ɫ��ֱ��

Join us for conversation with Professor Mark Peterson (Yale) about his new book The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand Year History.

This book charts the history and aims of the American constitution from its origins in an agrarian past to the grave crisis we face today. Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government but also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson's riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little. Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution reveals how this widening disconnect threatens the very existence of our democracy. It calls for a constitution that sustains the ideals developed over the past thousand years while meeting the challenges of the future.

Mark Peterson joined the Yale history faculty in 2018. He earned his Ph.D. in History at Harvard University and previously taught at the University of Iowa (1998-2007) and the University of California, Berkeley (2007-2018), where he served as chair of the History Department. He is also the author of The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865 (Princeton, 2019), and The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England (Stanford, 1997). He is now at work on Revolution's Ends: A History of the American Revolution for the 21st Century, designed to connect the war and political transformations of the late 18th century to the explosive growth in settler population, territorial expansion, and consumption patterns that characterized this world-transforming era.

This event is part of the "Worlds of 1776" series, co-sponsored by the Department of History, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and the Bass Connections "Worlds of 1776" research team.