“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.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The Core ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The People ◽  
The Subject ◽  
American Nation

The subject of this volume is law and the constitution of power in Great Britain’s thirteen continental North American colonies during the last three to four decades of their allegiance to the empire. The core claim of the volume is that, however different the legal systems of the thirteen colonies may have been at their founding, people recognizably American had begun by the mid-eighteenth century to share a common legal heritage, as well as a common political and cultural one. The shared heritage enabled the people to join together, declare their independence, and launch a new American nation....

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.

scholarly journals Seizures among the Participants of the Inconfidência Mineira as a Source for Research on the History of Books and Libraries (1789)

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
André Figueiredo Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Minas Gerais ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Minas Gerais State ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Books ◽  
Separatist Movement

ABSTRACT This article discusses the seizure of assets owned by the participants in the Minas Gerais State separatist movement known as the Inconfidência Mineira in Brazil, and whether these seizure records may serve as a source for research on the history of books, libraries, and general reading habits in Minas Gerais in the second half of the eighteenth century. First, the historical context of books and the intersection between the seizures and the region’s literary culture were examined. The possibilities and the limits to the use of these seizure records in the study of private libraries is also analyzed. Finally, some of the conspirators’ reading habits, which were influenced by the revolutionary ideas that circulated Europe and North America, are presented.

Consumption

2020 ◽  
pp. 295-299
Author(s):  
Richard J. Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
New England ◽  
Southern States ◽  
History Of

This brief chapter begins with a letter dated December 20, 1831, from Samuel Emerson of Kennebunk, Maine, commending the manuscript, particularly the volume on consumption, and agreeing with the “necessity of copious and repeated bleedings.” Barker promises a history of consumptive diseases as they have appeared in Maine and some other parts of New England since 1768, to be preceded by a history of the disease back to Hippocrates by Thomas Young. He notes that earlier in the eighteenth century consumption made up only about one-tenth of the bills of mortality but by the close of the century, it appears to have made up one-fourth of all deaths. Several physicians in North America have made valuable observations on consumption, though chiefly in the middle and Southern states; Barker will provide results of his inquiries and observations as it has appeared in the northern and eastern parts of the Union. He remarks about some cures that have come about by what are called by some, “the efforts of nature.”

A Dialogue with King Agaja: William Snelgrave’s 1727 Ardra Diary and the Contours of Dahomian-European Commercial Exchange

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 29-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neal D. Polhemus
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Commercial Exchange ◽  
History Of

Abstract:The rise of the Kingdom of Dahomey in the first quarter of the eighteenth century was a watershed event in the political history of precolonial West Africa. This article draws on a newly rediscovered copy of William Snelgrave’s diary who visited King Agaja of Dahomey in April 1727. The diary provides the fullest account to date of Agaja’s motives for invading Whydah in March 1727. In addition, the Diary provides the earliest evidence confirming the bona fides of Bulfinch Lambe’s 1731 mission to England to establish commercial relations with King George II.

Introduction: Newspaper reporting of crime and justice

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH FOYSTER
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Code ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Dominant Form ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Urban Policing ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
British State

One of the most intriguing and challenging problems facing historians of crime and the law is determining what were popular perceptions of criminal behaviour and criminal justice. Each of the articles in this special issue tackles this question by examining the content of British and colonial newspapers that were printed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The choice of this period is significant both for the history of the press, and for that of criminal justice. It was during the eighteenth century that the newspaper became the dominant form of print culture, with readers enjoying an increasing choice of papers that were printed both in London and in the provinces. As literacy rates improved, and because newspaper stories could be read aloud, the audience for newspapers continued to expand. At the same time, the British state attempted new ways of administering criminal justice. The multiplication of the number of offences that carried the death penalty meant that the criminal code gained notoriety as the ‘Bloody Code’, while the Transportation Act of 1718, covering England and Wales, authorized the deportation of English and Welsh criminals to the American colonies. By the end of the eighteenth century London magistrates were experimenting with new methods of urban policing, as fears mounted about how the growing population could be both controlled and protected from crime. Newspapers reported, reflected upon and sometimes debated each of these developments, yet remarkably, it is not until now that historians of crime have analysed in any detail what the content of these newspapers can reveal about contemporary attitudes towards crime and justice.

The Naval Defence of British North America 1739–1763

1948 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 95-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
West Coast ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The West ◽  
British North America ◽  
European Theatre

UNTIL the eighteenth century, British naval operations rarely strayed outside the strictly European theatre. Engagements in North American waters were isolated enterprises, having little connection with the decisive area of battle which lay off the west coast of Europe in the vicinity of the British Isles. This concentration of forces in home waters was deter-mined as much by structural, technical and hygienic deficiencies as by strategic doctrine. Disease and gales were always the worst enemies, and in the manner bf continental armies, the ships of the Royal Navy sought winter quarters in or after November. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, improvements in naval architecture and the technique of navigation, as well as methods of preserving food and protecting health (slight as they may appear to this age), enabled ships to keep at sea for longer periods, and at greater distances from their home ports.

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