Table of Contents

Introduction: Political Mobilization in the Urban Landscape
1: Port in a Storm: The Boston Waterfront as Contested Space, 1747-74
2: Orderly and Disorderly Mobilization in the Taverns of New York City
3: "And Yet There is Room": The Religious Landscape of Newport
4: Changing our Habitation: The Revolutionary Movement in Charleston's Domestic Spaces
5: Philadelphia Politics, In and Out of Doors, 1742-76
Epilogue: The Forgotten City

About the Author

Benjamin L. Carp is the Daniel M. Lyons Associate Professor of American History at Brooklyn College. In addition to several articles and public appearances, he has written two previous books: Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America (2010), which won the triennial Society of the Cincinnati Cox Book Prize in 2013; and Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution (2007).

Reviews

"A superb piece of scholarship, covering a vast landscape in literal and temporal terms."--Jon Latimer, Journal of American Studies
"An important analysis of both colonial cities and the origins of the American Revolution."--David Goldfield, American Historical Review
"A fresh analysis of the role of colonial cities in the earliest phase of the contest with Parliament and the Crown...A learned and carefully crafted study."--Richard D. Brown, Interdisciplinary History
"This risk-taking book reopens for discussion a range of important subjects...[A]n innovative work based on an impressive number of manuscript collections and newspapers and the absorption of a generation of social and cultural history...Rebels Rising is a short book written with zest; it is vivid and jam-packed. It should prove inviting to students and general readers, and it will dazzle scholars."--Alfred F. Young, William and Mary Quarterly
"Carp's account of the forgotten cities that fomented the Revolution is intriguing."--Publishers Weekly
"Benjamin Carp's intensively researched and elegantly crafted book is easily the most important study of the coming of the American Revolution to appear in nearly three decades."--John M. Murrin, Princeton University
"Rebels Rising is a tour de force. Carp re-energizes the study of revolutionary political mobilization by taking mobility--the movement of people in particular spaces--seriously. A terrific book!"--David Waldstreicher, Temple University
"Carp's book is the result of seemingly indefatigable research; the range of primary and secondary sources he draws on is stunning. He also engages, fearlessly, the several generations of scholars who precede him, and links his project with a wide variety of approaches and methods, all in highly readable prose."--Jane Kamensky, Brandeis University
"What Carl Bridenbaugh's Cities in Revolt and Gary Nash's Urban Crucible were to their generations of historians, Benjamin Carp's fascinating study of the revolution in the five major colonial cities is to the present time. Looking at different spaces for each city--the Boston waterfront, the New York taverns, the Newport congregations, the Charleston households, and Philadelphia's State House and Square--he shows how mobilization for
resistance progressed as it did because of the way these locations were employed by leaders and crowds. Carp's exciting narrative concludes with a moving epilogue demonstrating how the cities were displaced during the
revolution itself in both practice and in the American mind as the main focal points of civic life."--William Pencak, Pennsylvania State University
"Massively researched and elegantly written. One of the most important studies of the American Revolution in recent years and deserves to be read by any scholar or general reader who is interested in understanding the compelling story of how the British colonies in the 1760s and 1770s were mobilized against the mother country and for their own political identity."--Paul David Nelson, The South Carolina Historical Magazine
"Better than any writer...[Carp] evokes here the tangled, ocean-spanning, class-riven, open-ended complexity that distinguished all colonial port cities from any of their hinterlands." --The Historian
"A three-dimensional history that triangulates people, places, and protest, to produce a ground-breaking narrative of the Revolution."--H-Net Reviews
"Intriguing...Carp's contribution lies in revealing not only the distinictive experience of early American urban life but also how cities managed to play such a crucial role in the coming of the American Revolution."--Journal of the Early Republic
"Carp's thoroughly documented study represents the most significant elaboration of this very important subject to date."--Journal of Social History

"A superb piece of scholarship, covering a vast landscape in literal and temporal terms."--Jon Latimer, Journal of American Studies "An important analysis of both colonial cities and the origins of the American Revolution."--David Goldfield, American Historical Review "A fresh analysis of the role of colonial cities in the earliest phase of the contest with Parliament and the Crown...A learned and carefully crafted study."--Richard D. Brown, Interdisciplinary History "This risk-taking book reopens for discussion a range of important subjects...[A]n innovative work based on an impressive number of manuscript collections and newspapers and the absorption of a generation of social and cultural history...Rebels Rising is a short book written with zest; it is vivid and jam-packed. It should prove inviting to students and general readers, and it will dazzle scholars."--Alfred F. Young, William and Mary Quarterly "Carp's account of the forgotten cities that fomented the Revolution is intriguing."--Publishers Weekly "Benjamin Carp's intensively researched and elegantly crafted book is easily the most important study of the coming of the American Revolution to appear in nearly three decades."--John M. Murrin, Princeton University "Rebels Rising is a tour de force. Carp re-energizes the study of revolutionary political mobilization by taking mobility--the movement of people in particular spaces--seriously. A terrific book!"--David Waldstreicher, Temple University "Carp's book is the result of seemingly indefatigable research; the range of primary and secondary sources he draws on is stunning. He also engages, fearlessly, the several generations of scholars who precede him, and links his project with a wide variety of approaches and methods, all in highly readable prose."--Jane Kamensky, Brandeis University "What Carl Bridenbaugh's Cities in Revolt and Gary Nash's Urban Crucible were to their generations of historians, Benjamin Carp's fascinating study of the revolution in the five major colonial cities is to the present time. Looking at different spaces for each city--the Boston waterfront, the New York taverns, the Newport congregations, the Charleston households, and Philadelphia's State House and Square--he shows how mobilization for resistance progressed as it did because of the way these locations were employed by leaders and crowds. Carp's exciting narrative concludes with a moving epilogue demonstrating how the cities were displaced during the revolution itself in both practice and in the American mind as the main focal points of civic life."--William Pencak, Pennsylvania State University "Massively researched and elegantly written. One of the most important studies of the American Revolution in recent years and deserves to be read by any scholar or general reader who is interested in understanding the compelling story of how the British colonies in the 1760s and 1770s were mobilized against the mother country and for their own political identity."--Paul David Nelson, The South Carolina Historical Magazine "Better than any writer...[Carp] evokes here the tangled, ocean-spanning, class-riven, open-ended complexity that distinguished all colonial port cities from any of their hinterlands." --The Historian "A three-dimensional history that triangulates people, places, and protest, to produce a ground-breaking narrative of the Revolution."--H-Net Reviews "Intriguing...Carp's contribution lies in revealing not only the distinictive experience of early American urban life but also how cities managed to play such a crucial role in the coming of the American Revolution."--Journal of the Early Republic "Carp's thoroughly documented study represents the most significant elaboration of this very important subject to date."--Journal of Social History