Peoples and the Formations of Nations, States, Empires, and Societies

Abstract This article introduces the four essays that follow, respectively by Jack P. Greene, Donald F. Johnson, Angel-Luke O’Donnell, and Leslie Tassery. It describes the four articles’ origins as papers for a conference on the historiography of the American Revolution and places each one in the context of historiographical developments in the social and cultural histories of politics in the American Revolutionary era. It then argues that the articles’ variety in approach and scope – one covering the United States and the remainder of the British Empire in the decades of the American Revolution, two more being local studies of political conflict in Virginia and Pennsylvania in the years around 1776, and the last examining George Washington’s rhetoric of nationhood – is a sign of the strength and depth of the field.