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Edition: |
pb |
| ISBN: |
9781859844670 |
| Publisher: |
Verso |
| Release Date: |
2006-10-30 |
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ITEM OVERVIEW
Is racism a blot on the American democratic tradition? Or, as Alexander Saxton argues, has racial discrimination always been integral to it? In the nineteenth century the United States was transformed into an industrialized mass democratic society. But central to this economic growth and the territorial expansion which accompanied it were slave labor in the South and the expropriation of Indian lands in the West.
In this meticulous historical study, Saxton asks why white racism remained an ideological force in America long after the need to justify slavery and Western conquest had disappeared. He shows how the notion of white racial superiority continued to meet the needs of the various class coalitions that ruled the nation, at the same time as a creed of liberty and equality became dominant. And he explores the processes of idelogical revision that made possible these seeminingly contradictory transformations.
Examining images of race at a popular level – from blackface minstrelsy to the construction of the Western hero; from grassroots political culture to dime novels – as well as the philosophical construction of the political elite, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic is a powerful and comprehensive account of the idelogical forces at work in the formation of modern America. Now in a second edition, with an introduction by David Roediger.
"No other book offers us such a richly detailed and elegantly written illumination of the relationship between race and the labyrinth of American party politics in the nineteenth century." —Ron Takaki, Prof. of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
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