National Identity and the Agrarian Republic The Transatlantic Commerce of Ideas between America and France (1750–1830)

With a few exceptions, historiography has paid little attention to the impact of French economic thought during the American Revolution, focusing instead on the Revolution?s links with Britain. This book outlines how, from the mid-eighteenth to the early-nineteenth century, the political and social dimension of French economic thought, and particularly of Physiocracy, spurred American Republicans to a radical shaping of American agrarian ideology. Such a perspective allows for a reconsideration of several questions that lie at the heart of contemporary historiographic debate: the connection between politics and economics; the meaning of republicanism; the foundations of representation; the role of Europe in the Atlantic world; and the interaction between national histories and global context. In particular, the research methodology adopted here makes it possible to reconstruct how American national identity, conceived as an expression of society in economic terms, emerged through a cosmopolitan way of thinking focused on the uniqueness of the new state.

Introduction; Chapter 1 What is an American? St John de Crèvecoeur Between Agrarian Myth and National Identity; Chapter 2 Republicanism and Agrarian Democracy; Chapter 3 The Cosmopolitan Vocation of the Agrarian Model; Chapter 4 The Farmer as Common Man; Chapter 5 The Agrarian Ideology Between Economic Theory and Political Struggle; Chapter 6 Channels for Disseminating the Economic Culture; Chapter 7 The English Jacobins; Chapter 8 A Long Eighteenth Century; Chapter 101 Conclusion;

Manuela Albertone is Professor of Early Modern History in the Department of Historical Studies, University of Turin, Italy. Her works focus on eighteenth-century French and American history, and the relationship between politics and economics. She is particularly interested in the economic origins of political representation.