Kariann Akemi Yokota, “Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation” (Oxford UP, 2011)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Dec 7, 2011 · 59m

The founding fathers–and mothers, sons and daughters–were British. Sort of. It’s true that they were subjects of the British crown, and that they looked, talked, acted and had the tastes of folks in London. But they were always different. Though they carried with them a sort of “British cultural package,” what they changed that cultural package, sometimes intentionally and sometimes accidentally. To draw an evolutionary analogy, they “speciated,” that is, evolved into something new. But just what it was they did not know, not before the Revolution and for a long time after it. In her…