The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia) (Paperback)

by Gordon S. Wood (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Gordon S. Wood--winner of the Pulitzer Prize and professor of American history at Brown University--had no idea what he was getting into when he began this 653-page book. Innocently, he wanted to write a "monographic analysis of constitution-making in the Revolutionary era." Little did he know he would discover an intellectual world where a complete transformation of political thought was occurring, one that would create "a distinctly American system of politics." As Wood explains, "Beneath the variety and idiosyncrasies of American opinion there emerged a general pattern of beliefs about the social process--a set of common assumptions about history, society, and politics that connected and made significant seemingly discrete and unrelated ideas. Really for the first time I began to glimpse what late eighteenth-century Americans meant when they talked about living in an enlightened age." This original study of the American political system is a strong contribution to the scholarly studies of the events surrounding the nation's independence. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
As a synthesis of modern scholarship on the Revolution, this important book has no rival, and it is much more than that. I admire the clarity and grace with which Countryman demonstrates how the changes of the Revolutionary era went beyond institutions, affecting the lives of all Americans, indeed transforming the character of American life and culture. I can think of no work I would recommend with greater enthusiasm to readers seeking an introduction to that wonderfully complex and important event. -- Pauline Maier, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The library shelves groan with books on the American Revolution. Yet this brief account is the first to offer a balanced view of how the Revolution was made by a variety of social groups--ordinary farmers and artisans as well as merchants and lawyers, women as well as men, blacks as well as whites--and how, in turn, these groups were transformed by the Revolutionary experience. -- Gary B. Nash, University of California, Los Angeles --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 675 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (March 18, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807847232
• ISBN-13: 978-0807847237
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #100,221 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, February 19, 2004

By	R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This outstanding book is generally regarded as fundamental to understanding the American Revolution. Wood immersed himself in contemporary writings including a huge array of political pamphlets, sermons, letters, and other texts in an attempt to reconstruct the thinking of the people who made the Revolution and the Constitution. Wood begins with a reconstruction of how colonial Americans perceived the political organization of their societies, their relationship with Britain, and how they conceived politics in general. The initial parts of the book parallel and draw from Bernard Bailyn's outstanding book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Indeed, much of Wood's book can be seen as sequel to Bailyn's book.
Wood begins with a reconstruction of the pre-Revolutionary conception of politics. Like Bailyn, Wood reconstructs this as a compound of several elements but dominated by certain general Enlightenment concepts and the specific framework developed by dissident 18th century British Whig intellectuals. Basic concepts included the idea that political structure reflected basic social structures, that the 'people' embodied by parliamentary representation were opposed and oppressed by the Crown, and an obsession with 'corruption' induced by abuse of the executive power of the Crown.
The successful conclusion of the Revolution, however, did not produce the outcome predicted by this conception of politics. The resulting confederation and states were perceived by many American intellectuals as dominated by greed and self-interest, there was an absence of the expected moral regeneration, and there were increasing concerns about the power of state legislatures causing both abuse of minority rights and threats to social order.
The reaction to these problems produced a wholesale revision of American's conceptions of politics. In the period leading up to the formulation of the Constitution, many ideas that we accept as basic were formulated. The nascent and later explicit Federalists severed the coupling between social and political organization. This gave government an essentially independent role and represented a form of social engineering because the Federalists essentially depended on constructed institutions to guarantee social success rather than the prior emphasis on public virtue. The ideas of constitutionialism, large republics, delegation of sovereignty, mixed government with responsibility divided between states and the Federal government, and emphasis on social contracts as a source of authority all stem from this period.
Wood is careful to emphasize some particularly interesting aspects of this process. In some respects, the Federalist drive to constitutionalism was a reactionary act on the part of traditional elites who felt they were losing out in excessively egalitarian world created by the Revolution. The process was widely diffused. Important and generally recognized figures like Madison and James Wilson figure prominently in the story but Wood demonstrates how a host of other figures, many now obscure, contributed to and articulated this process.
In a sense, there were 2 American Revolutions. The first being actual revolt from the British Empire and the second being the dramatic change in political thought and institutions that followed the successful conclusion of that revolt. Wood does a wonderful job of delineating how this second revolution occurred.

52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The authoritative book on the aftermath of the Revolution, December 17, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787 (Paperback)

Gordon Wood's celebrated book is the story of the way people thought about themselves and the revolution they had made. It explains in great detail the initial failures of majoritarian democracy and the development of constitutionalism. A glance at the footnotes reveals the genuine source of this book's authority: Professor Wood has drawn his narrative and his conclusions from original sources--newspaper articles, letters, and diaries of the period. The only complaint I have is the glaring omission of any mention of slavery. That word doesn't appear in the index or anywhere else in this book. This is all the more remarkable in light of our growing awareness of just how deeply the Founders struggled with this issue. Nevertheless, this is the single most important book on the period. If you want to know about American Democracy and its intellectual origins, this is the book to read.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "a true, enduring classic", August 9, 2006

By	John A. Wagner "history MA and teacher" (Bel Air, MD) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Gordon S. Wood is one of the deans of the so-called "intellectual historians" of the Revolutionary era. I just finished reading this book for the third time in the last 15 years, and I am struck by the sweeping nature of it. Wood's thesis is essentially that Americans' thinking about government and politics underwent a remarkable change in the 11 years between the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the framing of the Constitution. In short, through a series of piecemeal changes during this brief period, Americans largely put together a new mode of political thinking. The key to Wood's argument seems to be his discussion of the changes that occurred in the locus of sovereignty, and the separation of political from social authority. "The people" play the key role here. They went from traditionally being "embodied" in one branch of the gov't (the House of Commons in England, for example), to being the source of all governmental authority. This change brought with it changes in the understanding of representation and of separation of powers, and made possible Americans' unique concept of federalism, and the development of an "American science of politics". Wood uses a dazzling array of sources to support his arguments, and in doing so, shows how many hands and brains were involved in this work. The book is long and the general reader may find it a bit difficult, but anyone interested in the development of American political thought cannot neglect it.