Turning the World Upside Down: The War of American Independence and the Problem of Empire

(Hardback)

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York illustrates how Revolutionary Americans founded an empire as well as a nation, and how they saw the two as inseparable. While they had rejected Britain and denounced power politics, they would engage in realpolitik and mimic Britain as they built their empire of liberty. England had become Great Britain as an imperial nation, and Britons believed that their empire promised much to all fortunate enough to be part of it. Colonial Americans shared that belief and sense of pride. But as clashing interests and changing identities put them at odds with the prevailing view in London, dissident colonists displaced Anglo-American exceptionalism with their own sense of place and purpose, an American vision of manifest destiny. Revolutionary Americans wanted to believe that creating a new nation meant that they had left behind the old problems of empire. What they discovered was that the basic problems of empire unavoidably came with them into the new union. They too found it difficult to build a union in the midst of rival interests and competing ideologies. Ironically, they learned that they could only succeed by aping the balance of power politics used by Britain that they had only recently decried.

Reviews

[S]ucceeds in providing a cogent narrative of the imperial precursors to the Revolution and of major military and diplomatic developments in the early United States....This book is best read as a guide to the ways military power shaped the imperial course of the American Revolution and the early diplomatic relationships of the United States....[a] useful diplomatic narrative and military strategy analysis of the American Revolution.-The Historian
[T]his is a thought-provoking work that makes some interesting points....Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.-Choice
[W]ill change how we teach and think about American history. In fewer than two hundred pages, York has recast American history into a global context without losing sight of the individual actors who shaped it.-The Journal of American History
York illustrates how revolutionary Americans founded an empire as well as a nation, and how they saw the two as inseparable.-Coastlines
"Succeeds in providing a cogent narrative of the imperial precursors to the Revolution and of major military and diplomatic developments in the early United States....This book is best read as a guide to the ways military power shaped the imperial course of the American Revolution and the early diplomatic relationships of the United States....a useful diplomatic narrative and military strategy analysis of the American Revolution."-The Historian
"This is a thought-provoking work that makes some interesting points....Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."-Choice
"Will change how we teach and think about American history. In fewer than two hundred pages, York has recast American history into a global context without losing sight of the individual actors who shaped it."-The Journal of American History
"[T]his is a thought-provoking work that makes some interesting points....Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."-Choice
"[W]ill change how we teach and think about American history. In fewer than two hundred pages, York has recast American history into a global context without losing sight of the individual actors who shaped it."-The Journal of American History
"York illustrates how revolutionary Americans founded an empire as well as a nation, and how they saw the two as inseparable."-Coastlines
"[S]ucceeds in providing a cogent narrative of the imperial precursors to the Revolution and of major military and diplomatic developments in the early United States....This book is best read as a guide to the ways military power shaped the imperial course of the American Revolution and the early diplomatic relationships of the United States....[a] useful diplomatic narrative and military strategy analysis of the American Revolution."-The Historian

Author Bio

NEIL LONGLEY YORK is Professor of History and History Department Chair at Brigham Young University. He also serves as Karl G. Maeser Professor of General Education. Over the past 25 years he has written widely about Revolutionary America, including the forthcoming book Maxims for a Patriot: Josiah Quincy Jr. and His Commonplace Book.