Americans in the post-Revolutionary period teetered between the
promise of a glorious future as an independent nation and the cultural
insecurity created by their colonial past. My paper, drawn from my dissertation
project, explores how American society during the early republic was permeated
by a post-colonial culture which outlasted the separation from the British
empire. The historical record is replete with evidence of the American
desire for British recognition of their efforts to both emulate and distinguish
themselves from the mother country. Recent scholarship on the condition
of post-coloniality has brought a greater awareness of the cultural transitions
involved with the process of de-colonization. These studies have yet to
be applied to the American context, but the potential insights are manifold.
An added awareness of the post-colonial nature of the new American nation
highlights transnational perspectives as well as the politics involved
in cultural practices. In light of the call of scholars such as T.H. Breen
and Jack Greene to take a broader, less parochial perspective when studying
the rise of American nationalism in the eighteenth century, my study examines
the political implications of post-colonial American fascination with how
British and Europeans understood America.
Judging themselves by seemingly universal standards that found them wanting, post-Revolutionary Americans eagerly embraced opportunities to establish the country's reputation in the community of "civilized" nations. Post-colonial Americans involved in activities as diverse as maritime commerce and evangelical missions found in their daily practices a recurrent need to prove themselves as good as their British brethren. They did this both by trying to emulate the achievements of European culture, and by playing to European fascination with things 'native' to the Americas.
The need for ex-colonials to marginalize Native Americans and African Americans can be intimately connected to their own marginalization within British Atlantic civilization. Much scholarly work has focused upon the oppression of racial minorities as part of the process of creating the American nation. Through application of the insights of post-colonial scholars, my project adds to this scholarship by analyzing the specific significance of Anglo American insecurity as a driving force in this process. In examining the early republic as a post-colonial period, my goal is not to portray "white" Americans as somehow analogous to "colored natives" suffering from the domination of Britain in later eras of the British empire. Instead, by interpreting Anglo Americans as both colonizers and as colonized within the British empire, I hope to see the intimate relationship between domination and subordination in the early republic.
The simultaneous position of inferiority to the "civilized" culture of Britain and the assumed superiority to African Americans and "native" Americans were linked, and generated both a local denigration of Native Americans as well as a celebration of the "Native" culture of the new nation. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, had no difficulties assuming the inferiority of Native Americans at the same time that he extolled to Europeans the virtues of Native contributions to American life. I argue that the formation of American national identity pivoted around these paradoxical relationships of celebration and denigration, and that both stemmed from the post-colonial insecurity of Americans in the early republic.