The Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution

by Gray, Edward G.; Kamensky, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780190257767
• ISBN10: 0190257768
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-05-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

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 Mary Ann Lippitt Professor of American History at Brown 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