Jefferson's Empire

Jefferson's Empire
Author :
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Total Pages : 276
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0813922046
ISBN-13 : 9780813922041
Rating : 4/5 (46 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Jefferson's Empire by : Peter S. Onuf

Download or read book Jefferson's Empire written by Peter S. Onuf and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Jefferson believed that the American revolution was atransformative moment in the history of political civilization. He hoped that hisown efforts as a founding statesman and theorist would help construct a progressiveand enlightened order for the new American nation that would be a model andinspiration for the world. Peter S. Onuf's new book traces Jefferson's vision of theAmerican future to its roots in his idealized notions of nationhood and empire.Onuf's unsettling recognition that Jefferson's famed egalitarianism was elaboratedin an imperial context yields strikingly original interpretations of our nationalidentity and our ideas of race, of westward expansion and the Civil War, and ofAmerican global dominance in the twentiethcentury. Jefferson's vision of an American "empirefor liberty" was modeled on a British prototype. But as a consensual union ofself-governing republics without a metropolis, Jefferson's American empire would befree of exploitation by a corrupt imperial ruling class. It would avoid the cycle ofwar and destruction that had characterized the European balance ofpower. The Civil War cast in high relief thetragic limitations of Jefferson's political vision. After the Union victory, as thereconstructed nation-state developed into a world power, dreams of the United Statesas an ever-expanding empire of peacefully coexisting states quickly faded frommemory. Yet even as the antebellum federal union disintegrated, a Jeffersoniannationalism, proudly conscious of America's historic revolution against imperialdomination, grew up in its place. In Onuf's view, Jefferson's quest to define a new American identity also shaped his ambivalentconceptions of slavery and Native American rights. His revolutionary fervor led himto see Indians as "merciless savages" who ravaged the frontiers at the Britishking's direction, but when those frontiers were pacified, a more benevolentJefferson encouraged these same Indians to embrace republican values. AfricanAmerican slaves, by contrast, constituted an unassimilable captive nation, unjustlywrenched from its African homeland. His great panacea: colonization. Jefferson's ideas about race revealthe limitations of his conception of American nationhood. Yet, as Onuf strikinglydocuments, Jefferson's vision of a republican empire--a regime of peace, prosperity, and union without coercion--continues to define and expand the boundaries ofAmerican national identity.


Jefferson's Empire Related Books

Jefferson's Empire
Language: en
Pages: 276
Authors: Peter S. Onuf
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2000 - Publisher: University of Virginia Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thomas Jefferson believed that the American revolution was atransformative moment in the history of political civilization. He hoped that hisown efforts as a fo
Religious Freedom
Language: en
Pages: 394
Authors: John A. Ragosta
Categories: Law
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-04-22 - Publisher: University of Virginia Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For over one hundred years, Thomas Jefferson and his Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom have stood at the center of our understanding of religious liber
Nature's Man
Language: en
Pages: 303
Authors: Maurizio Valsania
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013 - Publisher: University of Virginia Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although scholars have adequately covered Thomas Jefferson's general ideas about human nature and race, this is the first book to examine what Maurizio Valsania
Inventing America
Language: en
Pages: 440
Authors: Garry Wills
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-02-15 - Publisher: Vintage

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From one of America's foremost historians, Inventing America compares Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration of Independence with the final, accep
Thomas Jefferson, the Classical World, and Early America
Language: en
Pages: 329
Authors: Peter S. Onuf
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-10-19 - Publisher: University of Virginia Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Thomas Jefferson read Latin and Greek authors throughout his life and wrote movingly about his love of the ancient texts, which he thought should be at the core