Awards

• Winner of National Book Award in History 1975 (United States)

Overview

Winner of the National Book Award The classic political biography that reimagined Revolutionary history-in a new edition to honor America's 250th year. Thomas Hutchinson, governor of Massachusetts Bay during the restive years of 1771-1774, was the most distinguished colonial-born official in pre-Revolutionary America. He was also the most loathed. A loyalist, Hutchinson defended the legitimacy of Parliament's rule and suffered the consequences, bearing the full weight of Patriot ire. By the eve of the Revolution, he was vilified as the man most responsible for Britain's intolerable cruelties-not only a tyrant but a traitor. The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is Bernard Bailyn's National Book Award-winning history of Hutchinson and the American loyalists who found themselves on the losing side of the Revolutionary War. Offering a dramatic account of the origins of American independence from the viewpoint of one of its most thoughtful opponents, Bailyn makes the loyalist position comprehensible and rehabilitates a deft statesman who was far from the demagogue imagined in Patriot propaganda. Hutchinson in fact shared many Patriot grievances and faithfully represented colonial public opinion to both Crown and Parliament. Yet he was forced from office and died in exile, broken and longing for his native New England. Through a sympathetic yet balanced portrayal of one of the Revolution's defeated voices, Bailyn reveals with singular clarity why the Revolution prevailed and how those who survived its upheaval came to grasp its transformative power. Published on the 250th anniversary of American independence, with a foreword from Maya Jasanoff, this new edition of Bailyn's masterpiece marks a turning point in historiography, illuminating the overlooked dimensions of American history and the stories that shape nations.

Full Product Details

9780674306233

Table of Contents

Reviews

The most psychologically nuanced study of a political leader that I have ever read. -- Jack Rakove * Stanford Report * A work of art: exquisitely written, delicate in insight, and imbued with a wisdom about men and affairs that is the true hallmark of a great historian. * Times Literary Supplement * A sympathetic and penetrating study of the most important, and perhaps the most hated, loyalist of all, Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts. And it is presented by a historian who has already written with similar penetration and sympathy on the ideas that moved the other side. Indeed it grows out of and in a sense completes the author’s previous work. * New York Review of Books * As political biography, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is without equal in the voluminous literature on the Revolution. No other public figure of the Revolution has found such skillful and sensitive attention. * History * Writing this kind of history requires discipline, imagination, and sensitivity, and it presupposes that there is an inner world of intellect and of moral and emotional sensibility which is intimately responsive to external events… [Bailyn’s] probing, taut yet luminous prose weaves together into a single fabric finished explanations, analyses of evidence, flashes of insight, and intuitive understandings. A triumph of historical and literary artistry… The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is that rare achievement which is at once original and nearly definitive, masterful and provocative. * Reviews in American History * The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson offers neither defense nor condemnation. Bailyn’s portrayal is sympathetic, in that he does not justify the caricature of the governor that was propagated by the American founders. He seeks, rather, to understand not only why Hutchinson would be burned in effigy by the revolutionaries, but also how Hutchinson’s conservatism and patriotism failed to calm the growing revolutionary cause. * New Criterion * Bailyn’s narrative illustrates how an individual’s political decisions are informed by experience. Hutchinson was no less intelligent than Franklin. He was well acquainted with colonial concerns and shared his countrymen’s most basic hopes for Parliamentary restraint and no taxation. But in the end, he was unable to accept the revolutionaries’ deep moral commitments as anything other than political irrationality. * Claremont Review of Books * A brilliant and poignant biography of the last royal governor of Massachusetts—a high-minded, New England Tory who resisted the revolutionary ferment and died in lonely exile. * Law & Liberty *

