Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic PDF
Preview Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic
Anglicizing America EArly AmEricAn StudiES Series editors: daniel K. richter, Kathleen m. Brown, max cavitch, and david Waldstreicher Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture, Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about 1600 to 1850, the series is published in partnership with the mcneil center for Early American Studies. Anglicizing AmEricA Empire, revolution, republic edited by ignacio gallup-diaz, Andrew Shankman and david J. Silverman university of pennsylvania press philadelphia copyright © 2015 university of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by university of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the united States of America on acid-free paper 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Anglicizing America : empire, revolution, republic / edited by ignacio gallup-diaz, Andrew Shankman, and david J. Silverman. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Early American studies) includes bibliographical references and index. iSBn 978-0-8122-4698-8 (alk. paper) 1. united States—History—colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 2. united States— History—colonial period, ca. 1600–1775—Historiography. 3. united States— History—revolution, 1775–1783. 4. united States—History—revolution, 1775– 1783—Historiography. 5. united States—civilization—English influences. 6. united States—civilization—to 1783. 7. united States—civilization—1783–1865. 8. united States—Ethnic relations—History—17th century. 9. united States—Ethnic relations—History—18th century. 10. united States—relations—great Britain— History. 11. great Britain—relations—united States—History. 12. racism—united States—History. 13. Slavery—united States—History. i. gallup-diaz, ignacio, 1963– ii. Shankman, Andrew, 1970– iii. Silverman, david J., 1971– Series: Early American studies. E188.A59 2015 973.2—dc23 2014029115 Contents introduction 1 Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, and David J. Silverman PArt i. AnglicizAtion chapter 1. England and colonial America: A novel theory of the American revolution 9 John M. Murrin chapter 2. A Synthesis useful and compelling: Anglicization and the Achievement of John m. murrin 20 Andrew Shankman PArt ii. EmPirE chapter 3. “in great Slavery and Bondage”: White labor and the development of Plantation Slavery in British America 59 Simon P. Newman chapter 4. Anglicizing the league: the Writing of cadwallader colden’s History of the Five Indian Nations 83 William Howard Carter chapter 5. A medieval response to a Wilderness need: Anglicizing Warfare in colonial America 109 Geoffrey Plank PArt iii. rEvolution chapter 6. Anglicanism, dissent, and toleration in Eighteenth-century British colonies 125 Nancy L. Rhoden chapter 7. Anglicization Against the Empire: revolutionary ideas and identity in townshend crisis massachusetts 153 Jeremy A. Stern PArt iv. rEPuBlic chapter 8. racial Walls: race and the Emergence of American White nationalism 181 David J. Silverman chapter 9. de-Anglicization: the Jeffersonian Attack on an American naval Establishment 205 Denver Brunsman chapter 10. Anglicization and the American taxpayer, c. 1763–1815 226 Anthony M. Joseph conclusion. Anglicization reconsidered 239 Ignacio Gallup-Diaz notes 249 list of contributors 297 index 299 Acknowledgments 311 introduction ignacio gallup-diaz, Andrew Shankman, and david J. Silverman Anglicizing America reevaluates the idea of Anglicization, a seminal theoreti- cal model for the study of early American history. Anglicization explains the process through which the English colonies of the Americas emerged from their diverse beginnings to become increasingly more alike, expressing a shared Britishness in their political and judicial systems, material culture, economies, religious systems, and engagements with the empire. Angliciza- tion hinges on two powerful ironies: first, that the thirteen mainland colonies had never been more British than they were on the eve of their War of inde- pendence from Britain; and, second, that this shared Britishness, rather than a sense of American distinctiveness, enabled those colonies to make com- mon cause in the revolution and the creation of the early republic. This compelling, synthetic idea first appeared in the scholarship of John murrin in the 1960s and has since inspired a host of the most impor- tant books in the early American field, including richard Bushman’s King and People in Provincial Massachusetts, richard r. Johnson’s Adjustment to Empire, t. H. Breen’s Marketplace of Revolution, Frank lambert’s Inventing the Great Awakening, and Brendan mcconville’s The King’s Three Faces. it has also drawn retorts from those who have argued that the colonies were becom- ing more particularly American on the eve of the revolution, a claim recently articulated by Jon Butler in his Becoming America. regardless of where one stands in the debate, any scholar interested in the early modern empire and the American revolution must contend with the concept of Anglicization. The early twenty-first century is an opportune time to revisit the idea of Anglicization. For the past thirty years, early American historians have been drifting away from the traditional centerpiece of the field—the thirteen mainland British colonies and their advance to revolution and nationhood— toward topics that their predecessors usually treated only tangentially. These 2 gallup-diaz, Shankman, and Silverman themes include the British