Edward Countryman passed away in Dallas on March 24th, when a wide range of research from various groups working in the workplace during the American Revolution led the country to a more complicated understanding. He was 80 years old.
His daughters, Caron Onnadel and Kilstein Powell, confirmed their deaths, but did not say what caused Dallas or where they died.
Professor Countryman began his career in the 1970s as part of what is known as a neo-progressing school that focuses on social and economic factors that drive historical change.
Influenced by EP Thompson, the British labor historian who worked at Warwick University in England, Professor Countryman wrote history from the bottom up, examining how everyday people made decisions that influenced the course of events collectively.
He promoted the idea that the American Revolution not only achieved independence from Britain, but was far more.
“Ed's work was a major part of the movement to integrate political and institutional and new social history,” said Kate Holman, who studied with a historian at the American University in Washington, Countryman Professor.
His research is multi-directional, examining not only bottom-up history, but top-down political history. In his work, the elites and workers robbed them of influence along with once-existing groups like women, Native Americans and black Americans who discovered that the revolution had given them the opportunity to influence a new social order.
“He has taught me how he is interested in history from the bottom up, in classes, and from the crowds, and he is still interested in nation and nation building,” said David Waldstricher, a historian at the New York University Graduate Center, who studied with a professor of Countryman at Yale.
Professor Countryman's first book, People of the Revolution: American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790, won the Bancroft Award in 1981, one of the highest honors of history writing.
His fluid and engaging books and essays frequently appeared in reading lists at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. This shows that his love for education and guidance is almost as strong as his love for research.
Country Professor emphasized not only the complexity of revolutionary American society, but also its vastness, drawing in internal regions and frontiers that have long been neglected by historians focusing on elite and urban societies.
That flexibility allowed him to remain influential for a long time after a new generation of historians shifted their focus to other fields, including women and African-American history. His work created space for a variety of people and groups. He liked to say, but instead many Americans liked to say it.
“He had a great appreciation for humans, and what was important to humans was very flexible,” said Katherine Cathe, a historian who worked with a countryman professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who taught for the past 30 years. “He was not married to any particular ideological position.”
Edward Francis Countryman Jr. was born on July 31, 1944 in Glens Falls, New York, an industrial city in northern Albany. His father worked in state education, but his mother, Agnes (Alford), was managed by his compatriots.
He received his Bachelor's degree in History from Manhattan University (now Manhattan University) in 1966 and a PhD in History from Cornell in 1971.
Professor Countryman spent his early career outside of America, first at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, and at Warwick University and Cambridge University in the UK.
After serving as a visiting professor at Yale, he moved to Southern Methodist University in 1991 and remained there until his retirement in 2022.
Professor Countryman's first marriage ended with divorce. Along with his daughters, he was survived by his wife, Ebonne von Hugsen Countryman. Samuel, his first marriage son. sister, Judy Fournier. and six grandchildren.
Country professors never adhered to any particular historical interpretations of the American Revolution. Partly because the meaning of revolution was still in dispute at the time.
“The aftermath of independence made half-ri half-peasants, angry politicians, sophisticated intellectuals, loyal exiles all write down versions of what they had experienced.” “But these men and women couldn't agree with what the revolution was about everything they shared in the event.”
