Description: This book explores the constitutional issues at the heart of the conflict between Britain and its American colonies in the eighteenth century.
Brief description: Jack P. Greene taught at Michigan State University, Western Reserve University, and the University of Michigan before he moved in 1966 to The Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of the Department of History for thirty-nine years, except for two years spent at the University of California, Irvine in 1990-2. A specialist in the history of Colonial British and Revolutionary American history, he has published and edited many books, chapters in books, articles, and reviews. Perhaps his best-known works are The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689-1776 (1963), Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States, 1607-1789 (1986), Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (1988), and The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity from 1492 to 1800 (1993).
Review Quotes: "Jack P. Greene, one of the most gifted and prolific historians of our time, has given us a concise and incisive account of the constitutional origins of the American Revolution. It is a magnificent work of historical analysis - it should shape our understanding of the causes of the Revolution for decades to come." - Richard R. Beeman, University of Pennsylvania