Conceived in Crisis

Christopher R. Pearl has written an important work on the meaning and impact of the American Revolution. Focusing on Pennsylvania, Pearl argues that the Revolution was as much about domestic as imperial politics, but not in the ways we normally assume. Pearl opens Conceived in Crisis by asserting that, far from being antistatist, “the American Revolution led to the creation of powerful, extractive, coercive, and regulatory states” (p. 1). The goal was not to limit state power but to benefit from it. Historians have long debated whether the American Revolution was about home rule or who should rule at home. To Pearl, however, it was about state crisis, a term and conceptual framework he borrows from the sociologist Jack A. Goldstone. Faced with a series of challenges and structural limitations, the colonial government could not promote the public good. In the western colonies, settlers wanted government to protect them from Native Americans and to secure law and order. In the absence of state capacity, settlers organized themselves to achieve both goals. Their aim was not “liberty” from the state; they wanted the powers of the state. Instead, they were, as they were known, “regulators.” The imperial crisis, Pearl concludes, only deepened a pre-existing state crisis

Archaeology · Colonialism · Economics · Government (linguistics · Meaning (existential · Order (exchange · Pearl · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · State (computer science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law