Explaining Murrin: A Review of John M. Murrin’s *Rethinking America: From Empire to Republic.*

Over the last three decades, historians of the colonial American and the early American Republic have drastically revised their approaches to studying the past. Recent publication of John M. Murrin’s Rethinking America: From Empire to Republic is therefore as timely as any other compilation of a historiographic heavyweight’s writings.

Andrew Shankman’s opens this book with a celebratory introduction to the eleven essays that comprise the volume. (Murrin was Shankman’s doctoral advisor at Princeton University; he admits as much anecdotally in the preface.^[1]) Shankman draws on Murrin’s essays to articulate several important conceptual insights that have come to the forefront of historians’ debates on methodology. First, he points out that Murrin’s notion of Anglicization — a process that occured roughly between 1700 and 1760 whereby the colonists of the thirteen colonies “became more not less British” and engaged members of the British Empire — is relevant to a laundry list of subjects concerning change, continuity, and origination in early America.^[2] Murrin’s thoughtful approach to studying the America’s past, Shankman writes, led him to interrogate individuals’ written words to separate the false from the true. Skepticism only cemented Murrin’s faith in the credibility of his sources.^[3] Furthermore, Shankman sees a key role of Murrin’s scholarship as a caution against viewing the American Revolution as a period of irreversible change that rendered American life after the conflict as wholly different from the years preceding it; conversations about the organization of political society began long before 1774. It is incumbent on scholars to familiarize themselves (and their students) with the political history of the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods rather than narrowly focussing on the changes to American life brought on by the events of 1763 through 1789.^[4] In Shankman’s view, Murrin’s approach to reading and interpreting sources, as well as gaining a solid grasp on greater sums of time serve as guideposts for doctoral students and emerging scholars.

There is no disputing the merits of Murrin’s view of early America as a nuanced teleology leading to and from the American Revolution. An alternative title for the introduction may well have been “Do as Murrin Did.” Yet perhaps Shankman’s deserved praise for Murrin’s contributions overshadows the merits of intellectual bravery. While historians from every field must commit their predecessor’s contributions to memory and adapt to prevailing ways of studying the past, they must also develop bold strategies for interpreting both written, visual, and even auditory sources as well as changing the way time — both time span and direction — factors into narrative writing. Shankman’s own example of Murrin and Edmund Morgan’s critical reading of documentary sources reflects the relative novelty of that approach.^[5] Historians, especially those who are pre-candidacy, should not feel discouraged from making big arguments about oft-examined subjects. Declarative argumentation and bold arguments about important, even controversial historical subjects should feature prominently in emerging scholars’ work. Shankman does provide a fine description of Murrin, the man and learner, in the preface. He captures Murrin’s love of asking big questions and giving bold answers, questions and answers that remain the focus of more recent scholarship.^[6] But Shankman’s noticeable lack of pointed reminders of Murrin’s commitment to intellectual ingenuity runs the risk of distorting the balance between making bold arguments and building on previous scholarship, one that characterizes the historian’s craft.

One of two key strengths of Rethinking America is that it ends with Murrin’s observation of an increasingly democratic field of study wherein historians may weigh the benefits of several methodologies instead adopting one that prevails among career academics. Shankman’s selection of this volume’s first ten essays exemplifies the same teleological methodology that led Murrin to his penultimate insight noted above as Anglicization. First, Shankman selects essays that cover the colonial, revolutionary, and early national periods to show how studies of vast periods of time can reveal changes in American society that quietly characterize changing power dynamics of American political behavior and practices. Murrin views these changes as agents in the making of revolution, or has he puts it, “The coming of the American Revolution.”^[7] This concept is key, as it underscores the deeply transformative nature of the events that precipitated revolution as well as the revolution itself. For example, in “The Great Inversion, Or Court Versus Country: a Comparison of the Revolution Settlements in England (1668-1721) and America (1776-1816),” “The Making and Unmaking of an American Ruling Class,” Murrin (and Gary Kornblith in the latter essay) traces the formation of a British identity in the colonies and the settlement of the society remade by ruling elites but that featured “a decentralized and depoliticized Court” until 1896.^[8] As Murrin notes, non-American observers are correct that “Aspects of its [America’s] Revolution still inspire admiration abroad, especially in its concern with human rights.” He adds that “the Revolution Settlement [establishment of Parliament’s sovereign rule over the British colonies in 1668] is truly unique in its totality and quite inimitable in the way it has affected, or failed to affect, larger patterns of American life.”^[9] In other words, the events that precipitated revolution transformed American society and the world just as thoroughly as did the revolution.

