The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865 0691179999, 9780691179995

Table of contents :
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