Revolutions without Borders : The Call to Liberty in the Atlantic World / Janet Polasky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Polasky, Janet, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Revolutions--America--History.

Revolutions.

Revolutions--Europe--History.

Revolutions--History--Sources.

Revolutionaries--Travel--History.

Revolutionaries.

Intercultural communication--History.

Intercultural communication.

America--Intellectual life.

America.

Europe--Intellectual life.

Europe.

America--Politics and government--18th century.

America--Politics and government--19th century.

Europe--Politics and government--1789-1815.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (392 p.)

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A sweeping exploration of revolutionary ideas that traveled the Atlantic in the late eighteenth century Nation-based histories cannot do justice to the rowdy, radical interchange of ideas around the Atlantic world during the tumultuous years from 1776 to 1804. National borders were powerless to restrict the flow of enticing new visions of human rights and universal freedom. This expansive history explores how the revolutionary ideas that spurred the American and French revolutions reverberated far and wide, connecting European, North American, African, and Caribbean peoples more closely than ever before. Historian Janet Polasky focuses on the eighteenth-century travelers who spread new notions of liberty and equality. It was an age of itinerant revolutionaries, she shows, who ignored borders and found allies with whom to imagine a borderless world. As paths crossed, ideas entangled. The author investigates these ideas and how they were disseminated long before the days of instant communications and social media or even an international postal system. Polasky analyzes the paper records-books, broadsides, journals, newspapers, novels, letters, and more-to follow the far-reaching trails of revolutionary zeal. What emerges clearly from rich historic records is that the dream of liberty among America's founders was part of a much larger picture. It was a dream embraced throughout the far-flung regions of the Atlantic world.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Dramatis Personae

Introduction: Revolution without Borders

One. "Th e cause of all mankind" in Revolutionary Pamphlets

Two. Journals Relating "A share in two revolutions"

Three. Th e Revolutionary Narratives of Black "citizens of the world"

Four. Th e Press and Clubs: "Politico- mania"

Five. Rumors of Freedom in the Caribbean: "We know not where it will end"

Six. Th e Revolutionary Household in Fiction: "To govern a family with judgment"

Seven. Correspondence between a "Virtuous spouse, Charming friend!"

Eight. Decrees "in the Name of the French Republic": Armed Cosmopolitans

Nine. Revolutionaries between Nations: "Abroad in the world"

Chronology

Notes on Sources

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Feb 2020)

ISBN:

0-300-21343-3

OCLC:

905919675