Moravians

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Spencer Fogleman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
Atlantic History ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
British North America ◽  
New Community

The Moravians were a mostly German Pietist religious group that spread throughout the Atlantic world and beyond in the 18th century. Though considered “Protestant,” their origins predate the Reformation. In the late 14th century, a grassroots religious renewal movement began in Bohemia and Moravia that gained momentum after the martyrdom of its two most important leaders, Jan Hus (b. c. 1369–d. 1415) and Jerome of Prague (b. 1379–d. 1416). Thereafter, a mass movement developed that armed itself and successfully fought off numerous crusades by forces of the Holy Roman Empire bent on its destruction. After a settlement that secured its existence, a branch of this “Hussite” movement became pacifist and called itself the Unitas Fratrum, a name the Moravians carry to this day. Victorious imperial Catholic forces destroyed them and other “Protestants” in Bohemia and Moravia during the Thirty Years’ War, forcing them to go underground. In 1722 a remnant of the old Unitas Fratrum from Moravia settled on the estates of Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) in Upper Lusatia (Saxony). They began building a new community called Herrnhut, with Zinzendorf as their leader, and in 1728 the Unitas Fratrum formally celebrated its rebirth. Under Zinzendorf’s direction, the movement expanded rapidly in the mid-18th century and developed a rigorous mission program that continues to this day. The Moravians promoted ecumenism in a confessional age, which led to their involvement with Lutheran, Calvinist, and other churches in often controversial ways. They are important to Atlantic history because they engaged with Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans in significant ways throughout the Atlantic world, and they kept detailed records of their activities. Many of their early missionary efforts failed, but they became noted for their successes, especially among slaves on St. Thomas, St. Croix, and elsewhere in the Caribbean; the Mahicans, Delawares, and Shawnees in British North America; Maroons and later slaves in Suriname; and Inuits in Greenland. They also had significant short-term successes among the Arawaks in Berbice and Cherokees in northern Georgia. Suriname became a long-term success story in the 19th century, and in the late 19th and 20th centuries, Moravians had tremendous success in Africa. Today, the largest numbers of Moravians are in Africa and North America, not Europe. It is their mission successes in so many places, combined with their disassociation from European imperial projects, their record keeping, and their cosmopolitan Weltanschauung, that make them such an important people to the study of Atlantic history, especially for historians who wish to cross imperial boundaries and study encounters among all peoples in the region.

The Dutch in South America and the Caribbean

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Ebert
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Atlantic History ◽  
Salvador Da Bahia ◽  
Spanish Atlantic ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Republic

The concept of “Latin America” gained currency only in modern times, and its use as an organizing concept for the early modern period is limited. The best way to understand the involvement of the Dutch Republic in overseas colonizing efforts is through the idea of Atlantic history. This involvement was part and parcel of the fitful consolidation of the Republic in the latter decades of the 16th century, as the “rebellious provinces” took their war with Habsburg Spain to Spanish Atlantic possessions. A more sustained assault on the Iberian Atlantic began with the chartering of the first Dutch West India Company (WIC) in 1621. A short-lived invasion of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil’s colonial capital, was followed by a successful occupation of the rich sugar-producing captaincy of Pernambuco from 1630 to 1654. Dutch New York, by way of comparison, was a small venture. Grand schemes for large Dutch colonies in territories claimed by the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies came to nothing, and the WIC was reorganized in 1674 with more modest ambitions. The Dutch subsequently established a vigorous presence in Suriname, Curaçao, and a handful of islands in the Lesser Antilles embracing plantation agriculture, trade, and financial services. This bibliography examines Dutch Atlantic world historiography with a focus on competition with the Iberian empires, especially in Brazil. It also discusses works on other Dutch outposts, which are considered collectively as a “Caribbean zone,” whether mainland or island. Administered only loosely by the second WIC, these colonies became sites of vigorous interaction with all the other European Atlantic powers throughout the 18th century. Other sections list works on the Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in Dutch colonies, the history of Portuguese Jews in the Dutch Atlantic world, and published primary sources relevant to Dutch Atlantic history.

For a Comprehensive History of the Atlantic World or Histories Connected In and Beyond the Atlantic World?

