J.G.A. Pocock and Richard Whatmore
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691172231
- eISBN:
- 9781400883516
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691172231.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This chapter explores the history of the American consciousness in search of what manifestations of the problems of the republican perspective may be found there. It follows the discussion in the ...
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This chapter explores the history of the American consciousness in search of what manifestations of the problems of the republican perspective may be found there. It follows the discussion in the eighteenth-century debate of the previous chapter, and then turns to the debates on virtue and corruption, as well as an apocalyptic dimension to Machiavellism. The fact that the apocalyptic discourse was still an available recourse illustrates how far American thought and speech still belonged to the Renaissance tradition studied earlier in this volume. The chapter then turns to the debates regarding the Federalist theory as well as the end of the Machiavellian moment in America—that is, the end of the quarrel with history in its distinctively American form.Less
This chapter explores the history of the American consciousness in search of what manifestations of the problems of the republican perspective may be found there. It follows the discussion in the eighteenth-century debate of the previous chapter, and then turns to the debates on virtue and corruption, as well as an apocalyptic dimension to Machiavellism. The fact that the apocalyptic discourse was still an available recourse illustrates how far American thought and speech still belonged to the Renaissance tradition studied earlier in this volume. The chapter then turns to the debates regarding the Federalist theory as well as the end of the Machiavellian moment in America—that is, the end of the quarrel with history in its distinctively American form.
Phillip Troutman
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300103557
- eISBN:
- 9780300129472
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300103557.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
This chapter begins with the successful inversion of United States slave traders' network of communication and transportation. In November 1841, a group of at least nineteen enslaved African American ...
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This chapter begins with the successful inversion of United States slave traders' network of communication and transportation. In November 1841, a group of at least nineteen enslaved African American men held aboard the brig Creole violently captured control of the ship and forced the crew to chart a course for Nassau, Bahamas. There, with the aid of black Bahamians and British colonial officials, they gained freedom along with all but five of their enslaved shipmates. White contemporaries tended to view the Creole “incident” in terms of its contribution to an international trade conflict between the United States and Great Britain. The revolt, however, is important for what it illustrates about how enslaved African Americans worked to acquire, disseminate, and apply geographic and geopolitical knowledge and information—what the text refers to here as geopolitical literacy—and what that might mean for their broader Afro-American consciousness.Less
This chapter begins with the successful inversion of United States slave traders' network of communication and transportation. In November 1841, a group of at least nineteen enslaved African American men held aboard the brig Creole violently captured control of the ship and forced the crew to chart a course for Nassau, Bahamas. There, with the aid of black Bahamians and British colonial officials, they gained freedom along with all but five of their enslaved shipmates. White contemporaries tended to view the Creole “incident” in terms of its contribution to an international trade conflict between the United States and Great Britain. The revolt, however, is important for what it illustrates about how enslaved African Americans worked to acquire, disseminate, and apply geographic and geopolitical knowledge and information—what the text refers to here as geopolitical literacy—and what that might mean for their broader Afro-American consciousness.
Marie-Jeanne Rossignol
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038266
- eISBN:
- 9780252096129
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038266.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter examines the friendship between J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and French abolitionist Jacques-Pierre Brissot. Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer was long seen as the first ...
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This chapter examines the friendship between J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and French abolitionist Jacques-Pierre Brissot. Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer was long seen as the first expression of American literary consciousness. The book proved to be a best seller when it came out in England in 1782. London was then one of the major places where the French “literary underground” could publish magazines and books free of government censorship. A number of French journalists thus resided in London and contributed to various publications. One of them was Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville. Reading Letters formed a turning point in his career as an activist, prompting him to seek an acquaintance with Crèvecoeur.Less
This chapter examines the friendship between J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and French abolitionist Jacques-Pierre Brissot. Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer was long seen as the first expression of American literary consciousness. The book proved to be a best seller when it came out in England in 1782. London was then one of the major places where the French “literary underground” could publish magazines and books free of government censorship. A number of French journalists thus resided in London and contributed to various publications. One of them was Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville. Reading Letters formed a turning point in his career as an activist, prompting him to seek an acquaintance with Crèvecoeur.
Jean M. O'Brien
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816665778
- eISBN:
- 9781452946672
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816665778.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to ...
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Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the cradle of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted, often in mournful tones, that New England’s original inhabitants, the Indians, had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. This book argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, the book explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness.Less
Across nineteenth-century New England, antiquarians and community leaders wrote hundreds of local histories about the founding and growth of their cities and towns. Ranging from pamphlets to multivolume treatments, these narratives shared a preoccupation with establishing the region as the cradle of an Anglo-Saxon nation and the center of a modern American culture. They also insisted, often in mournful tones, that New England’s original inhabitants, the Indians, had become extinct, even though many Indians still lived in the very towns being chronicled. This book argues that local histories became a primary means by which European Americans asserted their own modernity while denying it to Indian peoples. Erasing and then memorializing Indian peoples also served a more pragmatic colonial goal: refuting Indian claims to land and rights. Drawing on more than six hundred local histories from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island written between 1820 and 1880, as well as censuses, monuments, and accounts of historical pageants and commemorations, the book explores how these narratives inculcated the myth of Indian extinction, a myth that has stubbornly remained in the American consciousness.
