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This Violent Empire traces the origins of American violence, racism, and paranoia to the founding moments of the new nation and the initial instability of Americans' national sense of self.

Fusing cultural and political analyses to create a new form of political history, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg explores the ways the founding generation, lacking a common history, governmental infrastructures, and shared culture, solidified their national sense of self by imagining a series of "Others" (African Americans, Native Americans, women, the propertyless) whose differences from European American male founders overshadowed the differences that divided those founders. These "Others," dangerous and polluting, had to be excluded from the European American body politic. Feared, but also desired, they refused to be marginalized, incurring increasingly enraged enactments of their political and social exclusion that shaped our long history of racism, xenophobia, and sexism. Close readings of political rhetoric during the Constitutional debates reveal the genesis of this long history.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Quotation
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  1. Preface
  2. pp. ix-xii
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. xiii-xviii
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. xix-xx
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  1. List of Illustrations
  2. pp. xxi-xxii
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  1. Introduction: "What Then Is the American, This New Man?"
  2. pp. 1-44
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  1. Section One: The New American–as–Republican Citizen
  1. Prologue One: The Drums of War/The Thrust of Empire
  2. pp. 47-54
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  1. Chapter One: Fusions and Confusions
  2. pp. 55-87
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  1. Chapter Two: Rebellious Dandies and Political Fictions
  2. pp. 88-135
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  1. Chapter Three: American Minervas
  2. pp. 136-188
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  1. Section Two: Dangerous Doubles
  1. Prologue Two: Masculinity and Masquerade
  2. pp. 191-206
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  1. Chapter Four: Seeing Red
  2. pp. 207-249
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  1. Chapter Five: Subject Female: Authorizing an American Identity
  2. pp. 250-288
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  1. Section Three: The New American–as–Bourgeois Gentleman
  1. Prologue Three: The Ball
  2. pp. 291-308
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  1. Chapter Six: Choreographing Class/Performing Gentility
  2. pp. 309-364
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  1. Chapter Seven: Polished Gentlemen, Troublesome Women, and Dancing Slaves
  2. pp. 365-412
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  1. Chapter Eight: Black Gothic
  2. pp. 413-464
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  1. Conclusion
  2. pp. 465-468
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 469-484
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