Synopses & Reviews
The fledgling United States fought a war to achieve independence from Britain, but as John Adams said, the real revolution occurred andldquo;in the minds and hearts of the peopleandrdquo; before the armed conflict ever began. Putting the practices of communication at the center of this intellectual revolution, Protocols of Liberty shows how American patriotsandmdash;the Whigsandmdash;used new forms of communication to challenge British authority before any shots were fired at Lexington and Concord.and#160;To understand the triumph of the Whigs over the Brit-friendly Tories, William B. Warner argues that it is essential to understand the communication systems that shaped pre-Revolution events in the background. He explains the shift in power by tracing the invention of a new political agency, the Committee of Correspondence; the development of a new genre for political expression, the popular declaration; and the emergence of networks for collective political action, with the Continental Congress at its center. From the establishment of town meetings to the creation of a new postal system and, finally, the Declaration of Independence, Protocols of Liberty reveals that communication innovations contributed decisively to nation-building and continued to be key tools in later American political movements, like abolition and womenandrsquo;s suffrage, to oppose local custom and state law.
Review
andldquo;A meticulously written book. . . . Warner has offered an important and useful study of the communication innovations that made the American Revolution possible.andrdquo;
Review
and#160;and#8220;William B. Warnerand#8217;s profoundly learned and well-timed Protocols of Liberty provides readers with a distant mirror for our own moment, returning us to the conditions of communication that determined the course of and#8216;Whigand#8217; politics in the 1760s and 1770s and made the American Revolution possible. Built upon the close scrutiny of printed sources and making excellent use of generations of scholarship, Warnerand#8217;s book patiently reconstructs the political networks and nodes of revolutionary America. In doing so, he provides a pointed and much-needed synthesis, bringing together what we know about the various communicative practices of the period to tell a new story about the modernity of eighteenth-century politics.and#8221;
Review
and#160;andldquo;Protocols of Liberty is an immensely interesting and edifying account of the role of communications in British America during the political crisis of the 1770s. William B. Warner has done prodigious research and produced insightful and creative close readings of an impressive range of texts, and his emphasis on andlsquo;protocolsandrsquo; intervenes usefully in debates about American nation-building. Readers from a range of disciplines, political persuasions, and new media orientations will take notice of this book.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Novels have been a respectable component of culture for so long that it is difficult for twentieth-century observers to grasp the unease produced by novel reading in the eighteenth century. William Warner shows how the earliest novels in Britain, published in small-format print media, provoked early instances of the modern anxiety about the effects of new media on consumers.
Warner uncovers a buried and neglected history of the way in which the idea of the novel was shaped in response to a newly vigorous market in popular narratives. In order to rein in the sexy and egotistical novel of amorous intrigue, novelists and critics redefined the novel as morally respectable, largely masculine in authorship, national in character, realistic in its claims, and finally, literary. Warner considers early novelists in their role as entertainers and media workers, and shows how the short, erotic, plot-driven novels written by Behn, Manley, and Haywood came to be absorbed and overwritten by the popular novels of Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Considering these novels as entertainment as well as literature, Warner traces a different storyone that redefines the terms within which the British novel is to be understood and replaces the literary history of the rise of the novel with a more inclusive cultural history.
Synopsis
"This is an exciting and wholly original book. It is devilishly intelligent, formidable in its deployment of history and theory."John Richetti, author of Popular Fiction before Richardson
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-309) and index.
About the Author
and#160;William B. Warner is professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of three books, most recently,and#160;Chance and the Text of Experience: Freud, Nietzsche, and Shakespeareandrsquo;s andquot;Hamletandquot;, and coeditor of This is Enlightenment, published by the University of Chicago Press. He lives in Goleta, CA.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Communication and the American Crisis
1 1 The Invention of the Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Popular Declaration
2 1 Th e Protocols of the Declarations and the Eclipse of Royal Power in Massachusetts in 1773
3 1 The Post and Newspaper in British America: A Communication System in Crisis
4 1 Th e Whig Network Scales Up: Inflecting the Crisis from Williamsburg
5 1 and#147;A Chain of Freedom Has Been Formedand#8221;: The First Continental Congress Develops into the Hub of an Intercolonial Network
6 1 The Panorama of the Declaration
Conclusion: Th e American Revolution as a Gift
References
Index