A Nation of Politicians

A Nation of Politicians PDF Author: Padhraig Higgins
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299233332
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Between the years 1778 and 1784, groups that had previously been excluded from the Irish political sphere—women, Catholics, lower-class Protestants, farmers, shopkeepers, and other members of the laboring and agrarian classes—began to imagine themselves as civil subjects with a stake in matters of the state. This politicization of non-elites was largely driven by the Volunteers, a local militia force that emerged in Ireland as British troops were called away to the American War of Independence. With remarkable speed, the Volunteers challenged central features of British imperial rule over Ireland and helped citizens express a new Irish national identity. In A Nation of Politicians, Padhraig Higgins argues that the development of Volunteer-initiated activities—associating, petitioning, subscribing, shopping, and attending celebrations—expanded the scope of political participation. Using a wide range of literary, archival, and visual sources, Higgins examines how ubiquitous forms of communication—sermons, songs and ballads, handbills, toasts, graffiti, theater, rumors, and gossip—encouraged ordinary Irish citizens to engage in the politics of a more inclusive society and consider the broader questions of civil liberties and the British Empire. A Nation of Politicians presents a fascinating tale of the beginnings of Ireland’s richly vocal political tradition at this important intersection of cultural, intellectual, social, and public history. Winner of the Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book, American Conference for Irish Studies

A Nation of Politicians

A Nation of Politicians PDF Author: Padhraig Higgins
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299233332
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Get Book

Book Description
Between the years 1778 and 1784, groups that had previously been excluded from the Irish political sphere—women, Catholics, lower-class Protestants, farmers, shopkeepers, and other members of the laboring and agrarian classes—began to imagine themselves as civil subjects with a stake in matters of the state. This politicization of non-elites was largely driven by the Volunteers, a local militia force that emerged in Ireland as British troops were called away to the American War of Independence. With remarkable speed, the Volunteers challenged central features of British imperial rule over Ireland and helped citizens express a new Irish national identity. In A Nation of Politicians, Padhraig Higgins argues that the development of Volunteer-initiated activities—associating, petitioning, subscribing, shopping, and attending celebrations—expanded the scope of political participation. Using a wide range of literary, archival, and visual sources, Higgins examines how ubiquitous forms of communication—sermons, songs and ballads, handbills, toasts, graffiti, theater, rumors, and gossip—encouraged ordinary Irish citizens to engage in the politics of a more inclusive society and consider the broader questions of civil liberties and the British Empire. A Nation of Politicians presents a fascinating tale of the beginnings of Ireland’s richly vocal political tradition at this important intersection of cultural, intellectual, social, and public history. Winner of the Donald Murphy Prize for Distinguished First Book, American Conference for Irish Studies

A Political Nation

A Political Nation PDF Author: Gary W. Gallagher
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813932823
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
This impressive collection joins the recent outpouring of exciting new work on American politics and political actors in the mid-nineteenth century. For several generations, much of the scholarship on the political history of the period from 1840 to 1877 has carried a theme of failure; after all, politicians in the antebellum years failed to prevent war, and those of the Civil War and Reconstruction failed to take advantage of opportunities to remake the nation. Moving beyond these older debates, the essays in this volume ask new questions about mid-nineteenth-century American politics and politicians. In A Political Nation, the contributors address the dynamics of political parties and factions, illuminate the presence of consensus and conflict in American political life, and analyze elections, voters, and issues. In addition to examining the structures of the United States Congress, state and local governments, and other political organizations, this collection emphasizes political leaders--those who made policy, ran for office, influenced elections, and helped to shape American life from the early years of the Second Party System to the turbulent period of Reconstruction. The book moves chronologically, beginning with an antebellum focus on how political actors behaved within their cultural surroundings. The authors then use the critical role of language, rhetoric, and ideology in mid-nineteenth-century political culture as a lens through which to reevaluate the secession crisis. The collection closes with an examination of cultural and institutional influences on politicians in the Civil War and Reconstruction years. Stressing the role of federalism in understanding American political behavior, A Political Nation underscores the vitality of scholarship on mid-nineteenth-century American politics. Contributors: Erik B. Alexander, University of Tennessee, Knoxville - Jean Harvey Baker, Goucher College - William J. Cooper, Louisiana State University - Daniel W. Crofts, The College of New Jersey - William W. Freehling, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities - Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia - Sean Nalty, University of Virginia - Mark E. Neely Jr., Pennsylvania State University - Rachel A. Shelden, Georgia College and State University - Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State University - J. Mills Thornton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

A Nation for All

A Nation for All PDF Author: Alejandro de la Fuente
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 9780807898765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
After thirty years of anticolonial struggle against Spain and four years of military occupation by the United States, Cuba formally became an independent republic in 1902. The nationalist coalition that fought for Cuba's freedom, a movement in which blacks and mulattoes were well represented, had envisioned an egalitarian and inclusive country--a nation for all, as Jose Marti described it. But did the Cuban republic, and later the Cuban revolution, live up to these expectations? Tracing the formation and reformulation of nationalist ideologies, government policies, and different forms of social and political mobilization in republican and postrevolutionary Cuba, Alejandro de la Fuente explores the opportunities and limitations that Afro-Cubans experienced in such areas as job access, education, and political representation. Challenging assumptions of both underlying racism and racial democracy, he contends that racism and antiracism coexisted within Cuban nationalism and, in turn, Cuban society. This coexistence has persisted to this day, despite significant efforts by the revolutionary government to improve the lot of the poor and build a nation that was truly for all.

