Richard Price and the Ethical Foundations of the American Revolution

Richard Price and the Ethical Foundations of the American Revolution
Author: Richard Price
Publisher: Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1979
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Richard Price was a loyal, although dissenting, subject of Great Britain who thought the British treatment of their colonies as wrong, not only prudentially, financially, economically, militarily, and politically, but, above all, morally wrong. He expressed these views in his first pamphlet early in 1776. It concluded with a plea for the cessation of hostilities by Great Britain and reconciliation. Its analyses, arguments, and conclusions, however, along with its admiration for the colonists, their moral position and qualities, could hardly fail to contribute to their reluctant recognition that there was no real alternative to independence. Price found some of his views not only misunderstood but vilified by negative critics in the ensuing controversy. So he wrote a second pamphlet which was published in early 1777. He expanded his analysis of liberty, extended its application to the war with America, and greatly expanded his discussion of the economic impact upon Great Britain. After the war, in 1784, he published a third pamphlet on the importance of the American Revolution and the means of making it a benefit to the world, appending an extensive letter from the Frenchman, Turgot. Implicitly the letter regards Price as a perceptive theorist of the revolution; explicitly it identifies the problems facing the prospective new nation and expresses a wish that it will fulfill its role s the hope of the world. Selections in the appendices present a part of the pamphlet controversy and the selection of correspondence shows how seriously Price was regarded by Revolutionary leaders.

The Marketplace of Revolution

The Marketplace of Revolution
Author: T. H. Breen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2004
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 019518131X

In a richly interdisciplinary narrative, a historian offers a boldly innovative interpretation of the mobilization of ordinary Americans on the eve of independence. 19 halftones & 21 line illustrations.

The Intellectual Construction of America

The Intellectual Construction of America
Author: Jack P. Greene
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807861774

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.

Political Thought of Hume and his Contemporaries

Political Thought of Hume and his Contemporaries
Author: Frederick G. Whelan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014-12-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 131757379X

Intended for scholars in the fields of political theory, and the history of political thought, this two-volume examines David Hume's Political Thought (1711-1776) and that of his contemporaries, including Smith, Blackstone, Burke and Robertson. This book is unified by its temporal focus on the middle and later decades of the eighteenth century and hence on what is usually taken to be the core period of the Enlightenment, a somewhat problematic term. Covering topics such as property, contract and resistance theory, religious establishments, the law of nations, the balance of power, demography, and the role of unintended consequences in social life, Frederick G. Whelan convincingly conveys the diversity--and creativity--of the intellectual engagements of even a limited set of Enlightenment thinkers in contrast to dismissive attitudes, in some quarters, toward the Enlightenment and its supposed unitary project. Political Thought of Hume and his Contemporaries: Enlightenment Projects Vol. 2 contains six in-depth studies of eighteenth-century political thought, including both normative issues and examples of Enlightenment social science, including international relations and law, the problem of double standards, political economy, demography, and the causes of imperial decline. The central figure is David Hume, with substantial attention to William Robertson, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, Malthus, and others.

American Revolution [5 volumes]

American Revolution [5 volumes]
Author: Spencer C. Tucker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 2459
Release: 2018-09-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1851097449

With more than 1,300 cross-referenced entries covering every aspect of the American Revolution, this definitive scholarly reference covers the causes, course, and consequences of the war and the political, social, and military origins of the nation. This authoritative and complete encyclopedia covers not only the eight years of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) but also the decades leading up to the war, beginning with the French and Indian War, and the aftermath of the conflict, with an emphasis on the early American Republic. Volumes one through four contain a series of overview essays on the causes, course, and consequences of the American Revolution, followed by impeccably researched A–Z entries that address the full spectrum of political, social, and military matters that arose from the conflict. Each entry is cross-referenced to other entries and also lists books for further reading. In addition, there is a detailed bibliography, timeline, and glossary. A fifth volume is devoted to primary sources, each of which is accompanied by an insightful introduction that places the document in its proper historical context. The primary sources help readers to understand the myriad motivations behind the American Revolution; the diplomatic, military, and political maneuvering that took place during the conflict; and landmark documents that shaped the founding and early development of the United States.

Britain and the American Revolution

Britain and the American Revolution
Author: H. T. Dickinson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2014-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317882687

This is the first modern study to focus on the British dimension of the American Revolution through its whole span from its origins to the declaration of independence in 1776 and its aftermath. It is written by nine leading British and American scholars who explore many key issues including the problems governing the American colonies, Britain's diplomatic isolation in Europe over the war, the impact of the American crisis on Ireland and the consequences for Britain of the loss of America.

The Broadview Anthology of Literature of the Revolutionary Period 1770-1832

The Broadview Anthology of Literature of the Revolutionary Period 1770-1832
Author: D.L. Macdonald
Publisher: Broadview Press
Total Pages: 1609
Release: 2010-03-04
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 1770487514

The selections from 132 authors in this anthology represent gender, social class, and racial and national origin as inclusively as possible, providing both greater context for canonical works and a sense of the era’s richness and diversity. In terms of genre, poetry, non-fiction prose, philosophy, educational writing, and prose fiction are included. Geographically, America, Canada, Australia, India, and Africa are represented along with Britain, emphasizing Romantic literature as a world literature. Biographical headnotes, explanatory footnotes, and an extensive bibliography clarify and illuminate the texts for readers.

Stumbling Towards the Constitution

Stumbling Towards the Constitution
Author: J. Chu
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2012-04-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137010800

Jonathan Chu explores individual economic and legal behaviors, connecting them to adjustments in trade relations with Europe and Asia, the rise in debt litigation in Western Massachusetts, deflation and monetary illiquidity, and the Bank of North America.

Jonathan Odell, Loyalist Poet of the American Revolution

Jonathan Odell, Loyalist Poet of the American Revolution
Author: Cynthia Dubin Edelberg
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1987
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780822307167

Jonathan Odell's live and writings give us insight into the American Revolution by revealing Loyalist ideology—the ambitious few have led the gullible multitude to slaughter—and he rails against the British military for fighting a war of containment aimed at bringing the rebel leadership to negotiation. This policy effectually trapped the Loyalists between the British army, which ignored them, and the rebels, who despised them. One of the best-educated of the colonialists, Odell, a physician turned Anglican minister and then writer, lived the gamut of experience: powerful friends sustained him and the British commanders-in-chief Sir William Howe, Henry Clinton, and Sir Guy Carleton employed him; nevertheless, during the war he was a lonely exile ("Tory hunters" forced him from his home in 1775), and, at the end of the war, when his hope for reconciliation between the Loyalists and the Americans came to nothing, he reluctantly emigrated to Canada. Here is a voice, all but silenced for over two hundred years, that must now be heard if we are to better understand the American Revolution.

The Impact of the French Revolution

The Impact of the French Revolution
Author: Iain Hampsher-Monk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2005-08-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780521570053

The French Revolution embodied, in the eyes of subsequent generations, the emergence of the modern political world. It offered a new understanding of class politics, secular ideology and revolutionary transformation which inspired, argues Iain Hampsher-Monk, the whole world-wide communist experiment of the twentieth Century. In this authoritative anthology of key political texts exploring the impact of this period on (primarily) the British experience, Hampsher-Monk examines the variety, influence and profundity of major thinkers such as Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine and Godwin, along with the impact of other less celebrated writers.