War, patriotism and identity in revolutionary North America / Jon Chandler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chandler, Jon, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

United States. Continental Army--History--18th century.

United States.

United States. Continental Army.

British--North America--History--18th century.

British.

National characteristics, American--History--18th century.

National characteristics, American.

History.

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

North America.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

248 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK : Boydell Press, 2020.

Summary:

In spite of various and growing discontents, the British inhabitants of the thirteen North American colonies continued to see themselves as an integral part of the British imperial project right up to the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. By its end eight years later, a distinctive continental patriotism had developed, brought into being by the manifold stresses of internecine conflict. The Continental Army emerged as the first embodiment of this national consciousness, and Jonathan Chandler's innovative study charts the various conflicting forces at work in this process. He shows how local and political allegiances were assimilated into a national ideal through various forms of print from newspapers to plays and pictures, and through public rituals of celebration and commemoration, but also how this continental turn was resisted not only by those who had least to gain from the new order - loyalists, slaves, Native Americans and civilians exposed to the worst excesses of the conflict - but also more surprisingly by elements within the army, which increasingly defined itself as a military community distinct from civil society. Nonetheless, as the war unfolded it was continental patriotism's ideas and rituals which most ordinary Americans absorbed and which would shape both the national idealism and the contours of federalism in the early United States.

Contents:

1 Creating the Continental Army p. 20

2 Celebrating the Continental Army p. 60

3 The Continental Soldier p. 92

4 The Military Community p. 119

5 Soldiers and Civilians p. 159.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Ebook version :

ISBN:

1783274379

9781783274376

OCLC:

1130767973