The Glorious Revolution in America

Introduction to the Wesleyan Edition

Introduction to the Wesleyan Edition What do you say about your book the second time around? My late friend and colleague Merrill Jensen, in like circumstance, wrote that it was a temptation to "review the reviewers," and I suppose it is, except that I don't believe I could stomach the task or think it would be worth the effort. Not that the reviews were bad, for most were not, although I do remember not finishing one or two that did not seem to have much to do with the book I had written. More than a dozen busy years have slipped by since The Glorious Revolution in America was published, and my recent, present, and prospective scholarly interests are markedly different from what they were in 1972. This may be a good thing, when it comes to introducing a second edition; a change in direction improves perspective and allows a greater objectivity than what I might summon had I continued research and writing in the same period or on a similar topic. I feel now almost as if I were writing an introduction to another person's book, or, at least, a book several times removed from the materials I read and write about at present. ix x Introduction Until recently, early American historians have paid less attention to the colonists' doings in the latter half of the seventeenth century than they have to other periods, specific events, and significant figures and themes. There are good reasons for this, I am sure, not the least being a continuing excitement among them for the American Revolution , which has never lacked its enthusiasts, and a like attraction to pioneer beginnings in Virginia, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay, whose very newness and uniqueness in the New World have always provoked curiosity and wonder. Besides, the almost frantic interest in Puritanism during the last fifty years has absorbed its share, maybe more than its share, of American historians, to say nothing of teachers of literature, whose intellectual, social, and cultural inquiries about early New England have burgeoned at the expense of other regions, periods, and subjects. Much that has been written about this period, again until recently, stemmed either directly or indirectly from what historians have called the "imperial school" of American history. This approach began in the late nineteenth century and has been taken by such stellar scholars as G. L. Beer. H. L. Osgood, C. M. Andrews, L. A. Harper, and L. H. Gipson. With a few exceptions, these people and their followers seemed close to concluding, with some truth, to be sure, that American colonial history was hardly very American at all, but more a subordinate chapter of English history. Moreover, accompanying their focus on the mother country was an emphasis on mercantilism and colonial policy which separated the historical action even farther from what the colonists were doing. This is no doubt an exaggerated explanation in too few words of the invaluable contribution made by a group of first-rate historians , but it does serve to point out that an exclusively imperial view of early America leaves something missing from the picture, chiefly the hearts and minds, the comings and goings of the people about whom much of the fuss should be made. Of course, the opposite emphasis, for all its intensive probing into colonists' lives in towns and communities, often suffers from isolation and similarly tells less than the whole story. We have needed a more balanced, a more rounded explanation of the colonists' relationships with the mother country and the course of events in America, and it seems to me this has been forthcoming in the last few years. I like to think that The Glorious Revolution in America has played a part in bringing together what at an earlier time seemed like diverse histories of colonists in America and imperial-minded policy makers in the realm. My interest started some time ago, when I realized that no one had written a book, broadly conceived, about the several rebellions that Introduction to the Wesleyan Edition xi took place in the American colonies in 1689. Having already published a work on the American Revolution, I was attracted to the new subject because it promised different materials and ideas, in an earlier period, for study and research. Moreover, it would give me an opportunity to pursue both political and religious ideas, which in the seventeenth century were a...