Americomania and the French Revolution debate in Britain, 1789--1802

This book explores the evolution of British identity and participatory politics in the 1790s. Wil Verhoeven argues that in the course of the French Revolution debate in Britain, the idea of 'America' came to represent for the British people the choice between two diametrically opposed models of social justice and political participation. Yet the American Revolution controversy in the 1790s was by no means an isolated phenomenon. The controversy began with the American crisis debate of the 1760s and 1770s, which overlapped with a wider Enlightenment debate about transatlantic utopianism. All of these debates were based in the material world on the availability of vast quantities of cheap American land. Verhoeven investigates the relation that existed throughout the eighteenth century between American soil and the discourse of transatlantic utopianism: between America as a physical, geographical space, and 'America' as a utopian/dystopian idea-image. Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Figures 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction. Utopianism in Practice: The American Front of the French Revolution in England, 1789–1802 14 1 “The War of Systems”: Print Culture and the Institutionalization of the Political Divide in the 1790s 41 2 “Cultivators of the Earth”: The American Crisis and the Emergence of the Freehold Farmer, 1763–1783 83 3 “Rabies Agri”: Or, Wilderness for Sale 125 4 “The Calculated Rise of the American Empire”: The Radicalization of American Utopianism, 1789–1795 147 5 “The Mania of Emigration”: New Philosophers in the Wilderness 181 6 “The Precious Pearl of Liberty”: From Newgate Prison to Ohiopiomingo 212 7 “Come to These Arcadian Regions Where There Is Room for Millions”: Politics for the People 252 8 “Look Before You Leap”: The Demonization of Jacobin America 283 9 “Parrying the Enemy with Their Own Weapons”: Dystopianism and the Popular Discourse of Fear 320 Postscript. “Mania Reformatio”: The Demise of Transatlantic Utopianism 354 Bibliography of Cited Materials 366 Index 384