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Introduction Public self-reflection is a necessary (if unsettling) element of historical inquiry if we want it to be more than an antiquarian pursuit. So let me begin by sharing some autobiographical information with a bearing on this book. How does identity shape my own sense of self? I'll start by posing an old, and perhaps tiresome, question. What's in a name? In my case, Liam O'Boyle Patrick Riordan, there's quite a bit of Irishness wrapped up in self-understanding. My childhood memories are replete with public events where ethnicity mattered, like riding in the St. Patrick's Day parade with my father, who served on the local community college governing board, or hearing him give Robert Emmet's "Speech from the Dock" in Golden Gate Park at the annual celebration of the Irish martyr's death (for a photo of me there as a three-year-old, see the San Francisco Examiner, March 9, 1970). Later, my first semiprofessional public presentation as an undergraduate historian would come at the Irish Literary and Historical Society of San Francisco. Nevertheless, my sense of being Irish American was far from all consuming. Irish step dancing always struck me as weird. I never attended parochial schools, didn't live in an Irish American neighborhood , and have a strained sense of myself as a Catholic (note how ethnic and religious lines are difficult to untangle). Still, growing up in San Francisco made me very aware that a host of cultural identities (numerous Latino and Asian groups, gay and lesbian cultures, African American urban life, and more) shaped my world. Being Irish American and Roman Catholic gave some purchase, a helpful orientation, in negotiating daily life that in my fortunate case only very rarely imposed themselves as obligations or carried public penalties. Imagine, then, my surprise when my Guatemala-born, California-raised, German-citizen sister-in-law informed me by chance that my brother did not consider himself to be Irish American! She thought he was in denial, and perhaps I did too, but I was wary about insisting on his proper group membership. If he was 'Just American," as he later told me, so be it. What, then, separated our self-understandings? I am two and a half years older, but otherwise we are remarkably close. The same parents raised us, we lived in the same household, we traveled together to Ireland twice, and we share professional commitments as teachers. Our main difference regarding eth- 2 Introduction nic self-identity, perhaps, is that he left the private high school we both attended to go to a public one where he met working-class Irish Americans who were a somewhat rough group. I suspect that these schoolmates gave Irishness a connotation that he wanted little part of, whereas my more sheltered path led to an easier and more genteel embrace of ethnicity. Our divergent sensibilities resonate as a cautionary tale about casting historical judgment in the subtle arena of cultural identity. If my brother's sense of self surprises me, how can I be certain of how group identity operated in early America? The point is not to suggest that my personal experience allows direct access to the issues faced by my historical subjects. Archival research and a close reading of evidence produced in the period are the basis of my claim to any insight. Indeed, as an early American specialist , I am deeply aware of the distance that separates contemporary America from the Revolutionary period that I study. Nevertheless, the art and mystery of the historian's craft arise from exploring the fragile ties of continuity and rupture that bind past and present together. While the transformation of the Revolutionary Delaware Valley examined here is separated from us by two centuries, there are important elements of that world that deserve our careful attention. In particular the fluid processes through which cultural identities are formed and transformed in situational social contexts occurred along an erratic continuum from separatist particularism to assimilation with which we remain familiar today. The main actors here inhabited a region comprised of eastern Pennsylvania , western New Jersey, and northern Delaware in the period from 1770 to 1830. The dynamism of the Revolutionary Delaware Valley's multicultural society has struck me as its most compelling feature, especially how religious, racial, and ethnic identities there combined, diverged, and infused the shifting popular culture of ordinary people during these decades of rapid change. The most prominent groups and their basic...

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