The first thing that caught my attention in Linebaugh and Rediker\u2019s work was the decision to explore on two of the groups of slaves and wage laborers. There topic provides an interesting opportunity to reframe many of the topics we\u2019ve discussed which have primarily omitted any mention of interracial collaboration towards political objectives (we\u2019ve talked about slaves accepting offers to fight for their freedom, but I would argue that to be a personal objective).<\/p>\n
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The idea of interracial collaboration in riots certainly hints at the potential of larger proletariat identity existing prior to the 1800s but there were things that bothered me in their work. For instance, the use of Sam Adam\u2019s assertion that the mob \u2018embodied the fundamental rights of man against which government itself could be judged\u2019 suggests that the legitimate use of mobs and the threat of mob violence was a new phenomenon in early American society (231). While Adam may have been the first to ideologically defend the notion, we\u2019ve already seen that mob violence was a tool employed by communities long before the lead up to the American revolution. Moreover, the inclusion of the Irish Whiteboys as part of 1768 London riot also seemed somewhat out of place. While it does introduce the important notion of striking as a form of political protest and the bridging of ethnic divisions, the desire to place the Irish at the forefront seemed strained and moved away from the theme of interracial rioting. While the authors used four separate instances to try to prove their point, I feel that the width of the study took away from the details needed to prove their assertion. \u00a0While they offer the idea of general economic oppression being the cause of many of the riots, the sources they use to talk about\u00a0 the events often come from the \u201cbourgeois\u201d side of the event as they describe the complexion of the rioters in a manner that would seek to reflect their desires. Sources from the rioters would either offer specific reasons that these individuals chose to rebel with one another and show an awareness of a larger proletariat identity or the lack thereof.<\/p>\n
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Moving on to somewhat unrelated things, I\u2019d like to tackle something AJ mentioned in his post which was \u201cReally, after all that led up to the rebellion, only a few frontiersmen went to jail.\u201d \u00a0This reminded me of something I thought of in class. In my opinion Slaughter provided his readers, mainly historians, with these excessive details in an effort to convince us that the Whiskey rebellion was part of this frontier conflict and the East vs. West divide that was an extremely important in American history. \u00a0After reading a book as dense as Slaughter\u2019s, I\u2019d certainly like to believe this is the case but the fact that only a few men went to jail and nothing really happened in its aftermath makes me wonder if this conflict is as central as Slaughter attempts to make it. Just something to ponder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The first thing that caught my attention in Linebaugh and Rediker\u2019s work was the decision to explore on two of the groups of slaves and wage laborers. There topic provides an interesting opportunity to reframe many of the topics we\u2019ve discussed which have primarily omitted any mention of interracial collaboration towards political objectives (we\u2019ve talked … <\/p>\n