Sophistry, Security, and Socio-Political Structures in the American Revolution; or, Why Jamaica did not Rebel

1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. Clayton
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
North American ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Constitutional Principle ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
Political Structures

Britain's most important American colonies did not rebel in 1776. Thirteen provinces did declare their independence; but no fewer than nineteen colonies in the western hemisphere remained loyal to the mother country. Massachusetts and Virginia may have led the American revolution, but they had never been the leading colonies of the British empire. From the imperial standpoint, the significance of any of the thirteen provinces which rebelled was pale in comparison with that of Jamaica or Barbados. In the century before 1763 the recalcitrance of these two colonies had been more notorious than that of any mainland province and had actually inspired many of the imperial policies cited as long-term grievances by North American patriots in 1774. Real Whig ideology, which some historians have seen as the key to understanding the American revolution, was equally understood by Caribbean elites who, like the continental, had often proved extremely sensitive on questions of constitutional principle. Attacks of ‘frenzied rhetoric’ broke out in Jamaica in 1766 and Barbados in 1776. But these had nothing whatsoever to do with the Stamp Act or events in North America.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin du Rivage
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
North American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain

This introductory chapter briefly considers why the British American colonists had broken away from an empire that they had long revered. Americans like to think of themselves as fundamentally different from Europeans—both more democratic and more libertarian. But during the eighteenth century, Britain and its North American colonies were actually becoming more alike. However, the United States followed a different path from the dramatic transformation that painted the globe French blue and British red. That path reflected the fact that the American Revolution was a revolution not for or against monarchy, but against the authoritarian transformation of the British Empire.

The Indigenous Roots of the American Revolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristofer Ray
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
North American ◽  
Ohio Valley ◽  
Illinois Country ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
Jurisdictional Control ◽  
Corrupt Behavior ◽  
Untapped Resource

Euro-Americans existed firmly on the periphery of an Indigenous North America in 1763, hubristic claims of continental sovereignty notwithstanding. Nowhere is this reality more clear than in the Ohio Valley and Illinois Country. Try as it might, the post-1763 British Empire could not assume jurisdictional control over this space. Even to begin to try was a task requiring significant investment—both in terms of more systematic Indigenous diplomacy and in terms of reforming colonial political structures unfit to accommodate imperial western policy. North American officials understood the problems quite well and were willing to spearhead reform. Between 1763 and 1775 they supported increased investment to defray North American expenses. They called for programs that would end colonial corruption, something they feared undermined Indigenous diplomacy and made a mockery of the rule of law. Ultimately, they concluded that centralizing Indian affairs offered the best means by which to stabilize North America. Colonials (generally) and speculators and their surveyor corps (specifically) powerfully disagreed, however, seeing Indian country as an untapped resource and imperial restraints as threats to local autonomy. They rejected the idea of centralizing power over Indigenous affairs and used the rhetoric of British constitutional liberty to reframe corrupt behavior into something it emphatically was not.

North America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James B. Bell
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Early America ◽  
Charles I ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
King Charles I ◽  
The Church

In step with the gradually unfolding imperial policies of the successive governments of King Charles I and later monarchs, the Church of England was extended to the northern part of the Western hemisphere between 1662 and 1829. Under the supervision of the Board of Trade and Plantations until 1701, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts from that year, decade after decade an increasing number of men of differing origins and places of collegiate education in Britain came to serve missions of the Church in early America. The ranks included natives of England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the American colonies, who were supported by the SPG or the legislatures of the provinces in which the Church was established. Development was shaped by imperial policies and administration over 160 years amid rising populations, changing political situations, and the consequences of war and diplomacy.

Sigonio in Anglo-American Projects to Reform the Imperial Constitution, 1751–1777

2020 ◽  
pp. 95-113
Author(s):  
Mark Somos
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
British Empire ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
American Identity ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Long Term Impact ◽  
Intense Debate

This chapter explores Carlo Sigonio’s long-term impact by zooming in on the nascent United States of America. It shows that Sigonio was seen as a leading comparative constitutional historian and one of the most cited authorities that would-be reformers turned to in the intense debate on the reform of the British imperial constitution in the second half of the eighteenth century. His analyses of the Roman Empire yielded timeless lessons for metropolitan and colonial administrators alike. Most importantly, Sigonio structured his studies of Roman, Athenian, Hebrew, and medieval Italian laws and customs in a way that revealed these complex historical states’ constitutional essence, making comparative analysis possible. This chapter shows why American lawyers, British politicians, and merchants and soldiers with a true British–American identity, explicitly drew on Sigonio’s analysis of Roman colonization in several reform plans for the British Empire, with particular attention to the American colonies.

scholarly journals A Surface Wind Extremes (“Wind Lulls” and “Wind Blows”) Climatology for Central North America and Adjoining Oceans (1979–2012)

