Articulating America: Fashioning a National Political Culture in Early America: Essays in Honor of J. R. Pole. Ed. by Rebecca Starr. (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000. xii, 276 pp. $40.00, ISBN 0-7425-2076-5.)

Abstract

This collection of essays grew out of a conference held at Cambridge University in 1995 to honor J. R. Pole. It includes the work of several young historians trained by Professor Pole as well as contributions from distinguished scholars in the field of early American history. While the quality of the separate essays is a bit uneven, most provide interesting insights into various aspects of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century American society. Despite this volume's subtitle, however, the essays do not deal in any coherent manner with the fashioning of a national political culture in early America. Consequently, readers who expect the “linked” essays in this volume to “identify, integrate, and explore the nature of some of [the] chief sinews” (p. 4) of such a culture will be disappointed; only one of the seven essays addresses that issue in any but the most tangential manner. Considered as discrete entities, the essays are not only insightful but entertaining. J. G. A. Pocock provides a fascinating reading of the Histoire des Etablissements et du Commerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes (1772–1780). For his part, Jack Greene elucidates the manner in which the colonists' firm adherence to the basic principles of British common law helped them to form a nation governed by the rule of law. Richard Vernier demonstrates the manner in which Jeffersonians eventually employed the authority of the new science of political economy to attack the Hamiltonian fi nancial program. Despite changes taking place throughout much of the rest of the nation, Andrew W. Robertson reveals how the old political culture based on personal relations persevered in Virginia well into the nineteenth century. Through his analysis of the National Reform Association's promotion of land reform, Lawrence Goldman analyzes how radical workingmen of the 1830s and 1840s forged a “strategic sense of language” (p. 181) by employing the rhetoric of republicanism, English radicalism, and antislavery. In her essay Rebecca Starr attempts to reach a better understanding of the concept of political culture by merging ideological (rhetorical) traditions with methodological (social and political conventions) ones.