Among the Powers of the Earth by Eliga H. Gould<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In his book, Eliga Gould presented the American Revolution and the beginning of the United States through a world view, a depiction that strays from the traditional narrative portraying the United States to be a fully sovereign and independent nation from its founding. As Victoria already asserted, this text shows the \u201cglobal context\u201d surrounding the creation of the United States, which reveals a more complex construction of how the United States came to be. Instead of looking at the U.S. from the states outward like most American history books that I have read, he analyzed its development as a nation from its interactions with more established powers, particularly the ones that it had to break from in order to become a nation. While still maintaining an American-focused subject, he utilized many international and global sources, particularly emphasizing treaties and letters showing the interactions between countries that emphasized the laws of nations. This book highlighted the dependency of the emerging country on England and European countries to legitimize it and give it power and standing within the world. Rather than the United States\u2019 gaining acceptance as an equal for transforming from colony to nation, this country had to conform to laws and customs between nations to gradually be seen as worthy of being interacted with. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0In previous American history classes, I have heard the American Revolution referred to as a \u201cconservative\u201d revolution, as the power simply shifted from one privileged class to the next. \u00a0Unlike other and more transformative revolutions, like the French, Haitian or Russian Revolutions, this nation did not stray too far from its origins. Yet, I believe that Gould takes his analysis a step further when he portrays America as conflicted right after the separation, desperate to be a power and accepted as an equal, but also needing to appease European nations who held the power to approve. In this book, Gould stated that America\u2019s independence could not be achieved \u201cunilaterally\u201d \u00a0due to its initial branding as a rebellion (114). They relied on the world to define them as an actual and legitimate nation. Gould stated that, \u201cToday, no matter where within the United States they happen to live, Americans mark July 4, 1776, as the moment their history as an independent nation began. What we sometimes forget- though people at the time knew it- it that United States could not become the nation that Americans imagined without the consent of other nations and people\u201d (2). This book challenged the notion that America was exceptional from the absolute beginning and instead show it as a weaker and needy country. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Gould continues this depiction of the American Revolution as conservative by discussing the continuity of policies between the English and American possession. One way the U.S. accomplished this was by trying to make themselves into a \u201ctreaty-worthy\u201d nation or one that would be peaceful with other countries in order to be accepted (12). \u00a0In order to do this, they had to sustain peaceful borders and at which point, Europe could see them as possessing \u201cinternal tranquility\u201d and finally view them as alike (140). Like Victoria, I also found the theme or feature of being a treaty worthy country quite prevalent. In one instance, England used treaties to create moral codes between nations (22). In another, they used it to justify slavery, as it was taken a treaty between the West and Africa (67, 71). Moreover, Gould also referred to the early union as a treaty between states, demonstrating that this concept permeated from Europe to the America (133). While I had never heard of this point of view before, it makes sense in a broader scope of European history that contains numerous treaties and formalized agreements between nations. It would, then, make sense that the United States would follow in the same footsteps and continue to define itself like its predecessor. Although Gould\u2019s argument that their existed continuity between Europe and the United States did not surprise me, I found his use of international documents and his \u201coutside in\u201d perspective to be a fresh take on the revolution and founding of the United States. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the Powers of the Earth by Eliga H. Gould \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In his book, Eliga Gould presented the American Revolution and the beginning of the United States through a world view, a depiction that strays from the traditional narrative portraying the United States to be a fully sovereign and independent nation from its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/hist571-fall2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}