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Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist ( talk · contribs) 18:38, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
I'll take a look at this, hopefully over the next couple of days.
UndercoverClassicist
T·
C 18:38, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
Not too much that's mission-critical here -- most of what follows is advisory. Please do push back or query if I've been unclear, unfair or simply got it wrong: I've read the book but don't pretend to be an expert in its field.
[...]criticized for resembling those of consensus history in the 1950s—homogenizing Americans and overstating democracy and equality as becoming widely accepted ideals—and for[...]. How is that? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
A leading A, An, or The is preserved in the title of a work, including when preceded by a possessive or other construction that would eliminate the article in something other than a title, e.g.: Stephen King's The Stand; however, the is sometimes not part of the title itself, e.g.: the Odyssey, the Los Angeles Times but The New York Times.. I think we've ended up in the right place. UndercoverClassicist T· C 17:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
a field full of newly diverse people, new questions, and new subject matters. Admitting the transformative quality of these changes, Woodward nonetheless casts himself as mostly put off by them(422). This could be about the people, but it could be about the subjects; McElya's point, by my understanding, is that it's both. I reworded this in the body text to be
and with how American universities changed in response to decolonization, Black Power, and women's rights movements., so as to be less specific about persons and capture the range of what McElya means about Van Woodward. All that said, I am quite sure that reliable sources indicate Woodward had some discomfort about multiculturalism and gender diversity in the university: in addition to McElya making this claim in the Journal of American Studies, a premier periodical for the field, Michael O'Brien, also writing in the same forum on the Oxford History of the United States (concurred with McElya's assessment (and this even though O'Brien is much more admiring of Woodward). O'Brien wrote,
In 1963, for example, he [Woodward] ambivalently opposed the election of any woman as a fellow of his Yale collegeand
Further, he became a public opponent of multiculturalism in the 1990s and very exercised about "political correctness"("A Response to Trevor Burnard: The Standpoint of an Editor", Journal of American Studies 45, no. 3 [2011]: 426–430, here 429). An article from another journal also agrees on the basic premise: Woodward
had a testy public exchange with John Hope Franklin, who criticized Woodward for implying in a surprisingly favorable review in the New York Review of Books of Dinesh D’Souza’s first book, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, that Duke University had been using racial criteria when it hired Franklin.Woodward became an open critic of political correctness(Sheldon Hackney, "C. Vann Woodward, Dissenter", Historically Speaking 10, no. 1 [January 2009]: 31–34, here 33). Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
He also wrote the 1993 The Radicalism of the American Revolution, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book which argued that the American Revolution transformed society, shifting American sensibilities from deferential hierarchy to egalitarian liberal democracy.Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
The Federalist era being approximately the first decade of the post-Constitution United States (1788–1800), when Federalists led national politics; and the Federalist era being the early decades of the nineteenth century when Jeffersonians dominated national politics, inaugurated by the ascent of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency in 1801.Citations are included in the body text. Does that clarify the terms? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
There is considerable irony in Wood's remarkable achievement—which Empire of Liberty clearly is—being slotted between Middlekauff and Howe. Wood does not really offer narrative history despite the seemingly 'narrative' concept of the Oxford History of the United States.. The criticism appears to be by way of contrast with Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause and Howe's What Hath God Wrought. Field also says on page 109 that
For Wood the historical process works itself out far removed from the day-to-day of politics, so Adams' Midnight Appointments can appear one hundred and fifty pages after Jefferson assumes the presidency.; the implication seems to be that Wood's willingness to narrate non-chronologically diminishes the extend to which it's a narrative history. However, Field's slightly veiled writing style left me uncomfortable with trying to fully extract that meaning (doing so seemed too near to interpreting rather than summarizing), so I just quoted his statement as corroboration of the assessment that Wood's latter chapters are topical instead of chronological. I rewrote the sentence as follows:
According to Field, although Woodward conceived the Oxford History of the United States series as narrative history, Wood's Empire of Liberty "does not really offer narrative history". How is that? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
For Wood the historical process works itself out far removed from the day-to-day of politics, so Adams' Midnight Appointments can appear one hundred and fifty pages after Jefferson assumes the presidencyand distil it to "as Wood often treats events in a non-chronological order", "as Wood structures the narrative by political trends rather than chronology", or something similar? UndercoverClassicist T· C 08:20, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
