Thomas Jefferson's Gender Frontier
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10028281 |
|---|---|
| Authors | B Steele, B C H Steele (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 95 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 17-42 |
| Publication date | 2008-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/25095463 |
| OpenAlex | W2316585243 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 4 |
Scholars have long emphasized Thomas Jefferson's cosmopolitanism in ways that obscure his nationalism. But simply recovering Jefferson's particularistic nationalism and juxtaposing it to his well-known universalist cosmopolitanism is too easy. These were not readily separable elements of his world view. Jefferson frequently expressed his nationalism in capacious terms precisely because he understood the universal to be exemplified in his nation. To be sure, Jefferson relished his reputation as an Enlightenment citizen of the world, and during his five years (1784–1789) as American minister to the court of Louis XVI, he acquired an association with France that his political enemies used ad nauseam to question his patriotism. Historians, too, have argued that Jefferson became a kind of internationalist, an “Apostle of European Culture,” while in France. His stint in Europe, in other words, somehow “freed [Jefferson] from provincial notions about the superiority of American life.”1 That interpretation is not so much wrong as in need of considerable qualification. While Jefferson was in France, his aesthetic evolved appreciably, and he embraced cultural refinements that his own nation lacked, becoming an enthusiastic connoisseur of European architecture, sculpture, painting, food, clothing, and music. He also enjoyed the pleasures of the salon and the companionship of a circle of Frenchwomen (and Frenchmen). Many of his letters from this period gush over the pleasing sociability and refined manners of French society. He was an enthusiastic participant in the transatlantic “republic of letters,” which he described in 1809 as “a great fraternity spreading over the whole earth” whose “correspondence is never interrupted by any civilized nation.”2
Apostle · Cosmopolitanism · Enlightenment · Fraternity · Glory · Interpretation (philosophy · Nationalism · Patriotism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · European Political History Analysis · History · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,38 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2021 (9) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |