Synopses & Reviews
The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution introduces scholars, students and generally interested readers to the formative event in American history. In thirty-three individual essays, by thirty-three authorities on the Revolution, the
Handbook provides readers with in-depth analysis of the Revolution's many sides, ranging from the military and diplomatic to the social and political; from the economic and financial, to the cultural and legal. Its cast of characters ranges far, including ordinary farmers and artisans, men and women, free and enslaved African Americans, Indians, and British and American statesmen and military leaders. Its geographic scope is equally broad. The
Handbook offers readers an American Revolution whose geo-political and military impact ranged from the West Indies to the Mississippi Valley; from the British Isles to New England and from Nova Scotia to Florida. The American Revolution of the
Handbook is, simply put, an event that far transcended the boundaries of what was to become the United States.
In addition to a breadth of subject matter, the Handbook offers a broad range of interpretive and methodological approaches. Its authors include social historians, historians of politics and institutions, cultural historians, historians of diplomacy, imperial historians, ethnohistorians, and historians of gender and sexuality. Instead of privileging a single or even several interpretive perspectives, the Handbook attempts to capture the full scope of current revolutionary-era scholarship. Nothing comparable has been published in decades.
Synopsis
The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution draws on a wealth of new scholarship to create a vibrant dialogue among varied approaches to the revolution that made the United States.
In thirty-three essays written by authorities on the period, the Handbook brings to life the diverse multitudes of colonial North America and their extraordinary struggles before, during, and after the eight-year-long civil war that secured the independence of thirteen rebel colonies from their erstwhile colonial parent. The chapters explore battles and diplomacy, economics and finance, law and culture, politics and society, gender, race, and religion. Its diverse cast of characters includes ordinary farmers and artisans, free and enslaved African Americans, Indians, and British and American statesmen and military leaders. In addition to expanding the Revolution's who, the Handbook broadens its where, portraying an event that far transcended the boundaries of what was to become the United States.
It offers readers an American Revolution whose impact ranged far beyond the thirteen colonies. The Handbook's range of interpretive and methodological approaches captures the full scope of current revolutionary-era scholarship. Its authors, British and American scholars spanning several generations, include social, cultural, military, and imperial historians, as well as those who study politics, diplomacy, literature, gender, and sexuality. Together and separately, these essays demonstrate that the American Revolution remains a vibrant and inviting a subject of inquiry. Nothing comparable has been published in decades.
About the Author
Edward G. Gray is professor of history at Florida State University. His previous books include
The Making of John Ledyard: Empire and Ambition in the Life of an Early American Traveler and
New World Babel: Languages and Nations in Early America.
Jane Kamensky is Harry S. Truman Professor of American History at Brandeis University. Her previous books include The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America's First Banking Collapse and Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England.
Table of Contents
List of Maps
Contributors
Introduction: American Revolutions, Edward G. Gray and Jane Kamensky
Part I. Cultures and Crises
1. Britain's American Problem: The International Perspective, P. J. Marshall
2. The Unsettled Periphery: The Backcountry on the Eve of the American Revolution, William B. Hart
3. The Polite and the Plebian, Michael Zuckerman
4. Political Protest and the World of Goods, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
5. The Imperial Crisis, Craig B. Yirush
6. The Struggle Within: Colonial Politics on the Eve of Independence, Michael A. McDonnell
7. The Democratic Moment: The Revolution and Popular Politics, Ray Raphael
8. Independence before and during the Revolution, Benjamin H. Irvin
Part II. War
9. The Continental Army, Caroline Cox
10. The British Army and the War of Independence, Stephen Conway
11. The War in the Cities, Mark A. Peterson
12. The War in the Countryside, Allan Kulikoff
13. Native Peoples in the Revolutionary War, Jane T. Merritt
14. The African Americans' Revolution, Gary B. Nash
15. Women in the American Revolutionary War, Sarah M. S. Pearsall
16. Loyalism, Edward Larkin
17. The Revolutionary War and Europe's Great Powers, Paul W. Mapp
18. Funding the Revolution: Monetary and Fiscal Policy in Eighteenth-Century America, Stephen Mihm
Part III. A Revolutionary Settlement
19. The Impact of the War on British Politics, Harry T. Dickinson
20. The Trials of the Confederation, Terry Bouton
21. A More Perfect Union: The Framing and Ratification of the Constitution, Max M. Edling
22. The Evangelical Ascendancy in Revolutionary America, Susan Juster
23. The Problems of Slavery, Christopher Leslie Brown
24. Rights, Eric Slauter
25. The Empire That Britain Kept, Eliga H. Gould
Part IV. New Orders
26. The American Revolution and a New National Politics, Rosemarie Zagarri
27. Republican Art and Architecture, Martha J. McNamara
28. Print Culture after the Revolution, Catherine O'Donnell
29. Republican Law, Christopher L. Tomlins
30. Discipline, Sex, and the Republican Self, Clare A. Lyons
31. The Laboring Republic, Graham Russell Gao Hodges
32. The Republic in the World, 1783-1803, J. M. Opal
33. America's Cultural Revolution in Transnational Perspective, Leora Auslander
Index