Brothers Among Nations
The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early America, 1580-1660
Cynthia J. Van Zandt
Description
In the past generation, scholars' understanding of relations among the peoples in the eastern portion of the North American mainland during the colonial era has been transformed by studies that have put the Native Americans' experiences at the center of the story instead of the periphery. Cynthia Van Zandt's work represents an effort to show how central Natives were to the European colonial project by demonstrating that the formation of alliances was the only way for the nascent colonies to succeed. Van Zandt argues that the growing number of transplanted Africans in the colonies demanded that Europeans effectively create alliances with them, though they were unequal alliances between free and enslaved peoples. Her study is unusual in that it brings together Indian and colonial peoples from a range of different Indian and European nations, focusing not just on one colony but on New England, Virginia, and the middle colonies together.
About the Author(s)
Cynthia J. Van Zandt, Associate Professor of History, University of New Hampshire, USA
Product Details
264 pages; 10 halftones; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4;
ISBN13: 978-0-19-518124-1
ISBN10: 0-19-518124-7
Hardback, 264 pages
Jun 2008, Not Yet Published
Price: $49.95 (06)
Atlantic History
A Critical Appraisal
Edited by Jack D. Greene and Philip D. Morgan
Description
The second volume in the OUP/National History Center series, Reinterpreting History, this book offers an incisive look at how interpretations of the Atlantic world have changed over time and from a variety of national perspectives. Atlantic history, which developed in the 1970s and has become very popular in the past several years, looks at the transnational interconnections between Europe, North America, South America, and Africa, particularly in the early modern/colonial period, rather than understanding nations/states absent a broader global context.
This volume discusses key areas of the Atlantic world, including the British, Dutch, French, Iberian, and African Atlantic, as well as the movement of ideas, peoples, and goods. It also offers critical perspectives of the concept itself, juxtaposing it with global and Continental history. The cast of contributors is stellar and international, including scholars who have been at the forefront of teaching and research in this area. Together they will create a volume that introduces inexperienced students and general readers to Atlantic history, as well as offers new perspectives for scholars. Atlantic history is taught as its own course at a variety of universities, and Atlantic perspectives are incorporated into courses on early modern Europe, British history, colonial America, colonial Latin America, and African history.
About the Author(s)
Edited by Jack D. Greene, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University (Emeritus) , and Philip D. Morgan, Professor of History, Princeton University
Product Details
416 pages; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
ISBN10: 0-19-532033-6
ISBN13: 9780195320343
ISBN10: 0195320344
Paper, 416 pages
Dec 2008, Not Yet Published
Price: $21.95 (01)
ISBN10: 0-19-532033-6
Hardback, 416 pages
Dec 2008, Not Yet Published
Price: $99.00 (06)
The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature
Edited by Kevin J. Hayes
Description
The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature is a major new reference work that provides the best single-volume source of original scholarship on early American literature. Comprised of twenty-seven chapters written by experts in their fields, this work presents an authoritative, in-depth, and up-to-date assessment of a crucial area within literary studies.
Organized primarily in terms of genre, the chapters include original research on key concepts, as well as analysis of interesting texts from throughout colonial America. Separate chapters are devoted to literary genres of great importance at the time of their composition that have been neglected in recent decades, such as histories, promotion literature, and scientific writing. New interpretations are offered on the works of Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards and Dr. Alexander Hamilton while lesser known figures are also brought to light. Newly vital areas like print culture and natural history are given full treatment. As with other Oxford Handbooks, the contributors cover the field in a comprehensive yet accessible way that is suitable for those wishing to gain a good working knowledge of an area of study and where it's headed.
About the Author(s)
Edited by Kevin J. Hayes, Professor of English, University of Central Oklahoma
Product Details
640 pages; 6-3/4 x 9-3/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-518727-4ISBN10: 0-19-518727-X
Dec 2007
Price:
$150.00 (06)
The Road to Monticello
The Life and Mind of Thomas Jefferson
Kevin J. Hayes
Description
The sheer variety of Jefferson’s many pursuits - he was an inventor, horticulturist, statesman, architect, and philosopher, among many other things - almost mask the singularity of his genius. But there is little doubt that our third president was also one of America’s greatest intellectuals. This superb new biography focuses on Jefferson’s intellectual and literary life. It follows Jefferson’s education from adolescence to adulthood, examines his interests, and gives new interpretations of his writings. Early writings, including A Summary View of the Rights of British America , the Declaration of Independence , and Notes on the State of Virginia are analyzed in depth. Hayes also provides substantial coverage of Jefferson’s professional, social, and literary activities in Paris and his travels through Europe. He devotes a chapter to the time he served as secretary of state and his publication, The Anas , an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at George Washington’s presidency. His tenure as vice-president and president is considered in light of the ideas and relationships that were most salient for him during those crucial years. Separate chapters treat his correspondence with John Adams, the formation of the Library of Congress and his retirement library, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, The Autobiography , and the founding of the University of Virginia. Overall, the biography offers an intimate portrait of the life of the mind that Jefferson cultivated and dreamed of one day developing to its full potential while in retirement at Monticello.
About the Author(s)
Kevin J. Hayes is Professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma and the author of A Colonial Woman’s Bookshelf, An American Cycling Odyssey, Melville’s Folk Roots, and Poe and the Printed Word.
720 pages; 27 halftones; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-530758-0ISBN10: 0-19-530758-5
ISBN13: 9780195307580 ISBN10: 0195307585 hardback, 720 pages
Jun 2008, Not Yet Published
Price: $34.95 (02)
Scandal and Civility
Journalism and the Origins of American Politics
Marcus Daniel
Description
A new breed of journalists came to the fore in post-revolutionary America--fiercely partisan, highly ideological, and possessed of a bold sense of vocation and purpose as they entered the fray of political debate. Often condemned by latter-day historians and widely seen in their own time as a threat to public and personal civility, these colorful figures emerge in this provocative new book as the era’s most important agents of political democracy.Through incisive portraits of the most influential journalists of the 1790s--William Cobbett, Benjamin Franklin Bache, Philip Freneau, Noah Webster, John Fenno, and William Duane--Scandal and Civility moves beyond the usual cast of “revolutionary brothers” and “founding fathers” to offer a fresh perspective on a seemingly familiar story. Marcus Daniel demonstrates how partisan journalists, both Federalist and Democratic-Republican, were instrumental in igniting and expanding vital debates over the character of political leaders, the nature of representative government, and, ultimately, the role of the free press itself. Their rejection of civility and self-restraint--not even icons like George Washington were spared their satirical skewerings--earned these men the label “peddlers of scurrility.” Yet, as Daniel shows, by breaking with earlier conceptions of “impartial” journalism, they challenged the elite dominance of political discourse and helped fuel the enormous political creativity of the early republic.
