Contested Commonwealths

Essays in American History

By (author) William A. Pencak Contributions by John Lax, Ralph J. Crandall

Not available to order

Publication date:

16 September 2011

Length of book:

390 pages

Publisher

Lehigh University Press

ISBN-13: 9781611460841

BOOK DESCRIPTION
TABLE OF CONTENTS

United States historian William Pencak presents thirteen of his essays, written beginning in 1976. Some deal with colonial and revolutionary crowds and communities in Massachusetts - the impressment riot of 1747, the popular uprisings of the 1760s and 1770s, and Shays' Rebellion. Others examine popular ideology in songs and almanacs, and the thought and behavior of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and the loyalist Peter Oliver. Interpretive essays argue that colonial outage that their participation in the French and Indian War went unrecognized by the British led to the American Revolution; that revolutionary economic thought turned smuggling from a vice into the 'natural law' of free trade; and that focusing on the 'Civil War,' and the years 1861 to 1865, leads to a glorified conception of the national past that is better understood as shaped by 'An Era of Racial Violence' that extended from 1854 to at least 1877.

Part 1 Acknowledgements
Part 2 Introduction
Part 3 Part One: Communities
Chapter 4 Chapter 1: 1.The Knowles Riot and the Crisis of the 1740s in Massachusetts
Chapter 5 Chapter 2: Metropolitan Boston Before the American Revolution: An Urban Interpretation of the Imperial Crisis
Chapter 6 Chapter 3:The Social Structure of Revolutionary Boston: Evidence from the Great Fire of 1760
Chapter 7 Chapter 4: Play as Prelude to Revolution: Boston, 1765-1776
Chapter 8 Chapter 5:"The Fine Theoretic Government of Massachusetts is Prostrated to the Earth": The Response to Shays's Rebellion Reconsidered
Part 9 Part Two: People
Chapter 10 Chapter 6:Politics and Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Almanacs: Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard and Nathanael Ames, Sr.'s An Astronomical Diary
Chapter 11 Chapter 7: The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship: Benjamin Franklin, George Whitefield, the Dancing School, and a Defense of the "Meaner Sort"
Chapter 12 Chapter 8: John Adams and His Contemporaries
Chapter 13 Chapter 9:The Extended Presidency of George Washington (1775-1797)
Chapter 14 Chapter 10: Peter Oliver (1713-1791), Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court
Part 15 Part Three: Ideas
Chapter 16 Chapter 11: From Racket to Natural Law: The Permutation of Smuggling Into Free Trade
Chapter 17 Chapter 12: "The Great War for the Empire" Reconsidered as a Cause of the American Revolution
Chapter 18 Chapter 13: The Civil War Did Not Take Place
Part 19 Index