In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820.

By David Waldstreicher (North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. ix plus 364pp. $45.00/cloth $16.95/paperback).

In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes examines "the relationship of nationalist ideology to political practice" (p. 3) in the early national United States. David Waldstreicher has assembled an enormous amount of data on national celebrations such as the Fourth of July, Washington's Birthday, and the festivities surrounding the ratification of the federal constitution to demonstrate how Americans created new understandings of the connection between individuals and the national government. Waldstreicher contends that national celebrations, along with descriptions and commentary about them printed in newspapers and pamphlets, constituted a public sphere in which many of the apparent contradictions of the early republic's politics come into clearer focus. "To see the contemporary public sphere in the intersection of local rites and an expanding print culture," Waldstreicher argues, "illuminates much about early national political culture, including the seemingly paradoxical existence of partisanship alongside nationalist denials of party legitimacy, and how partisan competition helped keep women and blacks beyond the pale of citizenship." (p. 13) This focus on national rites and their elaboration in print provides a context for discussions of party format ion and conflict, the role of class in the development of nationalism, the impact of sectionalism on nationalist rhetoric, and the relationship between groups without political power, notably women and blacks, to the emerging politics of nationalism.

In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes possesses many strengths. Most striking is its meticulous scholarship, which rests on both a comprehensive knowledge and utilization of available primary sources and a thorough grounding in the relevant theoretical and historiographic literature. Waldstreicher's command of archival material cannot but impress; one wonders if there is a broadside, pamphlet, or newspaper account from this period that he has not consulted. In conjunction with an enviable command of Revolutionary and early national historiography, Waldstreicher's ability to integrate the insights of scholars ranging from Michel Foucault to Jurgen Habermas into his work adds much to the analysis. Innovative discussions of particular topics throughout the book also merit attention. Of especial interest are examinations of the uses of celebration and print culture during the Genet mission, the tensions between sectional and national commitments, and the importance of the cult of sensibility in the ideological construction of patriotism and nationalism. Waldstreicher's inquiry into the relationship between black nationalism and its white counterpart also deserves notice. In a chapter that will doubtless provoke discussion, the author argues that nationalist-minded African Americans "invented Africa in the New World, in response to revolutionary conditions and out of Revolutionary rhetoric," (p. 317) and that "free blacks appropriated white political culture for the purpose of antislavery activity and cultural autonomy. They used the tools of American nationalism to create black nationalism." (p. 325) Here as elsewhere, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes offers a fresh look at early national political culture that is grounded in a close and insightful reading of primary sources.

For all its virtues, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes is not free from difficulties. Though he criticizes social historians and anthropologists for "restrictive definitions of rituals as 'relatively closed phenomenal worlds (ff. 17, p. 11),'" Waldstreicher does not consult ritual theorists such as Richard Schechner and Ronald L. Grimes. Neither does he explore the implications of failing to demarcate clear boundaries for ritual behavior. Expanding nationalist ritual to encompass both festivals and print accounts of them is not as unproblematic as Waldstreicher seems to believe. For example, just what types of political discussion in the public sphere would not be considered nationalist ritual? How did this perpetual ritual of national celebration and attendant print culture achieve the same symbolic impact associated with rites and practices clearly set apart from everyday life? To regard so much of the political discussion and debate characteristic of the early republic as "nationalist rituals" (p. 3) may in fact diminish the usefulness of ritual as an analytical category.

A second difficulty, related to the first, stems from Waldstreicher's assumption that Americans attended national celebrations and read newspapers, almanacs, and broadsides from primarily political motives. To a degree this was obviously true, but the reduction of Fourth of July celebrations, for example, to political occasions, ignores the social and symbolic complexity of the festivities. Americans attended festivals, even overtly political ones, for a variety of reasons, some of which ignored or contradicted the nationalist and partisan imperatives that Waldstreicher detects. Acknowledging that festival-goers and newspaper readers may have experienced their activities as leisure, sociability, familial obligation or economic self-interest, rather than politics, would not, perhaps, serve Waldstreicher's argument about the rites of nationalism.

Though the intensive focus on politics has clear benefits, one is forced to ask what In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes reveals about early national political life that was not already known. After a lengthy and detailed discussion of the partisan uses of nationalist celebration by Federalists and Republicans, for instance, we learn that nationalists "did not have to be nonpartisan. To act politically, they could not be. Instead, they denied the other party's legitimacy and the partisanship of their own party. (pp. 203-04)." This is certainly a valid point, but it hardly requires extensive exposition. Or again, despite the brilliance of Waldstreicher's examination of the relationship among gender, race, and nationalism, his conclusion that nationalist ideology marginalized women and African-Americans will hardly surprise many historians. For all these reservations, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes remains a book that demands the attention of specialists in the early American republic, and of social and cultural historians more generally, less for its larger conclusions than for its insightful and painstaking elaboration of the mechanisms of ideological production. The book's length and density render it unsuitable for undergraduate courses, but graduate students and serious scholars of the early republic will find much of value here.

Scott C. Martin Bowling Green State University