Backwoods Utopias

Backwoods Utopias
Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages : 344
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781512809640
ISBN-13 : 1512809640
Rating : 4/5 (40 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Backwoods Utopias by : Arthur Bestor

Download or read book Backwoods Utopias written by Arthur Bestor and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-07-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new society that the world awaited might yet be born in the humble guise of a backwoods village. This was the belief shared by the many groups which moved into the American frontier to create experimental communities—communities which they hoped would be models for revolutionary changes in religion, politics, economics, and education in American society. For, as James Madison wrote, the American Republic was "useful in proving things before held impossible." The communitarian ideal had its roots in the radical Protestant sects of the Reformation. Arthur Bestor shows the connection between the "holy commonwealths" of the colonial period and the nonsectarian experiments of the nineteenth century. He examines in particular detail Robert Owen's ideals and problems in creating New Harmony. Two essays have been added to this volume for the second edition. In these, "Patent-Office Models of the Good Society" and "The Transit of Communitarian Socialism to America," Bestor discusses the effects of the frontier and of the migration of European ideas and people on these communities. He holds that the communitarians could believe in the possibility of nonviolent revolution through imitation of a small perfect society only as long as they saw American institutions as flexible. By the end of the nineteenth century, as American society became less plastic, belief in the power of successful models weakened.


Backwoods Utopias Related Books

Backwoods Utopias
Language: en
Pages: 344
Authors: Arthur Bestor
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-07-09 - Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The new society that the world awaited might yet be born in the humble guise of a backwoods village. This was the belief shared by the many groups which moved i
Communal Utopias and the American Experience
Language: en
Pages: 182
Authors: Robert P. Sutton
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-02-28 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This important study begins with America's first secular utopia at New Harmony in 1824 and traces successive utopian experiments in the United States through th
America's Communal Utopias
Language: en
Pages: 560
Authors: Donald E. Pitzer
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-01-20 - Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From the Shakers to the Branch Davidians, America's communal utopians have captured the popular imagination. Seventeen original essays here demonstrate the rele
Utopias
Language: en
Pages: 224
Authors: Howard P. Segal
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-03-02 - Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This brief history connects the past and present of utopianthought, from the first utopias in ancient Greece, right up topresent day visions of cyberspace commu
The Utopian Alternative
Language: en
Pages: 544
Authors: Carl J. Guarneri
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-07-05 - Publisher: Cornell University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The utopian socialism of Charles Fourier spread throughout Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, but it was in the United States that it generated the most inte