A brilliant and poignant biography of the last royal governor of Massachusetts--a high-minded, New England Tory who resisted the revolutionary ferment and died in lonely exile.-- ""Law & Liberty"" (6/22/2020 12:00:00 AM) A sympathetic and penetrating study of the most important, and perhaps the most hated, loyalist of all, Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts. And it is presented by a historian who has already written with similar penetration and sympathy on the ideas that moved the other side. Indeed it grows out of and in a sense completes the author's previous work.-- ""New York Review of Books"" (3/21/1974 12:00:00 AM) A work of art: exquisitely written, delicate in insight, and imbued with a wisdom about men and affairs that is the true hallmark of a great historian.-- ""Times Literary Supplement"" Bailyn's narrative illustrates how an individual's political decisions are informed by experience. Hutchinson was no less intelligent than Franklin. He was well acquainted with colonial concerns and shared his countrymen's most basic hopes for Parliamentary restraint and no taxation. But in the end, he was unable to accept the revolutionaries' deep moral commitments as anything other than political irrationality.-- ""Claremont Review of Books"" (4/1/2005 12:00:00 AM) The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson offers neither defense nor condemnation. Bailyn's portrayal is sympathetic, in that he does not justify the caricature of the governor that was propagated by the American founders. He seeks, rather, to understand not only why Hutchinson would be burned in effigy by the revolutionaries, but also how Hutchinson's conservatism and patriotism failed to calm the growing revolutionary cause.-- ""New Criterion"" (3/1/2017 12:00:00 AM) As political biography, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is without equal in the voluminous literature on the Revolution. No other public figure of the Revolution has found such skillful and sensitive attention.-- ""History"" Writing this kind of history requires discipline, imagination, and sensitivity, and it presupposes that there is an inner world of intellect and of moral and emotional sensibility which is intimately responsive to external events... [Bailyn's] probing, taut yet luminous prose weaves together into a single fabric finished explanations, analyses of evidence, flashes of insight, and intuitive understandings. A triumph of historical and literary artistry... The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is that rare achievement which is at once original and nearly definitive, masterful and provocative.-- ""Reviews in American History""

The most psychologically nuanced study of a political leader that I have ever read.--Jack Rakove ""StanfordReport"" (1/5/2026 12:00:00 AM) A brilliant and poignant biography of the last royal governor of Massachusetts--a high-minded, New England Tory who resisted the revolutionary ferment and died in lonely exile.-- ""Law & Liberty"" (6/22/2020 12:00:00 AM) A sympathetic and penetrating study of the most important, and perhaps the most hated, loyalist of all, Governor Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts. And it is presented by a historian who has already written with similar penetration and sympathy on the ideas that moved the other side. Indeed it grows out of and in a sense completes the author's previous work.-- ""New York Review of Books"" (3/21/1974 12:00:00 AM) A work of art: exquisitely written, delicate in insight, and imbued with a wisdom about men and affairs that is the true hallmark of a great historian.-- ""Times Literary Supplement"" Bailyn's narrative illustrates how an individual's political decisions are informed by experience. Hutchinson was no less intelligent than Franklin. He was well acquainted with colonial concerns and shared his countrymen's most basic hopes for Parliamentary restraint and no taxation. But in the end, he was unable to accept the revolutionaries' deep moral commitments as anything other than political irrationality.-- ""Claremont Review of Books"" (4/1/2005 12:00:00 AM) The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson offers neither defense nor condemnation. Bailyn's portrayal is sympathetic, in that he does not justify the caricature of the governor that was propagated by the American founders. He seeks, rather, to understand not only why Hutchinson would be burned in effigy by the revolutionaries, but also how Hutchinson's conservatism and patriotism failed to calm the growing revolutionary cause.-- ""New Criterion"" (3/1/2017 12:00:00 AM) As political biography, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is without equal in the voluminous literature on the Revolution. No other public figure of the Revolution has found such skillful and sensitive attention.-- ""History"" Writing this kind of history requires discipline, imagination, and sensitivity, and it presupposes that there is an inner world of intellect and of moral and emotional sensibility which is intimately responsive to external events... [Bailyn's] probing, taut yet luminous prose weaves together into a single fabric finished explanations, analyses of evidence, flashes of insight, and intuitive understandings. A triumph of historical and literary artistry... The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson is that rare achievement which is at once original and nearly definitive, masterful and provocative.-- ""Reviews in American History""

Author Information

Bernard Bailyn was a preeminent historian of early America and the Atlantic world. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize twice, for The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and Voyagers to the West, and received the National Book Award for The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson. At Harvard University, he served as Adams University Professor and James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History. Maya Jasanoff is the Coolidge Professor of History and X. D. and Nancy Yang Professor of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, specializing in British imperial and global history. She is the author of Edge of Empire (Duff Cooper Prize), Liberty’s Exiles (National Book Critics Circle Award), and The Dawn Watch (Cundill Prize in History).

Tab Content 6

Countries Available