Tea Sets and Tyranny

Stephen C. Bullock's exploration of the politics of politeness in British America informs six biographies illustrating its practice in relation to power: those of Francis Nicholson, Thomas Nairne, William Byrd, Jonathan Belcher, Tom Bell, and Eliza Lucas Pinckney. All have figured in other histories of British America. These portraits form a Plutarchian gallery that reveal not the clash of public virtue and private vice but the contest of polite self-control and indulgent self-assertion. According to Peter France's Politeness and Its Discontents (1992), politeness emerged in 1640s Paris as a heterosocial courtliness that opposed homosocial military valor. According to Lawrence E. Klein's Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness (1994), English politeness jettisoned courtliness, creating a civic culture of mannerly sociability, sensibility, and moderation. Klein argued that this culture was Whig politically. Bullock's politics of politeness follows upon Klein's portrait of British politeness after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Bullock's biographies of Nicholson and Nairne explore contests between Tory brashness and Whig politeness. Countering Governor Nicholson's unrestrained exercise of power stood the polite Rev. James Blair. Similarly, South Carolina governor Nathaniel Johnson's violent exercise of power contrasted with the Indian trader Nairne's moderation and willingness to negotiate. Bullock raises an interesting implication: besides Nicholson's and Johnson's Tory politics and Church of England affiliation, their impolite practices of governance derived from their military backgrounds, where command, not negotiation, characterized leadership

Art history · Civility · Governor · Media studies · Negotiation · Politeness · Political science · Politics · Portrait · Power (physics · Sociology · American History and Culture · History · Law