Book overview
The Stamp Act as a cultural event.
This collection brings together essays from across the humanities and social sciences to reconsider the influence of British tax legislation on colonial culture—and the ways colonial responses shaped the crisis in return.
Rather than focusing only on constitutional arguments and political aftermath, the contributors examine the legislation’s effects on public life, print culture, religion, literature, and competing understandings of identity. Their work recovers perspectives often left outside traditional nationalist accounts, including those of women, Native Americans, and enslaved African Americans.
The essays use sermons, narratives, poems, newspapers, and accounts of collective action as complex cultural sources. Together, they offer a fuller account of the events of 1765–66 and their transatlantic significance.