| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
Introduction -- The state of nature -- Rights and consititutions -- The Stamp Act and the state of nature -- Creating and contesting the American state of nature -- The turn to self-defense -- The Frist Continental Congress -- On slavery and race -- Conclusion |
| Summary |
American States of Nature transforms our understanding of the American Revolution and the early makings of the Constitution. Surveying thousands of texts produced between 1761 and 1775, including hundreds of archival discoveries, this book shows that the state of nature was among the most crucial revolutionary concepts. The founding generation drew not only on English sources, such as Hobbes and Locke, but also on Grotius, Pufendorf, Rousseau, Vattel, and others, to develop an original and distinct American view of the state of nature as a natural community where colonists could pool their rig |
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The exact phrase, “state of nature,” was used thousands of times in the British colonies between 1630 and 1810, in juridical, theological, medical, political, economic, and other senses. From the plurality of meanings, a distinctive American state of nature discourse started to emerge by the 1760s. It combined existing European and American semantic ranges and sidelined others in moments of intense contestation, for instance during the 1765–66 Stamp Act crisis, and the 1774 First Continental Congress. In numerous laws and resolutions, forensic arguments, petitions, sermons, broadsides, books, pamphlets, letters, diaries, and college essays, the increasingly distinct and coherent American state of nature came to justify independence at least as much as colonial formulations of liberty, property, and individual rights did |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed March 22, 2019) |
| Subject |
Philosophy of nature -- United States
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Nature and civilization -- United States
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Natural law.
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HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- General.
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Natural law
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Nature and civilization
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Philosophy of nature
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Politics and government
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War -- Causes
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| SUBJECT |
United States -- Politics and government -- Philosophy
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United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Causes.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140149
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| Subject |
United States
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| Genre/Form |
History
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9780190462864 |
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0190462868 |
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