The Creation of America: Through Revolution to Empire
Cambridge University Press, 8/28/2000
EAN 9780521662550, ISBN10: 0521662559
Hardcover, 354 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
In the standard presentation of the American Revolution, a ragtag assortment of revolutionaries, inspired by ideals of liberty and justice, throw off the yoke of the British empire and bring democracy to the New World. In place of this fairy tale, Francis Jennings presents a realistic alternative: a privileged elite, dreaming of empire, clone their own empire from the British. This book, first published in 2000, shows that the colonists intended from the first to conquer American Indians. Though subordinate to the British crown, the colonists ruled over beaten native peoples. Some colonists bought Africans as slaves and rigidly ruled over them, and the colonists invented racial gradation to justify conquests and oppression. Jennings reveals as war propaganda the revolutionary rhetoric about liberty and virtue. Including the whole population in this meticulously documented history, Jennings provides an eloquent explanation for a host of anomalies, ambiguities, and iniquities that have followed in the American Revolution's wake.
Part I. England Extends Conquests to North America
1. Preface
2. Origins
3. Embryonic empires
4. Dependencies
Indians, The West
5. Colonial variety I
Virginia
6. Colonial variety II
New England
7. Colonial variety III
New York
8. Colonial variety IV
Pennsylvania
9. Colonial variety V
South Carolina
Part II. Frictions Arise Within The Empire
10. 'Salutary neglect'
11. Royal prerogative in America
12. War in principle
13. Irritants
14. At the core
15. George III
16. Reactions becoming revolution
17. A variation on the theme of liberty
18. Repression and resistance
19. A battle for bishops
Part III. An American Clone Breaks Off
20. Imperial and colonial frontiers
21. Changing sides
22. Defiance and crackdown
23. Uniting for liberty, tentatively
24. Shots heard round the world
25. Multiple revolutions
26. Decision
27. Religion then and now
28. A 'people's democracy'
29. Liberty, virtue, empire
30. Conquest, slavery, race
31. Combat
multiple outbreaks
32. Combat
the western theatre, I
33. Combat
the northern theatre, I
34. Combat
the northern theatre, II
35. Saratoga
36. Combat
the western theatre, II
37. 'West' in the middle
38. Combat
the southern theatre
39. Yorktown
Part IV. The Clone Establishes its Form
40. What next?
41. Land
42. People
43. Power
Part V. More Conquests
44. Climax
45. In sum.