Book description
Through careful research and colorful accounts, historian Paul A.
Gilje discovers what liberty meant to an important group of common men
in American society, those who lived and worked on the waterfront and
aboard ships. In the process he reveals that the idealized vision of
liberty associated with the Founding Fathers had a much more immediate
and complex meaning than previously thought.
In Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in
the Age of Revolution, life aboard warships, merchantmen, and
whalers, as well as the interactions of mariners and others on shore,
is recreated in absorbing detail. Describing the important
contributions of sailors to the resistance movement against Great
Britain and their experiences during the Revolutionary War, Gilje
demonstrates that, while sailors recognized the ideals of the
Revolution, their idea of liberty was far more individual in
nature-often expressed through hard drinking and womanizing or joining
a ship of their choice.
Gilje continues the story into the post-Revolutionary world
highlighted by the Quasi War with France, the confrontation with the
Barbary Pirates, and the War of 1812.
"In its ambitious sweep and encyclopedic detail, Gilje's
rendering of American maritime culture during the tumultuous century
from 1750 to 1850 is unlikely to be surpassed."-William and
Mary Quarterly
Paul A. Gilje is Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma.
He is the author of Rioting in America and The Road to Mobocracy:
Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763-1834.
