ABSTRACT
Ever since the 1960s, American historians have been rewriting American history, demonstrating that since the arrival of Europeans and Africans in the early 1600s, America has been a complex mosaic of different races and cultures. This historical movement has produced an immense literature that not only describes the deep racial and cultural divisions that have existed within American society for centuries, but also explores complex historical patterns of interracial cooperation as well as conflict. However, despite this explosion in American historiography, with only a few exceptions, political scientists continue to discuss and debate the nature of early American political development in Eurocentric terms that would have been familiar to the readers of Charles Beard almost a century ago.
