| Description |
1 online resource (x, 288 pages) : illustrations |
| Series |
Jeffersonian America |
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Jeffersonian America.
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| Contents |
Critique of self-evident liberty -- British Legacies: Privilege at the heart of freedom ; Marriage of rights and inequality -- Transmission of restricted liberty to Colonial America: Reproducing the Old World order in the provinces ; Fear of levelling and licentiousness ; Property and the cult of liberty -- Revolution: Radical script for a preservationist struggle ; Universalization of the language of freedom ; Delegitimizing pedigreed advantage ; Inventing patriotic traditions ; Constituting the people ; Equality as the future of America -- Sway of symbolic power: Captains of the ship of progress ; Meaning of representation ; Claims of liberty claim their authors -- Usurpers and dupes. The backlash: Revolutionary vocabulary against revoutionary government ; Party struggles and the expansion of liberty ; Ruling class: a crisis of identity ; Useful mob ; People's aristocracy |
| Summary |
From the publisher. In his new book, Michal Jan Rozbicki undertakes to bridge the current gap between the political and the cultural histories of the American Revolution. Through a careful examination of liberty as both the ideological axis and the central metaphor of the age, he is able to offer a fresh model for interpreting the Revolution. By establishing systemic linkages between the histories of the free and the unfree, and between the factual and the symbolic, this framework points to a fundamental reassessment of the ways we think about the American Founding. Rozbicki moves beyond the two dominant interpretations of Revolutionary liberty—one assuming the Founders invested it with a modern meaning that has in essence continued to the present day, the other highlighting its apparent betrayal by their commitment to inequality. Through a consistent focus on the interplay between culture and power, Rozbicki demonstrates that liberty existed as an intricate fusion of political practices and symbolic forms. His deeply historicized reconstruction of its contemporary meanings makes it clear that liberty was still understood as a set of privileges distributed according to social rank, rather than a universal right. In fact, it was because the Founders considered this assumption self-evident that they felt confident in publicizing a highly liberal, symbolic narrative of equal liberty to represent the Revolutionary endeavor. The uncontainable success of this narrative went far beyond the circumstances that gave birth to it because it put new cultural capital—a conceptual arsenal of rights and freedoms—at the disposal of ordinary people as well as political factions competing for their support, providing priceless legitimacy to all those who would insist that its nominal inclusiveness include them in fact |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-280) and index |
| Notes |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
|
English |
|
Print version record |
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digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL |
| Subject |
Liberty -- Social aspects -- United States -- History -- 18th century
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Liberty -- Political aspects -- United States -- History -- 18th century
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Social status -- United States -- History -- 18th century
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Social classes -- United States -- History -- 18th century
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Elite (Social sciences) -- United States -- History -- 18th century
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Founding Fathers of the United States.
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HISTORY -- United States -- Revolutionary Period (1775-1800)
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Social aspects
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Elite (Social sciences)
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Founding Fathers of the United States
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Liberty -- Political aspects
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Liberty -- Social aspects
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Social classes
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Social status
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Amerikanische Revolution
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Kultur
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Freiheit
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Vrijheid.
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Culturele aspecten.
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Sociale klassen.
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Amerikaanse Vrijheidsoorlog.
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Freiheit.
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Kultur.
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United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Social aspects
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United States
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Verenigde Staten.
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| Genre/Form |
Electronic books
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History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| LC no. |
2010020855 |
| ISBN |
9780813931548 |
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0813931541 |
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1280490020 |
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9781280490026 |
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9786613585257 |
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6613585254 |
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