American Democracy in Context. Joseph A. Pika

of a written constitution governing an entire nation was new and untested. Moreover, there had never before been a republican (that is, representative) government on the scale of the United States. In contrast, constitution writing had become something of a cottage industry by 2005. In the past 50 years, some 200 new constitutions have been drafted for nations around the world; over 25 since 2005, ranging from Angola to Zimbabwe.¹ This has allowed observers to analyze which processes work best when creating a new constitution.² Another difference was that the Iraqi framers faced a nation much more deeply divided along lines of ethnicity, language, religious sect, and region than did the American framers. Moreover, the post-conflict situations were different: Whereas the American colonists had fought to win their independence from a colonial power, a tyrannical Iraqi government had been overthrown as a result of an invasion by outside forces, and the Iraqis drafted their constitution under the watchful eye of an occupying force.

      The Iraq Constitution was ratified later in 2005 and remains in place. The fact that there are similarities between it and the U.S. Constitution is no accident. The U.S. Constitution has endured and become a model for many constitutions around the world. We now take for granted the success of the U.S. Constitution, but that success is really quite amazing. The American colonies were, as historian Joseph J. Ellis put it, “generally regarded as a provincial and wholly peripheral outpost of Western Civilization.” Despite that, it became the breeding ground for a novel approach to governance that has endured the test of time and emerged as an archetype for success.³

      The American Colonies

      In order to understand the factors that eventually led to the American Revolution, it is first necessary to understand how the colonies came into being and why they endured for so long. Europeans “discovered” America through Christopher Columbus in 1492. By then, North America had been populated for as long as forty thousand years and was already home to as many as ten million aboriginal or native people. France, Holland, and England led some explorations of the eastern seaboard of North America in the 1500s, but the road to English settlement did not really begin until 1606, when King James I issued charters to establish American colonies.

      Motivations for Coming to the Colonies

      Several factors led to the migration of people from England and other European countries to North America. One factor was religion. As early as the 1560s, French Protestants (known as Huguenots) came to what is now South Carolina and Florida to escape religious persecution, and the New England colonies in particular were settled by people seeking religious freedom for themselves. Religious beliefs across the colonies varied considerably. The Pilgrims—a group of religious separatists (those who advocated a complete break with, or separation from, the Church of England)—sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 and settled the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts. The Puritans—a group of nonseparatists (those who sought to reform the Church of England rather than break away from it)—settled the Massachusetts Bay colony, soon outnumbering the Pilgrims. The Maryland colony was originally envisioned as a haven for English Catholics, though in the end, few Catholics settled there. Meanwhile, Huguenots were also drawn to the religiously tolerant Dutch colony of New Netherland (which later became the English colonies of New York and New Jersey) because the Dutch Reformed Church there reflected the Huguenots’ Calvinist beliefs.

      In addition to religion, economic incentives drew people to the colonies. This was especially true in colonies from Maryland southward, where colonists were lured by the opportunity to make money by growing tobacco. Virginia, for instance, began not as a religious refuge but as a corporate colony financed by a joint stock company. As a result, the southern colonies were more religiously and ethnically diverse than their northern counterparts.⁴ The emphasis on growing crops for profit in the south led to the development of large plantations and inhibited urban development. Initially, these plantations lured young men from England and other European countries to work on them as indentured servants—laborers who entered a contract to work for no wages for a fixed period of time (usually three to seven years) in return for food, clothing, shelter, and their transportation to the colony. Some have suggested that as many as half of all white immigrants to the colonies during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries may have come as indentured servants. Later, white servitude gave way to slavery when plantation owners resorted to buying slaves from Africa.

      British Influences on American Political Thought

      Two documents—the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights—greatly influenced American political thought. Each contained principles that the colonists eventually used to justify revolution. Later, those principles served as foundations for the new government they created. Likewise, two events in England in the 1600s—civil war and the Glorious Revolution—served in the short run to preoccupy the British and distract their attention from the colonies while in the long run serving as models for resisting the arbitrary power of kings.

      The Magna Carta

      The Magna Carta (which means “great charter” in Latin, the language in which it was written) dates to 1215, when King John (ruler of England from 1199 to 1216) was forced to sign it by English barons who had revolted after John had imposed heavy taxes, waged an unsuccessful war with France, and quarreled with the Pope. It is one of the great documents in Western civilization, and its articulation of rights strongly influenced the framers of the U.S. Constitution.

      The Magna Carta was a practical document designed to remedy specific abuses of King John, so it includes many provisions (or “chapters”) that are not so relevant today. Others, however, stand as a fundamental basis for the rule of law—the idea that even the most powerful leader of government is bound by the law. The most important of these is Chapter 39, which emphatically states the requirement of due process of law, or of fair procedures:

      No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.⁵

      This provision of the Magna Carta limited the power of kings and later served as the basis for the guarantees in the U.S. Constitution that the government shall not take a person’s life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Modern-day Miranda warnings are an outgrowth of this.

      Description

      This Miranda warning card, developed for Kansas City police officers, is intended to ensure Americans’ due process rights.

      Mikael Karlsson / Alamy Stock Photo

      The fact that King John was forced to sign this document set an important precedent of free men standing up to the king. In 1297, the Magna Carta was placed in the statute books of England, where it remains to this day. By the end of the fourteenth century, the Magna Carta had come to be viewed not as any ordinary statute but as the fundamental law of the realm. Thus, opponents of King Charles I used it to justify rebellion in 1642.

      Civil War, the Glorious Revolution, and the English Bill of Rights

      In 1642, 36 years after King James I had issued the first charters establishing American colonies, civil war erupted in England. James I (who ruled from 1602 to 1625) and his son and successor, Charles I, believed in the divine right of kings—that is, the idea that kings derived their right to rule from God and were not accountable to their subjects. They thus believed that they had absolute control over Parliament (the legislature in England) and could, for example, impose taxes without the consent of Parliament. Charles I took other unilateral steps as well, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, quartering troops in private homes, and even imposing martial law. He summoned and dissolved Parliament at will and claimed an absolute right to veto any legislation it passed. Increasingly angered, Parliament and its supporters waged a civil war against