Daniel’s nuanced and penetrating narrative captures this key period of American history in all its contentious complexity. And in today’s climate, when many decry media “excesses” and the relentlessly partisan and personal character of political debate, his book is a timely reminder that discord and difference were essential to the very creation of our political culture.
About the Author(s)Marcus Daniel is Associate Professor of American History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Product Details
336 pages; 20 halftones; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-517212-6 ISBN10: 0-19-517212-4
hardback
Aug 2008, Not Yet Published
Price: $28.00 (02)
Religion in American Life
A Short History
Updated edition
Jon Butler, Grant Wacker and Randall Balmer
Description
Perhaps surprising in a country without a national church, religion has played a powerful role in American life. Now, in the new paperback edition of Religion in American Life , three of the country's most eminent historians of religion offer a superb overview that spans four centuries, illuminating the rich spiritual heritage central to nearly every event in our nation's history.
Jon Butler begins by describing the state of religious affairs in both the Old and New Worlds on the eve of colonization. He traces the progress of religion in the colonies through the time of the American Revolution, covering all the religious groups, Protestants, Jews, and Catholics, as well as the unique religious experiences of Native Americans and African Americans. Grant Wacker continues the story with a fascinating look at the ever-shifting religious landscape of 19th-century America. He focuses on the rapid growth of evangelical Protestants--Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, and others--and their competition for dominance over religions such as Catholicism and Judaism, which continued to increase with large immigrant arrivals from Ireland, Eastern Europe, and other countries. The 20th century saw massive cultural changes. Randall Balmer discusses the effects industrialization, modernization, and secularization had on new and established religions. He examines Protestants, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, New Age believers, Mormons, Buddhists, Roman Catholics, and many more, providing a clear look into the kaleidoscope of religious belief in modern-day America.
Religion in American Life is an engrossing look at how religion has changed--and in turn been changed by--the extraordinary events throughout American history.
About the Author(s)
Jon Butler is Howard R. Lamar Professor of American Studies, History, and Religious Studies and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Yale University. He is the author of Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People, Becoming America: The Revolution Before 1776 , and, with Harry S. Stout, editor of Religion in American History: A Reader.
Grant Wacker is Professor of Church History at Duke University Divinity School. He is the author of Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture, Religion in Nineteenth Century America (OUP, 2000), and Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism.
Randall Balmer is Professor of American Religious History at Barnard College, Columbia University, and Visiting Professor of American Religion at Yale University Divinity School. He is the author of ten books, including Protestantism in America and Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America (2006). His book Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America , now in its fourth edition, was made into an award-winning, three-part documentary for PBS.
Product Details
496 pages; 36 b/w halftones; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-533329-9ISBN10: 0-19-533329-2
Nov 2007
Price: $19.95 (01)
The Making and Unmaking of Empires
Britain, India, and America c.1750-1783
P.J. Marshall
Description
In The Making and Unmaking of Empires P. J. Marshall deals with a crucial period in the history of the British Empire in trying to explain how the British at the same time lost an empire in North America, while winning one in parts of India. He shows that British objectives were much the same all over the world and examines the conditions in America that frustrated these objectives and those in India that facilitated them.
Reviews
Product Details
408 pages; 2 maps; ISBN13: 978-0-19-922666-5 ISBN10: 0-19-922666-0
Oct 2007
Price: $34.95 (06)
The African American National Biography
8-Volume Set
Edited by Henry Louis Gates and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham
Description
The African American National Biography presents history through a mosaic of the lives of thousands of individuals, illuminating the abiding influence of persons of African descent on the life of this nation from the arrival of Esteban in Spanish Florida in 1529 through to notable black citizens of the present day.
Available initially as a handsome 8-volume set containing over 4,000 entries written and signed by distinguished scholars, the AANB continues to grow along with the field of African American biographical research, and continuous updates to the online edition will bring the total number of lives profiled to more than 5,000. This is a remarkable achievement, an eightfold increase over the number of biographies contained in 2004's award-winning and substantial African American Lives .
In addition to Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr., the AANB includes a wide range of African Americans from all time periods and all walks of life, both famous and nearly-forgotten. In the words of AANB editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "These stories, long buried in the dusty archives of history, will never be lost again. And that is what scholarship in the field of African American Studies should be all about."
Features
- The largest scholarly reference project covering African American lives and history ever undertaken
- The most diverse and extensive collection of African American biographies: eight volumes containing 4,000 biographies and 1,000 images of notable black Americans
- Biographies will be added to the Oxford African American Studies Center and updated on a regular basis, making new scholarship easily accessible and instantly available
- Entries written by more than one thousand scholars and experts
- Includes a Directory of Contributors, an Index of Subjects by Category or Area of Renown, and an Index of Prizewinners, Medalists, Members of Congress and Judges
Reviews
About the Author(s)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Harvard University.
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is Professor of History and Afro-American Studies at Harvard University and editor of The Harvard Guide to African American History .
Product Details4333 pages; 7 x 10; ISBN13: 978-0-19-516019-2ISBN10: 0-19-516019-3
SBN13: 9780195160192ISBN10: 0195160193
hardback, 4333 pages
Jan 2008
Price: $795.00 (04)
What Hath God Wrought
The Transformation of America, 1815-1848
Daniel Walker Howe
Description
The Oxford History of the United States is by far the most respected multi-volume history of our nation. The series includes two Pulitzer Prize winners, two New York Times bestsellers, and winners of the Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. Now, in What Hath God Wrought , historian Daniel Walker Howe illuminates the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War, an era when the United States expanded to the Pacific and won control over the richest part of the North American continent.
