Speaker: Mark Peterson
Professor, Department of History, Yale University
The American Revolution occurred when Britain’s constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American Constitution to succeed where Britain’s had faltered, planning for continuous population and territorial expansion that would eventually cross the continent. Yet by the end of the 19th century, it was already ill-suited for an increasingly urban, industrialized society, and the transformations of the 20th century pushed it to a breaking point.
In his book, “The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History” (Princeton University Press, 2026), Mark Peterson charts the history and aims of the American Constitution’s relationship to the social order from its origins in an agrarian past to the grave crisis we face today.
Peterson, the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University, 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 and the University of California, Berkeley, where he served as chair of the History Department. His other books include “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 working on “Revolution’s Ends: A History of the American Revolution for the 21st Century,” which connects 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. He is also completing an edited volume of the writings of John Hull, a 17th-century Boston merchant, mint-master, and political leader, for publication by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
Peterson also serves as co-editor for American Beginnings, a book series published by the University of Chicago Press, with 25 volumes published to date. At Yale, he serves as the Faculty Director of the Lewis Walpole Library, a remarkable research collection of books, manuscripts, graphic arts, and objects related to 18th-century British history, broadly defined.
