American History

This book was the first major work of revisionist history published in the United States, and as such, its publication was a watershed event; it stimulated a tremendous amount of debate in academic circles by challenging long-held conventions regarding the American Founding. “Could it be,” Beard asked, “that the Constitution, far from embodying its signers’ higher ideals of individual freedom and liberty, in fact merely codified selfish, elitist property interests, and a constitutional system of systematic class exploitation to sustain them?”

The debate was a lively one, and was valuable in so far as it reminded academia that history should not be taken for granted. But ultimately, no one could deny that Beard’s interpretation was grounded more in fancy than in fact, and that his book’s thesis was absurd.

In academia, this absurdity has been agreed upon for at least the last two generations. “An Economic Interpretation” is therefore notable for the historical context of its publication. In its substance, though, the book is never taken seriously anymore, nor should it be.
Rating: 1 / 5

I feel it best to summarize, in outline form, the positives and negatives of this book:

Positives

1.) Thuroughness: The author goes into tremendous detail to document not only how the people of each state (indeed, the people living in distinct *regions* of each state) reacted to the effort to draw up and ratify the Constitution, but also how their reactions (and ultimately, wether or not they supported the new government) tied into their economic interests (personalty vs realty), and thus determined if they approved or rejected the Constitution. On top of that, he examines each of the delegates to the convention to show what economic interests they had going into the convention that might have influenced their drafting of a new national government.

Negatives

1) Editing: Here are some examples of how this book could really have benefitted from having an editor:

a. there are pages in the book where footnotes are in German, French, or another foreign language; now maybe back in Beard’s day, it was common for people to be bilingual or trilingual, but I imagine that’s not so much the case today. So if you put in footnotes from a foreign language sources, and you want your readers to see how the material in the footnotes relate to your overall thesis of your book, then wouldn’t it be immensly helpful to translate said footnotes for your readers?

b. page 34: “funded sixes”, “deferred sixes”, “funded threes”, “deferred threes” …. what does any of that mean? I figured out that “sixes” and “threes” are interest rates, but I had to go to my dad, who’s an accountant, to learn what “funded” and “deferred” meant. On the same page, Beard talks about pounds and shillings. Well, how about explaining how much a shilling was worth, relative to a pound, in those days. Was a shilling equal to what we know as a quarter? A dime? Half a dollar? It would’ve helped tremendously to have someone translate Beards words into layman terms for those of us who do not have an economic background.

c. The text in the book referred (I can’t remember the page number) to a map showing the sections of a particular state that supported and fought against the Constitution, but there is not a single map in Beard’s book. Where did it go? An editor would’ve spotted this and worked to correct it.

2) Dry reading: While most of this book is quite readable, some portions – particularly the chapters examining each state’s delegates to the convention and the later fights within each state to ratify the document – are almost torturous to go through. Don’t get me wrong, I still admire Beard’s thuroughness in examining everything in detail, but he could’ve peppered his narrative to make it more interesting.

3) What’s the point?: Historians and activists on the left (ie. Howard Zinn) have referred to Beard’s work to document how the Constitution, and our current form of government in general, are inherently undemocratic and need to be “altered or abolished”. But what’s interesting, to me at least, is that while reading Beard’s book, there didn’t seem to be any of that same moral condemnation or calls for change – even after spending the entire book showing how the Constitution was an economic document meant to advance the interests of its supporters. So then one is left to ask, what was the point of writing the book? To simply do an objective historical study on the nature of the Constitution? To get people to stop treating the document as holy scripture written by men seeking to establish the best government possible for the American people, and view it more realistically? To provide historians with a reference source they could use to begin their own lines of inquiry?

I debated on giving this book 3 or 4 stars. On the one hand, 2 and 3 in the negatives column are minor complaints that are far outshined by the research that went into this book; but ultimately, I only gave it 3 stars because a book dealing with the economics of that period needs to be understandable to those without an economic background, and sadly, the author assumed the reader would already have that knowledge. I’d still recommend this book as a reference source – especially for those who wanted to start lines of research on individual convention delegates or state ratification efforts. I tend to think that Woody Holton’s “Unruly Americans” does much of the same work that Beard did, but Holton ties his conclusions into why we have a Bill of Rights and also tried (albeit unsuccessfully at times) to translate economic terms in ways that lay people can understand.
Rating: 3 / 5

I can’t fault Beard for reaching the conclusions he did with what little evidence he had at the time (or as some might argue, what evidence he did not intentionally neglect), but historical scholarship since the 1950s has disproved Beard’s thesis as presented in this book.

Beard tells us that the Framers and ratifiers of the Constitution talked big when it came to America’s founding values, but were really in it for themselves economically, framing our system of government in a way that would both enlarge and ensure their own economic hegemony over their fellow citizens. Yet, comprehensive review of historical documents, both by Forrest McDonald in We the People: The Economic Origins of the Constitution (which attacks the economic prong of Beard’s hypothesis), and by Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (which convincingly demonstrates the sincerity of the beliefs in liberty our forefathers held), has revealed Beard’s economic interpretation to be not anywhere remotely near historical truth.

This is not to say that Beard’s book is entirely without worth, however. When it was published, and for decades afterward, it was academically accepted and impacted many Americans’ understanding of their own history. It also played a notable role in energizing and sustaining the Progressive movement into the New Deal era, with Beard’s thesis lasting until better scholarship emerged in the 1950s. In that sense, then, it is valuable to any comprehensive understanding of early twentieth-century and depression-era politics.
Rating: 3 / 5