The great tradition : constitutional history and national identity in Britain and the United States, 1870-1960
This book 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. Constitutional history also became an aspect of the United States's self-definition as a nation governed by law. The book shows 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
Print Book, English, 2007
Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 2007
xii, 341 pages ; 24 cm
9780804756860, 0804756864
72799270
"The paragon of the world" : English constitutional history as national identity
"A three-step waltz, Germany, England, and New England eternally round and round" : Constitutional history as racial hierarchy
"I do not believe in the philosophy of history and I do not believe in Buckle" : constitutional history as an academic profession
"A too acrimonious spirit" : constitutional history as culture wars
"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
"Norman history merges in that of England, the British Empire, and the United States" : constitutional history and the Anglo-American connection
"Designed to disarm America by destroying patriotic spirit and inculcating national pusillanimity in the name of peace" : constitutional history and America's culture wars
"The endless jar of right and wrong" : constitutional history and the history women
"I never met a learned man who less oppressed one with his learning" : constitutional history as lawyers' history and historians' law