Gloucester’s Richard Rosenfeld, a historian and Associate Fellow at Yale University’s Timothy Dwight College, will present a radically new explanation for how democracy came to England, and hence to America, at a free lecture Thursday at the Rocky Neck Cultural Center in Gloucester.
Sponsored by the Gloucester Writers Center, this program at 7 p.m. July 23, will be a preview to a lecture he plans to give at Cambridge University in England to faculty and students of American, Early Medieval and Early Modern history.
“We owe the origin of our freedoms to Scandinavians, not to Anglo-Saxons,” Rosenfeld said.
He said that this theory dismisses centuries of teaching that the Saxons installed a democratic government in England when they settled there after the fall of the Roman Empire. Instead, he credits Scandinavian invaders and settlers, particularly the Vikings, with introducing democratic ideas.
Rosenfeld has argued revisionist history before, defending two newspaper editors whom George Washington and John Adams wanted to jail for sedition; this view was presented in his book “American Aurora,” which led the Los Angeles Times “Best History” list in 1997. Rosenfeld has lectured at Yale on the history of the Early American Republic and been a vocal advocate at Yale that the university should publicly defend Enlightenment values. He also has been a NPR commentator.
He said that the origins of the English and American constitutions have long been debated. During this talk, Rosenfeld will offer an alternative to what he sees as three centuries of misguided history in England and America about the origins of the Anglo-American democracy.
He presents his ideas of political inheritance as it emerged in the United States as the country celebrates its 250th anniversary and the American Revolution.
“This lecture offers an entirely new story of how democracy came to England,” he said. “The Scandinavians were the first to arrive in England once the Romans left, and the Scandinavians, especially the Viking invaders, deserve far more credit than the Saxons for advancing America’s democratic ideals. This may be a subject the audience may be unfamiliar with but I hope it is a subject that will interest them related to the beginning of democracy.”
Gail McCarthy may be contacted at 978-675-2706, or gmccarthy@northofboston.com.