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The Declaration of Independence: A Global History

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It was long known that the U.S declaration of Independence inspired others including Haiti, New Zealand, Hungary and Rhodesia. This book is an attempt to survey a few of those and ask important questions about the nature of such declarations. It is nice little book although it is not encyclopedic. It does miss a few declarations that are obviously modeled on the American one and the book could have gone deeper to examine the way in which the U.S declaration influenced others and why it didnt influence some. That would have been an interesting aside, nevertheless this is a first step and it merely begs someone to complete the project.

Incisive and intelligently written, a quick and enjoyable read.

Seth J. Frantzman

Armitage's work, though far from comprehensive, is an excellent "conversation starter" regarding the immense influence the U.S. Declaration of Independence has exerted upon world movements towards self-empowerment. And the reader need not take Armitage's word alone as the gospel: the oblong volume includes a broad selection of "declarations of independence" from around the world, including those from such diverse locations as Liberia, Texas, and Israel.

Armitage analyzes the ideological influences writers have felt from Jefferson's document, and offers his interpretations regarding the importance of those influences. His work is a key discussion on an emerging field in American archival study.

However, this book is simply not long enough. Only half of the volume is devoted to Armitage's research. The remaining half is given over to sample declarations, Jefferson's rough and final drafts for the Second Continental Congress, a British rebuttal to the American document, and a table listing almost all independence pronouncements from 1776 to 1993. Armitage has opened the discussion--it remains for a further scholar, or perhaps Armitage himself--to take it to the next level.

This book offers a fresh perspective on what may be the most familiar document in American history. What David Armitage shows is that the Declaration quickly became an international document, a template for dozens, hundreds in the end, of other movements for national independence around the globe. From Vietnam to Palestine it seems the American Declaration became like a form letter nationalists could download and fill in the blanks according to whatever particular grievances supported their claim to independence. This is meant to be a succinct, focused argument about the influence of the Declaration around the globe and across time. It is written in a crisp, lucid style that students and general readers will find very accessible.

In this short but concise work, Armitage suggests the act of declaring independence was not only a novel and unprecedented act of state-making, but that many of the ideals imbued in the revolutionary rhetoric within the document were, themselves, a reflection of political perspectives from beyond the Atlantic Ocean. He focuses on the state-making message of the American Declaration instead of underscoring the natural rights of the individual citizen as historians have historically done. Jefferson's document was practical.

Despite its incontrovertible influence on global politics, not all nations have shared the political ideals of the American Declaration. Instead, Armitage rightly proposes that many nations used the American model merely as a template to promote their own political agendas to achieve statehood. In such cases, nations would find particular use out of the first and third paragraphs of the American Declaration calling for independence and the legal right for their states to exist while minimizing the second paragraph highlighting "natural rights" of their citizenry. Moreover, states that have liberated themselves from larger political bodies have, ironically, been unwilling to acquiesce to demands of independence from smaller polities within their new states.

Armitage compiles a list of reliable primary and secondary sources in his research. In addition to the U.S. Declaration and personal letters of some of the document's key drafters, his book includes the text of ten other unabridged declarations of independence from nations throughout the globe. His work also provides a helpful key detailing the date and what he suggests are sources of inspiration behind each of the world's nations which declared their independence since the United States did so in 1776. With these sources, Armitage provides students with an invaluable tool for discerning how the ideas of popular sovereignty and self-determination forged the consciousness of the American founders.

The book's first hundred pages are a moving and extraordinary account of the American Declaration of Independence. It confirms the author's ommand of American history and of the English language. If the book stopped there, and was issued as a mass-distribution, commemorative account, it may even be the best thus far.

But alas, the author's ambition gets the better of him and he insists on turning it into a 'Global History' of declarations of independence. That is in fact the subtitle of the book, and perhaps a hoped-for hook to make readers buy it. But the next forty pages quickly confirm that the author has neither the breadth of knowledge to deliver a complete history, leaving gaps that an elephant could walk through, nor the savvy to avoid emphasizing declarations of independence by Haiti, Venezuela, Philipines, Latvia, Hungary and others, none of which have been independent for any reasonable length of their history. Lost thus are the history of Australian, New Zealand or French independence, and other countries that have in fact been independent, although those at least find mention in appendices and in passing. What finds no mention at all is the largest democracy in the world, India, and its declaration of independence, which begins with the familiar words "We the People." In fact, in an exhaustive but unnecessary appendix of all the world's declarations of independence, India finds no mention at all, neither its initial declaration in 1931 nor its final one in 1947. The book then simply loses all credibility and completeness.

It appears therefore that the author David Armitage has relied too much on extraneous countries, studying which perhaps won him grants and fellowships, and has thus missed the elephants in the room, countries like Australia and India, which rarely attract funding or discussions in the hallowed halls of Harvard. The book so badly misses its promise that Harvard Press should reissue it as a collector's books, and then it should soar.

A strangely dry and thin analysis of the political afterlife of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. It reads like a professor's lecture notes that are slightly expanded and tidied-up for publication. One more book to be listed as a professional accomplishment for the Harvard teacher.

I did enjoy reading the reprinting of Jeremy Bentham's view of the great document shortly after it was issued in 1776.

I did not enjoy the physical size of this edition. I found its relative smallness made for an awkward reading experience.