because of portions in which he treats events non-chronologically? I held off from "often" since Field doesn't quite say it's "often" (he says the historical process works out for Wood this way without qualification, which seems not quite true since the first eight chapters, covering the Federalist presidencies, apparently are chronological, whereas it's the Jeffersonian presidencies that get topical chapters). Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 17:29, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
It was Jefferson and the Jeffersonians who both reflected and defined the basic elements of American democratic capitalism that the radical egalitarian forces of the American Revolution had fostered and that (Wood implies) would come to comindate the nation's politics, cultural aspirations, and social life over at least the rest of the nineteenth centuryand
But too often, when describing the fierce social and political battles of the time, Wood falls back on the idea of democratic capitalism as some sort of irresistible force "unleashed" by the Revolution.(Wilentz, 177). That's to say, your concern is, in Wilentz's review, part of the point, that Wood's book sometimes comes across as disembodied and human-free. (Another reviewer, Peter Field, summarizes Wood similarly:
Humans think and act and fight with one another [...] but ultimately are buffeted by the tides of history, or what Wood calls the 'historical process'. (p.38) Unleashed by the Revolution, the forces of pluralism, individualism, leveling and democracy run roughshod over the best laid plans of even the great individuals of the American Founding.) Since the article is about the book, I've tried to write the body text so it summarizes what the book says was history, as described by reliable sources about the book. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
In its classical sense applied to early American hsitory, republicanism generally means an ideology upholding public good as the primary goal of political society and advocating for citizens to be virtuous and public-minded, politically independent of others, and active participants in civic society. How is that? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
(The contemporary American political party known as the Republicans did not exist at this time; it was founded in the 1850s.)Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 17:39, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Federalists appear in the history as political conservatives who are trying to restore the social deference and hierarchies that had characterized monarchic society and get blindsided by the era's democratic milieu.. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 17:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
were out of step with the era's democratic milieu? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 16:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
Overall, the book offers a celebratory portrayal of early Americans overthrowing legacies of traditionalist hierarchy, and Jefferson is cast as the embodiment of this perspective.. The portion of Noll's book review this is based on is
The title quotation comes from Jefferson, who saw the ideals of the American founding as delivering a decisive blow against monarchical tyranny and as setting up a modern nation where the absence of hierarchical coercion would bring in something like a secular millennium. Wood clearly finds this vision compelling. Somehow, he manages to take Jefferson's profession straight up: "Jefferson personified this revolutionary transformation" that led Democratic Republicans to "dream … of a world different from any that had ever existed, a world of democratic republics, which is itself abstract—as Wood's book can be at times. I'd like to be as clear as I can; does this improve the sentence? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
and casts Jefferson...UndercoverClassicist T· C 08:24, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Hartnett notes that according to Empire of Liberty, Jefferson's "libertarian vision"[...]; does that address the issue? I wasn't 100% sure if I grasped the issue as you see it, so feel free to press the matter. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
According to Isenberg, Wood's narrative voice resembles "the overwrought writers of the early republic whom he quotes".(the context of the quotation in Isenberg's review is as follows:
Wood's narrative is a morality play; his voice blends seemlessly with the overwrought writers of the early republic whom he quotes, exuberant rhetoricians who say their "rising empire" as a new Elysium, a magical place where compassion, virtue, and belief in equality were omnipresent.). Does that make for a better Style subsection? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
By "republican family", Wood refers to post-revolutionary family culture which emphasized parity in the household among children and both parents, as opposed to the husband-centered patriarchally authoritarian family structure common in colonial America.Does that work? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Megan Owens states that "marriage in practice did not always match up to the ideal 'republican family' model",[citation] and whether the republican family is genuinely antipatriarchal is debated; historian Nancy Cott argues that "[a]lthough Revolutionary-era republican political thinking was antipatriarchal in the sense that it followed John Locke’s political theory rather than Sir Robert Filmer's, the republican polity at that time affirmed the rights of the independent citizen" as "an indisputably male actor" who acted and voted on behalf of a dependent family.[citation]Does that addition to the explanatory note clarify some? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 16:17, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