But causality and teleology are only important for the ten of eleven essays included in Rethinking America and for the work of historians like him who conceptualize years prior to the revolution as leading to revolution. In his 2007 address to the Columbia University Seminar on Early American History and Culture, Murrin declared that “I rejoice that we no longer insist on a teleological component for colonial studies.” “[Digging] for a message that will get us to 1776” no longer determines worthwhile scholarship from superfluous studies.^[10] And just as non-teleological studies have merit, so too may be a new direction in scholarship: reinventing the way teleological studies are undertaken.^[11]

The second key strength is that the essays provide several examples of how to incorporate the methodologies of different and sometimes adversarial historiographic schools. As Shankman points out, “Self-Immolation: Schools of Historiography and the Coming of the American Revolution” urges scholars to consider adopting insights of the imperial school — a period of historical writing lasting roughly from 1900 to 1940. Similarly, “The Great Inversion” carves out space for neo-Whig and neo-Progressive scholars (through the 1970s) to engage with one another’s ideas.^[12] But welding together approaches from several historiographic schools is more than fruitful for developing historiographies; it is reflective of how eighteenth-century Americans understood their world. “American citizens had to fight a terribly difficult war and then recreate their polity, economy, and society after having rejected and destroyed most of the institutions and practices they had grown up with.”^[13] Comprehensive knowledge of early Americans’ “attitudes, outlooks, and actions” requires historians to prioritize methodological flexibility over intellectual dominance over the profession.^[14]

Yet the digital age calls into question the importance of collections of essays in hard copy. I myself am partial to holding a copy of Rethinking America, but many of my peers much prefer to access scholarship digitally for convenience or cost’s sake. Doctoral students (such as myself) will certainly find comfort in pulling Rethinking America from a bookshelf in preparation for papers, and written and oral exams. Certainly, the same could be said about any similar assemblage of historiographic heft. Additionally, connotation of prestige associated with publishing in hard-copy rather than in digital formats persists. Yet with the exception of Murrin’s 2007 address, nine of Murrin’s ten essays in Rethinking America are accessible from other printed and digital sources. The emergence of crowd-sourced syllabi such as Marcia Chatelain’s #FergusonSyllabus and the increasing number of #twitterstorians suggest that historians are finding new ways to communicate their thoughts on historiographic trends and assist one another in identifying scholarship that may be of use to them on digital forums. In other words, the process of distributing (with necessary permission where necessary) scholarship digitally and pointing peers and colleagues to important contributions in any given field online may be both time and cost-effective for scholars and scholarly presses alike.

Learning motivates us historians to learn more, a process that has the power to inspire students and awaken the public imagination and spark widespread curiosity and even fandom; one need not look further than Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton. Rethinking America reminds us of the power wielded by historians and their studies. It and Murrin both offer a compelling explanation for the transformative power of the American Revolution and suggests why it places so prominently in scholarship, political maneuvering, and in the public imagination. Rethinking America deserves significant praise and further critical attention in light of new developments in the field of early American history. At its core, the ten essays collected in Rethinking America explore how British North American colonists turned-citizens of a Republic developed ideas of how to act as British and American citizens. By virtue of its publication, this book asks historians to seriously consider Murrin’s place in the pantheon of great historians yet still to test the endurance of his numerous insights.

^[1] John M. Murrin, Rethinking America: From Empire to Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), ix.

^[2] Ibid., 1.

^[3] Ibid., 2.

^[4] Ibid., 3.

^[5] Ibid., 2.

^[6] Ibid., “Preface and Acknowledgements.”

^[7] Ibid., 383.

^[8] Regarding the formation of British identity and abandonment of British institutional and societal structures, see ibid., 79. Regarding the decentralization of America’s ruling classes, see ibid., 240.

^[9] Ibid., 79.

^[10] Ibid., 384.

^[11] Ibid., 385.

^[12] Ibid., 15-16, 17.

^[13] Ibid., 19.

^[14] Ibid., 1.