Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2025
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
History
Advisor
David Waldstreicher
Committee Members
Benjamin Carp
John M. Dixon
Subject Categories
American Studies | History | Political History | United States History
Keywords
American Revolution; Time; Temporality; Imperial Crisis; Communications
Abstract
“American Timelines” offers a new explanation for the origins of the American Revolution by charting the emergence of a fundamental rift in the ways colonists and imperial rulers understood and experienced time. Colonists’ expectations and beliefs about timely communications across the Atlantic underwent a profound shift in the middle of the eighteenth century that has gone largely unnoticed in the scholarship. The development of colonial time-consciousness—meaning an increased awareness of the time needed for transatlantic communications and a growing concern about its political consequences—catalyzed the colonists’ drive toward revolution. The rhythms of transatlantic communications framed how the colonists understood their place in the British empire and shaped political consciousness and action in colonial and revolutionary America.
“American Timelines” reveals how the intersection of time and space in the early modern empire produced explosive political consequences. Its methodology, which privileges the act of receiving news over the act of sending it, weaves together insights from ideological, imperial, and progressive schools of historiography in a new narrative of the imperial crisis. It approaches questions of time and communications through the lens of experience and governance to connect ideological and intellectual forces to material realities. Following the threads of communications and time-consciousness, “American Timelines” charts a new chronology that defamiliarizes traditional episodes in the coming of the American Revolution and blurs the boundaries of events in revealing ways.
By analyzing when and how information traveled to and from the metropole and the colonial peripheries, this dissertation traces the growth and politicization of colonial time-consciousness across the death of King George II in 1760, the end of the Seven Years’ War, the Stamp Act Crisis, the Townshend Crisis, and the decision in Somerset v. Steuart. It contends that time-consciousness precipitated the Revolution, and once violence broke out in 1775, communications delays and time lags decisively shifted the balance of power away from London and towards the colonies.
Recommended Citation
Yoo-Roth, Helena, "American Timelines: Imperial Communications, Colonial Time-Consciousness, and the Coming of the American Revolution" (2025). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6427
