Synopses & Reviews
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 ofand#160;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.
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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 recordsandmdash;books, broadsides, journals, newspapers, novels, letters, and moreandmdash;to follow the far-reaching trails of revolutionary zeal. What emerges clearly from rich historic records is that the dream of liberty among Americaandrsquo;s founders was part of a much larger picture. It was a dream embraced throughout the far-flung regions of the Atlantic world.
Review
andldquo;Revolutions without Borders is a pathbreaking work. It brings supposedly marginal places and little-known figures, including women, into the center of a transnational narrative, demonstrating the intersection of sentimentality and politics on both sides of the Atlantic.andrdquo;andmdash;Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University
Review
andldquo;In this riveting and elegant book, Janet Polasky weaves together stories usually told separately about the many late eighteenth-century revolutions.andnbsp;This is an example to be followed in the new modes of transnational, Atlantic and global history.andrdquo;andmdash;Lynn Hunt, author of Writing History in the Global Era
Review
andldquo;Significantly enhancing how previous scholars perceived the Atlantic world as spawning related but clearly discrete revolutions, this elegantly written book instead evokes a movement whose participants ebb and flow across borders, connected through print and personal ties.andrdquo;andmdash;Jack Censer, George Mason University
Review
andldquo;A thrilling, moving, lyrical account of the Atlantic revolutions. Janet Polasky weaves together a remarkably diverse range of sources and narratives to reveal the cosmopolitan spirit of the revolutionary era and its role in the making of the nation-state.andrdquo;andmdash;Malick W. Ghachem, author of
The Old Regime and the Haitian RevolutionReview
andldquo;A tour de force. Hugely informative and a joy to read, this is global history at its best.andrdquo;andmdash;Richard Whatmore, author of Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century
Review
andldquo;A thoughtful treatment that will make scholars think but appeal to the lay history lover as well.andrdquo;andmdash;David Keymer, starred review,andnbsp;Library Journal
Review
andlsquo;Janet Polasky charts the movement of the revolutionary ideas between 1776, with the American declaration of independence, and the 1904 Haitian revolution. It was not muskets, she says in this thrilling work of history, but pamphlets that ignited the revolutions that swept through America and Europe at the end of the 18th century.andrsquo;andmdash;Jad Adams, the Independent.andnbsp;
Review
andlsquo;...what sets Revolutions without Borders apart as a work of history is that Janet Polasky tears down wallsandhellip; Instead of telling the usual heroic national story, she ranges wherever her wayfaring revolutionaries take her: to Paris and Washington, but also to Poland, Sierra Leone and the Caribbean. Instead of confining herself to the deeds of valiant men, she also gives the stage to women and slaves. The result is a spectacle that conveys the thrill of the enlightenment as as the delirium of revolution.andrsquo;andmdash;The Economist.
Review
andlsquo;andhellip;[A] bold and captivating bookandrsquo;andmdash;Gavin Jacobson, The Guardian.andnbsp;
Review
andldquo;Janet Polaskyandrsquo;s Revolutions Without Borders does three things, and does them well. It identifies and traces the fortunes of the most zealous promoters of the andlsquo;universal cry of libertyandrsquo; in the tumultuous twenty-eight years after 1776. It demonstrates the importance of understanding the failures, the dead ends, the unrealized dreams, as well as the successes of past eras. And it contributes to our knowledge of Atlantic history. . . a deeply researched book . . . a solid and imaginative work of scholarship.andrdquo;andmdash;Bernard Bailyn, New York Review of Books
Review
andldquo;[A] bold and captivating book.andrdquo;andmdash;Gavin Jacobson, The Guardianandnbsp;
Synopsis
A sweeping review of eighteenth-century revolutionary ideas and how they crossed oceans and borders throughout the Atlantic world
Synopsis
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 ofenticing 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."
Synopsis
A sweeping exploration of revolutionary ideas that traveled the Atlantic in the late eighteenth century
About the Author
What was the inspiration for your book?
As an undergraduate studying in London, Iand#160;discovered a misfiled letter from Thomas Paine in the Public Records Office. That letter introduced me to unlikely alliances among London mechanics, Parisian lawyers, and abolitionists from Philadelphiaandmdash;eighteenth-century revolutionaries I had never met before. Ever since that first encounter in the archives, I have been discovering Paineandrsquo;s itinerant friends, most of whom would have agreed with him that andldquo;a share in two revolutions wasand#160;living to some purpose.andrdquo;
Who are some of those interesting friends?
Thomas Jeffersonandrsquo;s next-door neighbor was one. A Tuscan merchant who enthusiastically adopted the American revolutionary cause as his own, Filippo Mazzei later served as the Polish kingandrsquo;s emissary in revolutionary Paris. Or Anna Falconbridge, whose journal describesand#160;the settlement of black loyalists from America in Sierra Leoneandmdash;to her mind, andldquo;a premature, hare-brained, and ill-digested scheme.andrdquo;and#160;And dozens of others who connected with one another in various waysandmdash;sometimes aboard ship, sometimes in salons and cafandeacute;s, and often through notes scrawled in pamphlets, where encounters on the page transformed readers into revolutionaries.
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What important insights did you uncover in your research?
The interconnections of todayandrsquo;s global society are inescapable. So why should we imagine that the founding fathers who dreamed of liberty lived in isolation? Revolution loomed as an ever-present possibility over four continents at the end of the eighteenth century, two centuries before the Arab Spring. The rich variety of revolutionary possibility in the past reminds us that revolutions readily traverse national borders, and that they lead in a multitude of different and often unexpected directions.