Yokota, Kariann Akemi.
Oxford New York : Oxford University Press, c2011.
Added to CLICnet on 04/23/2014

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Notes:

• Includes bibliographical references and index.
• INTRODUCTION: Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation CHAPTER ONE: A New Nation on the Margins of the Global Map CHAPTER TWO: A Culture of Insecurity: Americans in a Transatlantic World of Goods CHAPTER THREE: A Revolution Revived: American and British Encounters in Canton, China CHAPTER FOUR: Sowing the Seeds of Postcolonial Discontent: The Transatlantic Exchange of American Nature and British Patronage CHAPTER FIVE: A Great Curiosity : The American Quest for Racial Refinement and Knowledge CONCLUSION: The Long Goodbye: Breaking with the British in Nineteenth-century America.
• What can homespun cloth, stuffed birds, quince jelly, and ginseng reveal about the formation of early American national identity? In this wide-ranging and bold new interpretation of American history and its Founding Fathers, Kariann Akemi Yokota shows that political independence from Britain fueled anxieties among the Americans about their cultural inferiority and continuing dependence on the mother country. Caught between their desire to emulate the mother country and an awareness that they lived an ocean away on the periphery of the known world, they went to great lengths to convince themselves and others of their refinement. Taking a transnational approach to American history, Yokota examines a wealth of evidence from geography, the decorative arts, intellectual history, science, and technology to underscore that the process of unbecoming British was not an easy one. Indeed, the new nation struggled to define itself economically, politically, and culturally in what could be called America’s postcolonial period. Out of this confusion of hope and exploitation, insecurity and vision, a uniquely American identity emerged.

Subjects:

• National characteristics, American — History.
• United States — Civilization — 1783-1865.
• United States — Civilization — To 1783.

Requested by Lansing, M