According to Isenberg, Empire of Liberty recapitulates a historical narrative that was consensus in the 1950s, telling an outdated narrative which homogenizes the American people and overcredits the revolution with establishing democracy and equality as uncontroversial values, a conception of the American "past that few academic historians accept anymore".How is that? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
a conception of U. S. history that few contemporary academic historians accept. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 17:48, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
From a broader perspective it may have been the North that was exceptional and unique during the antebellum generation. Despite the abolition of legal slavery or serfdom throughout much of the western hemisphere and western Europe, much of the world—like the South—had an unfree or quasi-free labor force. Most societies in the world remained predominantly rural, agricultural, and labor-intensive; most, including even several European countries, had illiteracy rates as high or higher than the South's 45 percent; most like the South remained bound by traditional values and networks of family, kinship, hierarchy, and patriarchy.(860). Reviewer John L. Brooke phrases it this way:
Another Oxford series author, James M. McPherson, has made a very cogent and contrary argument about this old theme of southern exceptionalism: maybe on a global stage it was the South that was the norm and the North that was so strange and exceptional.(553). Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Some reviewers considered the book's tone ironic.(succinct, couldn't say it better myself) and
Other reviewers read the book as having a triumphalist tone.. I also revised the first paragraph a little to bring McCoy's observation of irony further forward in the paragraph, with the explanation for why McCoy thinks the book reads ironically following it. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 16:23, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
As an example of this, Noll considered Wood's characterization of Jefferson as the United States' "supreme spokesman" for liberty at odds with the book's own report of Jefferson's ambitions for continental conquest, indulgent and debt-ridden lifestyle, and hypocritical participation in slavery.Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
To follow once content points are resolved.
and the book extends the argument's of Wood's earlier books, like The Radicalism of the American Revolution
Democratization and overthrow of past hierarchies pervaded every part of American life, where the source has
Wood defines democracy in broad cultural and ideological terms as the ascendancy of a radically new egalitarian conception of political society, not as a radical restructuring of the social order—and certainly not of the racial order.. According to Onuf, Wood's democratisation of American society is pointedly not about every part of society -- in particular, pointedly not about racial hierarchies.
Democratization pervaded much of American life? For that, I'm looking at
But Wood, like Tocqueville, is less interested in the limits of democracy than in why it works within those limits., and
Wood argues persuasively that the Revolution was critical for the emergence of a democratic culture., and
Republican oppositionists, inspired by the French Revolution, conjured up an American "old regime"-in-the-making, rallying "all good republicans and liberal reformers" to destroy this cancerous, alien growth (216). Anathematizing "aristocracy," Thomas Jefferson and his followers enabled Americans to overcome "the traditional culture's aversion to the term 'democracy'" (718). That conceptual transformation made all the difference, valorizing a republican revolution and its democratizing consequences and giving shape to the way of life that Tocqueville found so extraordinary.Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 22:23, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
his democratization thesisto non-political parts of life like religion (551), states that
The central interpretive dynamic of Empire of Liberty is the theme of the energies of a modernizing democratic people transcending political limits to realize their potential(552), and elaborates that
politics is actually secondary to Wood’s central sociological argument—the multifarious emergence of a liberal society(552). The last clause from Brooke seems especially clear that Empire of Liberty's interpretation is about more than politics. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 01:27, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
According to Wood, democratization pervaded much of American life in the course of the nation becoming a liberal society.
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 has been listed as one of the
History good articles under the
good article criteria. If you can improve it further,
please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can
reassess it. Review: March 2, 2024. ( Reviewed version). |
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||
|
A fact from Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 7 February 2024 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
|
The result was: promoted by
AirshipJungleman29Â
talk 17:48, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
Created by Hydrangeans ( talk). Self-nominated at 03:27, 15 January 2024 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.
