European Studies in American History – Serie

Between the 1760s and 1914, thousands of young Americans crossed the Atlantic to enroll in German-speaking universities, but what was it like to be an American in, for instance, Halle, Heidelberg, Göttingen, or Leipzig? In this book, the author combines a statistical approach with a biographical approach in order to reconstruct the history of these educational pilgrimages and to illustrate the interconnectedness of student migration with educational reforms on both sides of the Atlantic. This detailed account of academic networking in European educational centers highlights the importance of travel for academic and cultural transformations in nineteenth-century America.

Arising out of the context of the re-configuration of Europe, new perspectives are applied by the authors of this volume to the process of nation-building in the United States. By focusing on a variety of public celebrations and festivities from the Revolution to the early twentieth century, the formative period of American national identity, the authors reveal the complex interrelationships between collective identities on the local, regional, and national level which, over time, shaped the peculiar character of American nationalism.This volume combines vivid descriptions of various public celebrations with a sophisticated methodological and theoretical approach.

Arising out of the context of the re-configuration of Europe, new perspectives are applied by the authors of this volume to the process of nation-building in the United States. By focusing on a variety of public celebrations and festivities from the Revolution to the early twentieth century, the formative period of American national identity, the authors reveal the complex interrelationships between collective identities on the local, regional, and national level which, over time, shaped the peculiar character of American nationalism.This volume combines vivid descriptions of various public celebrations with a sophisticated methodological and theoretical approach.

In 1783, the officers of the Continental Army created the Society of the Cincinnati. This veterans’ organization was founded in order to preserve the memory of the revolutionary struggle and pursue the officers' common interest in outstanding pay and pensions. Henry Knox and Frederick Steuben were the society's chief organizers; George Washington himself served as president. Soon, however, a widely distributed pamphlet by Aedanus Burke of South Carolina accused the Society of conspiracy. According to Burke, the Society of the Cincinnati was nothing less than a hereditary nobility which would subvert American republicanism into aristocracy. Soon, more critics including John Adams and Elbridge Gerry joined the fray, claiming among other things that the Society was a secret government for the United States or a puppet of the French monarchy. While these accusations were unjustified, they played an important role in the difficult political debates of the 1780s, including the efforts to revise the Articles of Confederation. This books explores why a part of the revolutionary leadership accused another of subversion in the “critical period,” and how the political culture of the times predisposed many leading Americans to think of the Cincinnati as a conspiracy.