Americomania and the French Revolution Debate in Britain, 1789–1802

'Wil Verhoeven makes a strong and original argument, that the idea of 'America' played a central, neglected role in Britain's debate on the French Revolution in the 1790s. Despite the loss of the colonies in the American Revolution, America continued to loom large in the British national imaginary. Verhoeven's readings of familiar and obscure texts are consistently rewarding. His analyses of the new world degeneracy thesis of Buffon et al.; the 'progressive agrarianism' of Crevecoeur, Jefferson, and Imlay; and the Jacobin novel are fresh and insightful; and his rehabilitation of the anti-Jacobin novel brings to the fore a neglected but 'historically significant body of social critique'. No previous writer has put these texts into conversation, and the interpretative results are striking. The debate over the French Revolution will never look quite the same.' Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia
'Wil Verhoeven argues that participants in the 1790s debates between the so-called Jacobins and anti-Jacobins in Britain, triggered by the French Revolution, employed the issue of emigration to America as a vehicle to promote their political ideologies - the former to campaign for reforms and the latter to preserve the status quo. In the process, the Jacobin-leaning authors, including some land speculators, sponsored transatlantic settlements, while Tory-inclined ones warned of the dangers of laborer emigration, and invoked earlier sentiments hostile to the American Revolutionary republicanism. This is an innovative and worthy approach, and Verhoeven's analysis of emigration and anti-emigration literature reveals many new angles in the political and cultural history of this era. It also throws fresh light on the impact of the American Revolution on this debate. Verhoeven's work offers a significant contribution to scholarship.' Michal Jan Rozbicki, Saint Louis University