Historiography Of The Revolution Reading Notes

• language of shared experiences
  • radically inclusive strucutres of rsistance
  • creating an imagines national community
    • unanticipated at the start of the crisis!
• had to learn to trust eachother
  • mutual education -> trust

People transalated personal sacrifice into revolutionary ideology.

• beginning with idealogy leads to discounting social conditions
  • revolutionares stood to lose the most! how were they energized?
• pragmatic arguement about studying hist.. if we raise these revolutionaries to heroes with moral superiority, then it doesn't have much significance to us
  • uh, ok. very cool.
• we have our own ability to transform political society through collective imagination

• it changed!
• consumer revolution
  • happened in the middle of the 18th century
    • imports were polittixized

    • shared range of good allowed common ground to communicate about common experience

      • THIS what was gave the colonists the shared experience, which provided the cultural resources required to start the protests

      goods became the foundation of trust
      

• invented the consumer boycott
  • first instance? I doubt that frankly
• boycott movement let people normally not allowed to be involed in politics to voice opinons? to participate
  • generated an entire new form of politics
  • woman and poor had surge of empowerment
• tom highlights: egalitarian potential of this earlier movement
  • even though once they got independence the leaders were like "actully,"
• non-importers allowed american people to reinvent the entire polivitical culture

"revolutionary politics of pursuing happiness"

how shared consumer experience faciliated new forms of collective political action ~tom

• imagined national community as response to oppression
• argues: we should avoid the "discorvery of common cause" argument,
  • because it's about some divine luck that defys close analysis? that doesnt mean we should avoid it, but ok.
• stopping for now, quarter way through page 8 *
• continuing!

for which we would choose to live, or dare to die.

• everyone had narrow-evolded world views in their own communities?
• "invention of identity" collective act of self-discovery that happened over a decade of troubles with great britain
• the sugar act: seemed so bad that it defies explanation
  • ie. how tf?
• colonies beleived that britain was wallowing in welth and luxery
  • which they were
• wait, no.. BRITAIN believed that the colonies were wallowing in luxery
• end of page ten.
• britain had 'gross' misrepresentations of american culture
• benjamin franklin was angry.
• baldwin argues:
  • economic leveling in colonies stimulated status competiotion
    • this competition was primarily done through consumer goods, bought from britain.
    • this was how they sorted in an open society?
    • people must "make a show" more than they do in england, says baldwin
• the narrative goes:
  • england send the best of the best soldiers and welthy sons over,
  • colonies displayed riches to try and impress that were our of the leuge of reality
  • soldiers went back and informed well-connect friends in england about the "affluent consmers" in the colonies.
• this was why the parliment taxed the collonies in the first place! that's the point.
  • this was what made the sugar tax and etc seem resanable to the in-debt england.
• imbued goods with symbolic meaning
• subscription rolls
  • allowed for recoriding of the popular will
  • people ineligable to vote in the actual system were allowed in the rolls
  • the number of people on these rolls allowed them to say "we speak for the people"

the spirit of nationalism was as much a cause as a result of revolution

empire of goods

:CUSTOM_ID: strength-out-of-dependence-strategies-of-consumer-resistance-in-an-empire-of-goods

• imported goods provide powerful political leverage
• franklin argued that all the imported good were not nessasay
  • didnt need em or could make themselves
• colonies willing to forgo the 'luxery' of fashion was a bold concept
  • used to be the pride to indulge in the fashions manguactered by great britain
  • changed to wear old cloathes over and over until they can make new ones themselves
• they repealed the stamp act! franklin had a large part in it, and was regonized as such.
• not easy to give up all these nicitites!
• rhetoric of "save your money and you will save your country"
• stamp act shattered the shared british identity
• end, pg 34 *
• colonia fantasy that america had freinds in endglad was started
• linked the concept of ameria manufacturing to colinal independence
  • but they didnt anticipate the creation of an entire new republic!
• even after repealing stamp act the seeds of revolution and ideas of freedom had already been placed
• were convinced: english needed the colonies more than they needed the english
  • due to the colonies consumption of goods
    • thus, britain cant just use their warships and overpower them. diff kind of power
• the whole 'freedom means no debt' idea started
• communicated and synced up across vast distance with newspapers?
  • uh, pahplets? not newspapers?
• social environment of: imported goods symbolize the burden of colonial dependence
• people had role of woman to maintain state of luxery rejection?

"forging new links with distant strangers who understood, now more than ever, how thinking about goods invited ordinary men and woman also to think about politics.

%%## making lists – taking names: the politicization of everyday life%%