Howe's panoramic narrative portrays revolutionary improvements in transportation and communications that accelerated the extension of the American empire. Railroads, canals, newspapers, and the telegraph dramatically lowered travel times and spurred the spread of information. These innovations prompted the emergence of mass political parties and stimulated America's economic development from an overwhelmingly rural country to a diversified economy in which commerce and industry took their place alongside agriculture. In his story, the author weaves together political and military events with social, economic, and cultural history. He examines the rise of Andrew Jackson and his Democratic party, but contends that John Quincy Adams and other Whigs--advocates of public education and economic integration, defenders of the rights of Indians, women, and African-Americans--were the true prophets of America's future. He reveals the power of religion to shape many aspects of American life during this period, including slavery and antislavery, women's rights and other reform movements, politics, education, and literature. Howe's story of American expansion culminates in the bitterly controversial but brilliantly executed war waged against Mexico to gain California and Texas for the United States.
By 1848 America had been transformed. What Hath God Wrought provides a monumental narrative of this formative period in United States history.
Features
• The newest volume in the renowned Oxford History of the United States-- A brilliant portrait of an era that saw dramatic transformations in American life
Reviews
About the Author(s)
Daniel Walker Howe is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus, Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus, University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of The Political Culture of the American Whigs and Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln . He lives in Los Angeles.
928 pages; 47 halftones, 23 maps; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-507894-7ISBN10: 0-19-507894-2
ISBN13: 9780195078947ISBN10: 0195078942hardback, 928 pages
Oct 2007
Price: $35.00 (02)
The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan
Edited by Joanna Brooks
Foreword by Robert Warrior
Description This volume brings together for the first time the known writings of the pioneering Native American religious and political leader, intellectual, and author, Samson Occom (Mohegan; 1723-1792). The largest surviving archive of American Indian writing before Charles Eastman (Santee Sioux; 1858-1939), Occom’s writings offer unparalleled views into a Native American intellectual and cultural universe in the era of colonialization and the early United States. His letters, sermons, journals, prose, petitions, and hymns--many of them never before published--document the emergence of pantribal political consciousness among the Native peoples of New England as well as Native efforts to adapt Christianity as a tool of decolonialization. Presenting previously unpublished and newly recovered writings, this collection more than doubles available Native American writing from before 1800.
About the Author(s)
Joanna Brooks is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African-American and Native-American Literatures (Oxford, 2003), winner of the 2003 Modern Language Association William Sanders Scarborough Prize for best book in African-American literature and culture.
Robert Warrior is Edith Kinney Gaylord Presidential Professor at the University of Oklahoma. His books include The People and the Word: Reading Native Nonfiction , American Indian Literary Nationalism, and Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions.
Product Details
480 pages; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-517083-2ISBN10: 0-19-517083-0ISBN13: 9780195170832ISBN10: 0195170830
hardback, 480 pages Nov 2006
Price: $65.00 (06)
Almost a Miracle
The American Victory in the War of Independence
John Ferling
Description
In this gripping chronicle of America's struggle for independence, award-winning historian John Ferling transports readers to the grim realities of that war, capturing an eight-year conflict filled with heroism, suffering, cowardice, betrayal, and fierce dedication. As Ferling demonstrates, it was a war that America came much closer to losing than is now usually remembered. General George Washington put it best when he said that the American victory was "little short of a standing miracle."
Almost a Miracle offers an illuminating portrait of America's triumph, offering vivid descriptions of all the major engagements, from the first shots fired on Lexington Green to the surrender of General Cornwallis at Yorktown, revealing how these battles often hinged on intangibles such as leadership under fire, heroism, good fortune, blunders, tenacity, and surprise. The author paints sharp-eyed portraits of the key figures in the war, including General Washington and other American officers and civilian leaders. Some do not always measure up to their iconic reputations, including Washington himself. Others, such as the quirky, acerbic Charles Lee, are seen in a much better light than usual. The book also examines the many faceless men who soldiered, often for years on end, braving untold dangers and enduring abounding miseries. The author explains why they served and sacrificed, and sees them as the forgotten heroes who won American independence. Ferling's narrative is also filled with compassion for the men who comprised the British army and who, like their American counterparts, struggled and died at an astonishing rate in this harsh war. Nor does Ferling ignore the naval war, describing dangerous patrols and grand and dazzling naval actions.
Finally, Almost a Miracle takes readers inside the legislative chambers and plush offices of diplomats to reveal countless decisions that altered the course of this war. The story that unfolds is at times a tale of folly, at times one of appalling misinformation and confusion, and now and then one of insightful and dauntless statesmanship.
Features
The first authoritative military history of America's Revolutionary War in forty years, offering the definitive account of this epic struggle for freedom
About the Author(s)
John Ferling brings to this book nearly forty years of experience as a historian of early America. He is the author of nine books and numerous articles on the American Revolution and early American wars, and has appeared in four television documentaries devoted to the Revolution and the War of Independence. His book A Leap in the Dark won the Fraunces Tavern Book Award as the year's best book on the American Revolution. He and his wife live in metropolitan Atlanta.
Product Details
784 pages; 41 halftones, 20 maps; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-518121-0ISBN10: 0-19-518121-2
ISBN13: 9780195181210ISBN10: 0195181212hardback, 784 pages
May 2007, Price: $29.95 (02)
Rebels Rising
Cities and the American Revolution
Benjamin L. Carp
Description
The cities of eighteenth-century America packed together tens of thousands of colonists, who met each other in back rooms and plotted political tactics, debated the issues of the day in taverns, and mingled together on the wharves or in the streets. In this fascinating work, historian Benjamin L. Carp shows how these various urban meeting places provided the tinder and spark for the American Revolution.
