1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910781750203321

Autore

Yokota Kariann Akemi

Titolo

Unbecoming British [[electronic resource] ] : how revolutionary America became a postcolonial nation / / Kariann Akemi Yokota

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Oxford ; ; New York, : Oxford University Press, 2010

ISBN

0-19-977991-0

1-283-29696-9

9786613296962

0-19-975092-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (367 p.)

Disciplina

973.3/39

Soggetti

National characteristics, American - History

United States Civilization 1783-1865

United States Civilization To 1783

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; INTRODUCTION: Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation; CHAPTER ONE: A New Nation on the Margins of the Global Map; CHAPTER TWO: A Culture of Insecurity: Americans in a Transatlantic World of Goods; CHAPTER THREE: A Revolution Revived: American and British Encounters in Canton, China; CHAPTER FOUR: Sowing the Seeds of Postcolonial Discontent: The Transatlantic Exchange of American Nature and British Patronage; CHAPTER FIVE: "A Great Curiosity": The American Quest for Racial Refinement and Knowledge

CONCLUSION: The Long Goodbye: Breaking with the British in Nineteenth-century AmericaNotes; Index

Sommario/riassunto

What can homespun cloth, stuffed birds, quince jelly, and ginseng reveal about the formation of early American national identity? In this wide-ranging and bold new interpretation of American history and its Founding Fathers, Kariann Akemi Yokota shows that political independence from Britain fueled anxieties among the Americans about their cultural inferiority and continuing dependence on the mother country. Caught between their desire to emulate the mother country



and an awareness that they lived an ocean away on the periphery of the known world, they went to great lengths to convince themsel