Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of exploring how aspects of sociability and cosmopolitanism were central to the formation of Enlightenment thought outside the Paris-Edinburgh axis. The first section focuses upon areas of Europe that are rarely mentioned in discussions of the Enlightenment: Ireland, Spain and Italy. This essay sets the stage for two closer studies of how sociability was expressed in colonial Pennsylvania, the first looking at the Pittsburgh Enlightenment and the second considering the Philadelphia thinker Benjamin Rush and his influence upon rural farmers. this essay argues that Russian Imperial identity was challenged by its expansion into the Western European cultural world and examines the tensions associated with this process. By examining these issues of sociability within the Atlantic context, this essay will illustrate the abiding purchase of European thought in the early republic and how it was transformed by circumstances on the American frontier.