John Adams and the Constitutional History of the Medieval British Empire

This book contributes to the increasing interest in John Adams and his political and legal thought by examining his work on the medieval British Empire. For Adams, the conflict with England was constitutional because there was no British Empire, only numerous territories including the American colonies not consolidated into a constitutional structure. Each had a unique relationship to the English. In two series of essays he rejected the Parliament’s claim to legislate for the internal governance of the American colonies. His Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765) identified these claims with the Yoke, Norman tyranny over the defeated Saxons after 1066. Parliament was seeking to treat the colonists in similar fashion. The Novanglus essays (1774-75), traced the origin of the colonies, demonstrating that Parliament played no role in their establishment and so had no role in their internal governance without the colonists’ subsequent consent. 

• American Revolution
• Founding Fathers
• Middle Ages
• Legal history
• Roman texts
• Press, media
• Colonial America
• Eighteenth century
• 1760s-1770s

“Muldoon’s is a scholar’s book, deeply and compellingly invested in the historical traditions and scholarly controversies of Adams’s era and of our own. Muldoon offers a significant new perspective on both the English Revolution and the American Revolution by relating much of his coverage of the revolutionary ideologies behind both revolutions to their nascent moments in medieval history. The book’s greatest achievement lies … in clear, lucid writing backed by a significant body of scholarship Muldoon transparently offers readers.” (Carla J. Mulford,Reviews in American History, Vol. 49 (2), June, 2021)

• John Carter Brown Library, Providence, USA

  James Muldoon

James Muldoon is Emeritus Professor of History at Rutgers University, USA, and Researcher-in-Residence at The John Carter Brown Library, USA.

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