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Reviews in American History 31.2 (2003) 171-183



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In Retrospect:
Lawrence Henry Gipson's The British Empire before the American Revolution

Patrick Griffin


Lawrence Henry Gipson. The British Empire before the American Revolution. vol. 1-3. Caldwell, Id.: Caxton Printers, 1936. vol. 4-15. New York: Knopf, 1961-1970. Notes, illustrations, maps, and indices.

Lawrence Henry Gipson was one those tragic figures who lived far too long or died far too early. In 1970, the year Gipson completed his magisterial 15-volume study The British Empire before the American Revolution and the year before he died at the age of 90, the history profession was caught in the throes of a profound transformation. 1 While Gipson wrote of sweeping themes and the inexorable power of broad forces, a new generation of historians was coming of age, preaching the virtues of demographic studies of small communities. By the time Gipson had finished his task of chronicling the rise and fall of empire in North America on the eve of revolution, his methods and interpretations appeared wildly out of step with a profession that increasingly sought to uncover the experience of those "from below." Yet in our day, when it looks like the "new" social history may have reached its interpretive limits, scholars in Britain and the United States are revisiting nearly all the themes that Gipson examined. Exploring the great transition from British empire to American nation, as he claimed a generation ago and as we do today, requires an understanding of the Atlantic context as well as an appreciation of the ways in which disparate regions ranging from London and Dublin to Philadelphia and the Ohio Valley were linked together.

Reconsidering Gipson's work offers an opportunity not only to take the measure of the transformation of the profession and the field of early American history during Gipson's day but also to gauge the changes happening before our eyes. For the shifts today are every bit as seismic as those experienced a generation ago, not only in terms of approaches and conceptual scope but also in the ways we conceive of the craft of history. Revisiting Gipson highlights some promising possibilities for developing interpretive frameworks to make sense of arguably the most formative period in American history. Reevaluating his work also raises disturbing questions about our ability to write such studies. [End Page 171]

Gipson became an historian at an auspicious and crucial moment for the profession. 2 After graduating from the University of Idaho in 1903, Gipson traveled to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He came to England at the time early American historians were exploring the nature of the connection between Britain and America with new methods, sources, and sensibilities. In fact, his future mentor, Charles McLean Andrews—the man Gipson would study with at Yale—was mining the British archives for insights into colonial America the very time Gipson was at Oxford. With the materials he carried back from England, Andrews would redefine the field of early American history. What emerged from Andrews' work—and what strikes us as self-evident today—was a sense that America's heritage had tangible British roots, that the American experience could not be understood without placing it in an imperial context. The "Imperial School," as it came to be known, posited that exploring the political and institutional links that tied Britain to the mainland colonies in North America led to a more precise and objective understanding of the founding, development, and revolutionary settlement of the United States.

When Gipson was training as a graduate student, Andrews was also bringing a heightened sense of professional rigor to the study of early American history. In particular, Andrews and others saw it as their task to debunk the old "nationalist" school of interpretation, a group led by the likes of George Bancroft. Bancroft gloried in the genius and distinctiveness of American society. While Frederick Jackson Turner saw America's greatness in its frontier experience, most nationalists looked to the east, to the Founders, to seventeenth-century...

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