Bodies Politic: Negotiating Race in the American North, 1730-1830

by John Wood Sweet

Overview

Finalist for the 2004 Frederick Douglass Prize

A century after the Pilgrims' landing, the ongoing interactions of conquered Indians, English settlers, and enslaved Africans in southern New England had produced a closely interwoven, though radically divided, colonial society. In Bodies Politic, John Wood Sweet argues that the coming together of these diverse peoples profoundly shaped the character of colonial New England, the meanings of the Revolution in the North and the making of American democracy.

Grounded in a remarkable array of original sources—from censuses and newspapers todiaries, archival images, correspondence, and court records—this innovative and intellectually sweeping work excavates the dramatic confrontations and subtle negotiations by which Indians, Africans, and Anglo-Americans defined their respective places in early New England. Citizenship, as Sweet reveals, was defined in meeting houses as well as in court houses, in bedrooms as well as on battlefields, in medical experiments and cheap jokes as well as on the streets.

The cultural conflicts and racial divisions of colonial society not only survived the Revolution but actually became more rigid and absolute in the early years of the Republic. Why did conversion to Christianity fail to establish cultural common ground? Why did the abolition of slavery fail to produce a more egalitarian society? How did people of color define their places within—or outside of—the new American nation? Bodies Politic reveals how the racial legacy of early New England shaped the emergence of the nineteenth-century North—and continues, even to this day, to shape all our lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801873782
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	12/23/2003
Series:	Early America: History, Context, Culture
Pages:	504
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.29(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

John Wood Sweet is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: After Origins
Part I: Coming Together
Chapter 1. Common Ground
Chapter 2. Negotiating Slavery
Chapter 3. Strange Christians
Part II: Living Together
Chapter 4. Strange Flesh
Chapter 5. Men of Arms
Chapter 6. Negotiating Freedom
Part III: Moving Apart
Chapter 7. Conceiving Race
Chapter 8. Manifest Destinies
Chapter 9. Hard Scrabble
Epilogue: Democracy in America
Notes
A Note on Sources
Index

What People are Saying About This

Christine Leigh Heyrman

Bodies Politic is brilliant and eloquent -- a refreshingly original analysis of how the legacy of colonialism shaped the emergence of a democratic nation.

— Christine Leigh HeyrmanUniversity of Delaware and, author of Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt

Joseph A. Conforti

Joseph A. Conforti, University of Southern Maine
Ambitious, detailed, and provocative, this is the best multicultural history of early New England I have read.

Daniel K. Richter

Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania
In subtle and ingenious ways, Bodies Politic recovers the textures of real people doing real things of African Americans, Native Americans, and Euro-Americans interacting to create the racial formation of the early nineteenth-century North.

Nell Irvin Painter

Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University
John Sweet presents New England as it was: a multiracial and thoroughly conflicted scene. Sex and humor play leading roles in this fine, fresh depiction of the most American of American regions.

From the Publisher

Bodies Politic is brilliant and eloquent—a refreshingly original analysis of how the legacy of colonialism shaped the emergence of a democratic nation.
—Christine Leigh HeyrmanUniversity of Delaware and , author of Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt

This book recasts our vision of early New England. Informed by the insights of post-colonial theory and based on prodigious archival research, it offers a bracing challenge to the current historiography of early America. In the wake of Bodies Politic, it will be impossible to think of New England as a place unmarked by difference and exempt from the nation's original sins of slavery and racism.
—Robert Gross, University of Connecticut

John Sweet presents New England as it was: a multiracial and thoroughly conflicted scene. Sex and humor play leading roles in this fine, fresh depiction of the most American of American regions.
—Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University

In subtle and ingenious ways, Bodies Politic recovers the textures of real people doing real things—of African Americans, Native Americans, and Euro-Americans interacting to create the racial formation of the early nineteenth-century North.
—Daniel K. Richter, University of Pennsylvania

Ambitious, detailed, and provocative, this is the best multicultural history of early New England I have read.
—Joseph A. Conforti, University of Southern Maine

Christine Leigh HeyrmanUniversity of Delaware and

Bodies Politic is brilliant and eloquent—a refreshingly original analysis of how the legacy of colonialism shaped the emergence of a democratic nation.

