Description
Book SynopsisHe locates an increasingly articulate and refined sense of simplicity and virtue among these visitors and a gradual disappearance of their feelings of awe and inferiority.
Trade ReviewBeing American in Europe confirms and provides a new perspective on older scholarship. -- Timothy Mason Roberts Journal of American History Kilbride's book offers a lucidly written and valuable contribution to our understanding of the relationship between the United States and Europe, and the development of American identity in this period. -- Eileen Ka-May Cheng American Historical Review Kilbride has given us an impressive work of intellectual and cultural history that will prove key to understanding the creation of American identity and its sources. -- Charlene Boyer Lewis Journal of the Early Republic Daniel Kilbride's study provides much needed insight into an aspect of American history that is relatively unexplored. -- Andrew P. White Rocky Mountain Review Being American in Europe is a valuable contribution to the literature because it pulls a diverse array of travelers (many of whom are already well-known to historians in other contexts) into one analysis in order to reveal the fundamental questions of national identity that travel to Europe posed. Like the insights gained by the travelers he studies, Kilbride's book helps us better understand the United States as an emerging nation in the Atlantic world. -- Will B. Mackintosh Register of the Kentucky Historical Society The wide range of sources Kilbride has explored is a central virtue of this book... Kilbride has brought readers into wide-open conversations among earlier Americans about Europe and the United States. -- Thomas Bender Journal of Southern History With imposing feats of archival labour that do honour to the breadth of his subject, Daniel Kilbride's Being American in Europe, 1750-1860 offers new insight into the ways American identity was formed through European travel in the Antebellum Era. Countless little-known diaries and letters from ordinary travellers combine, like the tiles of a mosaic, to show patterns of response to the European encounter that are usually difficult to see. Rich in anecdote and insights into the period, Being American in Europe is a major contribution to the study of the meanings Europe has held for the United States. -- William L. Coleman Journal of Transatlantic Studies Kilbride offers useful discussions of the changing realities of travel over the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century... Kilbride should be commended for illuminating and analyzing these often obscure texts. -- Lawrence A. Peskin History A nuanced and balanced analysis... Promises to be the go-to volume for historians seeking a lively and synthetic account of U.S. overseas interactions from the colonial period to the U.S. Civil War. -- Stephen Tuffnell Reviews in American History
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Routes of Four American Travelers in Europe
Introduction
1. "English association," 1750–1783
2. "The blows my republican principles receive are forcible," 1783–1820
3. "What we Anglo-Americans understand by the significant word comfort," 1821–1850
4. "The manifold advantages resulting from our glorious Union," 1840s–1861
Conclusion
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
