LEADER 04018nam 2200697 a 450 001 9910463690403321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-283-89006-2 010 $a0-8122-0175-2 024 7 $a10.9783/9780812201758 035 $a(CKB)3240000000068507 035 $a(OCoLC)794702269 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10641570 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000631227 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11386413 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000631227 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10598872 035 $a(PQKB)10436260 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3441735 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse17925 035 $a(DE-B1597)449029 035 $a(OCoLC)1013937955 035 $a(OCoLC)979591438 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780812201758 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3441735 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10641570 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL420256 035 $a(EXLCZ)993240000000068507 100 $a20080924d2009 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aIn my power$b[electronic resource] $eletter writing and communications in early America /$fKonstantin Dierks 210 $aPhiladelphia $cUniversity of Pennsylvania Press$dc2009 215 $a1 online resource (377 p.) 225 0 $aEarly American Studies 225 0$aEarly American studies 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 $a0-8122-2181-8 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aCommunications and empire -- Letter writing and commercial revolution -- Migration and empire -- Letter writing and consumer revolution -- Revolution and war -- Universalism and the epistolary divide -- Conclusion -- Afterword : the burden of early American history. 330 $aIn My Power tells the story of letter writing and communications in the creation of the British Empire and the formation of the United States. In an era of bewildering geographical mobility, economic metamorphosis, and political upheaval, the proliferation of letter writing and the development of a communications infrastructure enabled middle-class Britons and Americans to rise to advantage in the British Atlantic world.Everyday letter writing demonstrated that the blessings of success in the early modern world could come less from the control of overt political power than from the cultivation of social skills that assured the middle class of their technical credentials, moral deserving, and social innocence. In writing letters, the middle class not only took effective action in a turbulent world but also defined what they believed themselves to be able to do in that world. Because this ideology of agency was extended to women and the youngest of children in the eighteenth century, it could be presented as universalized even as it was withheld from Native Americans and enslaved blacks.Whatever the explicit purposes behind letter writing may have been-educational improvement, family connection, business enterprise-the effect was to render the full terms of social division invisible both to those who accumulated power and to those who did not. The uncontested power that came from letter writing was, Konstantin Dierks provocatively argues, as important as racist violence to the rise of the white middle class in the British Atlantic world. 410 0$aEarly American studies. 606 $aAmerican letters$y18th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aLetter writing$zUnited States$xHistory$y18th century 606 $aAmerican letters$xHistory and criticism 608 $aElectronic books. 615 0$aAmerican letters$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aLetter writing$xHistory 615 0$aAmerican letters$xHistory and criticism. 676 $a816/.309 700 $aDierks$b Konstantin$0608789 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910463690403321 996 $aIn my power$91108819 997 $aUNINA