ASH3002y Reading Assignment
March 3, 1999

Political culture: The Backdrop of Rebellion

Required reading (on reserve): 

• Bernard Bailyn, "Political Experience and Enlightenment Ideas in Eighteenth-Century America," The American Historical Review 67 (January 1962):  339-351.
• Jesse Lemisch, "Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America," in In Search of Early America: The William & Mary Quarterly, 1943-1993.

As you read these texts, think about who's involved and what the stakes are for the various figures you're considering.

Also, please bring your Norton Anthology of American Literature to class.

Optionally, for fuller treatments:

• Bernard Bailyn, The Pamphlets of the American Revolution (Harvard UP, 1965) and The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard UP, 1967)
• Gary B. Nash, Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard UP, 1976)
• Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Knopf, 1993)

Electronic, Web-Based Resources

• For searchable electronic versions of some of the principal revolutionary and constitutional documents, including The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States and The Federalist Papers:
  • The Yale Law School Avalon Project -- http://elsinore.cis.yale.edu/lawweb/lawschool/webtfp.htm
  • Emory Law School Page -- http://www.law.emory.edu/Federal
  • Oklahoma Law School Page -- http://www.law.uoknor.edu/hist/
  • Docments from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention in American Memory -- http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/bdsds/bdsdhome.html
• For an excellent bibliography of published accounts and interpretations of the Revolutionary Era, 1760-1790:  Mighigan State,PBS and OIEAHC --http://revolution.h-net.msu.edu/
• For some maps of the Revolutionary Era, see the University of Georgia's Hargrett Collection:
  http://www.libs.uga.edu/darchive/hargrett/maps/revamer.html