The Idea of Europe and the Origins of the American Revolution

By: D.H. Robinson

Narrated by: Liam Gerrard

Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

In The Idea of Europe and the Origins of the American Revolution, Dan Robinson presents a new history of politics in colonial America and the imperial crisis, tracing how ideas of Europe and Europeanness shaped British-American political culture. Reconstructing colonial debates about the European states system, European civilization, and Britain's position within both, Robinson shows how these concerns informed colonial attitudes towards American identity and America's place inside - and, ultimately, outside - the emerging British Empire.

Taking in more than two centuries of Atlantic history, he explores the way in which colonists inherited and adapted Anglo-British traditions of thinking about international politics, how they navigated imperial politics during the European wars of 1740-1763, and how the burgeoning patriot movement negotiated the dual crisis of Europe and Empire in the between 1763 and 1775. In the process, Robinson sheds new light on the development of public politics in colonial America, the Anglicization/Americanization debate, the political economy of empire, early American art and poetry, 18th-century geopolitical thinking, and the relationship between international affairs, nationalism, and revolution.

©2020 D. H. Robinson (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

He thought he did something

I should preface, he did do something. Robinson provides a very interesting new look at understanding why the revolution occurred, and it is refreshing to see a new look on such a vastly discussed topic. However, he does so with slight agression towards other scholars, practically historians of gender and race, which he believes to be misconstruing our understanding of history by not taking writing at face value, before he goes on a tangent about skinner. The worst part is that he makes assumptions about writings, at one point he reads something by Adams and states i know it says this, but clearly he’s referring to this conflict so he actually means this (or something like that). Also the first two thirds of the book were irrelevant, I skipped half of it because truly I couldn’t listen to him anymore. Him as in the narrator, I was reading the book as I was listening and he messed up fairly often, and does not articulate well. Regardless, I recommend reading this as it is interesting, but do keep these things in mind.