'A nation first in all the arts of civilisation': Boston's post-revolutionary elites view great Britain
Titel:
'A nation first in all the arts of civilisation': Boston's post-revolutionary elites view great Britain
Auteur:
Mann, Anthony
Verschenen in:
American nineteenth century history
Paginering:
Jaargang 2 (2001) nr. 2 pagina's 1-34
Jaar:
2001
Inhoud:
The Anglophilia of early nineteenth-century elites of Boston is a well-known, if rarely explored, historical phenomenon. Contemporary opinion and historiographic assumption have proposed that the rising collection of merchants and professionals who formed the Brahmin upper class reverently sought to appropriate symbols of permanency and status associated with the British landed aristocracy. This essay, considering particularly the journals and letters of ten well-born transatlantic travelers between 1795 and 1826, reveals a more critical engagement with contemporary Britain. Members of a conservative republican elite, the nascent Brahmins rejected monarchical-aristocratic culture and political structures. They looked, rather, to Britain to inform attempts to build a cultural identity fitting to their own social aspirations and historical constraints, and for models of public engagement central to the management of social and economic change. In both arenas, it was the liberal, urban bourgeoisie of provincial Britain who most commonly inspired admiration and emulation.
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