These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace : : The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey / / Brendan McConville.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: McConville, Brendan,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2019]; ©1999
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.) :; 9 drawings, 10 maps, 8 halftones

During the century preceding the American Revolution, bitter conflicts raged in New Jersey over control of the land tenure system. This book examines how the struggle between yeoman farmers and landed gentry shaped public life in the colony. At once a cultural, political, and social history, it carefully delineates the beliefs of rioters and upholders of order, both of whom wanted control over land.Brendan J. McConville describes how changes in provincial society—affecting politics and government, religious life, economic conditions, gender relations, and ethnic composition—led farmers to resort to violence as a means of settling property disputes. He examines the disagreements in light of competing conceptions of property held by separate landowning classes, differences in the legal and political traditions of British and Dutch colonists, and local conditions unique to New Jersey. He also considers the ways in which the lack of a shared perception of deference among Puritan, Dutch, and multi-ethnic farmers helped foster insurrection.According to McConville, the social transformations brought into sharp focus by the agrarian unrest ultimately undermined imperial control and encouraged the creation of a new American identity. His book—the recipient of the Driscoll Prize from the New Jersey Historical Commission prior to its publication—is an eagerly awaited account of a colony that has seldom been seriously examined by colonial historians and a challenge to those scholars to rethink commonly accepted arguments about the development of the United States.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- A Note on Terms -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace -- Part One: Origins -- 1. Violent Origins -- 2. The Enlightenment s First Offensive: The Eighteenth-Century Proprietors and the Intellectual Origins of Their Land Claims -- 3. Communities and Cultures: A Portrait -- 4. The Faith of the People -- 5. Snakes and Ladders: The Competition for New Jerseys Resources -- Part Two: Conflict -- 6. A Cage without Bars: Anglicization and the Breakdown of Order, 1730 -1745 -- 7. The People against the Government -- 8. The Problem with Property -- 9. Deference and Defiance: A Tale of Two Men -- 10. The Problems of Social Healing -- Part Three: To the Revolution -- 11. Refinement and Resentment: The Transformations of the 1760s -- 12. "These Audacious Insults to Government": From Rioters to Revolutionaries -- Notes -- Essay on Manuscript Sources -- Index