Carp focuses closely on political activity in colonial America's five most populous cities--in particular, he examines Boston's waterfront community, New York tavern-goers, Newport congregations, Charleston's elite patriarchy, and the common people who gathered outside Philadelphia's State House. He shows how--because of their tight concentrations of people and diverse mixture of inhabitants--the largest cities offered fertile ground for political consciousness, political persuasion, and political action. The book traces how everyday interactions in taverns, wharves, and elsewhere slowly developed into more serious political activity. Ultimately, the residents of cities became the first to voice their discontent. Merchants began meeting to discuss the repercussions of new laws, printers fired up provocative pamphlets, and protesters took to the streets. Indeed, the cities became the flashpoints for legislative protests, committee meetings, massive outdoor gatherings, newspaper harangues, boycotts, customs evasion, violence and riots--all of which laid the groundwork for war.
Ranging from 1740 to 1780, this groundbreaking work contributes significantly to our understanding of the American Revolution. By focusing on some of the most pivotal events of the eighteenth century as they unfolded in the most dynamic places in America, this book illuminates how city dwellers joined in various forms of political activity that helped make the Revolution possible.
Features
A unique look at the key role the major colonial cities played in marshalling the forces of revolution
About the Author(s)
Benjamin L. Carp is Assistant Professor of History at Tufts University.
Product Details
336 pages; 35 halftones; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-530402-2ISBN10: 0-19-530402-0
ISBN13: 9780195304022ISBN10: 0195304020hardback, 336 pages
Jun 2007, Price: $35.00 (01)
Taming Democracy
"The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution
Terry Bouton
Description
Americans are fond of reflecting upon the Founding Fathers, the noble group of men who came together to force out the tyranny of the British and bring democracy to the land. Unfortunately, as Terry Bouton shows in this highly provocative first book, the Revolutionary elite often seemed as determined to squash democracy after the war as they were to support it before.
Centering on Pennsylvania, the symbolic and logistical center of the Revolution, Bouton shows how this radical shift in ideology spelled tragedy for hundreds of common people. Leading up to the Revolution, Pennsylvanians were united in their opinion that "the people" (i.e. white men) should be given access to the political system, and that some degree of wealth equality (i.e. among white men) was required to ensure that political freedom prevailed. As the war ended, Pennsylvania's elites began brushing aside these ideas, using their political power to pass laws to enrich their own estates and hinder political organization by their opponents. By the 1780s, they had reenacted many of the same laws that they had gone to war to abolish, returning Pennsylvania to a state of economic depression and political hegemony. This unhappy situation led directly to the Whiskey and Fries rebellions, popular uprisings both put down by federal armies.
Bouton's work reveals a unique perspective, showing intimately how the war and the events that followed affected poor farmers and working people. Bouton introduces us to unsung heroes from this time--farmers, weavers, and tailors who put their lives on hold to fight to save democracy from the forces of "united avarice." We also get a starkly new look at some familiar characters from the Revolution, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington, who Bouton strives to make readers see as real, flawed people, blinded by their own sense of entitlement.
Taming Democracy represents a turning point in how we view the outcomes of the Revolutionary War and the motivations of the powerful men who led it. Its eye-opening revelations and insights make it an essential read for all readers with a passion for uncovering the true history of America.
Features
An eye-opening account of the betrayal of democracy after the Revolutionary War
About the Author(s)
Terry Bouton is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Product Details
352 pages; 11 halftones, 2 maps; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-530665-1ISBN10: 0-19-530665-1
ISBN13: 9780195306651ISBN10: 0195306651hardback, 352 pages
Jun 2007, Price: $29.95 (01)
Beyond Toleration
The Religious Origins of American Pluralism
Chris Beneke
Description
At its founding, the United States was one of the most religiously diverse places in the world. Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Quakers, Dutch Reformed, German Reformed, Lutherans, Huguenots, Dunkers, Jews, Moravians, and Mennonites populated the nations towns and villages. Dozens of new denominations would emerge over the succeeding years. What allowed people of so many different faiths to forge a nation together?
In this richly told story of ideas, Chris Beneke demonstrates how the United States managed to overcome the religious violence and bigotry that characterized much of early modern Europe and America. The key, Beneke argues, did not lie solely in the protection of religious freedom. Instead, he reveals how American culture was transformed to accommodate the religious differences within it. The expansion of individual rights, the mixing of believers and churches in the same institutions, and the introduction of more civility into public life all played an instrumental role in creating the religious pluralism for which the United States has become renowned. These changes also established important precedents for future civil rights movements in which dignity, as much as equality, would be at stake.
Beyond Toleration is the first book to offer a systematic explanation of how early Americans learned to live with differences in matters of the highest importance to them --and how they found a way to articulate these differences civilly. Today when religious conflicts once again pose a grave danger to democratic experiments across the globe, Beneke's book serves as a timely reminder of how one country moved past toleration and towards religious pluralism.
Features
• First in-depth look at how tolerance for religious diversity emerged in early America
• Focuses on the cultural factors that changed attitudes toward religious pluralism
• Covers a large geographical area and many different religious groups over a long time-span
• Written for a general as well as a scholarly audience
Reviews
About the Author(s)
Chris Beneke is Assistant Professor of History at Bentley College in Waltham, MA. He received his Bachelors degree from Cornell University and his PhD from Northwestern University.
Product Details
320 pages; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-530555-5ISBN10: 0-19-530555-8
ISBN13: 9780195305555ISBN10: 0195305558hardback, 320 pages
Oct 2006, Price: $35.00 (01)
The Scratch of a Pen
1763 and the Transformation of North America
Colin G. Calloway
Description
In February 1763, Britain, Spain, and France signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the French and Indian War. In this one document, more American territory changed hands than in any treaty before or since. As the great historian Francis Parkman wrote, "half a continent...changed hands at the scratch of a pen."
As Colin Calloway reveals in this superb history, the Treaty set in motion a cascade of unexpected consequences. Indians and Europeans, settlers and frontiersmen, all struggled to adapt to new boundaries, new alignments, and new relationships. Britain now possessed a vast American empire stretching from Canada to the Florida Keys, yet the crushing costs of maintaining it would push its colonies toward rebellion. White settlers, free to pour into the West, clashed as never before with Indian tribes struggling to defend their way of life. In the Northwest, Pontiac's War brought racial conflict to its bitterest level so far. Whole ethnic groups migrated, sometimes across the continent: it was 1763 that saw many exiled settlers from Acadia in French Canada move again to Louisiana, where they would become Cajuns. Calloway unfurls this panoramic canvas with vibrant narrative skill, peopling his tale with memorable characters such as William Johnson, the Irish baronet who moved between Indian campfires and British barracks; Pontiac, the charismatic Ottawa chieftain whose warriors, for a time, chased the Europeans from Indian country; and James Murray, Britain's first governor in Quebec, who fought to protect the religious rights of his French Catholic subjects.
