The Intellectual Construction of America : Exceptionalism and Identity From 1492 to 1800

Jack Greene explores the changing definitions of America from the time of Europe's first contact with the New World through the establishment of the American republic. Challenging historians who have argued that colonial American societies differed little from those of early modern Europe, he shows that virtually all contemporary observers emphasized the distinctiveness of the new worlds being created in America. Rarely considering the high costs paid by Amerindians and Africans in the construction of those worlds, they cited the British North American colonies as evidence that America was for free people a place of exceptional opportunities for individual betterment and was therefore fundamentally different from the Old World. Greene suggests that this concept of American societies as exceptional was a central component in their emerging identity. The success of the American Revolution helped subordinate Americans'long-standing sense of cultural inferiority to a more positive sense of collective self that sharpened and intensified the concept of American exceptionalism. Expectations : The European Fabrication Of America In The Sixteenth Century -- Encounters : Projection And Design In The Construction Of English America, 1580-1690 -- Experiences : The Behavioral Articulation Of British America, 1690-1760 -- Evaluations : The Conceptual Identification Of British America, 1715-1775 -- Examinations : The European Response To The American Revolution, 1776-1800 -- Explanations : Revolution And Redefinition, 1774-1800. Jack P. Greene. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. When Columbus dropped anchor at the island he called San Salvador, he initiated the process by which a series of very different-and very old-worlds and a rich variety of places, cultures, and peoples were slowly revealed to an astonished Europe.