Peter S Onuf
Biographic Data
| ID | 514652 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter S Onuf |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter S |
| FAMILY NAME | Onuf |
| SIGNATURE | ONUF P S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Virginia |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 106 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 74 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 106 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Shifting Grounds: The Social Origins of Territorial Conflict by Burak Kadercan
International Relations (ir) scholarship suffers from a lack of historical self-awareness. Kadercan’s Shifting Grounds illuminates those limits by focusing on the impact of conceptions of territory on war—and vice versa—across time and space. Inspired by Agnew’s influential essay on the “territorial trap,” Kadercan charges his ir colleagues with “viewing ‘the territorial state as existing prior to and as a container of society’” (36).1 Taking the…
Federalist Republican: Michael Zuckert’s James Madison
History, Nature and the American Founding
If Americans can still imagine themselves exceptional, it is because of their obsession with the nation’s ‘founding’ and its ongoing significance in shaping the national narrative. Making the fateful choice to break with Britain, revolutionary patriots constituted themselves a people, seeking and gaining recognition from the ‘powers of the earth’. Ever since then, Americans have taken for granted their world-historical role as the first great mod…
A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism
Our own tumultuous times invite a fresh look at the hyperpartisanship of the 1790s. Carol Berkin's engaging, well-researched history of four crises that defined that controversial decade—the Whiskey Rebellion, the Citizen Genêt affair, the XYZ affair, and the Alien and Sedition Acts—argues provocatively that the much-maligned Federalists made America great, even as their campaign for a strong federal government ultimately energized the Republican…
Liberty, Development, and Union: Visions of the West in the 1780s
After the Revolution, American policymakers looked west with mingled expectation and anxiety. They entertained high hopes for the growth of national wealth and power through expansion of settlement and addition of states. As republican ideologues, Americans found the idea of territorial expansion profoundly unsettling. History demonstrated that republics were vulnerable to decline and decay as citizens turned toward private pursuits. During the m…
Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era
Journal Article Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era Get access Ed. by Patrick Griffin, Robert G. Ingram, Peter S. Onuf, and Brian Schoen. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015. xii, 313 pp. $45.00.) Journal of American History, Volume 103, Issue 1, June 2016, Pages 181–182, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw048 Published: 01 June 2016
The Empire of Liberty
Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World
State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States
Journal Article State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States Get access Peter Thompson and Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013. xiv, 311 pp. $49.50.) Journal of American History, Volume 102, Issue 2, September 2015, Pages 545–546, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jav483 Published: 01 September 2015
Empire's twin: U.S. anti-imperialism from the founding era to the age of terrorism
American Exceptionalism and National Identity
Historians are generally hostile to the idea of “American exceptionalism.” The history of American exceptionalist discourse, however, illuminates an ongoing process of identity formation as Americans have sought to determine the place of their nation in the larger world. This article focuses on the provincial Anglo-American sources of exceptionalist discourse and emphasizes Britain’s continuing centrality to national identity through the nineteen…
American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America
The Jeffersons at Shadwell – By Susan Kern
The “Madison Problem” Revisited
James Madison was a “law student or demi-lawyer,” Mary Sarah Bilder writes, with misgivings about his own role in the lawyers' world that he helped bring into being under the new federal Constitution. If Madison was the Constitution's “father,” his offspring seemed somewhat misbegotten. Structurally and ideologically the new regime was “federalist,” Alison LaCroix explains, with courts and lawyers “mediating among multiple levels of government” t…
Exclusionary Empire: English Liberty Overseas, 1600–1900
Consisting of an introduction and ten chapters, Exclusionary Empire examines the transfer of English traditions of liberty and the rule of law overseas from 1600 to 1900. Each chapter is written by a noted specialist and focuses on a particular area of the settler empire – Colonial North America, the West Indies, Ireland, the early United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa – and on one non-settler colony, India. The book exa…
The Mind of a Patriot: Patrick Henry and the World of Ideas (review)
Reviewed by: The Mind of a Patriot: Patrick Henry and the World of Ideas Peter S. Onuf (bio) Kevin J. Hayes. The Mind of a Patriot: Patrick Henry and the World of Ideas. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2008. ix + 184 pp. ISBN 978-0-813-92758-9, $22.95. Patrick Henry, the “Son of Thunder” whose powerful rhetoric helped spark the American Revolution, is customarily cast as “an unlearned backwoodsman” (24) with an intuitive grasp of natural law. T…
The Failure of the Founding Fathers: Jefferson, Marshall, and the Rise of Presidential Democracy
Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War
In this provocative interdisciplinary study, Nicholas and Peter Onuf argue that the American Civil War was the first great war between modern nations, emerging from the wreckage of a federal union that was supposed to secure perpetual peace. Situating conceptions of nationhood and war in the broader context of modern history, the authors draw attention to overlooked aspects of liberal thought that stand in tension with the a historical individual…
Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World
American in Paris
Journal Article American in Paris Get access Miller Melanie Randolph. Envoy to the Terror: Gouverneur Morris and the French Revolution. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2005. xiv + 284 pp. Illustrations, bibliography, $30.00 (hardcover), $19.95 (paper). Peter S. Onuf Peter S. Onuf Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Diplomatic History, Volume 30, Issue 2, April 2006, Pages 287–291, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-770…
Across the Continent: Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and the Making of America
Journal Article Across the Continent: Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and the Making of America Get access Across the Continent: Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and the Making of America. Edited by Seefeldt Douglas Hantman Jeffrey L. Onuf Peter S.. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. x + 22 pp. Notes, index. $29.50.) Jerome O. Steffen Jerome O. Steffen Georgia Southern University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic…
Jefferson, Louisiana, and American Nationhood
For Thomas Jefferson, the westward expansion of the new United States epitomized the progress of civilization. Near the end of his life, he looked back on the new nation’s history. “Let a philosophic observer commence a journey from the savages of the Rocky Mountains, eastwardly towards our sea-coast,” he wrote William Ludlow, and he will have observed “this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light…
The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic
The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic. Edited by James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002, Pp. xix, 431. Cloth, $59.50; paper, $22.50.)Well-tilled subjects in the history of the early republic can still be rewarding. This is the conclusion reached on reading The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic, a collection of sixteen essays presented in …
Jefferson, Morality, and the Problem of Slavery
tH TOW could Thomas Jefferson, advocate of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, have justified his ownership of human beings? How, in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, could he have accused King George III and the British nation of imposing slavery on the American colonies? Jefferson never thought that slavery was morally justifiable. In order to grasp his understanding of the issue of personal guilt, we need t…
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture
The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic
The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic. Edited by James Horn, Jan Ellen Lewis, and Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002, Pp. xix, 431. Cloth, $59.50; paper, $22.50.)Well-tilled subjects in the history of the early republic can still be rewarding. This is the conclusion reached on reading The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic, a collection of sixteen essays presented in …
Jeffersonian Legacies
Journal Article Jeffersonian Legacies. Ed. by Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993. xviii, 478 pp. Cloth, $39.50, ISBN 0-8139-1462-0. Paper, $18.95, ISBN 0-81391463-9.) Get access Willi Paul Adams Willi Paul Adams Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 81, Issue 3, December 1994, Pages 1291–1292, https://…
The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775-1787
Journal Article The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787. By Peter S. Onuf. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. xvii + 284 pp. Maps, notes, and index. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $12.95.) Get access Jack N. Rakove Jack N. Rakove Stanford University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 71, Issue 1, June 1984…
To Declare Them a Free and Independant People: Race, Slavery, and National Identity in Jefferson's Thought
In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Noble E. Cunningham, Jr
Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood
Journal Article Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. By Peter S. Onuf. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000. xiv, 250 pp. $27.95, ISBN 0-8139-1930-4.) Get access Emory G. Evans Emory G. Evans University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 2, September 2001, Pages 629–630, https://doi.org/10.230…
Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood
Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776-1814
Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance
Toward a Republican Empire: Interest and Ideology in Revolutionary America
CHANGING DEFINITIONS AND EVALUATIONS OF INTEREST OVER THE COURSE of the eighteenth century illuminate a great transformation in political ideology in post-Revolutionary America. When faced with the challenges of nationmaking on a continental scale in the 1780s, Americans discovered that they could no longer rely on the ideas that had justified and sustained resistance to British power. The most important ideological challenge was to reconcile ind…
American Exceptionalism and National Identity
Historians are generally hostile to the idea of “American exceptionalism.” The history of American exceptionalist discourse, however, illuminates an ongoing process of identity formation as Americans have sought to determine the place of their nation in the larger world. This article focuses on the provincial Anglo-American sources of exceptionalist discourse and emphasizes Britain’s continuing centrality to national identity through the nineteen…
Across the Continent: Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and the Making of America
Journal Article Across the Continent: Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and the Making of America Get access Across the Continent: Jefferson, Lewis and Clark, and the Making of America. Edited by Seefeldt Douglas Hantman Jeffrey L. Onuf Peter S.. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2005. x + 22 pp. Notes, index. $29.50.) Jerome O. Steffen Jerome O. Steffen Georgia Southern University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic…
To Make a Nation: The Rediscovery of American Federalism
Reflections on the Founding: Constitutional Historiography in Bicentennial Perspective
James Davenport and the Great Awakening in New London
Journal Article James Davenport and the Great Awakening in New London Get access Harry S. Stout, Harry S. Stout associate professor of history University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Peter Onuf Peter Onuf assistant professor of history Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Vol…
Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era
Journal Article Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era Get access Ed. by Patrick Griffin, Robert G. Ingram, Peter S. Onuf, and Brian Schoen. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015. xii, 313 pp. $45.00.) Journal of American History, Volume 103, Issue 1, June 2016, Pages 181–182, https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaw048 Published: 01 June 2016
Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture
Federalist Republican: Michael Zuckert’s James Madison
A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism
Our own tumultuous times invite a fresh look at the hyperpartisanship of the 1790s. Carol Berkin's engaging, well-researched history of four crises that defined that controversial decade—the Whiskey Rebellion, the Citizen Genêt affair, the XYZ affair, and the Alien and Sedition Acts—argues provocatively that the much-maligned Federalists made America great, even as their campaign for a strong federal government ultimately energized the Republican…
The Business of May Next: James Madison and the Founding
The Scholars' Jefferson
N I 960, Merrill Peterson concluded in his book TheJefferson Image in the American Mind that Thomas Jefferson had finally, belatedly ascended to a crucial place in the symbolical architecture of this nation. It was now possible for scholars to take the measure of the man. scholarly wish to possess Jefferson for himself might never be realized, Peterson wrote, a Jefferson about whom politicians cease to contend, whose ideas suffer drastic erosion …
Liberty, Development, and Union: Visions of the West in the 1780s
New Lights in New London: A Group Portrait of the Separatists
HE wild confusion at New London during the Great Awakening of I74I-I743 shattered the First Church of Christy the established Congregational church.' Bookburnings, singing in the streets, and shrieks of holy terror were unmistakable symptoms of the highly contagious disease enthusiasm, according to Old Light critics of the revivals.2 Moderate New Lights reluctantly agreed that zealous itinerants, like James Davenport, and their impressionable aud…
Maryland and the Empire, 1773: The Antilon-First Citizen Letters
Maryland and the Empire, 1773: The Antilon-First Citizen Letters
Journal Article Maryland and the Empire, 1773: The Antilon-First Citizen Letters. Ed. by Peter S. Onuf. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. x + 236 pp. Notes and index. $10.00.) Get access Robert E. Shalhope Robert E. Shalhope University of Oklahoma Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 61, Issue 4, March 1975, Pages 1081–1082, https://doi.org/10.2307/1890654 Pub…
Maryland and the Empire, 1773: The Antilon-First Citizen Letters
Journal Article Maryland and the Empire, 1773: The Antilon-First Citizen Letters Get access Onuf Peter S., Editor, Maryland and the Empire, 1773: The Antilon-First Citizen Letters. Baltimore, Maryland. The Johns Hopkins Press, 1974. x, 236 pp. $10.00. Gordon S. Wood Gordon S. Wood Professor of History Brown University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volume 19, Issue 2, Ap…
Maryland and the Empire, 1773: The Antilon-First Citizen Letters
Toward Federalism: Virginia, Congress, and the Western Lands
OE n March I, I784, Virginia ceded its vast charter claims north of the Ohio River to the Continental Congress. This epochal transaction resolved the protracted dispute over western claims between the landed states and Congress. It secured the first strong congressional claim to a national domain and set in motion a liberal territorial policy which led to the formation of new western states. Little can be added to the history and background of th…
New Lights in New London: A Group Portrait of the Separatists
HE wild confusion at New London during the Great Awakening of I74I-I743 shattered the First Church of Christy the established Congregational church.' Bookburnings, singing in the streets, and shrieks of holy terror were unmistakable symptoms of the highly contagious disease enthusiasm, according to Old Light critics of the revivals.2 Moderate New Lights reluctantly agreed that zealous itinerants, like James Davenport, and their impressionable aud…
State-Making in Revolutionary America: Independent Vermont as a Case Study
Journal Article State-Making in Revolutionary America: Independent Vermont as a Case Study Get access Peter S. Onuf Peter S. Onuf member of the department of history Columbia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 67, Issue 4, March 1981, Pages 797–815, https://doi.org/10.2307/1888050 Published: 01 March 1981
From Colony to Territory: Changing Concepts of Statehood in Revolutionary America
Journal Article From Colony to Territory: Changing Concepts of Statehood in Revolutionary America Get access Peter S. Onuf Peter S. Onuf PETER S. ONUF is assistant professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This article is part of a broader, ongoing study of the origins of American federalism. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 97, Issue 3, Fall 1982, Pages 44…
James Davenport and the Great Awakening in New London
Journal Article James Davenport and the Great Awakening in New London Get access Harry S. Stout, Harry S. Stout associate professor of history University of Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Peter Onuf Peter Onuf assistant professor of history Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Vol…
Miracle on Chestnut Street
Mr. Madison's War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early Republic, 1783-1830, by J. C. A. Stagg
The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775-1787
Journal Article The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787. By Peter S. Onuf. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. xvii + 284 pp. Maps, notes, and index. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $12.95.) Get access Jack N. Rakove Jack N. Rakove Stanford University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 71, Issue 1, June 1984…
The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775-1787
Historians have emphasized the founding fathers' statesmanship and vision in the development of a more powerful union under the federal constitution. In The Origins of the Federal Republic, Peter S. Onuf clarifies the founders' achievement by demonstrating with case studies of New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Virginia that territorial confrontations among the former colonies played a crucial role in shaping early concepts of statehood and uni…
Toward a Republican Empire: Interest and Ideology in Revolutionary America
CHANGING DEFINITIONS AND EVALUATIONS OF INTEREST OVER THE COURSE of the eighteenth century illuminate a great transformation in political ideology in post-Revolutionary America. When faced with the challenges of nationmaking on a continental scale in the 1780s, Americans discovered that they could no longer rely on the ideas that had justified and sustained resistance to British power. The most important ideological challenge was to reconcile ind…
Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution
Liberty, Development, and Union: Visions of the West in the 1780s
Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance
The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution
Journal Article The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. By Thomas P. Slaughter. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. vii + 291 pp. $19.95.) Get access Peter S. Onuf Peter S. Onuf Worcester Polytechnic Institute Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 74, Issue 1, June 1987, Pages 157–158, https://doi.org/10.2307/1908533 Published: 01 June 1987
State Politics and Ideological Transformation: Gordon S. Wood's Republican Revolution
G_ ORDON S. Wood's Creation of the American Republic brilliantly evokes the unintended consequences of America's republican revolution. Wood shows that was a highly unstable synthesis at best. The dizzying ideological transformations he skillfully charts did not reflect the declining virtue and patriotism contemporaries detected in each other's behavior so much as the immanent contradictions at the core of American republican thought that the exi…
Constitutional History of the American Revolution: The Authority to Tax
New State Equality: The Ambiguous History of a Constitutional Principle
Journal Article New State Equality: The Ambiguous History of a Constitutional Principle Get access Peter S. Onuf Peter S. Onuf Southern Methodist University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Volume 18, Issue 4, Fall 1988, Pages 53–69, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.pubjof.a037754 Published: 01 January 1988
The Charter of Federal Colonialism
In Pursuit of Reason: The Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Noble E. Cunningham, Jr
In Search of the Republic: Public Virtue and the Roots of American Government
Journal Article In Search of the Republic: Public Virtue and the Roots of American Government. By Richard Vetterli and Gary Bryner. (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987. xiii + 269pp. Cloth, $32.95; paper, $14.50.) Get access Peter S. Onuf Peter S. Onuf Southern Methodist University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 75, Issue 2, September 1988, Pages 595–596, https://doi.or…
The Draper Manuscripts
The Draper Manuscripts. 123 reels with printed guide and with 11 calendars on microfiche. 35 mm microfilm. (Alexandria, Va.: Chadwyck-Healey, 1985. $7,500.) Get access Peter S. Onuf Peter S. Onuf Southern Methodist University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 74, Issue 4, March 1988, Page 1397, https://doi.org/10.2307/1894513 Published: 01 March 1988
Political science (87 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (82 works) · History (70 works) · Law (65 works) · History (64 works) · Law (61 works) · Sociology (37 works) · Politics (34 works) · Economic history (25 works) · American History and Culture (23 works)