The Great Tradition : Constitutional History and National Identity in Britain and the United States, 1870-1960 / Anthony Brundage, Richard A. Cosgrove.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brundage, Anthony, Author.

Cosgrove, Richard A., Author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (360 p.)

Place of Publication:

Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, [2022]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The Great Tradition traces the way in which English constitutional history became a major factor in the development of a national identity that took for granted the superiority of the English as a governing race. In the United States, constitutional history also became an aspect of the United States's self-definition as a nation governed by law. The book's importance lies in the way constitutional history interpreted the past to create a favorable self-image for each country. It deals with constitutional history as a justification for empire, a model for the emergent academic history of the 1870s, a surrogate for political argument in the guise of scholarship, and an element that contributed to the Anglo-American rapprochement before World War I. The book also traces the rise and decline of constitutional history as a fashionable sub-discipline within the academy.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Acknowledgments

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Chapter one “The Paragon of the World”: English Constitutional History as National Identity

Chapter two “A Three-Step Waltz, Germany, England, and New England Eternally Round and Round”: Constitutional History as Racial Hierarchy

Chapter three “I Do Not Believe in the Philosophy of History and I Do Not Believe in Buckle”: Constitutional History as an Academic Profession

Chapter four “A Too Acrimonious Spirit”: Constitutional History as Culture Wars

Chapter five “Our Law Is, in Fact, the Sum and Substance of What We Have to Teach in India; It Is the ‘Gospel of the English’ ”: Constitutional History and the British Empire

Chapter six “Norman History Merges in That of England, the British Empire, and the United States”: Constitutional History and the Anglo-American Connection

Chapter seven “Designed to Disarm America by Destroying Patriotic Spirit and Inculcating National Pusillanimity in the Name of Peace”: Constitutional History and America’s Culture Wars

Chapter eight “The Endless Jar of Right and Wrong”: Constitutional History and the History Women

Chapter nine “I Never Met a Learned Man Who Less Oppressed One with His Learning”: Constitutional History as Lawyers’ History and Historians’ Law

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 31. Jan 2022)

ISBN:

1-5036-2669-5

OCLC:

1294424646