Absolute nieuwstaat.

This volume consists of five essays abstracting many of Bailyn?s larger historiographic theses concerning the American Revolution and its leading participants. Two of the essays??Jefferson and the Ambiguities of Freedom? and ?The Federalist Papers?? strike me as quite convincing. Two others??Politics and the Creative Imagination? and ?Atlantic Dimensions??could use some fleshing out, but are definitely interesting starting points for discussion. The remaining essay, ?Realism and Idealism in American Diplomacy?, consists of an interesting middle section that appears to me nearly unrelated to the introduction and conclusion.

In ?Jefferson and the Ambiguities of Freedom,? Bailyn outlines the love/hate relationship between American political theorists and the legacy of Thomas Jefferson. The object of both lauds and villifications, Jefferson has cast a shadow that few can ignore. Bailyn argues that his contradictory reception is indicative of the ambiguities in Jefferson himself and in the freedom he sought for his country. Jefferson is the rare political theorist who was also a successful administrator. The larger goals of implementing his ideals often strained Jefferson?s pragmatic side. Where goals-as-ends conflicted with goals-as-means, the means would typically lose to the ends.

The starting point of ?The Federalist Papers? is an extremely interesting phemonemon: of the 291 citations of the Federalist papers in U.S. Supreme Court decisions published before January 2000, two-thirds of them have appeared since 1950. Bailyn explores the propriety of this increasing reliance of the opinions expressed in those often hastily composed eighteenth-century polemics. They are certainly not perfect guides to constitutional political theory, but they are relevant, Bailyn argues, because ?they address masterfully our permanent concerns with political power?under our Constitution and in general.?

The opening essay, ?Politics and the Creative Imagination,? argues that the American founders were able to break out of the ossified European modes of political thinking because, although they certainly knew continental political theory, their ?provincialism, and the sense they derived from it of their own moral stature, had nourished their political imagination.? Bailyn succeeds in his portrayal of colonial provincialism, but he doesn?t do as much as he might to demonstrate how their wild strains of political thought comingled with the status quo to produce Constitutional thought.

In the closing essay, ?Atlantic Dimensions,? Bailyn seeks to argue that American Revolutionary thought was still powerful and relevent after the onslaught of the French Revolution. There are some interesting bits here, but his thesis is at best suggestive, in need of further elaboration.

In the middle of the book stands the most problematic article, ?Realism and Idealism in American Diplomacy.? Bailyn?s prolog suggests that he want to reinforce the judgment of Felix Gilbert that the greatest American historical moments have come when Idealism and Realism have joined forces. Inexplicably, Bailyn then proceeds with an analysis (admittedly interesting in its own right) of the iconography of Benjamin Franklin. At the essay?s end come a half-dozen paragraphs that revert to the opening theme. It?s an odd essay, suggestive but hardly convincing.

In all, however, this is a nice little volume for someone looking to return to a study of revolutionary America. Bailyn?s themes are largely congratulatory, full of admiration for the Founders and their creation; he entices the reader toward further studies by suggesting their moral and philosophical excellence.