Abstract

American Feeling: Political Passions and Affective Identity in the Revolutionary Era, 1754-1815

by

Russell L. Weber

Doctor of Philosophy in History

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Mark A. Peterson, Chair

This dissertation explores the relationship between emotions and politics in the early-modern Atlantic world, specifically interrogating the relationship between affective rhetoric, popular violence, and political identity in British America throughout its long revolutionary era. Emotions, it demonstrates, were essential political tools by which the inhabitants of British America forged bonds of fellow-feeling, and thereby coalesced into shared identities, both imperial and national. Further, it explores the ways in which these affective, often violent rhetorics distilled into an exclusionary, patriotic ethos. Revolutionary America’s affective rhetorics facilitated the transformation of French colonists, Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, British regulars, radical insurgents, imperial loyalists, antifederalists, federalists, and republicans into political others, who often were denied the rights of subjecthood within the British empire and the rights of citizenship within the United States. This dissertation excavates a new political history of America’s revolutionary era, one which prioritizes the power of feelings.

The first two chapters explore how the subjects of George II, and then George III, transposed those affects traditionally reserved for their imperial enemies – French soldiers and Indigenous peoples – onto British regulars and the agents of Parliament. This affective transference intensified the diversity of sentiment that already had existed among British Americans since the earliest years of colonization, and thereby destabilized their transatlantic imperial identity. The third and fourth chapters illustrate the role of treason, betrayal, and patriotism in severing the tethers of imperial affection between the subjects of the British empire. British America’s civil war for independence further marginalized Indigenous peoples, enslaved Africans, and imperial loyalists, and thereby birthed the United States. The final two chapters examine the difficulty that America’s revolutionaries had in forging a coherent, national identity. The ratification of a new, federal constitution and the contested policies of the Washington administration divided, rather than united, the citizens of America’s early republic. By 1797, the United States had succumbed to intense partisan discord. America’s burgeoning disunity arose not simply from ideological disagreements, but rather from the impassioned discourse with which its citizens refuted, rebuked, and condemned their political opponents. The conclusion demonstrates that the United States did not reforge a cohesive national identity until its impassioned, patriotic victory in the War of 1812. This dissertation searches for the origins of America’s emotional republic and finds it within the bonds of affection that tethered British America to its once beloved constitution, empire, and king.