A Nation within a Nation

A Nation within a Nation PDF Author: Komozi Woodard
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807876178
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is best known as one of the African American writers who helped ignite the Black Arts Movement. This book examines Baraka's cultural approach to Black Power politics and explores his role in the phenomenal spread of black nationalism in the urban centers of late-twentieth-century America, including his part in the election of black public officials, his leadership in the Modern Black Convention Movement, and his work in housing and community development. Komozi Woodard traces Baraka's transformation from poet to political activist, as the rise of the Black Arts Movement pulled him from political obscurity in the Beat circles of Greenwich Village, swept him into the center of the Black Power Movement, and ultimately propelled him into the ranks of black national political leadership. Moving outward from Baraka's personal story, Woodard illuminates the dynamics and remarkable rise of black cultural nationalism with an eye toward the movement's broader context, including the impact of black migrations on urban ethos, the importance of increasing population concentrations of African Americans in the cities, and the effect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the nature of black political mobilization.

Divided Politics, Divided Nation

Divided Politics, Divided Nation PDF Author: Darrell M. West
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815736924
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Why are Americans so angry with each other? The United States is caught in a partisan hyperconflict that divides politicians, communities—and even families. Politicians from the president to state and local office-holders play to strongly-held beliefs and sometimes even pour fuel on the resulting inferno. This polarization has become so intense that many people no longer trust anyone from a differing perspective. Drawing on his personal story of growing up as a fundamentalist Christian on a dairy farm in rural Ohio, then as an academic in the heart of the liberal East Coast establishment, Darrell West analyzes the economic, cultural, and political aspects of polarization. He takes advantage of his experiences inside both conservative and liberal camps to explain the views of each side and offer insights into why each is angry with the other. West argues that societal tensions have metastasized into a dangerous tribalism that seriously threatens U.S. democracy. Unless people can bridge these divisions and forge a new path forward, it will be impossible to work together, maintain a functioning democracy, and solve the country's pressing policy problems.

Hellfire Nation

Hellfire Nation PDF Author: James A. Morone
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300105177
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 589

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Book Description
Annotation. Although the US is proud of being a secular state, religion lies at the heart of American politics. This volume looks at how the country came to have the soul of a church & the consequences - the moral crusades against slavery, alcohol, witchcraft & discrimination that time & again have prevailed upon the nation.

Political Culture and the Making of Modern Nation-States

Political Culture and the Making of Modern Nation-States PDF Author: Edward Weisband
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317254104
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
This book focuses on transformations of political culture from times past to future-present. It defines the meaning of political culture and explores the cultural values and institutions of kinship communities and dynastic intermediaries, including chiefdoms and early states. It systematically examines the rise and gradual universalization of modern sovereign nation-states. Contemporary debates concerning nationality, nationalism, citizenship, and hyphenated identities are engaged. The authors recount the making of political culture in the American nation-state and look at the processes of internal colonialism in the American experience, examining how major ethnic, sectarian, racial, and other distinctions arose and congealed into social and cultural categories. The book concludes with a study of the Holocaust, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the political cultures of violation in post-colonial Rwanda and in racialized ethno-political conflicts in various parts of the world. Struggles over legitimacy in nation-building and state-building are at the heart of this new take on the important role of political culture.

Democracy and Political Ignorance

Democracy and Political Ignorance PDF Author: Ilya Somin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804789312
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
One of the biggest problems with modern democracy is that most of the public is usually ignorant of politics and government. Often, many people understand that their votes are unlikely to change the outcome of an election and don't see the point in learning much about politics. This may be rational, but it creates a nation of people with little political knowledge and little ability to objectively evaluate what they do know. In Democracy and Political Ignorance, Ilya Somin mines the depths of ignorance in America and reveals the extent to which it is a major problem for democracy. Somin weighs various options for solving this problem, arguing that political ignorance is best mitigated and its effects lessened by decentralizing and limiting government. Somin provocatively argues that people make better decisions when they choose what to purchase in the market or which state or local government to live under, than when they vote at the ballot box, because they have stronger incentives to acquire relevant information and to use it wisely.

The Wealth of a Nation

The Wealth of a Nation PDF Author: C. Donald Johnson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190865911
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
The United States is entering a period of profound uncertainty in the world political economy--an uncertainty which is threatening the liberal economic order that its own statesmen created at the end of the Second World War. The storm surrounding this threat has been ignited by an issue that has divided Americans since the nation's founding: international trade. Is America better off under a liberal trade regime, or would protectionism be more beneficial? The issue divided Alexander Hamilton from Thomas Jefferson, the agrarian south from the industrializing north, and progressives from robber barons in the Gilded Age. In our own times, it has pitted anti-globalization activists and manufacturing workers against both multinational firms and the bulk of the economics profession. Ambassador C. Donald Johnson's The Wealth of a Nation is an authoritative history of the politics of trade in America from the Revolution to the Trump era. Johnson begins by charting the rise and fall of the U.S. protectionist system from the time of Alexander Hamilton to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930. Challenges to protectionist dominance were frequent and often serious, but the protectionist regime only faded in the wake of the Great Depression. After World War II, America was the primary architect of the liberal rules-based economic order that has dominated the globe for over half a century. Recent years, however, have seen a swelling anti-free trade movement that casts the postwar liberal regime as anti-worker, pro-capital, and--in Donald Trump's view--even anti-American. In this riveting history, Johnson emphasizes the benefits of the postwar free trade regime, but focuses in particular on how it has attempted to advance workers' rights. This analysis of the evolution of American trade policy stresses the critical importance of the multilateral trading system's survival and defines the central political struggle between business and labor in measuring the wealth of a nation.

A Nation Under Our Feet

A Nation Under Our Feet PDF Author: Steven Hahn
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 9780674017658
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 610

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Book Description
Emphasizing the role of kinship, labor, and networks in the African American community, the author retraces six generations of black struggles since the end of the Civil War, revealing a "nation" under construction.