The Language of Liberty 166018321993

This book creates a new framework for the political and intellectual relations between the British Isles and America in a momentous period which witnessed the formation of modern states on both sides of the Atlantic and the extinction of an Anglican, aristocratic and monarchical order. Jonathan Clark integrates evidence from law and religion to reveal how the dynamics of early modern societies were essentially denominational. In a study of British and American discourse, he shows how rival conceptions of liberty were expressed in the conflicts created by Protestant dissent's hostility to an Anglican hegemony. The book argues that this model provides a key to collective acts of resistance to the established order throughout the period. The book's final section focuses on the defining episode for British and American history, and shows the way in which the American Revolution can be understood as a war of religion.