Bøger af T. H. Breen

T. H. Breen introduces us to the ordinary men and women who took responsibility for the course of the American revolution. Far from the actions of the Continental Congress and the Continental Army, they took the reins of power and preserved a political culture based on the rule of law, creating America's political identity in the process.

The great Tidewater planters of mid-eighteenth-century Virginia were fathers of the American Revolution. Perhaps first and foremost, they were also anxious tobacco farmers, harried by a demanding planting cycle, trans-Atlantic shipping risks, and their uneasy relations with English agents. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries lived in a world that was dominated by questions of debt from across an ocean but also one that stressed personal autonomy. T. H. Breen's study of this tobacco culture focuses on how elite planters gave meaning to existence. He examines the value-laden relationships--found in both the fields and marketplaces--that led from tobacco to politics, from agrarian experience to political protest, and finally to a break with the political and economic system that they believed threatened both personal independence and honor.

Provides readers to rethink much of what is taken for granted about American race relations. This book reconstructs a community in which ownership of property was as significant as skin color in structuring social relations. Why this model of social interaction in race relations did not survive, makes this a critical and urgent work of history.

This collection of essays is concerned with two main issues: first, the way in which the local origins of English colonists influenced their attitudes and adaptation to North America; and second, the contrast between the settlements of Massachusetts and Virginia.