“THE POWER OF FEELING”? EMOTION, SENSIBILITY, AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH M. S. PEARSALL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
American History ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
Emotional Culture ◽  
Expression Of Emotion ◽  
The Revolution

In January 1776, Thomas Paine demanded to know whether “the Power of feeling” did not require that American colonists declare independence from Great Britain. Paine's efforts included an appeal to “common sense,” to the idea that it was only natural for colonists to end their ties with Britain. For Paine, independence did not depend on elaborately wrought arguments; instead, it should be obvious to all, even the most unlettered. His own emotionally charged language—the king was akin to a “crowned ruffian” descended from “a French Bastard landing with an armed Banditti”—sought to stir even those who still longed for reconciliation to “examine the passions and feelings of mankind” and to throw off the yoke of oppression. Paine's formulations, like these two books, raise numerous questions. How significant has the expression of emotion been in American history? How far can scholars go in attributing to it sufficient momentum to effect major historical change? Can something so universal be harnessed into nationalist political trajectories? Should America be seen as having a unique emotional culture in the eighteenth century? Did this exceptional culture of feeling contribute to the Revolution itself? These two authors answer yes to the last three questions, thus prompting re-evaluation of the “power of feeling” in the American Revolution itself.

The Unexpected Revolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. D. Clark
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Rights Theories ◽  
New View ◽  
The Revolution

Chapter 4 offers a new view of the American Revolution in terms more of negations than of affirmations: not the instantiation of modernizing natural rights theories or republicanism, but the result of older and passionate negations on both sides of the Atlantic, often religious. It reinterprets Paine’s Common Sense against the older contexts proposed in this book, and argues that the pamphlet, although important, was not transformative and ubiquitous. It traces Paine’s subsequent writings while in America, responding to and interpreting the course of the Revolution, and concludes that Paine’s understanding of that important episode was less than has been thought; rather, he largely remained within an English frame of reference, as did, indeed, most American colonists. He understood the American Revolution, then, in English terms.

scholarly journals Utopiens grænser i Den amerikanske revolution

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (64) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Birk Jespersen
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Farmer ◽  
Political Logic ◽  
The Revolution

Mikkel Birk Jespersen: "Utopiens grænser i Den amerikanske revolution - Om utopiske tekststrategier i Common Sense og Letters from an American Farmer"AbstractMikkel Birk Jespersen: “Boundaries of Utopia in the American Revolution: On Utopian Text Strategies in Common Sense and Letters from an American Farmer”The article discusses the relations between utopia, literature and revolution in the American Revolution through an analysis of Tom Paine’s Common Sense (1776) and J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer (1782). It is arguedthat utopia constitutes a textual function whose ‘non-place’ or ‘point zero’ is not reducible to a political logic, but rather presents a challenge to it. In the revolution, however, the different logics of utopia and of the political can be said to confront each other, hereby illuminating the contradictions of both. The constellation of the two texts brings out the contradictory nature of utopia, as the texts have opposed approaches to the revolution and are characterised by two different utopian logics.

Paine, Thomas (1737–1809)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Political System ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
Revolutionary Politics

Thomas Paine, born in Norfolk, England, spent his early years as an undistinguished artisan and later excise officer. In 1774 he emigrated to America and settled in Philadelphia where he became a journalist and essayist. His Common Sense (1776) and sixteen essays on The Crisis (1776–83) were stunning examples of political propaganda and theorizing. In the late 1780s, in Europe, Paine wrote The Rights of Man (1791–2) and attacked the English political system. During the French Revolution he was a Girondin in the French Convention and wrote The Age of Reason (1794, 1796), savagely criticizing Christianity. He died in New York in 1809, an important figure in the sweep of the revolutionary politics in America, England, and France at the end of the eighteenth century.

scholarly journals Explaining historical change in terms of LHT: A pluralistic causal framework is needed

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurélien Allard ◽  
Antoine Marie
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Phenotypic Plasticity ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Causal Framework ◽  
Creative Mindsets

Abstract Baumard suggests that the advent, through phenotypic plasticity mechanisms, of future-oriented preferences and creative mindsets in eighteenth-century Great Britain explains the wave of innovations that drove the British Industrial Revolution. We argue that, although this approach is promising, Baumard's model would benefit from being supplemented by demographic, economic, and sociological explanations independent of Life History Theory (LHT).

scholarly journals Allard & Marie (2019). Explaining historical change in terms of LHT/ A pluralistic causal framework is needed

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aurélien Allard ◽  
Antoine Marie
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Phenotypic Plasticity ◽  
Life History Theory ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Causal Framework ◽  
Creative Mindsets

Baumard suggests that the advent, through phenotypic plasticity mechanisms, of future-oriented preferences and creative mindsets in eighteenth century Great Britain explains the wave of innovations that drove the British Industrial Revolution. We argue that, although this approach is promising, Baumard’s model would benefit from being supplemented by demographic, economic, and sociological explanations independent of Life History Theory (LHT).

An English Audience for American Revolutionary Pamphlets

1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 355-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. C. Bonwick
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
The World ◽  
Catharine Macaulay ◽  
Joseph Priestley ◽  
And Function ◽  
Good Number ◽  
The Revolution

The eighteenth century was a great age of pamphleteering. Subjects were legion and authors innumerable. Every question of substance – and many of none – attracted writers to such a degree that in the world of politics one is tempted to establish the scale of pamphleteering as one of the yardsticks against which the importance of an issue should be measured. The American revolution fully conforms to this criterion, for during a twenty-year period beginning in 1763 it stimulated the publication of well over a thousand pamphlets in England alone. A good number of those pamphlets originated in America and their subsequent reappearance in England was a matter of considerable significance; some were written by Americans resident in London. This paper will examine the mechanics by which American revolutionary tracts were published and distributed in England, and their circulation among the radicals who proved themselves to be the patriots' best English friends during the difficult years of the revolution. They included among others Thomas Hollis, John Wilkes, Major John Cartwright and Granville Sharp; the Dissenting ministers Richard Price and Joseph Priestley, and one of the most brilliant women of her generation, Catharine Macaulay. Such an examination is not only an integral component in the analysis of the English side of the revolution; it also serves as a useful case-study in the mechanics and function of political propaganda.

The French Revolution Controversy

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-120
Author(s):  
Susan Marks
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Edmund Burke ◽  
The Political ◽  
Thomas Paine ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
The Revolution

The rights of man ‘arrived’ in England, in the sense of beginning to circulate in public discourse and becoming a topic on which people staked out positions, during the final decade of the eighteenth century. The context was debate over the significance of the French Revolution for England (the ‘Revolution controversy’). This chapter initiates discussion of the contested meaning of the rights of man in that debate, examining contributions by Richard Price, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine. A vision of the rights of man emerges as the rights of the living to control the political community of which those latter are a part.

Reforms Under Czar Alexander I: French and American Influences

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Vernadsky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Common Source ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Revolution

The two great revolutions of the eighteenth century—the American and the French had each in turn and in its own way a profound influence not only on the history of the United States and of France, but directly or indirectly on the history of the whole world.These two powerful currents had a common source in the French ideological movement before the Revolution. The development of American revolutionary thought was of course more closely linked to the English ideology, but there was much contact and cross influence between the English and the French philosophers. Further, the French political and philosophical literature was directly accessible to Americans without intermediary English works. We have only to mention Montesquieu and his principle of the separation of powers which serves as the basis of the Constitution of the United States. Also, the American Revolution influenced in turn political developments in France. One finds the roots of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen not only in France but in America as well.

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