1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910465211103321

Autore

Smith-Rosenberg Carroll

Titolo

This violent empire : the birth of an American national identity / / Carroll Smith-Rosenberg

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chapel Hill, [North Carolina] : , : Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, , 2010

©2010

ISBN

0-8078-9591-1

1-4696-0039-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (509 p.)

Collana

Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia

Disciplina

973.2/5

Soggetti

National characteristics, American - History - 18th century

Men, White - United States - Attitudes - History - 18th century

Difference (Psychology) - Political aspects - United States - History - 18th century

Political culture - United States - History - 18th century

Violence - United States - History - 18th century

Racism - United States - History - 18th century

Paranoia - United States - History - 18th century

Sexism - United States - History - 18th century

Marginality, Social - United States - History - 18th century

Electronic books.

United States Civilization 1783-1865

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: "What, then, is the American, this new man?" -- Section 1. The new American-as-republican citizen -- Prologue 1: The drums of war/the thrust of empire -- Fusions and confusions -- Rebellious dandies and political fictions -- American Minervas -- Section 2. Dangerous doubles -- Prologue 2: Masculinity and masquerade -- Seeing red -- Subject female : authorizing an American identity -- Section 3. The new American-as-bourgeois gentleman -- Prologue 3:



The ball -- Choreographing class/performing gentility -- Polished gentlemen, troublesome women, and dancing slaves -- Black gothic.

Sommario/riassunto

This study traces the origins of American violence, racism, and paranoia to the founding moments of the new nation and the initial instability of Americans' national sense of self. It explores how the founding generation, lacking a common history, governmental infrastructures, and shared culture, solidified their national sense of self by imagining a series of 'others' (African Americans, Native Americans, women, the propertyless) whose differences from European American male founders overshadowed the differences that divided those founders.