Constituting the Body of State: Paper, Parchment, and Political Thought in the Age of the American Revolution.

This essay examines the material and visual cultural dynamics underlying the emergence of the modern state during the Age of Revolutions, focusing on the rhetoric of the "written constitution" in Revolutionary North America and the early United States. It argues that the American constitutional form was not a novel invention but a revision of early modern British imperial practices linking documents, statecraft, and the body politic, rooted in seventeenth-century critiques of monarchy. The essay highlights how early Americans and their transatlantic allies distinguished constitutional authority from written records, emphasizing lived political practice over archival documentation, even as the U.S. Constitution itself was materially inscribed on parchment. Through analysis of political theory, administrative history, and visual culture, the essay reveals continuities between British imperial governance and American republicanism, showing that both relied on similar material substrates—such as paper and parchment—to animate political authority despite differing rhetorical claims about the nature of constitutional legitimacy.