General: Article is new enough and long enough |
---|
Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems |
---|
|
Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation |
---|
|
QPQ: Done. |
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: UndercoverClassicist ( talk · contribs) 18:38, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
I'll take a look at this, hopefully over the next couple of days.
UndercoverClassicist
T·
C 18:38, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
Not too much that's mission-critical here -- most of what follows is advisory. Please do push back or query if I've been unclear, unfair or simply got it wrong: I've read the book but don't pretend to be an expert in its field.
[...]criticized for resembling those of consensus history in the 1950s—homogenizing Americans and overstating democracy and equality as becoming widely accepted ideals—and for[...]. How is that? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
A leading A, An, or The is preserved in the title of a work, including when preceded by a possessive or other construction that would eliminate the article in something other than a title, e.g.: Stephen King's The Stand; however, the is sometimes not part of the title itself, e.g.: the Odyssey, the Los Angeles Times but The New York Times.. I think we've ended up in the right place. UndercoverClassicist T· C 17:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
a field full of newly diverse people, new questions, and new subject matters. Admitting the transformative quality of these changes, Woodward nonetheless casts himself as mostly put off by them(422). This could be about the people, but it could be about the subjects; McElya's point, by my understanding, is that it's both. I reworded this in the body text to be
and with how American universities changed in response to decolonization, Black Power, and women's rights movements., so as to be less specific about persons and capture the range of what McElya means about Van Woodward. All that said, I am quite sure that reliable sources indicate Woodward had some discomfort about multiculturalism and gender diversity in the university: in addition to McElya making this claim in the Journal of American Studies, a premier periodical for the field, Michael O'Brien, also writing in the same forum on the Oxford History of the United States (concurred with McElya's assessment (and this even though O'Brien is much more admiring of Woodward). O'Brien wrote,
In 1963, for example, he [Woodward] ambivalently opposed the election of any woman as a fellow of his Yale collegeand
Further, he became a public opponent of multiculturalism in the 1990s and very exercised about "political correctness"("A Response to Trevor Burnard: The Standpoint of an Editor", Journal of American Studies 45, no. 3 [2011]: 426–430, here 429). An article from another journal also agrees on the basic premise: Woodward
had a testy public exchange with John Hope Franklin, who criticized Woodward for implying in a surprisingly favorable review in the New York Review of Books of Dinesh D’Souza’s first book, Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, that Duke University had been using racial criteria when it hired Franklin.Woodward became an open critic of political correctness(Sheldon Hackney, "C. Vann Woodward, Dissenter", Historically Speaking 10, no. 1 [January 2009]: 31–34, here 33). Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
He also wrote the 1993 The Radicalism of the American Revolution, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book which argued that the American Revolution transformed society, shifting American sensibilities from deferential hierarchy to egalitarian liberal democracy.Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
The Federalist era being approximately the first decade of the post-Constitution United States (1788–1800), when Federalists led national politics; and the Federalist era being the early decades of the nineteenth century when Jeffersonians dominated national politics, inaugurated by the ascent of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency in 1801.Citations are included in the body text. Does that clarify the terms? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
There is considerable irony in Wood's remarkable achievement—which Empire of Liberty clearly is—being slotted between Middlekauff and Howe. Wood does not really offer narrative history despite the seemingly 'narrative' concept of the Oxford History of the United States.. The criticism appears to be by way of contrast with Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause and Howe's What Hath God Wrought. Field also says on page 109 that
For Wood the historical process works itself out far removed from the day-to-day of politics, so Adams' Midnight Appointments can appear one hundred and fifty pages after Jefferson assumes the presidency.; the implication seems to be that Wood's willingness to narrate non-chronologically diminishes the extend to which it's a narrative history. However, Field's slightly veiled writing style left me uncomfortable with trying to fully extract that meaning (doing so seemed too near to interpreting rather than summarizing), so I just quoted his statement as corroboration of the assessment that Wood's latter chapters are topical instead of chronological. I rewrote the sentence as follows:
According to Field, although Woodward conceived the Oxford History of the United States series as narrative history, Wood's Empire of Liberty "does not really offer narrative history". How is that? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
