• The New Old-School American Revolution
• Francis Russo (bio)

When it came to self-immolations, Richard Wagner could stomach exactly one: the heroine Brünnhilde, who rides her loyal horse to flames in the fifteenth and final hour of Wagner's epic opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Historian John Murrin, by contrast, identified three in the saga of American Revolution historiography. Independence origin stories by schools Imperial, Progressive, and Whig had each, "in a pattern of self-immolation," swelled over time into tangled morasses of "accumulated inconsistencies."¹ The tale goes that since the late nineteenth century, professional historical writing on the American Revolution had been dominated by roughly three major interpretive schools, each associated with contrasting approaches to the past. These were not just academic arguments but implicit convictions about how history and contemporary politics conjoined. Whigs looked to ideology and stressed consensus among elite actors, Progressives looked to social history and economics and stressed a polity riven by class conflict, and Imperial historians looked to institutions and stressed that the entire British Empire had to substitute a parochial view of the thirteen colonies if the Revolution's causes were to be understood. In 2007, Murrin—a famed fixture at Princeton for three decades and a dean essayist of early American history—had traced the history of these schools and argued that whatever insights they had originally claimed, they had grown so capacious and complex that their interpretive luster had faded. Murrin supposed these immolations unique to historical writing on the American Revolution. In fact, he put his finger on a repetitive historiographical asymmetry: empirical proliferation, explanatory contraction.²

Yet by the time Murrin's essay reappeared in an edited collection in 2018, his perspective was eclipsed by a new way of viewing early American history that placed a premium on expanding the field's boundaries rather than continuing to play within the confines of antique schools. Mark Peterson recently predicted "imaginative failure" if historians obsessed over fitting together Murrin's a priori schools rather than approaching archives with "questions [End Page 264] generated by our current predicament," like climate change, information technology, or global authoritarianism.³ Meanwhile the Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution (2012) had declared the end of school-based Revolution history altogether. Editors Jane Kamensky and Edward Gray lamented a previous generation's alienating battles between intellectual (neo-Whig) and social (neo-Progressive) historians whose "irreconcilable interpretations" amounted to "ever more Manichean and absolute postures."⁴ The Handbook set out instead to capture what many historians now refer to as "vast early America": plural views west (from London and Bengal), north (from the West Indies), east (from Indian country), and inward (from port cities of thirteen rebel colonies), all in longue durée perspective and with bricolage interpretation "methodologically pluralist, even promiscuous."⁵ The sun never set on the new bounds of the American Revolution, except on its old historiographical schools. Here was a summa that recalled not the immolation flames of Wagner's last Ring opera, but its more portentous title: Götterdämmerung—"Twilight of the Gods"—a complete washing away of the old wars in favor of a fresh start.

But were Murrin's hoary gods really gone? David Waldstreicher rejected the Handbook's "declaration of historiographical independence" and claimed that deep continuities with the traditional schools persisted in the new.⁶ Despite real losses for the Whig camp, Waldstreicher argued, the Handbook displayed a "neo-Imperial" stance (billed "Atlantic"), which paired well with a Progressive inclination for social conflict. The best essays were those whose authors acknowledged their lineage without becoming shills for calcified camps. Waldstreicher likened an old school to a jazz standard that could "get you out on the dance floor if it's played a bit differently and doesn't nod too sagely to your grandparents."⁷ And the "trophies," Waldstreicher suggested, "will go to those who know the old steps as well as the new ones."⁸

Woody Holton knows both the old and the new steps and...

• 新老派美国革命
• 弗朗西斯·鲁索（生平）

谈到自焚，理查德瓦格纳完全可以忍受：女主人公布伦希尔德在瓦格纳史诗歌剧周期的第十五小时也是最后一小时骑着她忠诚的马去火焰，Der Ring des Nibelungen，相比之下，历史学家约翰穆林，在美国革命史学的传奇中确定了三个。帝国学校、进步学校和辉格党学校的独立起源故事都“以自焚的方式”，随着时间的推移膨胀成“不断累积的矛盾”的混乱泥潭。^1个传说自 19 世纪末以来，关于美国革命的专业历史著作一直由大约三个主要的解释学派主导，每个学派都与对过去的对比方法相关联。这些不仅仅是学术争论，而且是关于历史和当代政治如何结合的隐含信念。辉格党着眼于意识形态并强调精英参与者之间的共识，进步派着眼于社会历史和经济学并强调被阶级冲突撕裂的政体，帝国历史学家着眼于制度并强调整个大英帝国必须取代对十三个殖民地的狭隘观点如果要了解革命的原因。2007年，Murrin——在普林斯顿工作了 30 年的著名固定人物，也是美国早期历史的首席散文作家——追溯了这些学校的历史，并争辩说，无论他们最初声称的见解是什么，它们都变得如此广阔和复杂，以至于它们的解释光彩已经褪色。Murrin 认为这些自焚事件是美国革命历史著作所特有的。事实上，他指出了一种重复的史学不对称：经验扩散，解释收缩。^2个

然而，当 Murrin 的文章在 2018 年重新出现在编辑过的合集中时，他的观点被一种看待美国早期历史的新方式所掩盖，这种方式重视扩大该领域的边界，而不是继续在古老学校的范围内发挥作用。马克·彼得森 (Mark Peterson) 最近预测，如果历史学家痴迷于将 Murrin 的先验学派组合在一起，而不是用“我们当前困境产生的问题[End Page 264] ”（如气候变化、信息技术或全球威权主义）来处理档案，那么马克·彼得森 (Mark Peterson) 预测“想象力会失败”。³与此同时，牛津美国革命手册（2012）完全宣告了以学校为基础的革命历史的终结。编辑简·卡门斯基 (Jane Kamensky) 和爱德华·格雷 (Edward Gray) 哀叹上一代知识分子（新辉格党）和社会（新进步派）历史学家之间的疏远斗争，他们的“不可调和的解释”相当于“越来越摩尼教和绝对的姿态”。⁴该手册转而着手捕捉许多历史学家现在所说的“广阔的早期美国”：向西（来自伦敦和孟加拉）、向北（来自西印度群岛）、向东（来自印度国家）和向内（来自十三个反叛殖民地的港口城市），所有这些都以长期视角和拼凑式解释“方法论上的多元主义，甚至是混杂的”。^5个除了旧的历史学派，太阳从未落在美国革命的新边界上。这是一个总结，它让人想起的不是瓦格纳最后一部指环歌剧中的自焚火焰，而是它更具预兆性的标题：Götterdämmerung—— “诸神的黄昏”——彻底洗刷旧战争，迎接新的开始。

但是穆林的苍白神灵真的消失了吗？David Waldstreicher 拒绝了该手册的“史学独立性宣言”，并声称新学派与传统学派有着深刻的连续性。⁶尽管辉格党阵营遭受了真正的损失，Waldstreicher 认为，该手册显示了一种“新帝国主义”立场（被称为“大西洋”），这与社会冲突的进步倾向相得益彰。最好的文章是那些作者承认他们的血统而没有成为钙化营地的托儿的文章。Waldstreicher 将一所老式学校比作一种爵士乐标准，“如果它的演奏方式有点不同并且不会太明智地向你的祖父母点头，那么它可以让你在舞池中脱颖而出。” ⁷而“奖杯”，Waldstreicher 建议，“将授予那些了解旧步骤和新步骤的人。” ^8个

伍迪·霍尔顿 (Woody Holton) 对新旧步骤都了如指掌，而且……