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 643-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonny W. Malloy ◽  
Daniel S. Krahenbuhl ◽  
Chad E. Bush ◽  
Robert C. Balling ◽  
Michael M. Santoro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
North Atlantic Ocean ◽  
Grid Point ◽  
Surface Wind ◽  
Wind Speeds ◽  
The North ◽  
Anomalous Wind

AbstractThis study explores long-term deviations from wind averages, specifically near the surface across central North America and adjoining oceans (25°–50°N, 60°–130°W) for 1979–2012 (408 months) by utilizing the North American Regional Reanalysis 10-m wind climate datasets. Regions where periods of anomalous wind speeds were observed (i.e., 1 standard deviation below/above both the long-term mean annual and mean monthly wind speeds at each grid point) were identified. These two climatic extremes were classified as wind lulls (WLs; below) or wind blows (WBs; above). Major findings for the North American study domain indicate that 1) mean annual wind speeds range from 1–3 m s−1 (Intermountain West) to over 7 m s−1 (offshore the East and West Coasts), 2) mean durations for WLs and WBs are high for much of the southeastern United States and for the open waters of the North Atlantic Ocean, respectively, 3) the longest WL/WB episodes for the majority of locations have historically not exceeded 5 months, 4) WLs and WBs are most common during June and October, respectively, for the upper Midwest, 5) WLs are least frequent over the southwestern United States during the North American monsoon, and 6) no significant anomalous wind trends exist over land or sea.

North America’s Commerce in a Revolutionary Era

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Matson
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
British Empire ◽  
North American ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Far East ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Spanish Caribbean ◽  
North Americans ◽  
The North

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Please check back later for the full article. A long revolutionary era beginning in the 1770s and continuing into the 1820s profoundly altered North American commerce. The North American movement for independence from the British empire disrupted channels of trade in people and goods as embargoes and blockades shut down major transition points between continents or islands and the Atlantic Ocean, privateering crews of different empires seized vessels, wartime activities challenged the slave trade, and the economic fortunes of many international traders forced them to migrate, find new avenues of commerce, or retire altogether. Only a handful of well-placed merchants prospered during the North American Revolution by securing military supply contracts or engaging in illicit commerce, especially in the French and Spanish Caribbean. Despite many North Americans’ expectations for a rapid recovery after the Peace of Paris, recovery and new prosperity emerged slowly. Old connections to England, despite the revolutionary separation, recovered most quickly; but these connections were available to a small percentage of well-placed merchants, and often they were built on new foundations with new immigrants to North America. Moreover, England’s policy makers were intent upon limiting North American trade to parts of the world—especially the Caribbean—where the British empire hoped to control markets. A spike in vessel and crew seizures ensued during the 1780s. Within the Western Hemisphere, the French and Haitian revolutions also deeply unsettled many essential ties to British, French, and Spanish Caribbean markets, so that by the end of the 1790s North American merchants who wished to stay in commerce had been compelled to diversify their ports of call and seek new markets in South America, the Gulf Coast, and northern Europe. Meanwhile, the slave trade revived. When North American commerce began to flourish after the 1790s, revolutions in South America had a far less deleterious effect on the movement of goods and people. By then, the demand for provisions during the global spread of the Napoleonic wars, the opening of markets in the Far East, the expanding exporting potential of North Americans (especially flour and cotton), and their re-export commerce (especially sugar) rose above some of the constraints of earlier years.

“Good English without Idiom or Tone”: The Colonial Origins of American Speech

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 513-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul K. Longmore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
Political History ◽  
National Language ◽  
Standard English ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Linguistic Evolution ◽  
American Nation

The interplay between modes of speech and the demographical, geographical, social, and political history of Britain's North American colonies of settlement influenced the linguistic evolution of colonial English speech. By the early to mid-eighteenth century, regional varieties of English emerged that were not only regionally comprehensible but perceived by many observers as homogeneous in contrast to the deep dialectical differences in Britain. Many commentators also declared that Anglophone colonial speech matched metropolitan standard English. As a result, British colonials in North America possessed a national language well before they became “Americans.” This shared manner of speech inadvertently helped to prepare them for independent American nation-hood.

The British Credit Crisis of 1772 and The American Colonies

1960 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard B. Sheridan
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
Credit Crisis ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Finance ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
Anglo American

Few stones have remained unturned in an effort to reconstruct Anglo-American history in the critical years from the Treaty of Paris in 1763 to the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775. Much has been learned by investigating such problems as public finance, colonial administration, and mercantile policy within the context of an expanded British empire. It is not always realized, however, that by the Treaty of 1763 Great Britain acquired new fields for capital investment as well as vast new lands to govern. In addition to taxation and public expenditure, such problems were raised as capital recruitment and allocation, the modification of financial institutions, and the adjustment of debtor-creditor relationships. Though distinct in certain respects, public and private finance impinged upon each other in the period from 1763 to 1775. This was especially the case after the British credit crisis of 1772, when, in addition to the controversy over tea, debtor-creditor relations between the thirteen colonies and the mother country underwent marked deterioration.

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