Revised Research Statement

Sorry this is late - mixed up the due dates.

After a good amount of deliberation, I've decided that the topic I would like to pursue this quarter is my second one: anti-British Propaganda in Colonial America. More specifically, I'd like to engage the contradiction between the rhetoric of “enslavement” to Great Britain utilized by revolutionary forces before the outbreak of the revolutionary war and the practice of economic slavery that was common in the colonies. This is by no means an absolutely unique topic, but the angle with which I plan to tackle it should definitely provide some new insights into how the contradiction was born and thrived.
In a nutshell, here are the questions I want to answer: How much did the anti-British “slavery” rhetoric contrast with the actual philosophical positions of those espousing this rhetoric? How much was genuine, how much was used as a tool of manipulation? In spite of the obvious contradiction, “slavery” rhetoric was prominent in anti-British propaganda. Something about this rhetoric must have resonated strongly with the population that the propagandists were trying to mobilize, but why? Understanding why and how this rhetoric worked so well would provide a unique lens into understanding the psychology and political/moral philosophies of average Americans, the potential foot soldiers of revolution. It would help us understand more fully what truly made the revolution possible.
The primary sources I need to look into are rather obvious – first, I'd be looking at the actual pamphlets that were disseminated by organizations such as Sons of Liberty. I also want to find documents that express revolutionaries' views of economic slavery, and private letters in which they express their true feelings for Great Britain and to what extent the relationship between Great Britain and the United States constituted “slavery.” I haven't gone through a rigorous inventory of secondary sources yet, but I definitely want to look at Bernard Bailyn's Ideological Origins of the American Revolution and other sources that engage the issue of the rhetoric of slavery.

After evaluating my topic further, I feel like I have some good starting points for my research. Prof. Hobbs recommended some fantastic sources I plan on looking in to, and I'm going to talk to my adviser Prof. Rakove some time early next week.

One new idea that I've come up with is doing an analysis of how common "slavery" rhetoric was in from colony to colony. Was it used more in the South than in the North? Was the rhetoric used in a different way? I hope that I can find a variety of sources from different colonies, and also some sources that point to how prevalent slavery was in certain areas so I can see if there's anything to be found here.

I might also want to analyze the rhetoric's change over time, if there is significant change over time. Obviously I can't cover all of this, but I would like to do at least a little bit of research on all of it to see where the most interesting angles lie.