Most Americans know the significance of the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation, but not the Treaty of Paris. Yet 1763 was a year that shaped our history just as decisively as 1776 or 1862. This captivating book shows why.
Reviews
About the Author(s)
Colin G. Calloway is Professor of History and Samson Occom Professor of Native American Studies at Dartmouth College. His many books on early American history include New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America and The American Revolution in Indian Country . His most recent work, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark (2003), received the Ray Allen Billington Prize, the Merle Curti Award, and many other prizes, and was named one of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year.
240 pages; 13 halftones, 8 maps; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4;
ISBN13: 978-0-19-530071-0ISBN10: 0-19-530071-8
ISBN13: 9780195300710ISBN10: 0195300718
hardback, 240 pages
May 2006, Price: $28.00 (02)
The Faiths of the Founding Fathers
David L. Holmes
Description
It is not uncommon to hear Christians argue that America was founded as a Christian nation. But how true is this claim?
In this compact book, David L. Holmes offers a clear, concise and illuminating look at the spiritual beliefs of our founding fathers. He begins with an informative account of the religious culture of the late colonial era, surveying the religious groups in each colony. In particular, he sheds light on the various forms of Deism that flourished in America, highlighting the profound influence this intellectual movement had on the founding generation. Holmes then examines the individual beliefs of a variety of men and women who loom large in our national history. He finds that some, like Martha Washington, Samuel Adams, John Jay, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson's daughters, held orthodox Christian views. But many of the most influential figures, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John and Abigail Adams, Jefferson, James and Dolley Madison, and James Monroe, were believers of a different stripe. Respectful of Christianity, they admired the ethics of Jesus, and believed that religion could play a beneficial role in society. But they tended to deny the divinity of Christ, and a few seem to have been agnostic about the very existence of God. Although the founding fathers were religious men, Holmes shows that it was a faith quite unlike the Christianity of today's evangelicals. Holmes concludes by examining the role of religion in the lives of the presidents since World War II and by reflecting on the evangelical resurgence that helped fuel the reelection of George W. Bush.
An intriguing look at a neglected aspect of our history, the book will appeal to American history buffs as well as to anyone concerned about the role of religion in American culture.
About the Author(s)
David L. Holmes is Walter G. Mason Professor of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of A Brief History of the Episcopal Church, A Nation Mourns , other books, and numerous articles.Product Details
240 pages; 25 halftones; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-530092-5ISBN10: 0-19-530092-0
ISBN13: 9780195300925ISBN10: 0195300920hardback, 240 pages
May 2006, Price: $20.00 (02)
Carry Me Back
The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life
Steven Deyle
Description
Originating with the birth of the nation itself, in many respects, the story of the domestic slave trade is also the story of the early United States. While an external traffic in slaves had always been present, following the American Revolution this was replaced by a far more vibrant internal trade. Most importantly, an interregional commerce in slaves developed that turned human property into one of the most valuable forms of investment in the country, second only to land. In fact, this form of property became so valuable that when threatened with its ultimate extinction in 1860, southern slave owners believed they had little alternative but to leave the Union. Therefore, while the interregional trade produced great wealth for many people, and the nation, it also helped to tear the country apart.
The domestic slave trade likewise played a fundamental role in antebellum American society. Led by professional traders, who greatly resembled northern entrepreneurs, this traffic was a central component in the market revolution of the early nineteenth century. In addition, the development of an extensive local trade meant that the domestic trade, in all its configurations, was a prominent feature in southern life. Yet, this indispensable part of the slave system also raised many troubling questions. For those outside the South, it affected their impression of both the region and the new nation. For slaveholders, it proved to be the most difficult part of their institution to defend. And for those who found themselves commodities in this trade, it was something that needed to be resisted at all costs.
Carry Me Back restores the domestic slave trade to the prominent place that it deserves in early American history, exposing the many complexities of southern slavery and antebellum American life.
Reviews
About the Author(s)
Steven Deyle is Associate Professor of History at the University of Houston.
Product Details
ISBN13: 978-0-19-531019-1ISBN10: 0-19-531019-5
paper, 416 pages
Also available:
hardback
Aug 2006, In Stock
Price: $19.95 (01)
416 pages; 24 halftones, 2 maps; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4
James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights
Richard Labunski
Description
Today we hold the Constitution in such high regard that we can hardly imagine how hotly contested was its adoption. In fact, many of the thirteen states saw fierce debate over the document, and ratification was by no means certain. Virginia, the largest and most influential state, approved the Constitution by the barest of margins, and only after an epic political battle between James Madison and Patrick Henry. Now Richard Labunski offers a dramatic account of a time when the entire American experiment hung in the balance, only to be saved by the most unlikely of heroes--the diminutive and exceedingly shy Madison.
Here is a vividly written account of not one but several major political struggles which changed the course of American history. Labunski takes us inside the sweltering converted theater in Richmond, where for three grueling weeks, the soft-spoken Madison and the charismatic Patrick Henry fought over whether Virginia should ratify the Constitution. The stakes were enormous. If Virginia voted no, George Washington could not become president, New York might follow suit and reject the Constitution, and the young nation would be thrust into political chaos. But Madison won the day by a handful of votes, mollifying Anti-Federalist fears by promising to add a bill of rights to the Constitution. To do this, Madison would have to win a seat in the First Congress. Labunski shows how the vengeful Henry prevented Madison's appointment to the Senate and then used his political power to ensure that Madison would run against his good friend, Revolutionary War hero James Monroe, in a House district teeming with political enemies. Overcoming great odds, Madison won by a few hundred votes, allowing him to attend the First Congress and sponsor the Bill of Rights.
Packed with colorful details about life in early America, this compelling and important narrative is the first serious book about Madison written in many years. It will return this under-appreciated patriot to his rightful place among the Founding Fathers and shed new light on a key turning point in our nation's history.
Reviews
About the Author(s)
Richard Labunski is a professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. The author of four other books, he previously taught at the University of Washington and Penn State and worked for ten years in radio and television news.
Product Details
352 pages; 35 halftones, 1 map; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4;
ISBN13: 978-0-19-518105-0
ISBN10: 0-19-518105-0
Jul 2006, Price: $28.00 (02)
Paper, Jun 2008
$15.95 Not Yet Published,
ISBN13: 9780195341423
ISBN10: 0195341422
A Well-Regulated Militia
The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America
Saul Cornell
Description
Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias. Now, in the first and only comprehensive history of this bitter controversy, Saul Cornell proves conclusively that both sides are wrong.
Cornell, a leading constitutional historian, shows that the Founders understood the right to bear arms as neither an individual nor a collective right, but as a civic right--an obligation citizens owed to the state to arm themselves so that they could participate in a well regulated militia. He shows how the modern "collective right" view of the Second Amendment, the one federal courts have accepted for over a hundred years, owes more to the Anti-Federalists than the Founders. Likewise, the modern "individual right" view emerged only in the nineteenth century. The modern debate, Cornell reveals, has its roots in the nineteenth century, during America's first and now largely forgotten gun violence crisis, when the earliest gun control laws were passed and the first cases on the right to bear arms came before the courts. Equally important, he describes how the gun control battle took on a new urgency during Reconstruction, when Republicans and Democrats clashed over the meaning of the right to bear arms and its connection to the Fourteenth Amendment. When the Democrats defeated the Republicans, it elevated the "collective rights" theory to preeminence and set the terms for constitutional debate over this issue for the next century.
A Well-Regulated Militia not only restores the lost meaning of the original Second Amendment, but it provides a clear historical road map that charts how we have arrived at our current impasse over guns. For anyone interested in understanding the great American gun debate, this is a must read.
About the Author(s)
Saul Cornell is Associate Professor of History at Ohio State University and Director of the Second Amendment Research Center at the John Glenn Institute. An authority on constitutional history and especially on the Second Amendment, he is the author of The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America and editor of Whose Right to Bear Arms Did the Second Amendment Protect.
304 pages; 8 halftones; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-514786-5ISBN10: 0-19-514786-3
ISBN13: 9780195147865ISBN10: 0195147863hardback, 304 pages
Jun 2006 Price: $30.00 (02)
Inhuman Bondage
The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
David Brion Davis
Description
David Brion Davis has long been recognized as the leading authority on slavery in the Western World. His books have won every major history award--including the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award--and he has been universally praised for his prodigious research, his brilliant analytical skill, and his rich and powerful prose. Now, in Inhuman Bondage, Davis sums up a lifetime of insight in what Stanley L. Engerman calls "a monumental and magisterial book, the essential work on New World slavery for several decades to come." Davis begins with the dramatic Amistad case, which vividly highlights the international character of the Atlantic slave trade and the roles of the American judiciary, the presidency, the media, and of both black and white abolitionists. The heart of the book looks at slavery in the American South, describing black slaveholding planters, the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, the daily life of ordinary slaves, the highly destructive internal, long-distance slave trade, the sexual exploitation of slaves, the emergence of an African-American culture, and much more. But though centered on the United States, the book offers a global perspective spanning four continents. It is the only study of American slavery that reaches back to ancient foundations (discussing the classical and biblical justifications for chattel bondage) and also traces the long evolution of anti-black racism (as in the writings of David Hume and Emmanuel Kant, among many others). Equally important, it combines the subjects of slavery and abolitionism as very few books do, and it illuminates the meaning of nineteenth-century slave conspiracies and revolts, with a detailed comparison with 3 major revolts in the British Caribbean. It connects the actual life of slaves with the crucial place of slavery in American politics and stresses that slavery was integral to America's success as a nation--not a marginal enterprise. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed in the subject, Inhuman Bondage offers a compelling narrative that links together the profits of slavery, the pain of the enslaved, and the legacy of racism. It is the ultimate portrait of the dark side of the American dream. Yet it offers an inspiring example as well--the story of how abolitionists, barely a fringe group in the 1770s, successfully fought, in the space of a hundred years, to defeat one of human history's greatest evils.
About the Author(s)
David Brion Davis is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and Director Emeritus of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, also at Yale. Best known for his highly acclaimed books The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, Slavery and Human Progress, and most recently, Challenging the Boundaries of Slavery, Davis has won a Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award for History and Biography, the Bancroft Prize, the Albert J. Beveridge Award, and the Bruce Catton Prize for Lifetime Achievement, among other honors.
352 pages; 40 b/w illus; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; 0-19-514073-7
hardback, 352 pages
Mar 2006, Price: $30.00 (02)
A Strange Likeness
Becoming Red and White in Eighteenth-Century North America
Nancy Shoemaker
Description
The histories told about American Indian and European encounters on the frontiers of North America are usually about cultural conflict. This book takes a different tack by looking at how much Indians and Europeans had in common. In six chapters, this book compares Indian and European ideas about land, government, recordkeeping, international alliances, gender, and the human body. Focusing on eastern North America in the 18th century, up through the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, each chapter discusses how Indians and Europeans shared some core beliefs and practices. Paradoxically, the more American Indians and Europeans came to know each other, the more they came to see each other as different, so different indeed that they appeared to be each other's opposite. European colonists thought Indians a primitive people, laudable perhaps for their simplicity but not destined to possess and rule over North America. Simultaneously, Indians came to view Europeans as their antithesis, equally despicable for their insatiable greed and love of money. Thus, even though American Indians and Europeans started the 18th century with ideas in common, they ended the century convinced of their intractable differences. The 18th century was a crucial moment in American history, as British colonists and their Anglo-American successors rapidly pushed westward, sometimes making peace and sometimes making war with the powerful Indian nations-the Iroquois and Creek confederacies, Cherokee nation, and other Native peoples-standing between them and the west. But the 18th century also left an important legacy in the world of ideas, as Indians and Europeans abandoned an initial willingness to recognize in each other a common humanity so as to instead develop new ideas rooted in the conviction that, by custom and perhaps even by nature, Native Americans and Europeans were peoples fundamentally at odds
Reviews
"In these elegantly written and scrupulously documented essays, Shoemaker persuasively argues that an acknowledgement of commonly held ideas is essential to understanding the construction of difference. This alone should encourage scholars in the field to rethink the encounter, no mean achievement for any book."-American Historical Review "With clarity, economy, and penetrating insight, Nancy Shoemaker has crafted a very important book. It is also an eminently teachable one: it will introduce students to broad patterns in Indian-white relations and provoke wide-ranging conversations on essential topics in cross-cultural contact."--Journal of American History "Scholars often forget that, as human beings, Indians and Europeans had much in common: they were men and women with families who used their five senses to explain the world around them; and they organized themselves into distinctive groups and built relationships within groups and across groups. Shoemaker's study is invaluable because it brings those similarities to light and argues for Indian agency in using that common experiential language to articulate and magnify differences between Indian and European/Euro-American cultures."--Journal of Social History "Ambitious and rewarding."--H-Atlantic
About the Author(s)
Nancy Shoemaker is Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut- Storrs. She is the author of American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century and editor of Negotiators of Change: Historical Perspectives on Native American Women, Clearing a Path: Theorizing the Past in Native American Studies, and American Indians.
