In 1600, Englishmen stood on the threshold of a new world. Robert M. Bliss's Revolution and Empire adopts an imperial perspective to explain how they adjusted to it, yet insists that the new world was more than a place on the map. The author argues that the American experience was an extension of England's seventeenth-century encounter with change and expansion, an encounter which challenged existing ideas and patterns in English politics and government on both sides of the Atlantic.Dr Bliss looks beyond the usual story of colonial autonomy versus imperial authority. He examines a more basic conflict over whether to seek refuge in tradition or to embrace change and adjust politics accordingly. He asserts that this has often set Englishmen against Englishmen, colonists against colonists, as it led to conflict between metropolis provinces. Throughout the century and throughout the empire, tradition warred with modernity, achieving a certain balance in the last 'glorious' revolution of a troubled century. England's first extensive encounter with revolution and empire provoked conflict and instability, but also laid the foundations for the modern state.
