In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 - Brossura

Waldstreicher, David

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0807846910 ISBN 13: 9780807846919

Casa editrice: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997

Riassunto

In this innovative study, David Waldstreicher investigates the importance of political festivals in the early American republic. Drawing on newspapers, broadsides, diaries, and letters, he shows how patriotic celebrations and their reproduction in a rapidly expanding print culture helped connect local politics to national identity. Waldstreicher reveals how Americans worked out their political differences in creating a festive calendar. Using the Fourth of July as a model, members of different political parties and social movements invented new holidays celebrating such events as the ratification of the Constitution, Washington's birthday, Jefferson's inauguration, and the end of the slave trade. They used these politicized rituals, he argues, to build constituencies and to make political arguments on a national scale. While these celebrations enabled nonvoters to participate intimately in the political process and helped dissenters forge effective means of protest, they had their limits as vehicles of democratization or modes of citizenship, Waldstreicher says. Exploring the interplay of region, race, class, and gender in the development of a national identity, he demonstrates that an acknowledgment of the diversity and conflict inherent in the process is crucial to any understanding of American politics and culture.

Su questo libro

L'autore

David Waldstreicher is professor of history at Temple University.

Product Description

David Waldstreicher's In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes probes the practices of nationalism in a country made up of inherent and evolving divisions. His question is simple: How did national celebrations work as political strategy and as unifying event? Pursuing this inquiry, Waldstreicher offers a series of rich explorations into the dynamics of festivities that celebrated - or mourned - events and characters in the early republic. Using an innovative methodology and a sophisticated theoretical framework, Waldstreicher uncovers the processes that generated a profusion of patriotic sentiment. While celebrations like those for the Constitution, the Fourth of July, Washington's birthday, Jefferson's inauguration, and the end of the slave trade enabled nonvoters to participate intimately in the political process, they also provided ways to keep women and blacks in prescribed, noncitizen roles, even as members of both groups began to use celebrations for their own ends. Through a careful analysis of printed materials - newspapers, broadsides, toasts, orations, and ballads, - in relation to nationalist practices, Waldstreicher traces the emergence of an American political culture formed around a desired unity of purpose.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: The University of North Carolina Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1997
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0807846910
• ISBN 13: 9780807846919
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 380
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile