TRUE BORN COLUMBIANS: THE PROMISES AND PERILS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY FOR AMERICAN SEAFARERS OF THE EARLY REPUBLICAN PERIOD
Open Access
- Author:
- Hicks, Dan
- Graduate Program:
- History
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- December 19, 2006
- Committee Members:
- William Pencak, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Carla Mulford, Committee Member
Daniel Chapin Beaver, Committee Member
Amy S Greenberg, Committee Member
Sally Mcmurry, Committee Member - Keywords:
- War of 1812
American National Identity
American Early Republic
U.S. Navy
Dartmoor Prison
Prisoners of War
Masculinity
Gender
Maritime Culture
Atlantic World
Sailors' Songs - Abstract:
- This work investigates national identity and masculinity among American sailors during the era of the War of 1812, drawing from a number of published and unpublished materials. It begins with a description of pertinent aspects of maritime culture: specifically, the ubiquitous adoption of false identities by common seamen, officers, and merchants, both in public and in private services. After establishing this context, the project investigates the ways in which individual men had their professed identities, be they true or false, accepted or rejected by other men; and it explains the hierarchies of status which added weight to the claims of some men over others (such as that of officers over that of men from the forecastle). This dissertation also examines American sailors’ relationship with landed society. Although sailors consciously differentiated themselves from “landlubbers” they also shared many of the same concerns, beliefs, and assumptions—such as a conviction that a healthy community was founded on the well ordered sentiments of its members. These shared understandings allowed sailors, despite their idiosyncrasies, to serve as symbols of the American national community. Seamen did not accept this role passively; instead, they used it to articulate their own understanding of American nationality. Through their songs and their writings, they argued that the genius of the American nation lay in the interrelationships of its male members. Unlike men of other nations, sailors contended, American men joined together voluntarily in pursuit of the commonweal and the protection of individual members. The last chapter of the dissertation shows how sailors strove to embody the ideals of American national identity to which they subscribed, and depicts the self-destructive consequences that sometimes resulted from that attempt.