Hoffman, Ronald 1941–

PERSONAL: Born February 10, 1941, in Baltimore, MD; married, 1965; children: two. Education: George Peabody College (now Vanderbilt University), B.A., 1964; University of Wisconsin, M.A., 1965, Ph.D., 1969.

ADDRESSES: Office—Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, College of William and Mary, P.O. Box 8781, Williamsburg, VA 23187-8781; fax: 757-221-1047. E-mail—IEAHC1@wm.edu.

CAREER: University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, assistant professor, 1969–73, associate professor, 1973–92, professor of history, 1992–95; College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, director of Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, 1992–, professor, 1993–, William E. Pullen Professor of American History, 2004–09. Editor of "Papers of Charles Carroll of Carrollton University," 1977–; member of editorial board of several periodicals, including Journal of Congress and the Presidency, Maryland Historical, and Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.

MEMBER: Organization of American Historians.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Endowment for the Humanities grants, 1977, 1980; research fellowship, Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1978; E. Harold Hugo Memorial Book Prize, National Historical Society, 1995; editorial grant, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, 1979–98; media grant, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 1997; Library of Virginia, Virginia Literary Award for nonfiction and Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Award, both 2001; book prize, Maryland Historical Society, 2002; J. Franklin Jameson Prize, American Historical Association, 2006.

WRITINGS:

A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1973.

(With Sally D. Mason) Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500–1782, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2000.

Contributor to books, including The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism, edited by Alfred F. Young, Northern Illinois University Press (DeKalb, IL), 1976; and The City in Southern History: The Growth of Urban Civilization in the South, edited by Blaine A. Brownell and David R. Goldfield, Kennikat, 1976. Contributor to periodicals, including Perspectives in American History.

EDITOR

(With Peter J. Albert) Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American Alliance of 1778, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1981.

(With Peter J. Albert) Sovereign States in an Age of Uncertainty, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1982.

(With Ira Berlin) Slavery and Freedom in the Age of American Revolution, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1983.

(With Peter J. Albert) Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1984.

(Coeditor) An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry during the American Revolution, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1985.

(With Peter J. Albert) Peace and the Peacemakers: The Treaty of 1783, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1986.

(Coeditor) The Economy of Early America: The Revolutionary Period, 1763–1790, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1987.

(With Peter J. Albert) Women in the Age of the American Revolution, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1989.

(With Peter J. Albert) We Shall Overcome: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Freedom Struggle, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Peter J. Albert) To Form a More Perfect Union: The Critical Ideas of the Constitution, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1992.

(With Peter J. Albert) Religion in a Revolutionary Age, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1994.

(With Peter J. Albert and Cary Carson) Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1994.

(With Peter J. Albert) The Transforming Hand of Revolution: Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1996.

(With Peter J. Albert) Launching the "Extended Republic": The Federalist Era, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1996.

(With Mechal Sobel and Fredrika J. Teute) Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on Personal Identity in Early America, The University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1997.

(With Peter J. Albert) The Bill of Rights: Government Proscribed, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1997.

(With Frederick E. Hoxie and Peter J. Albert) Native Americans and the Early Republic, University Press of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA), 1999.

(With Sally D. Mason and Eleanor S. Darcy) Charles Carroll, Dear Papa, Dear Charley: The Peregrinations of a Revolutionary Aristocrat, as Told by Charles Carroll of Carrollton and His Father, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, with Sundry Observations on Bastardy, Child-Rearing, Romance, Matrimony, Commerce, Tobacco, Slavery, and the Politics of Revolutionary America, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Ronald Hoffman ranks among the authorities on seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century American history. He is perhaps best known to the general public as editor of various volumes included in the University Press of Virginia's "Perspectives on the American Revolution" series. Among Hoffman's contributions to this series is Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, which he edited with Ira Berlin. This volume features ten essays addressing various aspects of slavery as it existed in late seventeenth-century America. In the Journal of American History, David W. Galenson observed: "The essays in this volume make significant progress toward the ambitious and important goal of linking the study of slavery in the colonial period and the nineteenth century." Stanley L. Engerman, assessing the volume in American Historical Review, accorded the book similar importance, declaring that "the essays are necessary reading." He added that the "quality of the essays is high, and much new information is provided."

Another of Hoffman's key works is Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution, another volume in the "Perspectives on the American Revolution" series. This book, which Hoffman edited with Peter J. Albert, largely explores military strategy in relation to specific military personnel. John Pancake, writing in the American Historical Review, noted that all of the work's essays feature "sound scholarship and provocative conclusions."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, June, 1975, review of A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland, p. 713; April, 1984, Stanley L. Engerman, review of Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution; December, 1984, John Pancake, review of Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution, p. 1387; February, 1986, Kenneth Coleman, review of An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry during the American Revolution, p. 175.

Historian, February, 1985, review of Sovereign States in an Age of Uncertainty, p. 283; November, 1986, review of An Uncivil War, p. 113.

Journal of American History, June, 1975, review of A Spirit of Dissension, p. 108; December, 1981, review of Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American alliance of 1778, p. 651; June, 1984, David W. Galenson, review of Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, p. 119; September, 1986, Jerald A. Combs, review of Peace and the Peacemakers: The Treaty of 1783, p. 463; December, 1986, review of An Uncivil War, p. 435; April, 1987, review of Peace and the Peacemakers, p. 120.

Journal of American Studies, April, 1985, review of Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution, p. 146.