Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
321
result(s) for
"Revolution, 1775–1783"
Sort by:
A short history of the American Revolutionary War
\"Ideologically defined by the colonists' formal Declaration of Independence in 1776, the struggle has taken on something of a mythic character. From the Boston Tea Party to Paul Revere's ride to raise the countryside of New England against the march of the Redcoats; and from the American travails of Bunker Hill (1775) to the final humiliation of the British at Yorktown (1781), the entire contest is now emblematic of American national identity. Stephen Conway shows that, beyond mythology, this was more than just a local conflict: rather a titanic struggle between France and Britain. The Thirteen Colonies were merely one frontline of an extended theatre of operations, with each superpower aiming to deliver the knockout blow. This bold new history recognizes the war as the Revolution but situates it on the wider, global canvas of European warfare.\"--Publisher's website.
BOOK
Women of the Republic
Women of the Republicviews the American Revolution through women's eyes. Previous histories have rarely recognized that the battle for independence was also a woman's war. The \"women of the army\" toiled in army hospitals, kitchens, and laundries. Civilian women were spies, fund raisers, innkeepers, suppliers of food and clothing. Recruiters, whether patriot or tory, found men more willing to join the army when their wives and daughters could be counted on to keep the farms in operation and to resist enchroachment from squatters. \"I have Don as much to Carrey on the warr as maney that Sett Now at the healm of government,\" wrote one impoverished woman, and she was right.Women of the Republicis the result of a seven-year search for women's diaries, letters, and legal records. Achieving a remarkable comprehensiveness, it describes women's participation in the war, evaluates changes in their education in the late eighteenth century, describes the novels and histories women read and wrote, and analyzes their status in law and society. The rhetoric of the Revolution, full of insistence on rights and freedom in opposition to dictatorial masters, posed questions about the position of women in marriage as well as in the polity, but few of the implications of this rhetoric were recognized. How much liberty and equality for women? How much pursuit of happiness? How much justice?When American political theory failed to define a program for the participation of women in the public arena, women themselves had to develop an ideology of female patriotism. They promoted the notion that women could guarantee the continuing health of the republic by nurturing public-spirited sons and husbands. This limited ideology of \"Republican Motherhood\" is a measure of the political and social conservatism of the Revolution. The subsequent history of women in America is the story of women's efforts to accomplish for themselves what the Revolution did not.
eBook
The Stamp Act Crisis
'Impressive! . . . The authors have given us a searching account of
the crisis and provided some memorable portraits of officials in
America impaled on the dilemma of having to enforce a measure which
they themselves opposed.'-- New York Times
'A brilliant contribution to the colonial field. Combining great
industry, astute scholarship, and a vivid style, the authors have
sought 'to recreate two years of American history.' They have
succeeded admirably.'-- William and Mary Quarterly
'Required reading for anyone interested in those eventful years
preceding the American Revolution.'-- Political Science
Quarterly
The Stamp Act, the first direct tax on the American colonies,
provoked an immediate and violent response. The Stamp Act
Crisis , originally published by UNC Press in 1953, identifies
the issues that caused the confrontation and explores the ways in
which the conflict was a prelude to the American Revolution.
eBook
Forced Founders
In this provocative reinterpretation of one of the best-known
events in American history, Woody Holton shows that when Thomas
Jefferson, George Washington, and other elite Virginians joined
their peers from other colonies in declaring independence from
Britain, they acted partly in response to grassroots rebellions
against their own rule. The Virginia gentry's efforts to shape
London's imperial policy were thwarted by British merchants and by
a coalition of Indian nations. In 1774, elite Virginians suspended
trade with Britain in order to pressure Parliament and, at the same
time, to save restive Virginia debtors from a terrible recession.
The boycott and the growing imperial conflict led to rebellions by
enslaved Virginians, Indians, and tobacco farmers. By the spring of
1776 the gentry believed the only way to regain control of the
common people was to take Virginia out of the British Empire.
Forced Founders uses the new social history to shed light
on a classic political question: why did the owners of vast
plantations, viewed by many of their contemporaries as aristocrats,
start a revolution? As Holton's fast-paced narrative unfolds, the
old story of patriot versus loyalist becomes decidedly more
complex.
eBook
Sentiments of a British-American Woman
At the time of her death in 1780, British-born Esther DeBerdt
Reed-a name few know today-was one of the most politically
important women in Revolutionary America. Her treatise \"The
Sentiments of an American Woman\" articulated the aspirations of
female patriots, and the Ladies Association of Philadelphia, which
she founded, taught generations of women how to translate their
political responsibilities into action. DeBerdt Reed's social
connections and political sophistication helped transform her
husband, Joseph Reed, from a military leader into the president of
the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, a position analogous
to the modern office of governor.
DeBerdt Reed's life yields remarkable insight into the scope of
women's political influence in an age ruled by the strict social
norms structured by religion and motherhood. The story of her
courtship, marriage, and political career sheds light both on the
private and political lives of women during the Revolution and on
how society, religion, and gender interacted as a new nation
struggled to build its own identity.
Engaging, comprehensive, and built on primary source material
that allows DeBerdt Reed's own voice to shine, Owen Ireland's
expertly researched biography rightly places her in a prominent
position in the pantheon of our founders, both female and male.
eBook
Independence now : the American Revolution, 1763-1783
An overview of the American Revolution and the events that led to it.
Book
Tea
In Tea ,
James R. Fichter reveals that despite the so-called Boston Tea
Party in 1773, two large shipments of tea from the East India
Company survived and were ultimately drunk in North
America. Their survival shaped the politics of the years
ahead, impeded efforts to reimburse the company for the tea lost in
Boston Harbor, and hinted at the enduring potency of consumerism in
revolutionary politics.
Tea protests were widespread in 1774, but so were tea
advertisements and tea sales, Fichter argues. The protests were
noisy and sometimes misleading performances, not clear signs that
tea consumption was unpopular. Revolutionaries vilified tea in
their propaganda and prohibited the importation and consumption of
tea and British goods. Yet merchant ledgers reveal these goods were
still widely sold and consumed in 1775. Colonists supported
Patriots more than they abided by non-consumption. When Congress
ended its prohibition against tea in 1776, it reasoned that the ban
was too widely violated to enforce. War was a more effective means
than boycott for resisting Parliament, after all, and as rebel arms
advanced, Patriots seized tea and other goods Britons left behind.
By 1776, protesters sought tea and, objecting to its high price,
redistributed rather than destroyed it. Yet as Fichter demonstrates
in Tea , by then the commodity was not a symbol of the
British state, but of American consumerism.
eBook