Contested commonwealths : essays in American history / William A. Pencak.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pencak, William, 1951-2013.

Contributor:

George R. Fink Memorial Fund.

Series:

Studies in eighteenth-century America and the Atlantic world

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

United States.

History.

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

Massachusetts--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Massachusetts.

Massachusetts--History--Revolution, 1775-1783.

Boston (Mass.)--History--Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.

Boston (Mass.).

Boston (Mass.)--History--Revolution, 1775-1783.

Physical Description:

xiii, 368 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Bethlehem [Pa.] : Lehigh University Press ; Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield, [2011]

Summary:

United States historian William Pencak presents thirteen of his essays, written beginning in 1976. Some deal with colonial and revolutionary crowds and communities in Massachusetts - the impressment riot of 1747, the popular uprisings of the 1760s and 1770s, and Shays' Rebellion. Others examine popular ideology in songs and almanacs, and the thought and behavior of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and the loyalist Peter Oliver. Interpretive essays argue that colonial outage that their participation in the French and Indian War went unrecognized by the British led to the American Revolution; that revolutionary economic thought turned smuggling from a vice into the 'natural law' of free trade; and that focusing on the 'Civil War, ' and the years 1861 to 1865, leads to a glorified conception of the national past that is better understood as shaped by 'An Era of Racial Violence' that extended from 1854 to at least 1877

Contents:

The Knowles Riot and the crisis of the 1740s in Massachusetts (with John Lax)

Metropolitan Boston before the American Revolution : an urban interpretation of the imperial crisis (with Ralph J. Crandall)

The social structure of revolutionary Boston : evidence from the Great Fire of 1760

Play as prelude to revolution : Boston, 1765-1776

"The fine theoretic government of Massachusetts is prostrated to the earth" : the response to Shays's Rebellion reconsidered

Politics and ideology in eighteenth-century almanacs : Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard and Nathanael Ames, Sr.'s An astronomical diary

The beginning of a beautiful friendship : Benjamin Franklin, George Whitefield, the dancing school, and a defense of the "meaner sort"

John Adams and his contemporaries

The extended presidency of George Washington (1775-1797)

Peter Oliver (1713-1791), chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court

From racket to natural law : the permutation of smuggling into free trade

"The great war for the empire" reconsidered as a cause of the American Revolution

The Civil War did not take place.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the George R. Fink Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

1611460832

9781611460834

OCLC:

724674324

Publisher Number:

99946307673