POPULAR POLITICS IN A POSTCOLONIAL NATION

The conflict at the seat of government over finance, constitutionalism, and style of governance might or might not have produced on its own a full-fledged party conflict involving the voters and a national contest for power. What the historical records show, however, is that it did not happen that way. Surprising as it may be from the inward-looking modern American perspective, the catalyst for full-scale party conflict actually came from outside the republic’s borders and across the ocean. To understand this, we need to consider that the early United States was also a new nation in the global order of