Bernard Bailyn

Bernard Bailyn teaches history at Harvard and is an honorary fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge.

All Too Firmly Planted

Bernard Bailyn, 10 November 1994

It is no new thing for British historians to write knowledgeably about American history. They were at work by the early 18th century, wrote significant histories (mainly Tory) of the American Revolution soon after the event had concluded, and in the 19th century produced, in G.O. Trevelyan’s six volumes on the Revolution, one of the magisterial works of Whig historiography, and in the two American volumes of Lecky’s History of England in the 18th Century a masterpiece of balanced judgment, character analysis and comprehension of complex issues. Many have followed, and in our own time British-American historians continue to write on such major, established topics as Anglo-American diplomatic and military relations, the Revolution, the Civil War, race relations, the New Deal and the Cold War.

The Last War of Religion

David Armitage, 9 June 1994

All rebellions resemble one another, but every revolution is revolutionary in its own way. The French wrote the classic modern script for revolution – utopian, transformative and bloody...

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Somewhere else

Rosalind Mitchison, 19 May 1988

‘The great thing to be determined was whether there was a Call from God or not.’ So wrote a missionary about his move to Australia in the 1880s. It is not a view expressed in that...

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