Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664-1830

by Daniel J. Hulsebosch

According to the traditional understanding of American constitutional law, the Revolution produced a new conception of the constitution as a set of restrictions on the power of the state rather than a mere description of governmental roles. Daniel J. Hulsebosch complicates this viewpoint by arguing that American ideas of constitutions were based on British ones and that, in New York, those ideas evolved over the long eighteenth century as New York moved from the periphery of the British Atlantic empire to the center of a new continental empire.

Hulsebosch explains how colonists and administrators reconfigured British legal sources to suit their needs in an expanding empire. In this story, familiar characters such as Alexander Hamilton and James Kent appear in a new light as among the nation's most important framers, and forgotten loyalists such as Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson and lawyer William Smith Jr. are rightly returned to places of prominence.

In his paradigm-shifting analysis, Hulsebosch captures the essential paradox at the heart of American constitutional the Revolution, which brought political independence and substituted the people for the British crown as the source of legitimate authority, also led to the establishment of a newly powerful constitution and a new postcolonial genre of constitutional law that would have been the envy of the British imperial agents who had struggled to govern the colonies before the Revolution.

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In his paradigm-shifting analysis, Daniel J. Hulsebosch captures the essential paradox at the heart of American constitutional the Revolution, which brought political independence and substituted the people for the British crown as the source of legitimate authority, also led to the establishment of newly powerful constitutions and a new postcolonial genre of constitutional law that would have been the envy of the British imperial agents who had struggled to govern the colonies before the Revolution.
The revolutionary transformation did not, therefore, consist of a new conception of the constitution as a set of restrictions on the power of the state, Hulsebosch argues. Instead, it entailed a search for new ways of framing, empowering, and limiting official power. Drawing on new archival sources as well as canonical documents such as The Federalist Papers , Hulsebosch demonstrates that these constitutional experiments were informed by imperial experience and continued well into the nineteenth century, as New York moved from the periphery of the British Atlantic empire to the center of a new continental empire.
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Hardcover

First published October 1, 2005

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I started grad school, I've actually had less time to read full books. We've been so inundated with articles and selections from larger works that whenever we are assigned a complete book I've been forced to economize and skim large portions of it. This is the first book in awhile I've read cover to cover.

It's a solid one, basically examining, for the first time, the inchoate bureaucracy of the British imperial state as a force in expanding British power in America. Less convincingly, the author also tries to show how the methods of imperial administration became the tools by which a Federalist judiciary strengthened the national and "Empire" states. In any case, its in-depth analysis of the 1777 and 1821 New York constitutions does a great job at tracing those documents political and intellectual roots, and their importance in subsequent debates.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

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