City government and the state in eighteenth century South Carolina
Abstract
This article documents the character and development of the government in eighteenth-century Charleston, South Carolina. It argues that urban authority played a very important role in articulating the relationship between citizens and the state across the colonial, revolutionary, and early national eras. Two characteristics of this emerging authority are especially noteworthy. First, there were strong connections between governing practices in British cities and in Charleston. Efforts to order the South Carolina town were underpinned by an ideology of “internal police” that was increasingly shaping the government of towns across the British Atlantic world. Second, recognizing the importance of this doctrine relocates its origins firmly to the prerevolutionary urban environment, whereas historians had previously traced its roots to the revolutionary era.
Citation
Hart , E 2017 , ' City government and the state in eighteenth century South Carolina ' , Eighteenth-Century Studies , vol. 50 , no. 2 , pp. 195-211 . https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2017.0003
Publication
Eighteenth-Century Studies
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0013-2586Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 by the ASECS. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the final published version of the work, which was originally published by the Johns Hopkins University Press at https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2017.0003
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