History

The American Revolution: A Critical Comparison with the 1688 English Revolution and the 1789 French Revolution

ABSTRACT

The conference explored the differences and similarities of Great Britain’s "Glorious" Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution with regard to sources and institutional significance for a free society.

READING LIST

From Liberty Fund

Select Works of Edmund Burke: Reflections on the Revolution in France

by By Edmund Burke
Compiled and with a Foreword and Notes by Francis Canavan

Originally published by Oxford University Press in the 1890s, the famed three-volume Payne edition of Select Works is universally revered by students of English history and political thought. Faithfully reproduced in each volume are E. J. Payne’s notes and introductory essays. Francis Canavan, one of the great Burke scholars of…

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Further Reflections on the Revolution in France

by By Edmund Burke
Edited by Daniel E. Ritchie

In his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke excoriated French revolutionary leaders for recklessly destroying France’s venerable institutions and way of life. But his war against the French intelligentsia did not end there, and Burke continued to take pen in hand against the Jacobins until his…

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Additional Readings

A Collection of Historical Documents relating to the American Revolution and Founding [compiled from public domain sources]:

Cato. Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, Volume One. Edited by Ronald Hamowy. Compiled by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995.

Cato. Cato’s Letters or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and Other Important Subjects, Volume Two. Edited by Ronald Hamowy. Compiled by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995.

Gentz, Friedrich von. The Origin and Principles of the American Revolution Compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution. Translated by John Quincy Adams. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010.

Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments. New York: Vintage Books, 2004.

Staël, Germaine de. Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution. Edited by Aurelian Craiutu. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2008.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. The Ancien Régime and the French Revolution. Edited by Jon Elster. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Trevelyan, George Macaulay. The English Revolution, 1688-1689. London: Oxford University Press, 1938 (reprinted 1965).