The American Counter-Revolution in Favor of Liberty

How Americans Resisted Modern State, 1765–1850

Ivan Jankovic

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783030037321
• eBook ISBN: 9783030037338
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book presents the case that the origins of American liberty should not be sought in the constitutional-reformist feats of its "statesmen" during the 1780s, but rather in the political and social resistance to their efforts.There were two revolutions occurring in the late 18th century America: the modern European revolution "in favour of government, " pursuing national unity, "energetic" government and centralization of power (what scholars usually dub "American founding"); and a conservative, reactionary counter-revolution "in favour of liberty, " defending local rights and liberal individualism against the encroaching political authority. This is a book about this liberal counter-revolution and its ideological, political and cultural sources and central protagonists.The central analytical argument of the book is that America before the Revolution was a stateless, spontaneous political order that evolved culturally, politically and economically in isolation from the modern European trends of state-building and centralization of power.The book argues, then, that a better model for understanding America is a "decoupled modernization" hypothesis, in which social modernity is divested from the politics of modern state and tied with the pre-modern social institutions.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Part I. America and Traditional British Liberties
• Part II. On a Collision Course with Modern State
• Part III. States’ Rights Philosophy as a Synthesis and Reconciliation