Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic

Riordan, Liam

ISBN 10: 0812240014 / ISBN 13: 9780812240016

Editore: University of Pennsylania Press, 2007

FINE / DUST JACKET VERY GOOD. 353 pages. Text is very clean. Red cloth board with gold lettering on the spine. Cover is very gently worn. DJ is lightly rubbed. Binding and hinges are firm. Codice articolo 038586

Riassunto:

The richly diverse population of the mid-Atlantic region distinguished it from the homogeneity of Puritan New England and the stark differences of the plantation South that still dominate our understanding of early America. In Many Identities, One Nation, Liam Riordan explores how the American Revolution politicized religious, racial, and ethnic identities among the diverse inhabitants of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey. Attending to individual experiences through a close comparative analysis, Riordan explains the transformation from British subjects to U.S. citizens in a region that included Quakers, African Americans, and Pennsylvania Germans.

In the face of a gradually emerging sense of nationalism, varied forms of personal and group identities took on heightened public significance in the Revolutionary Delaware Valley. While Quakers in Burlington, New Jersey, remained suspect after the war because of their pacifism, newly freed slaves in New Castle, Delaware, demanded full inclusion, and bilingual Pennsylvania Germans in Easton, Pennsylvania, successfully struggled to create a central place for themselves in the new nation. By placing the public contest over the proper expression of group distinctiveness in the context of local life, Riordan offers a new understanding of how cultural identity structured the early Jacksonian society of the 1820s as a culmination of the American Revolution in this region.

This compelling story brings to life the popular culture of the Revolutionary Delaware Valley through analysis of wide-ranging evidence, from architecture, folk art, clothing, and music to personal papers, newspapers, and local church, tax, and census records. The study's multilayered local perspective allows us to see how the Revolutionary upheaval of the colonial status quo penetrated everyday life and stimulated new understandings of the importance of cultural diversity in the Revolutionary nation.

Informazioni sull?autore: Liam Riordan is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maine.

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution ...
Casa editrice: University of Pennsylania Press
Data di pubblicazione: 2007
Legatura: Hardcover
Condizione: Fine
Condizione sovraccoperta: Very Good