224 pages; 11 halftones; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4;
Hardback: ISBN13: 978-0-19-516792-4
ISBN10: 0-19-516792-9
Feb 2004, Price: $29.95 (06)
Paper: ISBN13: 978-0-19-530710-8
ISBN10: 0-19-530710-0
Mar 2006, Price: $19.95 (01)
Benjamin Franklin
Edwin S. Gaustad
Description
The tenth and youngest son of a poor Boston soapmaker, Benjamin Franklin would rise to become, in Thomas Jefferson's words, "the greatest man and ornament of his age." In this short, engaging biography, historian Edwin S. Gaustad offers a marvelous portrait of this towering colonial figure, illuminating Franklin's character and personality. Here is truly one of the most extraordinary lives imaginable, a man who, with only two years of formal education, became a printer, publisher, postmaster, philosopher, world-class scientist and inventor, statesman, musician, and abolitionist. Gaustad presents a chronological account of all these accomplishments, delightfully spiced with quotations from Franklin's own extensive writings. The book describes how the hardworking Franklin became at age 24 the most successful printer in Pennsylvania and how by 42, with the help of Poor Richard's Almanack, he had amassed enough wealth to retire from business. We then follow Franklin's next brilliant career, as an inventor and scientist, examining his pioneering work on electricity and his inventions of the Franklin Stove, the lightning rod, and bifocals, as well as his mapping of the Gulf Stream, a major contribution to navigation. Lastly, the book covers Franklin's role as America's leading statesman, ranging from his years in England before the Revolutionary War to his time in France thereafter, highlighting his many contributions to the cause of liberty. Along the way, Gaustad sheds light on Franklin's personal life, including his troubled relationship with his illegitimate son William, who remained a Loyalist during the Revolution, and Franklin's thoughts on such topics as religion and morality. Written by a leading authority on colonial America, this compact biography captures in a remarkably small space one of the most protean lives in our nation's history.
Reviews
"Edwin S. Gaustad's admirable brief life of Benjamin Franklin is written with grace and informed by a lifetime of close and thoughtful study of the American past. Perhaps our greatest historian of American religion, Gaustad deftly weaves together the many strands of Franklin's life and thought. In the process, he exemplifies Franklin's teaching: 'What is serving God? 'Tis doing Good to Man.'" --R. B. Bernstein, author of Thomas Jefferson "Edwin Gaustad has written a short life of Benjamin Franklin that is rich in detail and insight. Here is Franklin on his way up in Pennsylvania, the public-spirited craftsman and businessman, the pragmatist whose ideas do not exceed his grasp, the insightful politician, the imaginative scientist, and the shrewd diplomat. The whole story of his life is told with sophistication in a book that is a joy to read." --Robert Middlekauff, author of The Glorious Cause
About the Author(s)
Edwin S. Gaustad is Professor of History and Religious Studies Emeritus at the University of California at Riverside. He is the author of many books, including Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America, Church and State in America, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson, and Roger Williams (another book in the Lives and Legacies series).
Product Details
ISBN13: 978-0-19-530535-7
ISBN10: 0-19-530535-3
hardback, 160 pages
Feb 2006, Price: $17.95 (02)
The Early American Republic, 1789-1829
Paul E. Johnson
Description
Synthesizing political, social, and cultural aspects of early U.S. history, The Early American Republic, 1789-1829 provides a unique and integrated overview of the era. Focusing on the politics and process of nation-making and the birth of American market society, the book addresses two main subjects. First, it recounts the history of national politics from the presidency of George Washington through the inauguration of Andrew Jackson. During that period, the Founders struggled to make a national republic, then watched as their United States became bigger, more democratic, and more divided than anything they had envisioned. Second, the book describes the beginnings of American market society, demonstrating how many Americans began to organize their lives around earning, buying, and selling. The Early American Republic, 1789-1829 illustrates the formative years of American nationhood, democracy, and free-market capitalism. While most people consider these to be inevitably American, the book demonstrates that none were natural, inevitable, or undisputed in 1789. Examining all aspects of the Early Republic, the book explores such topics as family life, religion, the construction and reconstruction of gender systems, the rise of popular print and other forms of communication, and evolving attitudes toward slavery and race. It also covers the social history of market society, territorial expansion, and the growth of slavery, offering detailed region-, race-, and class-specific considerations of family life and religion. Providing a brief, comprehensive, and clearly written synthesis of American political, economic, social, and cultural development, The Early American Republic, 1789-1829 is ideal for courses in the early national period.
