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In the age of MapQuest and GPS, we take cartographic literacy for granted. We should not; the ability to find meaning in maps is the fruit of a long process of exposure and instruction. A ""carto-coded"" America - a nation in which maps are pervasive and meaningful - had to be created. The Social Life of Maps tracks American cartography's spectacular rise to its unprecedented cultural influence. Between 1750 and 1860, maps did more than communicate geographic information and political pretensi...

In this highly original work, Thomas D. Wilson offers surprising new insights into the origins of the political storms we witness today. Wilson connects the Ashley Cooper Plan-a seventeenth-century model for a well-ordered society imagined by Anthony Ashley Cooper (1st Earl of Shaftesbury) and his protege John Locke-to current debates about views on climate change, sustainable development, urbanism, and professional expertise in general. In doing so, he examines the ways that the city design, po...

Approaches to American Cultural Studies provides an accessible yet comprehensive overview of the diverse range of subjects encompassed within American Studies, familiarising students with the history and shape of American Studies as an academic subject as well as its key theories, methods, and concepts. Written and edited by an international team of authors based primarily in Europe, the book is divided into four thematically-organised sections. The first part delineates the evolution of Americ...

First published in 1971 and long out of print, this classic account of Colonial-era New York chronicles how the state was buffeted by political and sectional rivalries and by conflict arising from a wide diversity of ethnic and religious identities. New York's highly volatile and contentious political life, Patricia U. Bonomi shows, gave rise to several interest groups for whose support political leaders had to compete, resulting in new levels of democratic participation.

Explores how some of colonial North America's first towns were started and what life was like for the people who lived in them.

This collection of some of George Washington's most important letters and speeches documents key moments of his military and political career as a general in the American army during the War of Independence and as the first President of the United States. Published in 1800 following Washington's death in 1799, this collection is dedicated to Washington's widow Martha and contains details of Washington's state funeral and memorial, and letters of condolence. The book includes a short biography co...

Concentrating on the lives of blacks who achieved freedom, this book describes how, against formidable odds, they amassed property, established plantations, acquired dependent labourers, and lived for several generations as free and independent members of Virginia society.

Reflecting the burgeoning interest of colonial historians in South Carolina and its role as the economic and cultural center of the Lower South, Money, Trade, and Power is a comprehensive exploration of the colony's slave system, economy, and complex social and cultural life. The first six chapters of this essay collection focus on the formative decades of South Carolina's history, from 1670 through the 1730s. Contributors Meaghan N. Duff, Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, and Gary L. Hewitt explore the co...

A poet unusually versatile for his time and place, Steere adds a dimension to the study of 17th century American poetry. His career also enlarges the historical record regarding social, political, economic, and legal conditions in Restoration Britain and her colonies. Steere's protests in 1695 against the imprisonment of a radical sectarian constitute a significant early defense of liberty of conscience in America.

In The Memory of All Ancient Customs, Tom Arne Midtrød examines the complex patterns of diplomatic, political, and social communication among the American Indian peoples of the Hudson Valley—including the Mahicans, Wappingers, and Esopus Indians—from the early seventeenth century through the American Revolutionary era. By focusing on how members of different Native groups interacted with one another, this book places Indians rather than Europeans on center stage.Midtrød uncovers a vast and multi...