The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865

Description

A groundbreaking history of early America that shows how Boston built and sustained an independent city-state in New England before being folded into the United States In the vaunted annals of America's founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary "city upon a hill" and the "cradle of liberty" for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clich�s, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston's overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a pathbreaking and brilliant new history of early America. Following Boston's development over three centuries, Mark Peterson discusses how this self-governing Atlantic trading center began as a refuge from Britain's Stuart monarchs and how--through its bargain with slavery and ratification of the Constitution--it would tragically lose integrity and autonomy as it became incorporated into the greater United States. Drawing from vast archives, and featuring unfamiliar figures alongside well-known ones, such as John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and John Adams, Peterson explores Boston's origins in sixteenth-century utopian ideals, its founding and expansion into the hinterland of New England, and the growth of its distinctive political economy, with ties to the West Indies and southern Europe. By the 1700s, Boston was at full strength, with wide Atlantic trading circuits and cultural ties, both within and beyond Britain's empire. After the cataclysmic Revolutionary War, "Bostoners" aimed to negotiate a relationship with the American confederation, but through the next century, the new United States unraveled Boston's regional reign. The fateful decision to ratify the Constitution undercut its power, as Southern planters and slave owners dominated national politics and corroded the city-state's vision of a common good for all. Peeling away the layers of myth surrounding a revered city, The City-State of Boston offers a startlingly fresh understanding of America's history. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Book I. Render unto Caesar Chapter 1. Boston Emerges: From Hiding Place to Hub of the Puritan Atlantic The Disappointments of Silver and Gold The Insufficiency of Fish and Furs Wampum Troubles The West Indian Solution: Triangle Trade for a Settler Society Trouble with Trade: Atlantic Commerce and Commonwealth Values Atlantic Competition and the Challenge of Diplomacy The Birth of the Commonwealth, 1643 Chapter 2. The World in a Shilling: Building the City-State’s Political Economy Two Dowries: Boston and Potosí The Big Problem of Small Change The Trouble with Pieces of Eight From Spanish Silver to Boston Shillings The Virtues of Boston’s Shillings Captain Hull, “Entreprenour" Financing King Philip’s War Dealing in the Spoils of War Independence and Allegiance in the Land of the Shilling Chapter 3. Boston Pays Tribute: The Political Trials of an Expanding City-State Absorbing the Eastern Frontier Restoration, Rendition, and Tribute Fending Off the Crown’s Agents Financing the Colony’s Agents The Lure of the “Wracks" Fighting the Dominion’s Kleptocracy The Apotheosis of William Phips: Silver Makes a Bostonian From Silver to Paper: Moving the “Mountains of Peru" Book II. The Selling of Joseph Chapter 4. Theopolis Americana: Boston and the Protestant International Samuel Sewall and The Selling of Joseph Jonathan Belcher’s Wanderjahr The Local Politics of Universal Truth Cotton Mather’s Journey to Pietism Theopolis Americana Chapter 5. “God Deliver Me and Mine from the Government of Soldiers" Boston and Acadia: Nos Amis, les Ennemis An Accidental Bostonian: Paul Mascarene A Soldier by Convenience: William Shirley Something Shocking: The Ordeal of Abijah Willard The Government of Soldiers and The Selling of Joseph Chapter 6. Cutting Off the Circulation: Phillis Wheatley and Boston’s Revolutionary Crisis Locating Phillis Wheatley in Theopolis Americana Phillis Wheatley’s Connections: The Making of an Eighteenth-Century Celebrity Circulation and Salvation in Wheatley’s British Empire Circulation Interrupted: The Destruction of Phillis Wheatley’s World Chapter 7. John Adams, Boston’s Diplomat: Apostle of Balance in a World Turned Upside Down The Limited Reach of John Adams’s Connections John Adams Reads History The Search for Stability within Crisis The Massachusetts Constitution: Restoring Balance to the Kingless Commonwealth Shays’s Rebellion: The Massachusetts Regulation of 1786–87 Diplomat to the American Republics: Fear of the “Eternal Yoke" International Disappointments: Constitutions in Need of Defense Book III. A New King over Egypt Chapter 8. The Failure of Federalism: Boston’s French Years Federalism and federalism Fisher Ames and the Frenchified Politics of the American Confederation The French Revolution and Greater Virginia Ames, the French Revolution, and the Rise of Bonaparte Josiah Quincy and the Lure of Secession The Embargo Louisiana and the Breaking of the Federal Compact The War of 1812 and Pressure for Separation “A GREAT PAMPHLET” and the Demise of Federative Politics Chapter 9. From Merchant Princes to Lords of the Loom: Remaking Boston’s Political Economy France Comes to Boston, and Boston Goes to France French Commerce and the House of Perkins Property and Theft: Industrial Espionage and the Rise of the Mills Lords of the Loom and Lords of the Lash Black Dan’s Dilemma Chapter 10. On the German Road to Athens: Boston at a Crossroads The Lure of Germany A Southern Interlude Göttingen Byron, Goethe, and Greece Literal Greeks: Edward Everett, Samuel Gridley Howe, and the Greek Revolution Figurative Greeks: German Reform in the Athens of America Philanthropy and Its Limits in the Age of Cotton Die Unbedingten: The Unconditionals in Boston Chapter 11. Dismembering the Body: Boston’s Spatial Fragmentation Separating City from State and Citizen from City Defortification: Dismantling the City’s “Honor" Immigration and Ethnic Segregation in the Corporate City The Great Hunger and the Collapse of Christian Charity Chapter 12. “There Was a Boston Once" “Extravasat Blood”: Racial Segregation in the Corporate City “The Body Comprehends Men and Women of Every Shade and Color" A Phrenological Solution? Violent Renditions Conclusion. The Making of US History and the Disappearance of the City-State of Boston Coda. Looking Forward to Looking Backward Notes Illustration Credits Index Color Plates