History
Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution
How American colonists reinterpreted their British and colonial histories to help establish political and cultural independence from Britain
In Past and Prologue, Michael Hattem shows how colonists’ changing understandings of their British and colonial histories shaped the politics of the American Revolution and the origins of American national identity. Between the 1760s and 1800s, Americans stopped thinking of the British past as their own history and created a new historical tradition that would form the foundation for what subsequent generations would think of as “American history.” […Learn More]