Mark Peterson

Professor Mark Peterson, a specialist in early North America and the Atlantic world, joined the Yale History Department in July 2018.  He earned his Ph.D. in History at Harvard University, and taught previously at the University of Iowa from 1998 to 2007, and at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2007 to 2018, where he was Chair of the History Department from 2015-2018.  His most recent book is The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865 (Princeton University Press, 2019, paperback, 2020), and he is also the author of The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England (Stanford University Press, 1997).  At the moment, he is at work on two new books for Princeton University Press. The first, The Long Crisis of the Constitution, offers a historical account of the US Constitution as a political compromise based on 18^th-century conceptions of power and property, and describes how the slow erosion of its original premises in the face of a changing US population and economy have left the nation politically unmoored.  The second, Revolution’s Ends: A History of the American Revolution for the 21^st Century, is a new narrative history of the major conflicts of late-18^th-century North America, designed to offer useful frameworks for understanding the processes that generated an independent and consolidated United States, in order to better grasp the prospects for the nation and its place in the world today.  Besides these current projects, Professor Peterson is also planning a third volume of his New England trilogy, focused on the transformation of material culture, consumer demand, and public expenditure from the 16^th to the 19^th century.  He is also completing an edited volume of the writings of John Hull, a 17^th-century Boston merchant, mint-master, and political leader, for publication by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.  In addition, Professor Peterson also serves as co-editor for the book series, American Beginnings published by the University of Chicago Press.