The rediscovery of America : transatlantic crosscurrents in an age of revolution / Stuart Andrews.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Andrews, Stuart, 1932-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rhetoric--Political aspects.

History.

United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Participation, Foreign.

United States.

United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Causes.

United States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Influence.

United States--Intellectual life--18th century.

Intellectual life.

Rhetoric--Political aspects--United States--History--18th century.

Rhetoric.

United States--Relations--Europe.

Relations.

Europe.

Europe--Relations--United States.

Physical Description:

xii, 257 pages : portraits ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Summary:

Europe's rediscovery of America was not, as in the days of Cabot and Columbus, a matter of navigation. It was an imaginative response to the American Revolution. Historians have argued that revolutionary events in America led to the fall of the Bastille, and point to an "Atlantic Revolution." Without taking sides in that long-running debate, this study seeks to show how the transatlantic experience colored the perceptions of some twenty Britons, Americans and Frenchmen whose careers spanned the Atlantic during the revolutionary period. The evidence of their writings and correspondence reveals that contemporaries wrote and acted as if they thought they were involved in an Atlantic Revolution.

Contents:

1. Discovery and Rediscovery: Planters, Puritans and Philosophes 3

Founding Fathers in Europe

2. Porcelain and Revolutionary Principles: Franklin and the French 19

3. American Encyclopediste: Jefferson at Home and Abroad 31

4. Reluctant Philosophe: John Adams and Republican Government 43

Transatlantic Citizens

5. Bridging the Atlantic: Paine's Three Revolutions 59

6. Burke's Grasshoppers: Dr Price as 'Apostle of Liberty' 72

7. Flammable Gas: Priestley as Propagandist 83

8. Land-agent of Liberty: South Carolina's Thomas Cooper 94

Frenchmen in America

9. Slaves, Quakers and 'Free Americans': Brissot's America and the French Revolution 109

10. Hero of Two Worlds: Lafayette, Freemasons and Liberty 121

11. Allies in Arms: Segur, Lauzun and Chastellux 133

Images and Visions

12. Armchair Philosophy: Raynal's Bestseller 147

13. American Farmer: Hector St John de Crevecoeur 159

14. Women and Emigrants: Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay 170

15. Poets' Utopia: Coleridge, Southey and the Susquehanna 182

16. North American Naturalists: Bartram and Audubon 194.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-237) and index.

ISBN:

0333726189

0312214057

OCLC:

38147868