Episode description

Do you hear...drumming? Must be the start of a new season of Flashback! We start off the third season by covering Martin Scorsese's 2002 epic historical drama Gangs of New York, taking us to the streets of Five Points in the mid-nineteenth century and amidst rising tensions stemming from the Civil War. Junior Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute Mark Power Smith joins to discuss the role of party politics in the formation of American nationalism in the nineteenth century, Daniel Day Lewis's turn as a patriotic political party man who loves a top hat (no not that one, that was last season), the New York City Draft Riots of 1863, and more! Was American democracy born through bloody fist fights and gang violence on the streets of Lower Manhattan, as this movie suggests? Find out on this episode of Flashback.

Mark's book, Young America: The Transformation of Nationalism before the Civil War (my infinite apologies for getting the title of the book wrong in the introduction), is available now for purchase at your academic bookstore of choice.

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Flashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute

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