Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American NationhoodUniversity of Virginia Press, 2000 - 250 páginas Thomas Jefferson believed that the American revolution was atransformative moment in the history of political civilization. He hoped that hisown efforts as a founding statesman and theorist would help construct a progressiveand enlightened order for the new American nation that would be a model andinspiration for the world. Peter S. Onuf's new book traces Jefferson's vision of theAmerican future to its roots in his idealized notions of nationhood and empire.Onuf's unsettling recognition that Jefferson's famed egalitarianism was elaboratedin an imperial context yields strikingly original interpretations of our nationalidentity and our ideas of race, of westward expansion and the Civil War, and ofAmerican global dominance in the twentiethcentury. Jefferson's vision of an American "empirefor liberty" was modeled on a British prototype. But as a consensual union ofself-governing republics without a metropolis, Jefferson's American empire would befree of exploitation by a corrupt imperial ruling class. It would avoid the cycle ofwar and destruction that had characterized the European balance ofpower. The Civil War cast in high relief thetragic limitations of Jefferson's political vision. After the Union victory, as thereconstructed nation-state developed into a world power, dreams of the United Statesas an ever-expanding empire of peacefully coexisting states quickly faded frommemory. Yet even as the antebellum federal union disintegrated, a Jeffersoniannationalism, proudly conscious of America's historic revolution against imperialdomination, grew up in its place. In Onuf's view, Jefferson's quest to define a new American identity also shaped his ambivalentconceptions of slavery and Native American rights. His revolutionary fervor led himto see Indians as "merciless savages" who ravaged the frontiers at the Britishking's direction, but when those frontiers were pacified, a more benevolentJefferson encouraged these same Indians to embrace republican values. AfricanAmerican slaves, by contrast, constituted an unassimilable captive nation, unjustlywrenched from its African homeland. His great panacea: colonization. Jefferson's ideas about race revealthe limitations of his conception of American nationhood. Yet, as Onuf strikinglydocuments, Jefferson's vision of a republican empire--a regime of peace, prosperity, and union without coercion--continues to define and expand the boundaries ofAmerican national identity. |
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... Revolutionaries " empire " did not necessarily suggest , as it does now , dangerous concentrations of power and schemes of world domina- tion . Jefferson envisioned " an empire for liberty , " an expanding union of republics held ...
... Revolutionary age . Jefferson's fixation on the recent but ever reced- ing Revolutionary past has also , paradoxically , kept his memory fresh for subsequent generations of Americans . As Jefferson looked backward to the timeless truths ...
... the great chasm between center and periphery , me- tropolis and provinces.16 Revolutionary Americans did not aspire to isolation but rather to closer integration in the European world . " In Jefferson's Jefferson's Empire 5.
... Revolutionaries ' boldest claim , that there was a distinct American people , capable of asserting its rights before the world , was bold because it had so little basis in historical experience or collective self - consciousness before ...
... Revolutionary , did not think he was defending the status quo . For him , the crucial connection was between union and hope . Harking back to an idealized vision of the British empire , looking forward to the republican millennium of a ...
Índice
1 | |
18 | |
Republican Empire | 53 |
The Revolution of 1800 | 80 |
Federal Union | 109 |
To Declare Them a Free and Independant People | 147 |
4 July 1826 | 189 |
Notes | 193 |
Bibliography | 229 |
Index | 243 |
Otras ediciones - Ver todo
Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood Peter S. Onuf No hay ninguna vista previa disponible - 2001 |
Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood Peter S. Onuf No hay ninguna vista previa disponible - 2000 |