‘The Venerable Head’

This introductory chapter sets out the argument of The Idea of Europe and the Origins of the American Revolution. It gives an overview of the ways in which colonial thinking about European geopolitics and European civilization shaped American politics and culture during the century prior to the Revolution. The introduction then reflects on the current historiographical consensus on the origins of the Revolution and the interplay of international relations with political culture in the eighteenth century. It concludes with some remarks on the challenges of writing histories of political culture and discusses the methodological problems of writing about the public sphere.