Boekhandel Douwes Den Haag

The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution

Diversity and Empire in the British Atlantic, 1688-1783

Fisher, Samuel K. (Assistant Professor of History, Assistant Professor of History, The Catholic University of America)

The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution

The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution

Diversity and Empire in the British Atlantic, 1688-1783

The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution

 

The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution offers a new, comparative history of the American Revolution that puts colonized people at the center of the story. It shows how Irish-speaking Catholics, Scottish Highlanders, and American Indians remade the British empire--and convinced American colonists to leave it in the process.


Leverbaar

€ 51,80

Levertijd: 5 tot 10 werkdagen


Beschrijving The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution

How did an unlikely group of peoples--Irish-speaking Catholics, Scottish Highlanders, and American Indians--play an even unlikelier role in the origins of the American Revolution?

Drawing on little-used sources in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution places these typically marginalized peoples in Ireland, Scotland, and North America at the center of a larger drama of imperial reform and revolution. Gaelic and Indian peoples experiencing colonization in the eighteenth-century British empire fought back by building relationships with the king and imperial officials. In doing so, they created a more inclusive empire and triggered conflict between the imperial state and formerly privileged provincial Britons: Irish Protestants, Scottish whigs, and American colonists. The American Revolution was only one aspect of this larger conflict between inclusive empire and the exclusionary patriots within the British empire.

In fact, Britons had argued about these questions since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when revolutionaries had dethroned James II as they accused him of plotting to employ savage Gaelic and Indian enemies in a tyrranical plot against liberty. This was the same argument the American revolutionaries--and their sympathizers in England, Scotland, and Ireland--used against George III. Ironically, however, it was Gaelic and Indian peoples, not kings, who had pushed the empire in inclusive directions. In doing so they pushed the American patriots towards revolution.

This novel account argues that Americans' racial dilemmas were not new nor distinctively American but instead the awkward legacies of a more complex imperial history. By showcasing how Gaelic and Indian peoples challenged the British empire--and in the process convinced American colonists to leave it--Samuel K. Fisher offers a new way of understanding the American Revolution and its relevance for our own times.


ISBN
9780197555842
Pagina's
320
Verschenen
NUR
680
Druk
1
Uitvoering
Hardback
Taal
Engels
Uitgever
OUP USA

Geschiedenis