In Jefferson and the Virginians, renowned scholar Peter S. Onuf examines the ways in which Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Virginians?George Washington, James Madison, and Patrick Henry?both conceptualized their home state from a political and cultural perspective, and understood its position in the new American union. The conversations Onuf reconstructs offer glimpses into the struggle to define Virginia?and America?within the context of the upheaval of the Revolutionary War. Onuf also demonstrates why Jefferson?s identity as a Virginian obscures more than it illuminates about his ideology and career. Onuf contends that Jefferson and his interlocutors sought to define Virginia?s character as a self-constituted commonwealth and to determine the state?s place in the American union during an era of constitutional change and political polarization. Thus, the outcome of the American Revolution led to ongoing controversies over the identity of Virginians and Americans as a ?people? or ?peoples?; over Virginia?s boundaries and jurisdiction within the union; and over the system of government in Virginia and for the states collectively. Each debate required a balanced consideration of corporate identity and collective interests, which inevitably raised broader questions about the character of the Articles of Confederation and the newly formed federal union. Onuf?s well-researched study reveals how this indeterminacy demanded definition and, likewise, how the need for definition prompted further controversy.

Jefferson and the Virginians: Democracy, Constitutions, and Empire (Walter Lynwood Fleming Lectures in Southern History)

History

Onuf, Peter

Americas

LSU Press

In this thought-provoking analysis of international relations, the Onufs deepen our understanding of the law of nations in a world of profound change. Federal Union, Modern World relates the emergence of the modern concept of state-societies to the remarkable experiments in constitution-making in the United States and shows how efforts to model a federal union in America influenced the broader relations of European nation-states.Relying on ancient and early modern sources prominent in the minds of the Founders, the authors show how the idea of a federal union was applied to the nations of the world. This profound conceptual change in international relations sundered the law of nations from naturalism and grafted it into modern ideas of liberalism.The formation of the United States as federation, argue the Onufs, "expressed Enlightenment impulses . . . more fully than any contemporaneous developments in Europe." Furthermore, as the Founders attempted to secure a tenable position for their creation, they inspired a shift in international relations theory from natural legal doctrine to the positive law of states.This timely study of international union and disunion informs us as much about the decades of revolution as it does about the context of international relations in our own time.

Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776-1814

Onuf, Nicholas

World

Madison House

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