The Dissemination and Reception of Isaac Watts’s Hymns and Psalms in the British North American Colonies to 1748

2019 ◽  
pp. 231-252
Author(s):  
Jane Giscombe
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Cotton Mather ◽  
The North ◽  
British North American ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
Psalms Of David

The hymns and psalms of the Congregational minister Isaac Watts circulated in the North American colonies prior to the revivals of the 1730s and’40s. Watts's transatlantic links are clearly evident in his regular correspondence with ministers and academics including Cotton Mather and Benjamin Colman. He gave forty-nine of his own books to Yale and many of these survive. Watts exchanged many letters with Benjamin Colman, pastor in Boston and an overseer of Harvard. Watts has often been regarded as having been first published in America in 1729 when Benjamin Franklin reprinted his Psalms of David. This paper examines two earlier publications of Watts's work, both printed in 1720 in Boston, and Cotton Mather’s reception of Watts’ early work. In so doing, it seeks to understand better Watts's influence in the American colonies before the arrival of George Whitefield and the Great Awakening of mid-century.

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.

scholarly journals Colonial American Paper Money and the Quantity Theory of Money: An Extension

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farley Grubb
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
North American ◽  
Statistical Relationship ◽  
Quantity Theory ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Monetary Unit ◽  
And Performance ◽  
British North American

The quantity theory of money is applied to the paper money regimes of seven of the nine British North American colonies south of New England. Individual colonies, and regional groupings of contiguous colonies treated as one monetary unit, are tested. Little to no statistical relationship, and little to no magnitude of influence, between the quantities of paper money in circulation and prices are found. The quantity theory of money does not explain the value and performance of colonial paper monies well. This is a general and widespread result, and not a rare and isolated phenomenon.

Concluding Observations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher C. Fennell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Commodity Chains ◽  
Exchange System ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The North ◽  
Manufactured Goods

This analysis contributes to studies that identify how social and cultural relationships facilitated or inhibited the spread of a Trans-Atlantic exchange system dominated by British economic interests. Other analysts have examined the remarkable expansion in the volume and variety of British-manufactured goods consumed in households of the North American colonies from the mid-eighteenth century onward. Part I of this book thus illustrated the ways in which concepts of ethnicity, trade spheres, and commodity chains can illuminate past social and economic trajectories.

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