How does a popular uprising transform itself from the disorder of
revolution into a legal system that carries out the daily administration
required to govern? Americans faced this question during the Revolution
as colonial legal structures collapsed under the period's disorder. Yet
by the end of the war, Americans managed to rebuild their courts and
legislatures, imbuing such institutions with an authority that was
widely respected. This remarkable transformation came about in
unexpected ways. Howard Pashman here studies the surprising role played
by property redistribution--seizing it from Loyalists and transferring
it to supporters of independence--in the reconstruction of legal order
during the Revolutionary War.
Building a Revolutionary State looks closely at one state, New York,
to understand the broader question of how legal structures emerged from
an insurgency. By examining law as New Yorkers experienced it in daily
life during the war, Pashman reconstructs a world of revolutionary law
that prevailed during America's transition to independence. In doing so,
Pashman explores a central paradox of the revolutionary era: aggressive
enforcement of partisan property rules actually had stabilizing effects
that allowed insurgents to build legal institutions that enjoyed popular
support. Tracing the transformation from revolutionary disorder to legal
order, Building a New Revolutionary State gives us a radically fresh
way to understand the emergence of new states.
