History
St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
The Gardiners of Massachusetts: Provincial
Ambition and the British-American Career
Publisher: University Press of New England
Lebanon, NH
2005, 306 pages
Gardiners explores late 18th century American political
and cultural history through the lives and careers of three men
from successive generations of a prominent New England family.
These men exemplified the ambitions of the cosmopolitan middle
class throughout the British Empire and Englishspeaking Atlantic
world during the decades just before and after the American
Revolution. Their ambitions demonstrate a deep allegiance to the
liberal vocabulary of private gains and public good—a vocabulary in
which Americans had been schooled by their imperial
engagements.
“This innovative and deeply researched book reflects wisely on
the inheritances that unite and divide generations, and illustrates
the ways that urban sophisticates navigated rapidly shifting winds
of fortune during a turbulent era. An exciting family history that
goes well beyond the conventions of the genre.”
—Ted Widmer, Director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the
American Experience, Washington College