2012 ◽  
Vol 67 (02) ◽  
pp. 279-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Vidal
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Atlantic History ◽  
Power Relationships ◽  
Atlantic Studies ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Colonialism ◽  
Comprehensive History

This article deals with the field of Atlantic history, which first rose to prominence in North America in the early 1990s. Based on a critical review of two recently published books that reflect this “new” historiographical current, it presents the various debates dividing the Atlanticist community, including the different ways of conceptualizing the Atlantic world, practicing Atlantic history, and envisioning the future of Atlantic studies. It argues that the Atlantic world should remain a simple historical framework instead of becoming the main object of investigation. The goal is thus to write a situated history that, while taking into account all historical actors, focuses on the redefinition and renegotiation of power relationships among individuals, groups, and socio-political formations in this interconnected world born out of European colonialism and imperialism.

Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Atlantic History ◽  
19Th Century Literature ◽  
The North ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approaches ◽  
The Relationship

It is hard to overestimate the extent to which anti-Catholicism structured the Atlantic world. As much as Catholicism itself was a transatlantic force (see the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History article “Catholicism” by Allyson M. Poska), the counter-response to Catholicism had a pervasive influence, especially in the Protestant-dominated North Atlantic (see “Protestantism” by Carla Gardina Pastana). It was, as Chris Beneke and Christopher Grenda have observed, “nimble and ubiquitous” (The First Prejudice, p. 15). The past decade has witnessed significant growth in the scholarship on anti-Catholicism. The most important overall advancement is our growing understanding that anti-Catholicism was more than just a knee-jerk prejudice. It was a complex, varied, and protean phenomenon that warrants close analysis. To a great degree, the growing sophistication of the historiography on anti-Catholicism across the Atlantic basin builds on the work of historians of early modern England and Britain, who have been carefully documenting and analyzing the phenomenon since the 1970s. Because this work is relatively narrow in its geographic scope—often limited to a particular county or region, individual, group, or theme—it is not covered here; but this historiography has been hugely important in providing a foundation for the works that are represented. The bibliography covers scholarship on anti-Catholicism from the 17th through the 20th centuries with a necessary focus on the North Atlantic world. It pays special attention to the British context not only because the literature is most developed for that region but also because it was the British who were most responsible for transferring anti-Catholic ideas, identities, institutions, and policies across the ocean. That said, historical examination of anti-Catholicism in the Dutch world is growing and is thus represented here as well. Overall, the works were selected either for their influence on studies of anti-Catholicism in the Atlantic world in various times and places, or because they adopt a wide geographical lens and deal directly with the Atlantic dimensions of anti-Catholicism. Indeed, one of the trends in the historiography is a shift from early modern and nation-centric studies to transnational investigations that include the 19th and 20th centuries (scholarship on the 18th century, while growing, still lags somewhat behind the early modern and 19th-century literature.) Other trends include efforts to distinguish anti-Catholicism from its closely related corollary, anti-Popery, and to explore the relationship between them; growing calls for interdisciplinary approaches to the study of anti-Catholicism; analysis of cross-fertilization of various forms of anti-Catholicism evident in the Atlantic world; and a commitment to studying how those targeted by anti-Catholicism navigated the systemic oppression it created.

Piracy in Colonial North America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark G. Hanna
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
New England ◽  
North American ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
British North America ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
British North American

Historians of colonial British North America have largely relegated piracy to the marginalia of the broad historical narrative from settlement to revolution. However, piracy and unregulated privateering played a pivotal role in the development of every English community along the eastern seaboard from the Carolinas to New England. Although many pirates originated in the British North American colonies and represented a diverse social spectrum, they were not supported and protected in these port communities by some underclass or proto-proletariat but by the highest echelons of colonial society, especially by colonial governors, merchants, and even ministers. Sea marauding in its multiple forms helped shape the economic, legal, political, religious, and cultural worlds of colonial America. The illicit market that brought longed-for bullion, slaves, and luxury goods integrated British North American communities with the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Pacific and Indian Oceans throughout the 17th century. Attempts to curb the support of sea marauding at the turn of the 18th century exposed sometimes violent divisions between local merchant interests and royal officials currying favor back in England, leading to debates over the protection of English liberties across the Atlantic. When the North American colonies finally closed their ports to English pirates during the years following the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), it sparked a brief yet dramatic turn of events where English marauders preyed upon the shipping belonging to their former “nests.” During the 18th century, colonial communities began to actively support a more regulated form of privateering against agreed upon enemies that would become a hallmark of patriot maritime warfare during the American Revolution.

