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From Polity to Exchange: The Fate of Democracy in the Changing Fields of Early American Historiography
Modern Intellectual History (2018)
  • Johann N. Neem
Abstract
Gordon Wood stoked a strong response from his fellow early American historians in 2015 when, in the pages of the Weekly Standard, he accused the Omohundro Institute of Early American History, publishers of the prestigious William and Mary Quarterly, of abandoning interest in the development of the United States. “A new generation of historians is no longer interested in how the United States came to be,” Wood argued. “That kind of narrative history of the nation, they say, is not only inherently triumphalist but has a teleological bias built into it.” Wood blamed the shift away from the nation on historians’ interest in such issues as race and gender: “The inequalities of race and gender now permeate much of academic history-writing, so much so that the general reading public that wants to learn about the whole of our nation's past has had to turn to the history books written by nonacademics who have no PhDs and are not involved in the incestuous conversations of the academic scholars.” Of the William and Mary Quarterly, Wood concluded, “without some kind of historical GPS, it is in danger of losing its way.”
Keywords
  • Vast Early America,
  • Early American Republic,
  • American Revolution,
  • United States History,
  • Early American History
Publication Date
November 20, 2018
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244318000495
Citation Information
Johann N. Neem. "From Polity to Exchange: The Fate of Democracy in the Changing Fields of Early American Historiography" Modern Intellectual History (2018)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/johann_neem/82/