned largely from sermons. Indeed, American history and literature, on that campus at that time, was pretty much devoted to the study of big ideas, and not to the study of political, economic, or social events or movements or of artistic form.

Bailyn was one of a new generation of historians who sought out ship registers, merchant's accounting ledgers, estate inventories, and other quantifiable data series, previously ignored, to tell their stories of how, in the late colonial and early national periods, ordinary Americans made decisions of lasting significance. For the next 30 years the study of American history followed Bailyn's lead. Still, Bailyn himself never fully abandoned his grounding in intellectual history. His oeuvre, for example, includes the highly respected "Ideological Origins of the American Revolution" and a study of pamphleteering in the revolutionary period.

With "To Begin the World Anew," Bailyn offers students of American history a thin book consisting of five essays reworked from speeches which he has given over several years. The essays are surely well-written, but they break no new ground. Readers who favor intellectual history may find them interesting enough. Readers who favor quantitative historical analysis will find them lacking.

Thus, for example, taking his cue from an essay by art historian Kenneth Clark, Bailyn writes that Jefferson, Franklin, and the other American "founders were provincials, alive to the values of a greater world, but not, they knew, of it -- comfortable in a lesser world but aware of its limitations. . . . For many -- the ablest, best informed, and most ambitious -- the result was a degree of rootlessness, of alienation either from the higher sources of culture or from the familiar local environment. . . . But the effect of their provincialism ran deeper than that. As their identity as a separate people took form through the Revolutionary years they came to see that their remoteness from the metropolitan world gave them a moral advantage in politics." (31-34) I enjoyed Bailyn's discussion and photographs of revolutionary era mansions and portraiture, in England and America, which he uses to illustrate this point. For my taste, however, his concepts of "provincialism," "rootlessness," "alienation," and "moral advantage" (like his concepts of "realism" and "idealism" in foreign policy) are too amorphous, and the analysis too formulaic, to much rely upon.

I am undoubtedly still squandering that education, but I would suggest borrowing, and not buying, this book. Robert E. Olsen

Historical research of the highest quality is frequently driven by a determination to answer questions of compelling importance. That is especially true of this volume in which Bailyn offers five separate but related essays which, together, examine a theme which its subtitle suggests: the nature and significance of "the genius and ambiguities of the American founders." In his Preface, Bailyn identifies two convictions which remain constant throughout all five chapters: that those founders were "truly creative people, and that their creative efforts, the generation-long enterprise that elevated these obscure people from their marginal world to the center of Western civilization, were full of inconsistencies, logical dilemmas, and unresolved problems."

With regard to questions of compelling importance, several can be summarized as follows:

1. Which ambiguities "beset" Jefferson's career? What were their nature and impact?

2. What is revealed by the "strange interplay between lofty idealism and cunning realism in Franklin's spectacular success in Paris"? Meanwhile, what can be learned from the interplay between Franklin and Adams?

3. What is the significance of the fact that the authors of the Federalist papers struggled to reconcile "the need for a powerful, coercive public authority with the preservation of the private liberties for which the Revolution had been fought"? To what extent was such a reconciliation achieved?

These are indeed compelling questions, ones which probably need to be asked today as our nation struggles to decide what its appropriate role is in the global community. After I read this book but before I began to formulate this review, I read Joseph Stiglitz's Globalization and Its Discontents. In it, Stiglitz offers a heartfelt but rigorous examination of globalization, "the removal of barriers to free trade and the closer integration of national economies," asserting that it can and should be a force for good "and that it has the potential [in italics] to enrich everyone in the world, particularly the poor." However, given how globalization has been managed thus far, it should be rethought. Focusing primarily on the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank) during the past decade, Stiglitz responds to the basic question: "Why has globalization -- a force that has brought so much good -- become so controversial?"

