Imagining the British Atlantic after the American Revolution

"Imagining the British Atlantic after the American Revolution is a stirring and instructive collection, full of local histories that complicate general claims of revolutionary rupture. It makes a decisive contribution to transatlantic studies by focusing on the cultural and political effects of colonial revolution in the eighteenth century and beyond." -- Paul Youngquist, Department of English, University of Colorado Boulder "Meranze and Makdisi's collection pulls together scholars from history, history of art, and literature whose essays demand the reader recognize the fluid boundaries of the revolutionary imagination from c.1750-1820. This is a thought-provoking, impressive collection of essays." -- Ella Dzelzainis, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University

Drawing on examples from different local and regional contexts,Imagining the British Atlantic after the American Revolution demonstrates the many remarkably local ways that revolution and empire were experienced in London, Pennsylvania, Pitcairn Island, and points in between.

Between 1750 and 1820, tides of revolution swept the Atlantic world. From the new industrial towns of Great Britain to the plantations of Haiti, they heralded both the rise of democratic nationalism and the subsequent surge of imperial reaction.

In Imagining the British Atlantic after the American Revolution, nine essays consider these revolutionary transformations from a variety of literary, visual, and historical perspectives. On topics ranging from painting and poetry to prison reform, the essays challenge and complicate our understandings of revolution and reaction within the transatlantic imagination. Drawing on examples from different local and regional contexts, they demonstrate the many remarkably local ways that revolution and empire were experienced in London, Pennsylvania, Pitcairn Island, and points in between.

Published by the University of Toronto Press in association with the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.