For Wood the historical process works itself out far removed from the day-to-day of politics, so Adams' Midnight Appointments can appear one hundred and fifty pages after Jefferson assumes the presidencyand distil it to "as Wood often treats events in a non-chronological order", "as Wood structures the narrative by political trends rather than chronology", or something similar? UndercoverClassicist T· C 08:20, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
because of portions in which he treats events non-chronologically? I held off from "often" since Field doesn't quite say it's "often" (he says the historical process works out for Wood this way without qualification, which seems not quite true since the first eight chapters, covering the Federalist presidencies, apparently are chronological, whereas it's the Jeffersonian presidencies that get topical chapters). Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 17:29, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
It was Jefferson and the Jeffersonians who both reflected and defined the basic elements of American democratic capitalism that the radical egalitarian forces of the American Revolution had fostered and that (Wood implies) would come to comindate the nation's politics, cultural aspirations, and social life over at least the rest of the nineteenth centuryand
But too often, when describing the fierce social and political battles of the time, Wood falls back on the idea of democratic capitalism as some sort of irresistible force "unleashed" by the Revolution.(Wilentz, 177). That's to say, your concern is, in Wilentz's review, part of the point, that Wood's book sometimes comes across as disembodied and human-free. (Another reviewer, Peter Field, summarizes Wood similarly:
Humans think and act and fight with one another [...] but ultimately are buffeted by the tides of history, or what Wood calls the 'historical process'. (p.38) Unleashed by the Revolution, the forces of pluralism, individualism, leveling and democracy run roughshod over the best laid plans of even the great individuals of the American Founding.) Since the article is about the book, I've tried to write the body text so it summarizes what the book says was history, as described by reliable sources about the book. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
In its classical sense applied to early American hsitory, republicanism generally means an ideology upholding public good as the primary goal of political society and advocating for citizens to be virtuous and public-minded, politically independent of others, and active participants in civic society. How is that? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
(The contemporary American political party known as the Republicans did not exist at this time; it was founded in the 1850s.)Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 17:39, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Federalists appear in the history as political conservatives who are trying to restore the social deference and hierarchies that had characterized monarchic society and get blindsided by the era's democratic milieu.. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 17:43, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
were out of step with the era's democratic milieu? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 16:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
Overall, the book offers a celebratory portrayal of early Americans overthrowing legacies of traditionalist hierarchy, and Jefferson is cast as the embodiment of this perspective.. The portion of Noll's book review this is based on is
The title quotation comes from Jefferson, who saw the ideals of the American founding as delivering a decisive blow against monarchical tyranny and as setting up a modern nation where the absence of hierarchical coercion would bring in something like a secular millennium. Wood clearly finds this vision compelling. Somehow, he manages to take Jefferson's profession straight up: "Jefferson personified this revolutionary transformation" that led Democratic Republicans to "dream … of a world different from any that had ever existed, a world of democratic republics, which is itself abstract—as Wood's book can be at times. I'd like to be as clear as I can; does this improve the sentence? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
and casts Jefferson...UndercoverClassicist T· C 08:24, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Hartnett notes that according to Empire of Liberty, Jefferson's "libertarian vision"[...]; does that address the issue? I wasn't 100% sure if I grasped the issue as you see it, so feel free to press the matter. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
According to Isenberg, Wood's narrative voice resembles "the overwrought writers of the early republic whom he quotes".(the context of the quotation in Isenberg's review is as follows:
Wood's narrative is a morality play; his voice blends seemlessly with the overwrought writers of the early republic whom he quotes, exuberant rhetoricians who say their "rising empire" as a new Elysium, a magical place where compassion, virtue, and belief in equality were omnipresent.). Does that make for a better Style subsection? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
By "republican family", Wood refers to post-revolutionary family culture which emphasized parity in the household among children and both parents, as opposed to the husband-centered patriarchally authoritarian family structure common in colonial America.Does that work? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Megan Owens states that "marriage in practice did not always match up to the ideal 'republican family' model",[citation] and whether the republican family is genuinely antipatriarchal is debated; historian Nancy Cott argues that "[a]lthough Revolutionary-era republican political thinking was antipatriarchal in the sense that it followed John Locke’s political theory rather than Sir Robert Filmer's, the republican polity at that time affirmed the rights of the independent citizen" as "an indisputably male actor" who acted and voted on behalf of a dependent family.[citation]Does that addition to the explanatory note clarify some? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 16:17, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
According to Isenberg, Empire of Liberty recapitulates a historical narrative that was consensus in the 1950s, telling an outdated narrative which homogenizes the American people and overcredits the revolution with establishing democracy and equality as uncontroversial values, a conception of the American "past that few academic historians accept anymore".How is that? Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
a conception of U. S. history that few contemporary academic historians accept. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 17:48, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
From a broader perspective it may have been the North that was exceptional and unique during the antebellum generation. Despite the abolition of legal slavery or serfdom throughout much of the western hemisphere and western Europe, much of the world—like the South—had an unfree or quasi-free labor force. Most societies in the world remained predominantly rural, agricultural, and labor-intensive; most, including even several European countries, had illiteracy rates as high or higher than the South's 45 percent; most like the South remained bound by traditional values and networks of family, kinship, hierarchy, and patriarchy.(860). Reviewer John L. Brooke phrases it this way:
Another Oxford series author, James M. McPherson, has made a very cogent and contrary argument about this old theme of southern exceptionalism: maybe on a global stage it was the South that was the norm and the North that was so strange and exceptional.(553). Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
Some reviewers considered the book's tone ironic.(succinct, couldn't say it better myself) and
Other reviewers read the book as having a triumphalist tone.. I also revised the first paragraph a little to bring McCoy's observation of irony further forward in the paragraph, with the explanation for why McCoy thinks the book reads ironically following it. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 16:23, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
As an example of this, Noll considered Wood's characterization of Jefferson as the United States' "supreme spokesman" for liberty at odds with the book's own report of Jefferson's ambitions for continental conquest, indulgent and debt-ridden lifestyle, and hypocritical participation in slavery.Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 03:58, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
To follow once content points are resolved.
and the book extends the argument's of Wood's earlier books, like The Radicalism of the American Revolution
Democratization and overthrow of past hierarchies pervaded every part of American life, where the source has
Wood defines democracy in broad cultural and ideological terms as the ascendancy of a radically new egalitarian conception of political society, not as a radical restructuring of the social order—and certainly not of the racial order.. According to Onuf, Wood's democratisation of American society is pointedly not about every part of society -- in particular, pointedly not about racial hierarchies.
Democratization pervaded much of American life? For that, I'm looking at
But Wood, like Tocqueville, is less interested in the limits of democracy than in why it works within those limits., and
Wood argues persuasively that the Revolution was critical for the emergence of a democratic culture., and
Republican oppositionists, inspired by the French Revolution, conjured up an American "old regime"-in-the-making, rallying "all good republicans and liberal reformers" to destroy this cancerous, alien growth (216). Anathematizing "aristocracy," Thomas Jefferson and his followers enabled Americans to overcome "the traditional culture's aversion to the term 'democracy'" (718). That conceptual transformation made all the difference, valorizing a republican revolution and its democratizing consequences and giving shape to the way of life that Tocqueville found so extraordinary.Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 22:23, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
his democratization thesisto non-political parts of life like religion (551), states that
The central interpretive dynamic of Empire of Liberty is the theme of the energies of a modernizing democratic people transcending political limits to realize their potential(552), and elaborates that
politics is actually secondary to Wood’s central sociological argument—the multifarious emergence of a liberal society(552). The last clause from Brooke seems especially clear that Empire of Liberty's interpretation is about more than politics. Hydrangeans ( she/her | talk | edits) 01:27, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
According to Wood, democratization pervaded much of American life in the course of the nation becoming a liberal society.