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A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State
What were the intentions of the Founders? Was the American constitution designed to protect individual rights? To limit the powers of government? To curb the excesses of democracy? Or to create a robust democratic nation-state? These questions echo through today's most heated legal and political debates. In this powerful new interpretation of America's origins, Max Edling argues that the Federalists were primarily concerned with building a government that could act vigorously in defense of American interests. The Constitution transferred the powers of war making and resource extraction from the states to the national government thereby creating a nation-state invested with all the important powers of Europe's eighteenth-century "fiscal-military states." A strong centralized government, however, challenged the American people's deeply ingrained distrust of unduly concentrated authority. To secure the Constitution's adoption the Federalists had to accommodate the formation of a powerful national government to the strong current of anti-statism in the American political tradition. They did so by designing a government that would be powerful in times of crisis, but which would make only limited demands on the citizenry and have a sharply restricted presence in society. The Constitution promised the American people the benefit of government without its costs. Taking advantage of a newly published letterpress edition of the constitutional debates, A Revolution in Favor of Government recovers a neglected strand of the Federalist argument, making a persuasive case for rethinking the formation of the federal American state.
345 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 10, 2024
Read for a class in graduate school. Extremely boring, not my cup of tea at all.
December 4, 2019
At the start of this century, historical scholarship on the origins of the U.S. Constitution divided into two camps or schools. A Neo-Whig school of interpretation viewed the Constitution as the fulfillment of the American Revolution’s republican promise. A “Madisonian” school considered it a conservative attempt to rein in the democratic “excesses” of the state governments. Both groups made thoughtful, if selective, use of the available records on the Philadelphia convention of 1787, of the debates in the contemporary press, and of the venerable FEDERALIST PAPERS to support their arguments.
In 2003 Swedish scholar Max Edling blew much fresh air into this stale debate with the book under review. Studying the published arguments of the “other Federalists” – supporters of the Constitution not named Hamilton, Jay, or Madison – Edling found that they wanted neither to fulfill the “Spirit of ‘76” nor rein in the state legislatures. They instead wanted to create a strong, European-style “fiscal-military state,” able to tax, borrow money, and raise an army and navy.* The Federalists, like their Antifederalist critics, saw themselves as defenders of liberty. Where opponents of the Constitution saw an overly-strong government as a danger, Federalists viewed external foes like Britain or France as greater threats to American liberties. Without the power to raise an army and without the public credit to pay for it, Americans could not hope to keep foreign foes at bay.
In practice the Federalists had to make numerous concessions to their critics in order to legitimize their new government.** They confined federal taxes to tariffs and excises, both lighter duties than land or poll taxes, and reduced the largest excise (on whiskey) after it met with riots. They relied, until the end of the 1790s, on a very small federal armed force: a few thousand soldiers backed by state militias, and a handful of ships-of-war. Most federal tax revenue (50-60 percent) went to servicing and monetizing the national debt, rather than to other forms of state-building. Essentially, the Federalists created a “fiscal-military state in reserve” (227), one whose powers they and their successors could keep inconspicuous or dormant until they were absolutely needed. For the most part, the officers of the new national government kept its ample powers tightly controlled until a legitimacy crisis and a civil war mandated their use.
*One flaw of this book is Edling’s failure to discuss the U.S. Navy, the most expensive part of the American military establishment. Financing naval construction had been one of the primary goals of previous European fiscal-military states, like Venice, the Netherlands, and Britain.
** Edling does not mention one of these concessions, the Bill of Rights, perhaps because, like Pauline Maier in RATIFICATION (2010), he views it as a rather weak effort to assuage the Antifederalists’ fears.
In 2003 Swedish scholar Max Edling blew much fresh air into this stale debate with the book under review. Studying the published arguments of the “other Federalists” – supporters of the Constitution not named Hamilton, Jay, or Madison – Edling found that they wanted neither to fulfill the “Spirit of ‘76” nor rein in the state legislatures. They instead wanted to create a strong, European-style “fiscal-military state,” able to tax, borrow money, and raise an army and navy.* The Federalists, like their Antifederalist critics, saw themselves as defenders of liberty. Where opponents of the Constitution saw an overly-strong government as a danger, Federalists viewed external foes like Britain or France as greater threats to American liberties. Without the power to raise an army and without the public credit to pay for it, Americans could not hope to keep foreign foes at bay.
In practice the Federalists had to make numerous concessions to their critics in order to legitimize their new government.** They confined federal taxes to tariffs and excises, both lighter duties than land or poll taxes, and reduced the largest excise (on whiskey) after it met with riots. They relied, until the end of the 1790s, on a very small federal armed force: a few thousand soldiers backed by state militias, and a handful of ships-of-war. Most federal tax revenue (50-60 percent) went to servicing and monetizing the national debt, rather than to other forms of state-building. Essentially, the Federalists created a “fiscal-military state in reserve” (227), one whose powers they and their successors could keep inconspicuous or dormant until they were absolutely needed. For the most part, the officers of the new national government kept its ample powers tightly controlled until a legitimacy crisis and a civil war mandated their use.
*One flaw of this book is Edling’s failure to discuss the U.S. Navy, the most expensive part of the American military establishment. Financing naval construction had been one of the primary goals of previous European fiscal-military states, like Venice, the Netherlands, and Britain.
** Edling does not mention one of these concessions, the Bill of Rights, perhaps because, like Pauline Maier in RATIFICATION (2010), he views it as a rather weak effort to assuage the Antifederalists’ fears.
January 22, 2014
Another review calls this book "graceless and repetitive" and it certainly is that. The argument is worthwhile, although I am not convinced that it is as much a break from the earlier historiography as it suggests. Ultimately, Edling sees the debates over ratification as debates about the sort of state the US were going to be - a debate about state building, rather than about economic interests or limiting the power of the government. He places the debates in the context of European state building, rooted in the idea that states of this period were "fiscal-military states" that is they served two purposes: defense and extraction. I would have been happier with just the intro and conclusion.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews