Book details

American Leviathan

Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier

Author: Patrick Griffin

American Leviathan

American Leviathan

$11.99

About This Book

The war that raged along America's frontier during the period of the American Revolution was longer, bloodier, and arguably more revolutionary than what transpired on the Atlantic coast.

Page Count
384
Genre
On Sale
04/17/2007

Book Details

The war that raged along America's frontier during the period of the American Revolution was longer, bloodier, and arguably more revolutionary than what transpired on the Atlantic coast.

Between 1763 and 1795 westerners not only participated in a War of Independence but engaged in a revolution that ushered in fundamental changes in social relations, political allegiances, and assumptions about the relationship between individuals and society. On the frontier, the process of forging sovereignty and citizens was stripped down to its essence. Settlers struggled with the very stuff of revolution: violence, uncertainty, disorder, and the frenzied competition to remake the fabric of society. In so doing, they were transformed from deferential subjects to self-sovereign citizens as the British Empire gave way to the American nation. But something more fundamental was at work. The violent nature of the contest to reconstitute sovereignty produced a revolutionary settlement in which race and citizenship went hand in hand. The common people demanded as much, and the state delivered. As westerners contended in a Hobbesian world, they also created some of the myths that made America American.

Patrick Griffin recaptures a chaotic world of settlers, Indians, speculators, British regulars, and American and state officials, vying with one another to remake the West during its most formative period.

Imprint Publisher

Hill and Wang

ISBN

9781429922852

In The News

“In this book, Griffin aims to re-conceptualize the American Revolution in the West and his explanation of the ways Hobbesian disorder and violence on the American frontier escalated and laid the basis for the acceptability of federal state power in the West is very convincing.” —Gordon S. Wood, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Radicalism of the American Revolution

About the Creators

American Leviathan

American Leviathan

$11.99