| Sumario: | The article focuses on the constitutional and political developments in North Carolina leading up to and during the American Revolution, emphasizing Thomas Burke’s role in shaping ideas of self-government and state sovereignty. It details the “foreign attachment controversy,” a legal dispute over colonial court authority that highlighted tensions between local autonomy and British imperial control, and how this conflict contributed to North Carolina’s revolutionary movement. The Provincial Congresses, in which Burke was active, asserted the principle that political power derived from the people and that only locally elected assemblies—not the British Parliament—had legitimate authority over internal colonial affairs. These ideas influenced North Carolina’s 1776 constitution and its delegates’ cautious approach to confederation, ultimately shaping Burke’s advocacy for state sovereignty in the Articles of Confederation. The article situates North Carolina’s experience within broader Whig political theory about negotiated authority, consent, and the metropolitan-periphery relationship in the British Empire.
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