Description
Book SynopsisTea Sets and Tyranny offers a political history of politeness in early America, from its origins in the late seventeenth century to its remaking in the age of the Revolution.
Trade Review"Deeply researched and engagingly written,
Tea Sets and Tyranny explores the relationship between ideas about power and politeness, a social value that celebrated restraint and refinement. Ranging from Indian agents to colonial governors to plantation mistresses, Steven Bullock's fascinating cast of characters takes us into a world in which unfettered personal and political power yields to the practices of civility. A provocative and persuasive reinterpretation of British subjects as they became American citizens through the pursuit of politeness." * Mary Kelley, University of Michigan *
"In a series of fascinating cameos, Steven Bullock illuminates the rise and fall of the eighteenth-century culture of politeness, benevolence, and sympathy that reshaped a politics of violent hierarchy into one of restrained moderation. His erudite account of the role of emotion in the governing styles of central figures in the Anglo-American gentry will stand with the most evocative work that we have on power and personality in this formative epoch." * John Brooke, The Ohio State University *
"Drawing on a fascinating array of life stories, Steven C. Bullock examines the hidden patterns behind a wide range of social and political interactions in colonial British America. More than a code of elite social norms, 'politeness' expressed a deeply embedded set of cultural assumptions about colonial hierarchies of race, gender, and political authority.
Tea Sets and Tyranny provides a whole new context for understanding the underlying forces that contributed to the coming of the American Revolution." * Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University *