I had Stiglitz's book in mind as I re-read Bailyn's. Granted, no one knew in the late-eighteenth century that the coalition of thirteen colonies (if it achieved independence) would one day become the single most powerful nation in the world. For me, the single greatest benefit of Bailyn's is his analysis of the nature and significance of "the genius and ambiguities of the American founders," how they created a foundation on which the original thirteen colonies evolved over more than two centuries into the 50 states and their federal government which now, during arguably the most volatile period since the 1770s, struggles to the support the natural rights of humanity by advocating and supporting what Jefferson once referred to as "the sacred fire of freedom and self-government" throughout the world. Challenges of various kinds will, of course, continue to present themselves. Bailyn duly acknowledges that reality while suggesting that "I think an equally important challenge is our own responsibility to probe the character of our constitutional establishment, as the eighteenth century provincials probed the establishment they faced, to recognize that for many in our own time and within our own culture, it has become scholastic in nits elaboration, self-absorbed, self-centered, and in significant ways distant from the ordinary facts of life."

Bailyn's brilliant examination of "the genius and ambiguities of the American founders" is in essence an examination of the heritage of those founders, revealing the humanity of their talents and imperfections, to be sure, but also suggesting the standards of measurement by which we determine the extent to which we have proven worthy of that heritage.

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.

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."

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.

Introspective and well-written essays by Bernard Bailyn, as we have come to expect. Though his work is always five-star, this one is a bit more slow and lecture-sounding than his previous scholarly works, and, curiously, attempts to countermand the lecturey characteristic with various types of iconography. If you come away liking that sort of thing, or like history that is less lecturey, after reading this wonderful work by Bernard Bailyn, I would recommend you also try Norman Thomas Remick's rendition of "beginning the world anew" called "West Point: Character Leadership Education..." which cleverly posits the foundation of West Point as a metaphor for the foundation of the United States of America and untangles the founders' deeds and philosophy, particularly Thomas Jefferson's.

I've read American history on and off for forty years, and even spent four years teaching it at the college level (pray for my poor students), but I still marvel at what I learn from talented historians like Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and Joseph Ellis. Bailyn is a venerable giant in the field, and this collection of essays reflects his years of scholarship. Every essay in this book delighted me with Bailyn's insights. The most illuminating essays, on the Federalist Papers and on realism and idealism, astounded me. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to dig deeper into our country's heritage.

This book should be a must read for every high school American history student.

This very short book has more information in it about the founding of the United States than all the other books I have read while studying and reading about American history over the decades. Thank you Bernard Bailyn. If you don't have an appreciation for the risk the country's founders took, have no idea how clever a diplomate Ben Franklin was, have never read any of the anti-federalist papers, this book will introduce you to all of this in various chapters. But the thinking behind Bailyn's theory of what allowed these men to create a totally new form of government is even more fascinating. It was an amazing time with an amazing group of imperfect, but thinking men -- men who could think beyond conventional wisdom and who, fortunately, were around to carry the country forward for close to a half century.

I can't remember if Bailyn touched on this but Jackson was the first president not involved with the country's founding. When I thought of the changes that occured beginning with his presidency, I stopped for a moment and thanked the founding fathers for what they did and for staying around to direct the country for near a half century.

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.

Bailyn has written a thoughtful treatise on some of the psyche of some of our founding fathers. Though this book is not quite on par with some of Bailyn's other work (such as The Ideological Origins of the American Revoluation), it is still fascinating read. Bailyn writes on several subjects and ties them together under his hypothesis that our nation's founding was accompanied by a series of contrasts.

First, he writes about how the founders were provincials, relative to European society. Their provincial nature, posits Bailyn, helped the founders develop a pragmatic approach to life. He writes that one of the reasons that the Americans were able to reject some of what Europe considered unquestionable was due to the fact that Europeans generally rejected the Americans for their provincial nature.

He also writes about some of the personal contrasts in the persona of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, Bailyn writes, hated slavery, but freed only a few of his personal slaves. At different times in his career, Jefferson worked to restrict the number of slave states and then worked to support the expansion of slave states. At times Jefferson was regarded as one of America's staunchest supporters of the free press. However, the same man also wrote that suppression of the press would do less damage than the press itself. Interestingly, Jefferson initially rejected the Constitution, before becoming one of its principal advocates. Though terribly fearful of powerful offices, Jefferson overstepped the bounds of his own presidency.

Using these, and other, examples, Bailyn writes that our country was ultimately founded on contrasts. The founding fathers, fearful of the power of government, created a powerful government as well as forces to control that power. Not just the ideas of the founders were idiosyncratic, writes Bailyn, but also were the founders themselves.

I highly recommend this book to thoughtful students of American history.