— Christine Leigh HeyrmanUniversity of Delaware and, author of Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt

Christine Leigh Heyman

Christine Leigh Heyrman, University of Delaware and author of Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt
Bodies Politic is brilliant and eloquent a refreshingly original analysis of how the legacy of colonialism shaped the emergence of a democratic nation.

Robert Gross

Robert Gross, University of Connecticut
This book recasts our vision of early New England. Informed by the insights of post-colonial theory and based on prodigious archival research, it offers a bracing challenge to the current historiography of early America. In the wake of Bodies Politic, it will be impossible to think of New England as a place unmarked by difference and exempt from the nation's original sins of slavery and racism.

Editorial Reviews

Superb . . . A useful addition to the literature about people of color in [New England] . . . The major strength of Bodies Politic is that it is based on extensive archival research and a wide reading of secondary literature on Africans and Native Americans. It also presents a significant challenge to hegemonic interpretations that are finally beginning to be addressed by colonial historians . . . Sweet's yeomanlike work should find a receptive audience among historians, graduate students, and intellectually sophisticated members of the reading public.
—Vernon J. Williams, Jr., History: Reviews of New Books

This superb study explores the origins of that ironic definition of democracy as 'universal freedom and racial inequality' . . . Sophisticated and engaging . . . Highly recommended.
—Choice

A fascinating picture of the interactions between English settlers, African slaves, and Native Americans in New England during the colonial era and early Republic.
—Catherine Molineux, Common-Place

It is difficult to imagine that anyone interested in the ways race was produced and articulated in early America and woven into every fiber of the national fabric would not depend upon and be grateful for Sweet's work.
—Rebecca Blevins Faery, New England Quarterly

An ambitious and persuasive account of the ways that the political inclusion of some groups and not others connected the colonial era through the Revolution to the early American republic.
—Serena Zabin, Journal of American History

At once detailed and sweeping, social and political, archival and synthetic . . . This book is the best application yet to early American history of postcolonial theory.
—Bruce Dain, American Historical Review

Sweet's brilliant micro-history of the tangled web of race relations in the North dynamically juxtaposes Native American, African American and Anglo-American experiences through a series of case studies.
—Alan Rice, Journal of American Studies

Sweet's regional history points us away from northern exceptionalism and toward a more honest appraisal of colonialism and its legacies as a national phenomenon . . . Bodies Politic truly is the best 'multicultural' history of early New England yet to appear not least because of Sweet's refusal to equate race and culture.
—David Waldstreicher, Reviews in American History

He emphasizes that the public was never simply Euro-American, and that categories for, and uses of, racial identity emerged out of complicated socio-cultural negotiations and changed with time and personal background. Bodies Politic is remarkably successful in grounding these assertions in detailed, well-told reconstructions of individual lives and community events.
—Joshua Piker, History Compass

Sweet offers scholars a capacious history of race in the North and a primer for thinking about the relationship between 'cultures' and identities . . . Bodies Politic is deeply researched and richly detailed.
—Catherine Kelly, William and Mary Quarterly

Superb . . . A useful addition to the literature about people of color in [New England] . . . The major strength of Bodies Politic is that it is based on extensive archival research and a wide reading of secondary literature on Africans and Native Americans.
—History: Reviews of New Books

From the Publisher

At once detailed and sweeping, social and political, archival and synthetic . . . This book is the best application yet to early American history of postcolonial theory.

American Historical Review - Bruce Dain

Superb . . . A useful addition to the literature about people of color in [New England] . . . The major strength of Bodies Politic is that it is based on extensive archival research and a wide reading of secondary literature on Africans and Native Americans. It also presents a significant challenge to hegemonic interpretations that are finally beginning to be addressed by colonial historians . . . Sweet's yeomanlike work should find a receptive audience among historians, graduate students, and intellectually sophisticated members of the reading public.

