The Intellectual Construction of America

by Greene, Jack P.

• ISBN13: 9780807846315
• ISBN10: 0807846317
• Edition: Revised
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

Jack Greene explores the changing definitions of America from the time of Europe's first contact with the New World through the establishment of the American republic. Challenging historians who have argued that colonial American societies differed little from those of early modern Europe, he shows that virtually all contemporary observers emphasized the distinctiveness of the new worlds being created in America. Rarely considering the high costs paid by Amerindians and Africans in the construction of those worlds, they cited the British North American colonies as evidence that America was for free people a place of exceptional opportunities for individual betterment and was therefore fundamentally different from the Old World.Greene suggests that this concept of American societies as exceptional was a central component in their emerging identity. The success of the American Revolution helped subordinate Americans' long-standing sense of cultural inferiority to a more positive sense of collective self that sharpened and intensified the concept of American exceptionalism.

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue

Expectations: The European Fabrication of America in the Sixteenth Century

Encounters: Projection and Design in the Construction of English America, 1580-1690

Experiences: The Behavioral Articulation of British America, 1690-1760

Evaluations: The Conceptual Identification of British America, 1715-1775

Examinations: The European Response to the American Revolution, 1776-1800

Explanations: Revolution and Redefinition, 1774-1800

Epilogue

Index

Illustrations

Renaissance Discoveries

Vespucci Awakens a Sleeping America

America at the End of the Sixteenth Century

Invasion of America

Mutiny in Jamaica

Utopia

A Century of Spanish Activities in America

East Coast of North America in the Late Sixteenth Century

America

Connecticut Colony Seal

New York Colony Coat of Arms

Design of Philadelphia

View of Savannah

Sachem and Soldier

Colonel Jacque

Tobacco Plantation

Hercules and the Waggoner

Public Buildings of Williamsburg

View of Philadelphia

View of Boston

Town and Country

Community Scenes

John Bartram's House and Garden

New England View

New York City Hall

Tryon's Palace

Faneuil Hall

Charleston Exchange

Redwood Library

Nassau Hall

America as Example

Pennsylvania State Seal

America as a Land of Freedom

An American Settlement

America and Fame

Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences

Maryland State Seal

An American New Cleared Farm

View from Bushongo Tavern

Seat of Moses Gill

View of Mulberry Plantation

The Beckoning West

A Settled Rural Landscape

Seat of Colonel George Boyd

Philadelphia Public Buildings

Invitation from America

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