Dissertation

American popular political culture in the age of the French Revolution

Newman, Simon Peter

1991

نظرة عامة

This study examines the development of a national popular political culture in the early American republic. It presents detailed examinations of a variety of processions, festivals and crowd actions, and asserts that these events were the most important venues for popular politicization, celebration and protest. Before the Revolution, popular political culture varied considerably from colony to colony, but it coalesced during the last decade of the eighteenth century when Americans from Georgia to New Hampshire publicly articulated their political ideals and demonstrated their partisan allegiances by attending July Fourth celebrations, by honoring Washington's birthday, by feasting and processing to celebrate the French republic, by wearing liberty caps and cockades, and by singing partisan songs. By the time of Jefferson's election to the presidency, a unified national popular political culture existed. Little has been written about the popular political culture of the early republic. Employing a broad conception of politics, this study focusses on civic holidays and festivals, processions, feasts and crowd actions as integral components of the politics of the period. They are seen as some of the most significant arenas in which political battles were fought, and where hierarchies of dominance and deference were created, maintained and overturned. For most Americans, politics was less a matter of Congressional debates than it was a succession of parades, processions, feasts, songs, and cockades.

• الناشر: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• موضوع: American history / Political science
• ISBN: 9781392655306, 1392655307