• Introduction to U.S. Political History: U.S. political history involves the study of American political ideas and their evolution over time, with a focus on competing ideologies and their impact on change. The editors of "Beyond the Founders" highlight the shift from traditional political history to a New Political History that includes social and cultural narratives.

• Key Contributions to New Political History: Pasley and Zagarri's works are highlighted as examples of New Political History, incorporating ground-level experiences and women's contributions to the political narrative of the early American Republic.

• Future of Political History: The New New Political History aims to include diverse voices and sources, leveraging modern technology to expand the scope of political history and incorporate findings from various social sciences.

Introduction

U.S. political history is the research, analysis, and historiography of the phenomena of American political ideas in which competing ideologies and their effect on change over time play a vital role.  Editors Waldstreicher, Pasley, and Robertson explain in their anthology Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic that American political history has evolved since the inception of the Republic; as ideas became more and many varied, the history of politics has adapted to speak the language and articulate the meaning of political parties, individuals, and available texts.  They point to a ‘founders chic’ era of political history, which found intellectual purchase from the inception of political history in the 19th century into the 1970’s and a New Political History that accounts for social and cultural history in the narrative of U.S. political history that persists today. The editors envision a New New Political History, incorporating more and different voices and sources over time.  This can be in one ideation in-line with the social sciences writ broadly. Formalization and academic rigor, the conscious inclusion of voices and artifacts from ‘the other’, and democratization of the field define this New New Political History and differentiate it from a ‘founders chic’ approach that emphasizes ‘big men’. 

The authors note, in the introduction to Beyond the Founders, that past this extent “lies a complex and important story about how recognizably American political institutions and practices…emerged from the top down, from the bottom up, and perhaps especially from the middle out in every direction,” hinting at the fruits of a New New Political History that might include the voices of the marginalized and oppressed, more broadly incorporate international histories and experiences, and draw from the myriad non-historical disciplines that exist under the rubric of the social sciences, including cultural anthropology, linguistics, and even archaeology.  “This political culture was successful precisely because it was not a standardized national system.  Instead, it was thoroughly embedded, and built out of, the culture of everyday life,” emphasizing the need for historians to look beyond the traditional histories of notable politicians and parties to present a more holistic view U.S. political history from varied or new perspectives.

Argument

In Chapter 1 of Beyond the Founders, “The Cheese and the Words: Popular Political Culture and Participatory Democracy in the Early American Republic,” author Jeffrey L. Pasley outlines the politics that engulfed the northeastern states of the new Republic (ca. 1800) with a large Republican partisan-made cheese wheel standing as a foil for Federalist critique. As the Republic revved up, political participation became a new feature, fiercely expressed across the American political landscape.  Pasley conveys the ground-level life experience of artisans and their participatory, democratic aims in the time of early Jeffersonian Republic political history.

In Chapter 4, “Women and Party Conflict in the Early Republic,” Rosemarie Zagarri exhibits her New Political History that incorporates the story of women into that of the early Republic, and women’s contributions and sentiments in the 18th century, offering a greater picture of this compelling era in U.S. political history.  Zagarri claims that the written history of the early republic “has traditionally been written as the story of great white males,” and has produced a work that “makes room for women…and understand[s] that ‘politics’ encompassed a much more capacious realm extending well beyond the confines of voting, electioneering, and the formal institutions of governance.” The perspectives and voices of period women is crucial for U.S. political historians to present as either counter-narrative or as context for a more forthright accounting of a shared political history.

As revisionists, “most of what the New Political Historians had written on the initial period dealt with the development of political parties. In this they incorporated the work of several more traditional historians,” resulting in a history that fell short of the fulsome representation required to ‘qualify’ as a New New Political History.  Nevertheless, by the 1990’s, “the perspectives, language, and methodology [revealed] the diversity of the scholars associated with the New New Political History... [and their] somewhat distant relationship [to] scholars of postmodernism.” William G. Shade accounts for this shift in revisionism in the concluding chapter of Beyond the Founders, “Commentary: Déjà Vu All Over Again: Is There a New New Political History?”

Conclusion

Chapter 14 documents the contributions to the anthology and walks the reader through the construction of U.S. political history, from the ‘founders chic’ period to the New New Political History, which includes culture, comparative literature, and “the positive empiricism that underlay the original New Political History.” With technical innovations, historians are better prepared today than ever before to find and document new sources to expand the scope of political history, bolstering our classical knowledge and inviting new perspectives to inform a modern body politic.  The social sciences including history and its requisite disciplines are called to digitize and deliver peer-reviewed and studied results to inform the myriad disciplines and the public at large, as an effort to affect the political historical discussions and issues that are unfolding in the world today.

References

Pasely, Jeffrey L., Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, “Introduction: Beyond the Founders.” In Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, edited by Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher, Chapel Hill. The University of North Carolina Press. 2004.

Pasely, Jeffrey L. “The Cheese and the Words: Popular Political Culture and Participatory Democracy in the Early American Republic.” In Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, edited by Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher. Chapel Hill. The University of North Carolina Press. 2004.

Shade, William G. “Commentary: Déjà Vu All Over Again: Is There a New New Political History?” In Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, edited by Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher. Chapel Hill. The University of North Carolina Press. 2004.

Zaggari, Rosemary. “Women and Party Conflict in the Early Republic.” In Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, edited by Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher.  Chapel Hill. The University of North Carolina Press. 2004.