| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Declaration of Independence: A Global History. By David Armitage. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. viii, 300 pp. $23.95, ISBN 978-0-674-02282-9.)

David Armitage's new book, The Declaration of Independence, sets forth the controversial argument that by far the most important original purpose of the Declaration was to "express the international legal sovereignty of the United States," not to establish universalistic claims for individual rights, set forth the conditions of legitimate government, or to serve as an "icon of Americanness" (pp. 21, 13). It also traces the dissemination and reception of the Declaration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and establishes the Declaration's importance as a model for a myriad of declarations of independence that have been written since 1776.

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