Experiencing Empire Power, People, and Revolution in Early America / edited by Patrick Griffin.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Griffin, Patrick, 1965- editor.

Series:

Early American histories.

Early American histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Power (Social sciences).

Great Britain--Colonies--America--Administration--History--18th century.

Great Britain.

United States--History--18th century.

United States.

United States--Politics and government--18th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (270 pages) : illustrations.

Edition:

1st ed.

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2017

Place of Publication:

Baltimore, Maryland : Project Muse, 2017

Summary:

Born of clashing visions of empire in England and the colonies, the American Revolution saw men and women grappling with power-- and its absence--in dynamic ways. On both sides of the revolutionary divide, Americans viewed themselves as an imperial people. This perspective conditioned how they understood the exercise of power, how they believed governments had to function, and how they situated themselves in a world dominated by other imperial players. Eighteenth-century Americans experienced what can be called an "imperial-revolutionary moment." Over the course of the eighteenth century, the colonies were integrated into a broader Atlantic world, a process that forced common men and women to reexamine the meanings and influences of empire in their own lives. The tensions inherent in this process led to revolution. After the Revolution, the idea of empire provided order--albeit at a cost to many--during a chaotic period. Viewing the early republic from an imperial-revolutionary perspective, the essays in this collection consider subjects as far-ranging as merchants, winemaking, slavery, sex, and chronology to nostalgia, fort construction, and urban unrest. They move from the very center of the empire in London to the far western frontier near St. Louis, offering a new way to consider America's most formative period.

Contents:

Introduction : imagining an American imperial-revolutionary history

part I. Empire and provincials

The baubles of America : object lessons from the eclectic empire of Peter Williamson / Timothy J. Shannon

Imperial vineyards : wine and politics in the early American South / Owen Stanwood

Sex and empire in eighteenth- century St. Louis / Patricia Cleary

On their own ground : native power and colonial property on the Maine frontier / Ian Saxine

part II. War, revolution, empires

Efficient and effective : the deceptive success of British strategy at Fort Stanwix during the Seven Years' War / James Coltrain

Rethinking failure : the French Empire in the age of John Law / Christopher Hodson

John Almon's web : networks of print, politics, and place in revolutionary London, 1760-1780 / Michael Guenther

part III. The ghosts of empire

Forgiving and forgetting in postrevolutionary America / Donald F. Johnson

Abbe's ghost : negotiating slavery in Paris, 1783-1784 / David N. Gellman

Seeing like an antiquarian : popular nostalgia and the rise of a modern historical subjectivity in the 1820s / Seth Cotlar

Conclusion : what time was the American Revolution? Reflections on a familiar narrative / T.H. Breen

Afterword / Joyce E. Chaplin.

Notes:

Issued as part of book collections on Project MUSE.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780813939896

0813939895

OCLC:

991565003