The Nation's Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America (Book) [show prizes]
Title: The Nation's Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America
Author: James D. Drake
Abstract: In one of Common Sense's most ringing phrases, Thomas Paine declared it "absurd" for "a continent to be perpetually governed by an island." Such powerful words, coupled with powerful ideas, helped spur the United States to independence. In The Nation's Nature, James D. Drake examines how a relatively small number of inhabitants of the Americas, huddled along North America's east coast, came to mentally appropriate the entire continent and to think of their nation as America. Drake demonstrates how British North American colonists' participation in scientific debates and imperial contests shaped their notions of global geography. These ideas, in turn, solidified American nationalism, spurred a revolution, and shaped the ratification of the Constitution.
Year: 2011
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/nations-nature-how-continental-presumptions-gave-rise-to-the-united-states-of-america/oclc/694283187&referer=brief_results
Primary URL Description: Worldcat
Secondary URL: http://books.upress.virginia.edu/detail%2Fbooks%2Fgroup-4202.xml?q=drake
Secondary URL Description: University of Virginia Press Website
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780813931227

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