1789 : the threshold of the modern age
Title:
1789 : the threshold of the modern age
Author:
Andress, David, 1969-
Personal Author:
Edition:
First American edition.
Publication Information:
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
©2008
Physical Description:
vi, 439 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Summary:
From the inauguration of George Washington to the birth of the cotton trade in the American South, from the British Empire's war in India to the street battles of the French evolution, Andress shows how the struggles of this explosive year would dominate the Old and New Worlds for the next 200 years.
The world in 1789 stood on the edge of a unique transformation. At the end of an unprecedented century of progress, the fates of three nations--France, the nascent United States, and their common enemy, Britain--lay interlocked. A year of revolution was crowned in two documents drafted at almost the same time: the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the American Bill of Rights. These texts gave the world a new political language and promised to foreshadow new revolutions, even in Britain. But as the French Revolution spiraled into chaos and slavery experienced a rebirth in America, it seemed that the budding code of individual rights would forever be matched by equally powerful systems of repression and control. David Andress reveals how these events and the men who led them stood at the threshold of the modern world. --From publisher description.
General Note:
First published: London : Little, Brown, 2008.
Language:
English
Contents:
"He snatched lighting from the heavens" : Benjamin Franklin, the Enlightenment and France's crisis of the 1780s -- "The best model the world has ever produced" : governing America and Britain in the traumatic 1780s -- "Vibrating between a monarchy and a corrupt oppressive aristocracy" : The woes of France and America, 1787-8 -- "The seeds of decay and corruption" : Britain, empire and the king's madness, 1784-8 -- "The base laws of servitude" : empire, slavery and race in the 1780s -- "That offspring of tyranny, baseness and pride" : abolitionism, political economy and the people's rights -- "Constant effort and continuous emulation" : the revolutions of cotton and steam -- "This general agitation of public insanity" : France and Britain in the spring of 1789 -- "Highly fraught with disinterested benevolence" : empire, reason, race and profit in the Pacific -- "Deep rooted prejudices, and malignity of heart, and conduct" : President Washington and the war in the West -- "No, sire, it is a revolution" : from the Estates-General to the Bastille, France, May-July 1789 -- "For all men, and for all countries" : declaring rights in America and France -- "Your houses will answer for your opinions" : the French Revolution imperiled -- "The greatest event it is that ever happened in the world" : the British and the French Revolution -- Conclusion : 1789/1798.
ISBN:
9780374100131
Format :
Book
