World of the Revolutionary American Republic

Andrew Shankman is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University, Camden, and a Senior Research Associate at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. He is the author of Crucible of American Democracy: The Struggle to Fuse Egalitarianism and Capitalism in Jeffersonian Pennsylvania and over a dozen articles on the early American Republic. He has received the Ralph D. Gray Prize from the Society of the Historians of the Early American Republic and the Program in Early American Society and Economy article prize, both for his scholarly work.

Drawing together a dream team of historians – a mix of rising stars and established luminaries – these essays masterfully synthesize recent work on the early American Republic, offering a fresh portrait of a nation riven by discord and violence and yet, perhaps for that very reason, hanging together nonetheless. This volume will be an indispensable resource for historians in the field.— François Furstenberg, author of In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a NationThe essays in this excellent volume both summarize the state of the field and push it toward a new bigger picture, one that pays more attention to war, to the state, to land, to slavery, and to Native Americans. Editor Shankman's introduction is a tour de force. Anthologies don't get more useful than this.— David Waldstreicher, author of Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to RatificationThis volume boldly recasts the period between the Revolution and the Civil War as a coherent whole—a First American Republic unfolding on a continental scale and marked by competing sovereignties, rival political economies, and endemic violence. Featuring established and up-and-coming scholars, The World of the Revolutionary American Republic sets a new agenda for U.S. history.— Seth Rockman, author of Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early BaltimoreIn this delightfully overstuffed volume, nineteen of the brightest historians working today sometimes jostle, more often agree, and nearly always surprise as they expose the political, economic, and racial dynamics of "the first American republic." There is no better introduction to current scholarship on U.S. history between the Revolution and the Civil War.— Daniel K. Richter, author of Before the Revolution: America's Ancient Pasts

• 1. Introduction: Conflict for a Continent: Land, Labor, and the State in the Revolutionary American Republic, Andrew ShankmanSection I: Movement and Mastery: Eighteenth Century Origins of the Revolutionary Republic2. Movement of Ideas, Movement of Goods: The British Empire in Theory and Practice, Zara Anishanslin3. Slavery and the Causes of the American Revolution In Plantation British America, Trevor Burnard4. Native Nations in the Age of Revolution, Christina SnyderSection II: The Quest for Continental Control5. Independent for Whom?: Expansion and Conflict in the South and Southwest, Kathleen DuVal6. Independence for Whom?: Expansion and Conflict in the Northeast and Northwest, Alyssa Mt. Pleasant7. "Such Things Ought Not to Be:" The American Revolution and the First National Great Depression, Allan Kulikoff8. Consolidating a Revolutionary Republic, Max M. Edling9. The Empire of Liberty: Land of the Free, Home of the Slave, Peter Onuf10. Atlantic Antislavery, American Ambition: The Problem of Slavery in the United States in an Age of Disruption, 1770-1808, James Alexander Dun11. The War of 1812: The Struggle for a Continent, Alan Taylor12. The Theory of Civilized Sentiments: Emotion and the Creation of the United States, Nicole EustaceSection III: Internal and External Conflicts: The Emergence of a Continental Hegemon13. Natural Rights and National Greatness: Economic Ideology and Social Policy in the American States, 1780s-1820s, J.M. Opal14. Land Conflict and Land Policy in the United States, 1785-1841, Reeve Huston15. The "High-road to a Slave Empire:" Conflict and the Growth and Expansion of Slavery on the North American Continent, John Craig Hammond16. Dissenters from the Mainstream: the National and International Dimensions of Moral Reform, Emily Conroy-Krutz17. The Pendulum Swings: The Rise of an Anti-Slavery Sentiment between the American Revolution and the Civil War, Richard Newman18. The World the Slaveholders Craved: Proslavery Internationalism in the 1850s, Matthew Karp29. The Republic in Peril: Expansion, the Politics of Slavery, and the Crisis of the 1850s, Michael A. Morrison