Suchergebnisse

Nicholas Guyatt offers a completely new understanding of a central question in American history: how did Americans come to think that God favored the United States above other nations? Tracing the story of American providentialism, this book uncovers the British roots of American religious nationalism before the American Revolution and the extraordinary struggles of white Americans to reconcile their ideas of national mission with the racial diversity of the early republic. Making sense of previously diffuse debates on manifest destiny, millenarianism, and American mission, Providence and the Invention of the United States explains the origins and development of the idea that God has a special plan for America. This conviction supplied the United States with a powerful sense of national purpose, but it also prevented Americans from clearly understanding events and people that could not easily be fitted into the providential scheme

Britain, America and the emergence of providential separatism -- Providence and the problem of England in early America -- "Openinge a doore" : 1600-1640 -- Prophecy, history and national providentialism -- Virginia : "weak and feeble crutches" -- New England : "the houre for the worke" -- "A constant correspondence" : 1640-1660 -- The uses of England in America -- The uses of America in England -- "To rip up the womb of time" : 1660-1700 -- "Confused times" : English providentialism after the restoration -- "A little nation" : New England and historical providentialism -- Conclusion: "magnalia dei" -- "Empires are mortal" : the origins of providential separatism, 1756-1775 -- "This providential key" : providence and public affairs in hanoverian britain -- "The indulgence of heaven :" national identity in the seven years' war -- "A dream in the night" : the discontinuities of British history -- "That awful goal" : imperial decline and the future of America -- "Open paths" : the development of American providentialism -- Conclusion: "people of different genius" -- "Becoming a nation at once" : providentialism and the American Revolution -- "A new asylum" : patriot providentialism -- "To deceive the elect" : the limits of providential appeal -- Constituencies -- Opponents -- "Pencillers of providence" : Britain and the meaning of the revolution -- Conclusion: thanksgiving 1783-1784 -- Providence, race and the limits of revolution -- "Our glorious example" : the limits of revolutionary providentialism -- Providence, reform and revolution, 1786-1796 -- The constitution : "the object of divine patronage" -- France : "a season of universal freedom" -- Confounded expectations, 1796-1808 -- "The illustrious hereafter" : 1808-1815 -- Conclusion: "citizens of the world" -- "Deifying prejudice" : race and removal in the early republic -- "The hand of heaven is in it" : the blueprint for Indian removal -- "A divine impulse" : removing Blacks -- "The obvious designs of heaven" : providence and the politics of removal -- Conclusion: "judgments are yet to be visited upon us" -- "Divided destinies" : the providential meanings of American slavery -- "The fulfillment of our mission :" expansion and its critics -- Slavery and providence -- "A traditionary freedom will not save us" : antislavery arguments -- "The badges of a fallen world" : pro-slavery arguments -- "The key to American history" : slavery and the rationale for secession -- Conclusion: "that great idea of national continuity" -- "The regenerated nation" : the Civil War and the price of reunion -- "What is to be the mission of this nation?" : God and the confederacy -- "To retrieve our destiny" : slavery, war and reunion -- "A glorious career of self-regeneration" -- Colonization, Lincoln and "the will of providence" -- Conclusion: "the great deliverance" -- William Lloyd Garrison's complaint -- Providence and the new South -- "The sacred significance of this war" -- Conclusion: "centennial reflections"

Guyatt reviews Reshaping Rogue States: Preemption, Regime Change, and U. S. Policy Toward Iran, Iraq, and North Korea edited by Alexander T. J. Lennon and Camille Eiss.

The imperial warfare of the period 1770-1830, including the American wars of independence and the Napoleonic wars, affected every continent. Covering southern India, the Caribbean, North and South America, and southern Africa, this volume explores the impact of revolutionary wars and how people's identities were shaped by their experiences