page_title: Pauline Maier
section_title: Scholarship
hierarchical_section_title: Pauline Maier / Scholarship
caption_attribution_description: English: John Trumbull's painting, Declaration of Independence, depicting the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Congress. The painting can be found on the back of the U.S. $2 bill. The original hangs in the US Capitol rotunda. Español: Cuadro del pintor estadounidense John Trumbull. Se encuentra en la rotonda del capitolio de los Estados Unidos (Washington D.C.) y representa la presentación al Congreso del documento que establecía la Declaración de Independencia de los Estados Unidos. Français&#160;: John Trumbull (US-americain, 1756-1843): Déclaration d'indépendance figurant la Commission des Cinq déposant le texte de la déclaration d'indépendance. De gauche à droite, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Thomas Jefferson et Benjamin Franklin. فارسی: جان ترامبول در مشهورترین اثر خود با نام اعلان استقلال، پنج مرد را به تصویر کشیده‌است که در حال تحویل پیش‌نویس اعلامیهٔ استقلال ایالات متحده به دومین کنگرهٔ مهاجرنشینان هستند. این تصویر بر پشت اسکناس‌های دو دلاری ایالات متحده به چشم می‌خورد. تابلو اصلی در ساختمان کاپیتول نصب شده‌است.
context_page_description: Pauline Alice Maier was a revisionist historian of the American Revolution, though her work also addressed the late colonial period and the history of the United States after the end of the Revolutionary War. She was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  Maier achieved prominence over a fifty-year career of critically acclaimed scholarly histories and journal articles. She was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and taught undergraduates. She authored textbooks and online courses. Her popular career included series with PBS and the History Channel. She appeared on Charlie Rose, C-SPAN2's In Depth and wrote 20 years for The New York Times review pages. Maier was the 2011 President of the Society of American Historians. She won the 2011 George Washington Book Prize for her book Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788. She died in 2013 from lung cancer at the age of 75.
context_section_description: The Neo-Whigs
  Maier's scholarship belongs to the "Neo-Whig" school of historiography founded by Bernard Bailyn in reaction to the "Progressive" historians. Her work is likened to that of Gordon S. Wood and Edmund S. Morgan. Radical English libertarian thought changed American beliefs and society and culture. The spreading ideas of natural rights and individual liberty distinctively altered politics, economy and society. These are explained with political analysis apart from ideology, incorporating English and French sources.
  Neo-Whigs of the 1950s forward avoided the triumphalism of the 1930s 'Whig historians' of the Revolution. The neo-Whigs added empire perspective, explored Patriot differences among colonies and within each colony, and added treatment of Tory elements. Maier's account of evolving Patriot differences is "Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787–1788". Still, neo-Whigs have critics who see no causal imperative to revolution by Lockean ideals. Maier's account of the connections is found in "American Scripture: The Making of the Declaration of Independence".
  Neo-Whigs versus neo-Progressives
  In contrast to the neo-Whigs, neo-Progressives explain many developments as a conservative return to Coke's 'Rights of Englishmen', a reaction to economic imperatives of expanding Empire.
  The British of all classes everywhere in the empire were more free than any in the world. Neo-progressives show that the structural economic change in the English Atlantic empire and local profit margins counted as much for merchants and planters as a colonial concern for Parliament's enactments. Control of domestic markets motivated as much as rights and ideals. The Neo-Whigs have difficulty explaining a tipping point from mild protest to sustained violence. At times they have not accounted for the exodus by Tories and ex-slave British. 'Liberty' in 1776 meant different things to different people. Maier's take is found in "From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776".
  Neo-Whigs in general answer that doctrine of every kind was underpinned by a colonial social reality that was by its nature uncertain and unstable. Nevertheless, they are charged with favoring those who could read and write. Social historians expanded historical inquiry into urban labor movements and rural militias. Maier contributed to the wider sensibility with her article "Popular Uprisings in 18th Century America" in the William and Mary Quarterly, featured in a reissue of their 50-year best. And while neo-Whigs can explain much of later social, economic and political transformation, see Maier's "Revolutionary Origins of the American Corporation", there still remains how marginalized populations (day-laborers, women, blacks slave and free, Amerindians) should be incorporated into the narrative of the American Revolution.
  Expanding 'early American' history
  Indeed, whatever was once "Early American History" is changed and changing. The field is 'imperialistically' reaching chronologically forward fifty years and backwards a century. It has spread geographically over the entire continent and across Atlantic communities. It topically encompasses slavery, gender, ethnicity and borderland outliers. The new intellectual fault line is methodological, based on differences in research standards and how to relate theory and archival research.
  A recent collection by Donald A. Yerxa looks towards finding a 'reconceptualization' of the field with chronological bounds based on newly researched continuity and change, along with more coherent themes. Maier's section was a forum on historiography, Peter C. Mancall led 'the colonial period', and  Gordon S. Wood started 'revolution and early republic'. Maier began the historiography section with three "Disjunctions" based on her previous work at NEH and a newly written rejoinder following comments by five other scholars.
  In the first disjunction considered by Maier, the social 'Colonial' history is unlike the predominantly political and ideological 'Rev
caption: Declaration Comte of Ma, Ct, NY, Pa, Va. Written in secret, then venerated, transformed → see Maier's American Scripture
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