In the decades after the American Revolution, as Philadelphia became a center of political and economic power, the city experienced extraordinary population growth, increasing from 60,000 to 400,000 inhabitants between 1790 and 1850. By tracing the business strategies of several hundred housebuilders during this period--a medley of traditional craft workers, emerging entrepreneurs, and hustling speculators--Making Houses, Crafting Capitalism uncovers the complex process by which thousands of row houses were constructed and sold, and shows how craftsmen were at the center of this...
In the decades after the American Revolution, as Philadelphia became a center of political and economic power, the city experienced extraordinary popu...
Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America, 1780-1850 Rodney Hessinger "Offering keen insight derived from a wide range of sources, from eighteenth-century literature to institutional records, Seduced, Abandoned, and Rebornis important reading for scholars of gender, youth, and class in the early republic."--Journal of the Early Republic "Politicians, preachers, and pundits prattle about family values, but this lovely little book engages our actual experience of the family as those self-appointed moralists never manage to do. Rodney Hessinger is a...
Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn Visions of Youth in Middle-Class America, 1780-1850 Rodney Hessinger "Offering keen insight derived from a wide range o...
In the summer of 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, the grandson of England's King James II, landed on the western coast of Scotland intending to overthrow George II and restore the Stuart family to the throne. He gathered thousands of supporters, and the insurrection he led--the Jacobite Rising of 1745--was a crisis not only for Britain but for the entire British Empire. Rebellion and Savagery examines the 1745 rising and its aftermath on an imperial scale. Charles Edward gained support from the clans of the Scottish Highlands, communities that had long been derided as primitive. In 1745...
In the summer of 1745, Charles Edward Stuart, the grandson of England's King James II, landed on the western coast of Scotland intending to overthrow ...
From Privileges to Rights connects the changing fortunes of tradesmen in early New York to the emergence of a conception of subjective rights that accompanied the transition to a republican and liberal order in eighteenth-century America.
Tradesmen in New Amsterdam occupied a distinct social position and, with varying levels of success, secured privileges such as a reasonable reward and the exclusion of strangers from their commerce. The struggle to maintain these privileges figured in the transition to English rule as well as Leisler's Rebellion. Using hitherto...
From Privileges to Rights connects the changing fortunes of tradesmen in early New York to the emergence of a conception of subjective r...
Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820), poet, essayist, playwright, and one of the most thoroughgoing advocates of women's rights in early America, was as well known in her own day as Abigail Adams or Martha Washington. Her name, though, has virtually disappeared from the public consciousness. Thanks to the recent discovery of Murray's papers including some 2,500 personal letters historian Sheila L. Skemp has documented the compelling story of this talented and most unusual eighteenth-century woman.Born in Gloucester, Massachussetts, Murray moved to Boston in 1793 with her second husband,...
Judith Sargent Murray (1751-1820), poet, essayist, playwright, and one of the most thoroughgoing advocates of women's rights in early America, was ...
In "A Town In-Between," Judith Ridner reveals the influential, turbulent past of a modest, quiet American community. Today Carlisle, Pennsylvania, nestled in the Susquehanna Valley, is far from the nation's political and financial centers. In the eighteenth century, however, Carlisle and its residents stood not only at a geographical crossroads but also at the fulcrum of early American controversies. Located between East Coast settlement and the western frontier, Carlisle quickly became a mid-Atlantic hub, serving as a migration gateway to the southern and western interiors, a commercial...
In "A Town In-Between," Judith Ridner reveals the influential, turbulent past of a modest, quiet American community. Today Carlisle, Pennsylvania, ...
In this path-breaking study of the intersections between visual and literary culture, Christopher J. Lukasik explores how early Americans grappled with the relationship between appearance and social distinction in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War.
Through a wide range of evidence, including canonical and obscure novels, newspapers, periodicals, scientific and medical treatises, and plays as well as conduct manuals, portraits, silhouettes, and engravings, "Discerning Characters" charts the transition from the eighteenth century's emphasis on performance and...
In this path-breaking study of the intersections between visual and literary culture, Christopher J. Lukasik explores how early Americans grappled ...
"Imperial Entanglements" chronicles the history of the Haudenosaunee Iroquois in the eighteenth century, a dramatic period during which they became further entangled in a burgeoning market economy, participated in imperial warfare, and encountered a waxing British Empire. Rescuing the Seven Years' War era from the shadows of the American Revolution and moving away from the political focus that dominates Iroquois studies, historian Gail D. MacLeitch offers a fresh examination of Iroquois experience in economic and cultural terms. As land sellers, fur hunters, paid laborers, consumers, and...
"Imperial Entanglements" chronicles the history of the Haudenosaunee Iroquois in the eighteenth century, a dramatic period during which they became...
"A Democracy of Facts" chronicles the fascinating story of American naturalists who came of age and stumbled toward a profession in the years after the American Revolution.
In a political climate mistrusting of elites and book knowledge, naturalists turned to the American populace, especially its farmers and artisans, for information to catalog and describe the fledgling nation's natural environment. From these ordinary Americans, naturalists gathered a vast wealth of fact and opinion about the natural world of North America. But in relying on those who daily lived in and worked with...
"A Democracy of Facts" chronicles the fascinating story of American naturalists who came of age and stumbled toward a profession in the years after...
Originally a sect within the Anglican church, Methodism blossomed into a dominant mainstream religion in America during the nineteenth century. At the beginning, though, Methodists constituted a dissenting religious group whose ideas about sexuality, marriage, and family were very different from those of their contemporaries.
Focusing on the Methodist notion of family that cut across biological ties, "One Family Under God" speaks to historical debates over the meaning of family and how the nuclear family model developed over the eighteenth century. Historian Anna M. Lawrence demonstrates...
Originally a sect within the Anglican church, Methodism blossomed into a dominant mainstream religion in America during the nineteenth century. At ...