Evangelicalism and Conversion

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Gardina Pestana
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
European Expansion ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Bible ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
Religious Revivals

Conversion was a frequently cited reason for European expansion into the wider Atlantic world. All colonizing powers justified their presence in the New World with reference to their mission to bring Christianity to the inhabitants, and indeed a papal bull divided responsibility for those conversion efforts outside Europe between the Portuguese and the Spanish in the late 15th century. Later, as other European states became involved, they used the same justification. The Protestants among them also cited the need to counteract the Roman Catholic efforts—especially those of the Spanish— to rescue the natives from what they deemed false religion. Conversion was, at least in theory, central to the creation of an integrated early modern Atlantic world. On the ground, actual efforts put into the conversion project varied widely, with Roman Catholics relying on religious orders to invest energy in the effort and Protestants doing far less in that direction for the first century or so after they entered the Atlantic world. When conversions did occur, Christian missionaries expected native peoples who converted to change drastically and completely, and they tended to judge anything less than a radical alteration as a false conversion. Much recent scholarship, however, has revealed that Native Americans negotiated between their traditional faith and the new one offered to them by Europeans, making sense of the new by relating it to the old. Conversions to Christianity among America’s first inhabitants were a focal point of European efforts, but they were not the only cases that occurred. Europeans also attempted to convert their African slaves—again more readily among Catholics than Protestants—and one another. By the 18th century, newly founded Protestant missionary organizations often concentrated on the conversion of other Europeans within the wider Atlantic world. Partly as a result of their efforts (but also due to other causes) religious revivals swept the Protestant community during the 1730s and 1740s. “Evangelicalism” refers to those Protestants who emphasize conversion and often expand their numbers through revivals. The term “evangelical” was favored by Protestants on the continent of Europe from the beginning to link their religious movement to the early Christian church. The term was taken up by British Protestants in the 18th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, to refer to their efforts to revive their churches, returning them to their scriptural roots. Evangelical Christians focus on the Bible and on the importance of the conversion process, and they helped to reshape the Protestant Atlantic through their missionary work and their revivals in the 18th century.

Voices from the Other Side

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Terraciano
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
New Spain ◽  
The Other ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Western Side ◽  
Competition For Resources

European and African migrations brought waves of change to millions of people on the western side of the Atlantic world. This article examines indigenous responses to some of these changes in three regions of the Americas (New Spain, Peru, and North America), from about the mid-sixteenth to the second half of the eighteenth centuries. It highlights indigenous attempts to reach out across the Atlantic, to meet imperial authorities face to face, to speak to them through mediators and messengers, or to influence them with writings. Many writings from Mexico and Peru reveal a tension between hope and despair, expectation and frustration, as possibilities for cooperation, trade, and alliance between colonists and indigenous gave way in many places to competition for resources and profit. The long-term costs of this competition to Native Americans were incalculable.

Native American Networks

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Cultural Beliefs ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Native North America

Networks describe how people and places are connected. In Native North America, these connections took the form of kinship, trade, and various forms of alliance—all of which overlapped in ways that make it impossible to analyze one category without considering the others. At a basic level, all of these networks depended on the communication of information, which circulated as fact and rumor across the continent. Varying by region and topography, Native peoples traveled by canoe, foot, and (from the colonial period onward) horseback along trail networks that linked diverse Native American towns and facilitated both continental and transatlantic trade and communication. The study of networks, whether in the form of trade, kinship, or Native-defined alliances, allows historians to transcend typical boundaries of analysis, such as borders drawn by European cartographers. Throughout the 18th century and even into the 19th century, these borders were fictions, as Native Americans continued to control much of the continent. An abundance of archaeological evidence reveals the exchange networks that spread material items and cultural beliefs long before the colonial period. Some of the most well-known pre-Columbian networks involved agriculturalist settlements often grouped under the label “Mississippian,” which thrived along the Mississippi and its tributaries from approximately the 11th through 16th centuries. But other networks crisscrossed the continent, from the Great Plains to the Southwest. These long-existing but shifting networks facilitated the later spread of European trade goods. To varying degrees, following the arrival of Europeans, Native peoples participated in a new system of exchange, capitalism, which commodified the natural world and has drawn considerable attention from scholars. Political power in Native North America was dynamic, organized by kinship networks that were both local and regional in importance. Families belonged to larger groups known as clans, which facilitated connections beyond the village. Typically, Native peoples traced these clan origins to some other-than-human ancestor. Kinship did not necessarily represent biological connections. Through ceremonies, Native peoples created what scholars call “fictive kinship” to create networks across distances and even into Euro-American communities.

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