Americomania and the French Revolution Debate in Britain, 1789–1802

Wil Verhoeven

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781107040199
• eBook ISBN: 9781107454576
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explores the evolution of British identity and participatory politics in the 1790s. Wil Verhoeven argues that in the course of the French Revolution debate in Britain, the idea of 'America' came to represent for the British people the choice between two diametrically opposed models of social justice and political participation. Yet the American Revolution controversy in the 1790s was by no means an isolated phenomenon. The controversy began with the American crisis debate of the 1760s and 1770s, which overlapped with a wider Enlightenment debate about transatlantic utopianism. All of these debates were based in the material world on the availability of vast quantities of cheap American land. Verhoeven investigates the relation that existed throughout the eighteenth century between American soil and the discourse of transatlantic utopianism: between America as a physical, geographical space, and 'America' as a utopian/dystopian idea-image.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 “The War of Systems”
• 2 “Cultivators of the Earth”
• 3 “Rabies Agri”
• 4 “The Calculated Rise of the American Empire”
• 5 “The Mania of Emigration”
• 6 “The Precious Pearl of Liberty”
• 7 “Come to These Arcadian Regions Where There Is Room for Millions”
• 8 “Look Before You Leap”
• 9 “Parrying the Enemy with Their Own Weapons”
• Postscript “Mania Reformatio”
• Bibliography of Cited Materials
• Index