History: Reviews of New Books - Vernon J. Williams

Sweet's brilliant micro-history of the tangled web of race relations in the North dynamically juxtaposes Native American, African American and Anglo-American experiences through a series of case studies.

Journal of American Studies - Alan Rice

He emphasizes that the public was never simply Euro-American, and that categories for, and uses of, racial identity emerged out of complicated socio-cultural negotiations and changed with time and personal background. Bodies Politic is remarkably successful in grounding these assertions in detailed, well-told reconstructions of individual lives and community events.

History Compass - Joshua Piker

Sweet's regional history points us away from northern exceptionalism and toward a more honest appraisal of colonialism and its legacies as a national phenomenon . . . Bodies Politic truly is the best 'multicultural' history of early New England yet to appear not least because of Sweet's refusal to equate race and culture.

Reviews in American History - David Waldstreicher

A fascinating picture of the interactions between English settlers, African slaves, and Native Americans in New England during the colonial era and early Republic.

Common-Place - Catherine Molineux

It is difficult to imagine that anyone interested in the ways race was produced and articulated in early America and woven into every fiber of the national fabric would not depend upon and be grateful for Sweet's work.

New England Quarterly - Rebecca Blevins Faery

Superb . . . A useful addition to the literature about people of color in [New England] . . . The major strength of Bodies Politic is that it is based on extensive archival research and a wide reading of secondary literature on Africans and Native Americans.

History: Reviews of New Books

An ambitious and persuasive account of the ways that the political inclusion of some groups and not others connected the colonial era through the Revolution to the early American republic.

Journal of American History - Serena Zabin

This superb study explores the origins of that ironic definition of democracy as 'universal freedom and racial inequality' . . . Sophisticated and engaging . . . Highly recommended.

Choice

Sweet offers scholars a capacious history of race in the North and a primer for thinking about the relationship between 'cultures' and identities . . . Bodies Politic is deeply researched and richly detailed.

William and Mary Quarterly - Catherine Kelly

Sweet offers scholars a capacious history of race in the North and a primer for thinking about the relationship between 'cultures' and identities... Bodies Politic is deeply researched and richly detailed.

— Catherine Kelly

William and Mary Quarterly

He emphasizes that the public was never simply Euro-American, and that categories for, and uses of, racial identity emerged out of complicated socio-cultural negotiations and changed with time and personal background. Bodies Politic is remarkably successful in grounding these assertions in detailed, well-told reconstructions of individual lives and community events.

— Joshua Piker

History Compass

Sweet's regional history points us away from northern exceptionalism and toward a more honest appraisal of colonialism and its legacies as a national phenomenon... Bodies Politic truly is the best 'multicultural' history of early New England yet to appear not least because of Sweet's refusal to equate race and culture.

— David Waldstreicher

Reviews in American History

Sweet's brilliant micro-history of the tangled web of race relations in the North dynamically juxtaposes Native American, African American and Anglo-American experiences through a series of case studies.

— Alan Rice

Journal of American Studies

At once detailed and sweeping, social and political, archival and synthetic... This book is the best application yet to early American history of postcolonial theory.

— Bruce Dain

American Historical Review

An ambitious and persuasive account of the ways that the political inclusion of some groups and not others connected the colonial era through the Revolution to the early American republic.

— Serena Zabin

Journal of American History

It is difficult to imagine that anyone interested in the ways race was produced and articulated in early America and woven into every fiber of the national fabric would not depend upon and be grateful for Sweet's work.

— Rebecca Blevins Faery

New England Quarterly

A fascinating picture of the interactions between English settlers, African slaves, and Native Americans in New England during the colonial era and early Republic.

— Catherine Molineux

Common-Place

Superb... A useful addition to the literature about people of color in [New England]... The major strength of Bodies Politic is that it is based on extensive archival research and a wide reading of secondary literature on Africans and Native Americans.

History: Reviews of New Books