Among the Powers of the Earth
- ISBN-10
- 0674065026
- ISBN-13
- 9780674065024
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 342
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012-03-19
- Publisher
- Harvard University Press
- Author
- Eliga H. Gould
Description
For most Americans, the Revolution’s main achievement is summed up by the phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Yet far from a straightforward attempt to be free of Old World laws and customs, the American founding was also a bid for inclusion in the community of nations as it existed in 1776. America aspired to diplomatic recognition under international law and the authority to become a colonizing power itself. As Eliga Gould shows in this reappraisal of American history, the Revolution was an international transformation of the first importance. To conform to the public law of Europe’s imperial powers, Americans crafted a union nearly as centralized as the one they had overthrown, endured taxes heavier than any they had faced as British colonists, and remained entangled with European Atlantic empires long after the Revolution ended. No factor weighed more heavily on Americans than the legally plural Atlantic where they hoped to build their empire. Gould follows the region’s transfiguration from a fluid periphery with its own rules and norms to a place where people of all descriptions were expected to abide by the laws of Western Europe—"civilized" laws that precluded neither slavery nor the dispossession of Native Americans.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World
By Peter Onuf, Peter S. Onuf, Eliga H. Gould" The essays in Empire and Nation challenge facile assumptions about the "exceptional" character of the republic's founding moment, even as they invite readers to think anew about the complex ways in which the Revolution reshaped both ...
-
Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality
By Danielle AllenNo one has ever written a book on the Declaration quite like this one.” —Gordon Wood, New York Review of Books Winner of the Zócalo Book Prize Winner of the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize Winner of the Chicago ...
-
The Earth: From Myths to Knowledge
By Hubert KrivineFew of us have more than the faintest notion of the path we have travelled. Hubert Krivine tells the story of the thinkers and scientists whose work allowed our species to put an age to the planet and pinpoint our place in the solar system.
-
The Powers of Heaven and Earth: New and Selected Poems
By John Frederick NimsIn addition, this incomparably rich volume includes thirty new poems published during Nims’s last decade.
-
The Declaration of Independence: A Global History
By David ArmitageNot only did the Declaration announce the entry of the United States onto the world stage, it became the model for other countries to follow.
-
The Social Conquest of Earth
By Edward O. WilsonRefashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution.
-
All the Powers of Earth: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. III, 1856-1860
By Sidney BlumenthalLincoln achieves the presidency by force of strategy, of political savvy and determination. This is Abraham Lincoln, who indisputably becomes the greatest president and moral leader in the nation’s history.
-
Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth
By Avi LoebHarvard's top astronomer lays out his controversial theory that our solar system was recently visited by advanced alien technology from a distant star
-
A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809–1849
By Sidney BlumenthalThis first volume traces Lincoln from his birth in 1809 through his education in the political arts, rise to the Congress, and fall into the wilderness from which he emerged as the man we recognize as Abraham Lincoln. “Splendid…no one ...
-
Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History
By Kyle HarperMany pathogens have highly conserved elements— biochemical parts that their ancestors, and their ancestors' ancestors, used to accomplish the basic tasks necessary for a microbe, like building a cell wall or a protein coat.