Reviews
"This is a highly readable, nicely fleshed-out distillation of key themes and developments in the early republic, most notably the new nation's transformation from an (ideally) orderly republic to a tumultuous democracy and from a 'colonial' economy dependent on exports to a more 'developed' economy with strong internal markets. It makes sense of Americans' hopes and expectations coming out of the ratification period and provides a map for navigating the economic, social, and political developments not only up to 1829, but also afterwards."--Kirsten Wood, Florida International University "This text, written by a master historian and incorporating the outpouring of research on the New Republic from the last two decades, should prove very useful. Johnson's scholarship is impeccable."--Lawrence Peskin, Morgan University "No other work I can think of would provide as clear or as quick an introduction."--Christopher Clark, University of Warwick, U.K.
About the Author(s)
Paul E. Johnson is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina.
Product Details
208 pages; 6 illus.; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4;
ISBN13: 978-0-19-515423-8
paper, 208 pages
March 2006 Price: $24.95 (04)
Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren
The Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender
Kate Davies
Description
Catharine Macaulay and Mercy Otis Warren were radical friends in a revolutionary age. They produced definitive histories of the English Civil War and the American Revolution, attacked the British government and the United States federal constitution, and instigated a debate on women's rights which inspired Mary Wollstonecraft, Judith Sargent Murray, and other feminists. Drawing on new research (including recently discovered correspondence) this is the first book to consider Macaulay and Warren in the context of the revolutionary Atlantic. In a series of detailed interdisciplinary studies, Davies suggests the centrality of both women to transatlantic political cultures between the middle of the eighteenth century and the turn of the nineteenth. The experience of Anglo-American conflict formed Macaulay and Warren's friendship and radically changed their writing lives. In showing how it did so, Davies also explains how the revolutionary Atlantic shaped modern ideas of gender difference. Anglo-American separation had a politics of gender which defined Warren and Macaulay's awareness of themselves as women and of which their writing also offered important critiques. Davies's book reveals the political significance of Mercy Otis Warren and Catharine Macaulay to an era when the truths of patriotism, nationhood and empire were never wholly self-evident but were hotly contested.
About the Author(s)
Kate Davies is Lecturer in English Literature at the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York.
Product Details
272 pages; 25 b/w illus.;
ISBN13: 978-0-19-928110-7
hardback, 272 pages
Feb 2006, Price: $95.00 (06)
Quixotic Fictions of the USA 1792-1815
Sarah F. Wood
Description
Quixotic Fictions of the USA 1792-1815 explores the conflicted and conflicting interpretations of Don Quixote available to and deployed by disenchanted writers of America's new republic. It argues that the legacy of Don Quixote provided an ambiguous cultural icon and ironic narrative stance that enabled authors to critique with impunity the ideological fictions shoring up their fractured republic. Close readings of works such as Modern Chivalry, Female Quixotism, and The Algerine Captive reveal that the fiction from this period repeatedly engaged with Cervantes's narrative in order to test competing interpretations of republicanism, to interrogate the new republic's multivalent crises of authority, and to question both the possibility and the desirability of an isolationist USA and an autonomous "American" literature. Sarah Wood's study is the first book-length publication to examine the role of Don Quixote in early American literature. Exploring the extent to which the literary culture of North America was shaped by a diverse range of influences, it addresses an issue of growing concern to scholars of American history and literature. Quixotic Fictions reaffirms the global reach of Cervantes's influence and explores the complex, contradictory ways in which Don Quixote helped shape American fiction at a formative moment in its development.
About the Author(s)
Sarah Wood is a Leverhulme Fellow and Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Sussex.
320 pages; 6 b/w illus.;
ISBN13: 978-0-19-927315-7
ISBN10: 0-19-927315-4
hardback, 320 pages
Jan 2006, In Stock
Price: $99.00 (06)
Romantic Indians
Native Americans, British Literature, and Transatlantic Culture 1756-1830
Tim Fulford
Description
Romantic Indians considers the views that Britons, colonists, and North American Indians took of each other during a period in which these people were in a closer and more fateful relationship than ever before or since. It is, therefore, also a book about exploration, empire, and the forms of writing that exploration and empire gave rise to--in particular the form we have come to call Romanticism. Among the authors discussed are Wordsworth, Hemans, Coleridge, and the Native Americans Copway, Tanner, and Norton.
About the Author(s)
Tim Fulford, Professor of English, Nottingham Trent University
Product Details
ISBN13: 978-0-19-927337-9
hardback, 288 pages
Apr 2006
Price: $99.00 (06)
Savages within the Empire
Representations of American Indians in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Troy Bickham
Description
In 1720s London, a well-known band of young ruffians gave themselves crescent tattoos and adorned turbans in honor of their so-called "mohamattan [Muslim]" Indian namesakes, the Mohawk. Few Britons noticed the gang's mistaken muddling of North American and Indian subcontinent geographies and cultures. Even fewer cared in an age in which "Indian" was a catch-all term applied to theatre characters, philosophies, and objects whose only common characteristic often was that they were not European. Yet just thirty years later, when the North American empire had entered center stage, Londoners bought Iroquois tomahawks at auctions; provincial newspapers debated Cherokee politics; women shopkeepers read aloud newspaper accounts of frontier battles as their husbands counted the takings; church congregations listened to the sermons of American Indian converts; families toured museum exhibits of American Indian artefacts; and Oxford dons wagered their bottles of port on the outcome of American wars. Focusing on the question, 'How did the British who remained in Britain perceive American Indians, and how did these perceptions reflect and affect British culture?', Savages within the Empire explores both how Britons engaged with the peripheries of their Atlantic empire without leaving home, and, equally important, how their forged understanding significantly affected the British and their rapidly expanding world. It draws from a wide range of evidence to consider an array of eighteenth-century contexts, including material culture, print culture, imperial government policy, the Church of England's missionary endeavours, the Scottish Enlightenment, and the public outcry over the use of American Indians as allies during the American War of Independence. By chronicling and exploring discussions and representations of American Indians in these contexts, Troy Bickham reveals the proliferation of empire-related subjects in eighteenth-century British culture as well as the prevailing pragmatism with which Britons approached them.
About the Author(s)
Troy Bickham, Assistant Professor of History, Texas A&M University
276 pages; 8 halftones, 1 map;
ISBN13: 978-0-19-928696-6ISBN10: 0-19-928696-5
hardback, 276 pages
Feb 2006, In Stock
Price: $90.00 (06)
May 13, 2008