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.

Autorentext

Ivan Jankovic is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Mary, North Dakota, USA. His main research interests are Austrian and Public choice economics, American Revolution, political theory of federalism and decentralized order as well as history and theory of classical liberalism.

Inhalt

1. The American Revolution as the Last European Peasants' Rebellion.- 2. Consent, Representation and Liberty: America as the Last Medieval Society.- 3. Shades of Anarchy: The Concept of Lawful Rebellion in America.- 4. Men of Little Faith Facing the Modern State: The Country Party Ideology in Great Britain.- 5. When in the Course of Human Events.- Hobbes, Locke and the Long Parliament against America.- 6. The Great Derailment: Philadelphia Putsch of 1787 and the Coming of the American State.- 7. 1776 Strikes Back Antifederalist Critics of the Constitution.- 8. The Compact Theory of the Union A Revolution within a Form.- 9. Free Market in a Small Republic Economic Doctrines of Jeffersonians and Jacksonians.- 10. The Last Stand: John C. Calhoun.- 11. Conclusion.