Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era

Between Sovereignty and Anarchy considers the conceptual and political problem of violence in the early modern Anglo-Atlantic, charting an innovative approach to the history of the American Revolution. Its editors and contributors contend that existing scholarship on the Revolution largely ignores questions of power and downplays the Revolution as a contest over sovereignty. Contributors employ a variety of methodologies to examine diverse themes, ranging from how Atlantic perspectives can redefine our understanding of revolutionary origins, to the ways in which political culture, mobilization, and civil-war-like violence were part of the revolutionary process, to the fundamental importance of state formation for the history of the early republic.

The editors skillfully meld these emerging currents to produce a new perspective on the American Revolution, revealing how America—first as colonies, then as united states—reeled between poles of anarchy and sovereignty. This interpretation—gleaned from essays on frontier bloodshed, religion, civility, slavery, loyalism, mobilization, early national political culture, and war making—provides a needed stimulus to a field that has not strayed beyond the bounds of "rhetoric versus reality" for more than a generation. Between Sovereignty and Anarchy raises foundational questions about how we are to view the American Revolution and the experimental democracy that emerged in its wake.

Contributors: Chris Beneke, Bentley University · Andrew Cayton, Miami University · Matthew Rainbow Hale, Goucher College · David C. Hendrickson, Colorado College · John C. Kotruch, University of New Hampshire · Peter C. Messer, Mississippi State University · Kenneth Owen, University of Illinois at Springfield · Jeffrey L. Pasley, University of Missouri, Columbia · Jessica Choppin Roney, Temple University · Peter Thompson, University of Oxford

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Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era

Between Sovereignty and Anarchy considers the conceptual and political problem of violence in the early modern Anglo-Atlantic, charting an innovative approach to the history of the American Revolution. Its editors and contributors contend that existing scholarship on the Revolution largely ignores questions of power and downplays the Revolution as a contest over sovereignty. Contributors employ a variety of methodologies to examine diverse themes, ranging from how Atlantic perspectives can redefine our understanding of revolutionary origins, to the ways in which political culture, mobilization, and civil-war-like violence were part of the revolutionary process, to the fundamental importance of state formation for the history of the early republic.

The editors skillfully meld these emerging currents to produce a new perspective on the American Revolution, revealing how America—first as colonies, then as united states—reeled between poles of anarchy and sovereignty. This interpretation—gleaned from essays on frontier bloodshed, religion, civility, slavery, loyalism, mobilization, early national political culture, and war making—provides a needed stimulus to a field that has not strayed beyond the bounds of "rhetoric versus reality" for more than a generation. Between Sovereignty and Anarchy raises foundational questions about how we are to view the American Revolution and the experimental democracy that emerged in its wake.

Contributors: Chris Beneke, Bentley University · Andrew Cayton, Miami University · Matthew Rainbow Hale, Goucher College · David C. Hendrickson, Colorado College · John C. Kotruch, University of New Hampshire · Peter C. Messer, Mississippi State University · Kenneth Owen, University of Illinois at Springfield · Jeffrey L. Pasley, University of Missouri, Columbia · Jessica Choppin Roney, Temple University · Peter Thompson, University of Oxford

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Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era

Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era

Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era

Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era

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Overview

Between Sovereignty and Anarchy considers the conceptual and political problem of violence in the early modern Anglo-Atlantic, charting an innovative approach to the history of the American Revolution. Its editors and contributors contend that existing scholarship on the Revolution largely ignores questions of power and downplays the Revolution as a contest over sovereignty. Contributors employ a variety of methodologies to examine diverse themes, ranging from how Atlantic perspectives can redefine our understanding of revolutionary origins, to the ways in which political culture, mobilization, and civil-war-like violence were part of the revolutionary process, to the fundamental importance of state formation for the history of the early republic.

The editors skillfully meld these emerging currents to produce a new perspective on the American Revolution, revealing how America—first as colonies, then as united states—reeled between poles of anarchy and sovereignty. This interpretation—gleaned from essays on frontier bloodshed, religion, civility, slavery, loyalism, mobilization, early national political culture, and war making—provides a needed stimulus to a field that has not strayed beyond the bounds of "rhetoric versus reality" for more than a generation. Between Sovereignty and Anarchy raises foundational questions about how we are to view the American Revolution and the experimental democracy that emerged in its wake.

Contributors: Chris Beneke, Bentley University · Andrew Cayton, Miami University · Matthew Rainbow Hale, Goucher College · David C. Hendrickson, Colorado College · John C. Kotruch, University of New Hampshire · Peter C. Messer, Mississippi State University · Kenneth Owen, University of Illinois at Springfield · Jeffrey L. Pasley, University of Missouri, Columbia · Jessica Choppin Roney, Temple University · Peter Thompson, University of Oxford


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813936789
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Publication date: 04/06/2015
Series: Jeffersonian America
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Patrick Griffin, author of America’s Revolution, is Madden-Hennebry Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. Robert G. Ingram, author of Religion, Reform, and Modernity in the Eighteenth Century: Thomas Secker and the Church of England, is Associate Professor of History at Ohio University. Peter S. Onuf, author of The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (Virginia), is Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia. Brian Schoen, author of The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War, is Associate Professor of History at Ohio University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction Patrick Griffin 1

"The Constant Snare of the Fear of Man" Authority and Violence in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic Andrew Cayton 21

Destroying and Reforming Canaan Making America British Patrick Griffin 40

"Not by Force or Violence" Religious Violence, Anti-Catholicism, and Rights of Conscience in the Early National United States Chris Beneke 60

Government without Arms; Arms without Government The Case of Pennsylvania Jessica Choppin Roney 84

Stamps and Popes Rethinking the Role of Violence in the Coming of the American Revolution Peter C. Messer 114

Social Death and Slavery The Logic of Political Association and the Logic of Chattel Slavery in Revolutionary America Peter Thompson 139

Violence and the Limits of the Political Community in Revolutionary Pennsylvania Kenneth Owen 165

Whiskey Chaser Democracy and Violence in the Debate over the Democratic-Republican Societies and the Whiskey Rebellion Jeffrey L. Pasley 187

Escaping Insecurity The American Founding and the Control of Violence David C. Hendrickson 216

American Hercules Militant Sovereignty and Violence in the Democratic-Republican Imagination, 1793-1795 Matthew Rainbow Hale 243

The Battle of Fallen Timbers An Assertion of U.S. Sovereignty in the Atlantic World along the Banks of the Maumee River John C. Kotruch 263

Epilogue Peter S. Onuf 285

List of Contributors 303

Index 307

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