caribbean, native Americans, slavery, transatlan- tic migrations, and other European colonies. recent scholarship sees colonial America not as the prologue to the united States but instead as a conver- gence and clash of many peoples and imperial powers across the hemisphere over the course of three centuries. new analytical frameworks have arisen in turn. one framework posits the existence of an early modern Atlantic world connecting the peoples of Western Europe, West Africa, the caribbean, and the eastern coasts of north, central, and South America. Another model calls for a continental history of north America centered on indian coun- try and contests between the various European powers for indian alliances and resources. These approaches have immeasurably enriched the field by expanding its geographical and thematic range, but the multiplication of top- ics has led many scholars and students to wonder if Early America remains a coherent field of study. This quandary is a primary reason for renewed discussion of the Angli- cization concept. There is pent-up scholarly demand to restore attention to the American revolution’s origins, events, and outcomes, as evidenced by the mcneil center for Early American Studies conference, “The American revolution reborn,” held in spring 2013, which drew a larger audience of scholars and the general public than any other event of its kind in recent memory. concerns over fragmentation in early American studies make this a ripe moment to explore the applicability of the concept of Anglicization to current scholarly interests such as the Atlantic world and American indian history. Bringing the concept of Anglicization to these areas of scholarly inquiry invites many new questions. to what degree did Anglicization shape Britain’s caribbean colonies, and how did that process influence the caribbean colonies’ response to the Ameri- can revolution? did the French and Spanish colonies also become more like their parent societies over time, and does the answer help to explain their independence movements in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centu- ries? How did American indian engagement with the British Empire, Brit- ish material goods, the British market, and British missionaries shape their contests with British colonists? might one refer to some indians as Angliciz- ing too? For excellent reasons, there is no turning back to a time when early American history focused squarely on Anglo-American people and the colo- nies that became the united States. This volume does not take such a reaction- ary position, nor does it contend that the process of Anglicization applies to the colonial histories of other imperial powers. yet highlighting Anglicization introduction 3 will refocus scholarly attention on issues that promise to bring greater coher- ence to the field. These issues include how the British mainland and carib- bean colonies fit together within a single British imperial system; the extent to which Anglo-American colonists, indians, and African slaves shared experi- ences amid their profound differences; and how the early republican united States managed to endure in the absence of a well-developed national identity and in the face of staggering social and political divisions. Anglicizing America is divided into four parts designed to introduce readers to the theme of Anglicization and then explore its applicability to the colonial, revolutionary, and early u.S. national periods. Part i, “Angli- cization,” opens with a concise 1974 essay by John m. murrin that defines the idea and shows how it can be used to explain the development of the British colonies, the coming of the American revolution, and the consolida- tion of the early republic around the federal constitution. The subsequent essay by Andrew Shankman traces how murrin developed the Anglicization concept over the course of forty years of scholarship in conversation with the emergent trends of the field. Shankman argues that Anglicization was a vital process intimately connected to the momentous changes that England (and then Britain) experienced between the Exclusion crisis and the Hanoverian succession. The long process of establishing a glorious revolution settle- ment that addressed the religious, constitutional, and financial conflicts of the fractured English seventeenth century allowed eighteenth-century Brit- ain to impose a new degree of imperial order that dramatically shaped its colonial possessions. England/Britain itself underwent Anglicization during the formative years of its “long eighteenth century,” and its north American colonies, in diverse ways, followed suit. Part ii, “Empire,” explores how Anglicization illuminates the histories of African slaves, native Americans, and military affairs, which have been of peripheral interest to most subsequent Anglicization scholars, although not to murrin. Simon P. newman’s essay situates the development of planta- tion slavery in both the caribbean and the mainland colonies within English labor practices, suggesting that American slavery was not such a sharp break with English methods of labor coercion. in doing so, newman shows how uncovering the transmission of English influence can stretch and, to some extent, redefine the idea of Anglicization. For murrin, Anglicization was a process of the eighteenth century, and at its core it remains so in this volume. yet newman shows that being English mattered a great deal in the initial decades of the empire, well before the most intense period of Anglicization.
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