Our First Revolution

Chapter 1 The Improbable Revolution The First Revolution: what is generally known as the Glorious Revolution. In recent years Americans have been devouring books on our nation's Founding FathersBenjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamiltonsome written by academic historians, others by gifted professional writers. As these writers help us understand, the Founders did not spring from a historical vacuum. Before the break with the Crown, they regarded themselves as Englishmen, as inheritors of the system of government and the traditional liberties of England. As they moved daringly into a revolutionary and republican future, they looked back on a heritage that was shaped by many historical events. Not least among them was what most Englishmen referred to as the Glorious Revolution of 168889. This term referred to the series of events that resulted in the ouster of King James II and the installation of King William III and Queen Mary II, and in changes in English law, governance, and politics that turned out to be major advances for representative government, guaranteeing liberties, global capitalism, and a foreign policy of opposing hegemonic powers on the European continent and in the world beyond. The First Revolution, as it will be called here, was a reference point, an example, indeed a glowing example, for the American Founders. The Founding Fathers began their rebellion not by rejecting the achievements of the Glorious Revolution, but by arguing that Parliament and King George III were denying them their rights as Englishmen that were gained in that Revolution and the revolutionary settlementthe laws passed in 1689 and the 1690s. It is true that as the Founding Fathers created their own revolution and formed their republic, they did not fully accept the Revolutionary settlementthe set of laws and customs established during and immediately following the Glorious Revolution. The new nation would have no monarchy or titled nobility, no religious tests for public office, and no national established church. But the founders also self-consciously copied some features of the Revolutionary settlement, from yearly sessions of Congress to the establishment of a national bank and a funded debt to the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Glorious Revolution has long been recognized in Britain as a founding event that has shaped the character of the nation ever since. But this First Revolution has gotten much less attention in the United States. For much of the second half of the twentieth century, academic historians in this country as well as in Britain have devoted much more attention to the events of 164160, events that brought to the fore radicals who could be seen as ancestors of the Marxist revolutionaries of the twentieth century. The Glorious Revolution was seen, in contrast, as something in the nature of a coup d'etat brought off by royals and nobles, a shuffling of power between dead white males (never mind that important parts were played by Princesses Mary and Anne, Queen Mary Beatrice, and Sarah Churchill). But there is a strong argument that the events of 164160 were less than consequential in shaping the English polity and what would become the American inheritance than was the Revolution of 168889 and the Revolutionary settlement that was worked out in the 1690s. Those changes proved to be far more enduring. The Revolution of 168889 was the first change of government in England that was at the time called a revolution. Twentieth-century historians often refer to the events of 164160 as the English Revolution,1 but this complicated series of eventsdescribed by recent historians as three separate civil wars and a republican interregnumwas not called a revolution in the seventeenthBarone, Michael is the author of 'Our First Revolution' with ISBN 9781400097937 and ISBN 1400097932.