Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic

Abstract

Readers familiar with Matt Groening’s cartoon collection School Is Hell (1987) will recall “Lesson 19: The 9 Types of College Teachers.” Among them was “The Single-Theory-to-Explain-Everything Maniac,” whose answer to any question was “The nation that controls magnesium controls the universe!!!” I think of that cartoon whenever I read about an idea that has caught fire in academic circles. Historians of early America are as susceptible to the allure of the big idea as anyone. Since I have been in graduate school, we have cycled through town studies, republicanism, the middle ground, the Atlantic world, and now the continental approach. Anglicization is another such big idea, one that owes its origins to John Murrin, who during several decades of teaching at Princeton University mentored the students who have gathered in this volume to write about his big idea.