Book Categories
|
The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Published for the Institute... |
Buy The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Published for the Institute... here, one of 750 American Revolution books offered for sale at discount prices here in the history books section at R bookshop. There are currently 86845 history books in our history books section, and over 1,000,000 books listed in our book store. We greatly appreciate your patronage at R bookshop and look forward to offering you a large selection of great books at discount prices now and in the future. Thank you for shopping at R Bookshop!
|
You Are Here: Home > History Books > American Revolution > Item 219
|
The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Published for the Institute...
|
by Eliga H. Gould
Sales Rank: 691438
|
List Price: $23.95
$23.95
At Amazon
on 11-17-2008.
|
|
|
|
Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 288 pages
Published by: The University of North Carolina Press February 16, 2000
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0807848468
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0807848463
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
Weighs: 15.5 ounces
Product Review
[A] nicely written and articulate study.
Historian
A well-researched, closely argued account of the impact of the American Revolution on British political culture.
International History Review
Gould has made a substantial contribution not only to imperial and Atlantic histories but also to the study of Britishness.
Journal of American History
An impressively well-documented analysis of the empire from an English perspective.
William and Mary Quarterly
This is a thought-provoking book, its argument consistently developed in sophisticated and engaging terms and presented with lucidity and grace.
Reviews in American History
Product Description
The American Revolution was the longest colonial war in modern British history and Britain's most humiliating defeat as an imperial power. In this lively, concise book, Eliga Gould looks at an important yet surprisingly understudied aspect of the conflict: the British public's predominantly loyal response to its government's actions in North America.
Gould attributes British support for George III's American policies to a combination of factors, including growing isolationism in regard to the European continent and a burgeoning sense of the colonies as integral parts of a greater British nation. Most important, he argues, the British public accepted such ill-conceived projects as the Stamp Act because theirs was a sedentary, "armchair" patriotism based on paying others to fight their battles for them. This system of military finance made Parliament's attempt to tax the American colonists look unexceptional to most Britons and left the metropolitan public free to embrace imperial projects of all sorts-including those that ultimately drove the colonists to rebel.
Drawing on nearly one thousand political pamphlets as well as on broadsides, private memoirs, and popular cartoons, Gould offers revealing insights into eighteenth-century British political culture and a refreshing account of what the Revolution meant to people on both sides of the Atlantic.
Reader Reviews
Gould describes the origin and changing self concepts of the first British empire. He describes the benign neglect of the North American colonies under the reign of George I and II - despite the fact that a large amount of the victories of the Seven Years War occurred in North America - the colonies were seen, by the Hanovarian world view, as little more than distractions, pawns in the stuggle for dominance of the European landmass. The colonies interests were menanced by the threat of French invasion from Quebec and thus their loyalty for the protection of their liberty and religion, emphasised their Britishness. Great Brition's policy (envisioned by Bolinbroke, but embodied by Pitt Snr.) increasingly saw the domination of colonial trade, and the protection of trade routes as a method of increasing wealth and power in the world. With the accession of the nationalist George III this `blue water' strategy marked a British distaste for continental alliances and a new emphasis on transatlantic values of liberty, Protestanism and profits. Gould makes very clear that the increasing London-based emphasis on the Britishness of the colonies brought with it a metropolitan belief that the colonies should contribute more than trade taxes, at about the same time as the French threat from Quebec had removed the colonies major anxieties for their security. Indeed it was to pay for the debts run up in the Seven Years War that the taxation question became urgent. Gould is very good at illustrating how the metropolitan foreign policy called for a powerful Navy and a standing army in the American colonies to deter French rearmament, whereas the colonial view saw the standing army as a threat to their liberty, much as the Whigs had resisted a standing army in English soil after the Restoration. A strength of the book is illustrating the progress of this mutual incomprehension from refined argument to confrontation and, eventually, Revolution. If this area interests you, also worth a read is The Power of Commerce by Nancy Kohen, which is much clearer on the policy divisions within the British parliament on the question of how to pay for the Government debt run up by the war. There were many voices (including Pitt Snr) who backed the theoretical right of Parliament to impose colonial taxes, but opposed each new measure in turn, relying instead on the increasing value of commercial taxes (and perhaps inflation) to deal with the debt. The governing faction, however, stared into the jaws of fiscal default and saw debt reduction as the major task of their time in office. Gould agues that the failure of the first `one-nation' British empire, set the philosophy for the second muti-cultural (some might say racist) imperialism that pervaded the 19th Century. Having failed with the North Atlantic, trading based `cousins', the empire defaulted to one set on the exploitation exemplified by the East India Company. However it is possible to argue that the emergence of the anti-Slavery movement, among others, gives the lie to this view. This is a welcome addition to those seeking knowledge of the guiding philosophies and strategies of the first British Empire , and the affect which its collapse had on subsequent British Imperial thinking.
Back To Top
|
The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Published for the Institute...
Available from Amazon
Price: $23.95
Updated on 11-17-2008.
|
NOTICE: All prices, availability, and specifications
are subject to verification by their respective retailers.
| We offer The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Published for the Institute... and other related American Revolution Books here at Rbookshop.com. To view more books about American Revolution please use the previous and next buttons near the top of this page.
|
|
|
Search for books at
