New from Harvard University Press:
Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution (October 2015), Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (University of Southern California). From the Press:
In the decades after the United
States formally declared its independence in 1776, Americans struggled
to gain recognition of their new republic and their rights as citizens.
None had to fight harder than the nation’s seamen, whose labor took them
far from home and deep into the Atlantic world.
Citizen Sailors
tells the story of how their efforts to become American at sea in the
midst of war and revolution created the first national, racially
inclusive model of United States citizenship.
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal immerses us in sailors’ pursuit of safe
passage through the ocean world during the turbulent age of revolution.
Challenged by British press-gangs and French privateersmen, who
considered them Britons and rejected their citizenship claims, American
seamen demanded that the U.S. government take action to protect them. In
response, federal leaders created a system of national identification
documents for sailors and issued them to tens of thousands of mariners
of all races—nearly a century before such credentials came into wider
use.
Citizenship for American sailors was strikingly ahead of its time: it
marked the federal government’s most extensive foray into defining the
boundaries of national belonging until the Civil War era, and the
government’s most explicit recognition of black Americans’ equal
membership as well. This remarkable system succeeded in safeguarding
seafarers, but it fell victim to rising racism and nativism after 1815.
Not until the twentieth century would the United States again embrace
such an inclusive vision of American nationhood.
A few blurbs:
“Citizen Sailors is the first book to
explore how sailors were crucial to definitions of U.S. citizenship
during and after the War for Independence because of their central role
in national politics and because of the peculiar problems in
ascertaining their nationality. Engagingly written and marshaling
terrific new evidence, this important book will alter our understanding
of the American Revolution, the Atlantic world, and the dynamics of
national identity.”—Joyce E. Chaplin
“With erudition and eloquence, Citizen Sailors
tells the remarkable story of the federal government’s efforts to
protect the welfare of seafaring Americans, doing so without regard to
region, class or, surprisingly, race. Showcasing maritime history at its
best, the result is a tour de force that will appeal to general readers
and specialists alike.”—Eliga Gould
More information is available
here.
