A Loyalist Who Loved His Country too Much: Thomas Hutchinson, Historian of Colonial Massachusetts

2017 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 344-384
Author(s):  
Liam Riordan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
American Culture ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
British Atlantic World

A history of the book approach to Thomas Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay (published 1764-1828) recovers his commitment to preserve facts and his place in eighteenth-century historiography. Hutchinson's vilification by patriots still obscures our understanding of his loyalism. The article reassesses late colonial society, the American Revolution, and Anglo-American culture in the British Atlantic World.

Hawthorne's Ritual Typology of the American Revolution

Prospects ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 483-498
Author(s):  
Peter Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Nathaniel Hawthorne ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
History Of

In the course of his career Nathaniel Hawthorne twice wrote the history of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England. He told the story for children in Grandfather's Chair (1841) and for adults in five related tales published between 1831 and 1838. These tales do not appear in chronological order among Hawthorne's collections, nor were they so written. But they are assigned prominent positions in the two volumes of Twice-Told Tales and in The Snow-Image and Other Tales. They contain a ritual history of protorevolutionary events in New England extending from the beginning of the settlement in Massachusetts Bay to the eve of the American Revolution. The key stories in this series and the events they deal with are “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” concerning Governor Endicott's destruction of Thomas Morton's maypole in 1629; “Endicott and the Red Cross,” on Endicott's desecration of the British flag in protest at the appointment of a royal governor in 1634; “The Gray Champion,” on the people's defiance of tyrannous Governor Andros on the eve of his expulsion in 1689; “My Kinsman, Major Molineux,” introduced as an incident relating to mistreatment and expulsions of governors between 1689 and 1730; and “Howe's Masquerade,” on the expulsion of military governor General Howe, predicted at a masquerade ball given by him during the siege of Boston in 1775.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Paugh
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Haitian Revolution ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
British Atlantic World ◽  
The Haitian Revolution

Abolitionist sentiments had long circulated in the British Atlantic world, but it was not until the 1760s in Virginia that they gained political traction in a colony dependent on slave labor. The politics of reproduction explain the success of abolitionism in this time and place: Virginia was unique among Britain’s colonies because, by the mid-eighteenth century, its slave population was growing, and wealthy planters had no need for fresh recruits. The American Revolution depleted the slave populations in the Caribbean, however, because it disrupted both the slave trade and the flow of imported foodstuffs. Consequently, British politicians began to fantasize, by the 1780s, that Caribbean slave societies could mimic the demographic success in North America in order to enjoy the economic benefits of a plentiful labor supply and allow for the abolition of the slave trade. This vision for reform was postponed, however, by geopolitical developments, including the Haitian Revolution.

scholarly journals “An Extensive Collection of Useful and Entertaining Books”: The Quebec Library and the Transatlantic Enlightenment in Canada

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Michael Eamon
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
Useful Knowledge ◽  
The Public ◽  
French And English ◽  
Extensive Collection ◽  
British Atlantic World

At the height of the American Revolution in 1779, the Quebec Library was created by Governor Sir Frederick Haldimand. For Haldimand, the library had a well-defined purpose: to educate the public, diffuse useful knowledge, and bring together the French and English peoples of the colony. Over the years, the memory of this institution has faded and the library has tended to be framed as an historical curiosity, seemingly divorced from the era in which it was created. This paper revisits the founding and first decades of this overlooked institution. It argues that its founder, trustees, and supporters were not immune to the spirit of Enlightenment that was exhibited elsewhere in the British Atlantic World. When seen as part of the larger social and intellectual currents of the eighteenth century, the institution becomes less of an historical enigma and new light is shed on the intellectual culture of eighteenth-century Canada.

J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Nacol
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
History Of Political Economy ◽  
History Of Finance ◽  
Scholarly Attention

In The Machiavellian Moment, J. G. A. Pocock shows how Niccolò Machiavelli and other Florentine political thinkers adapted Aristotelian and Polybian insights to create a paradigm of republican political thought that was sensitive to the problem of stabilizing civic virtue against inevitable political decay in time. This republican paradigm, he famously insists, traveled to eighteenth-century Anglo-American contexts via the work of James Harrington and helped political thinkers make sense of two seemingly disparate events—the rise of finance in Britain and the American Revolution—in civic republican terms. Pocock’s insistence that The Machiavellian Moment is a work of history does not negate its contributions to political theory. First, it is a significant text for political theorists who attend to the role of language and discourse in political thinking, although the Pocockian approach bears limitations worth acknowledging. Second, Pocock’s work is critical to the republican revival in contemporary political theory, because he centers and defends Florentine and Anglo-American republicanisms as political discourses worthy of scholarly attention. Lastly, The Machiavellian Moment appears, in hindsight, as a foundational text for scholarship in the history of political economy, particularly the pre-history of finance and credit.

Governance through Documents: The Board of Trade, Its Archive, and the Imperial Constitution of the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 264-290
Author(s):  
Asheesh Kapur Siddique
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
British Atlantic World ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
British State

AbstractThis article examines the role of documents, their circulation, and their archivization in the enactment of the imperial constitution of the British Empire in the Atlantic world during the long eighteenth century. It focuses on the Board of Trade's dispatch of “Instructions” and “Queries” to governors in the American colonies, arguing that it was through the circulation of these documents and the use of archives that the board sought to enforce constitutional norms of bureaucratic conduct and the authority of central institutions of imperial administration. In the absence of a singular, codified written constitution, the British state relied upon a variety of different kinds of documents to forge the imperial Atlantic into a governed space. The article concludes by pointing to the continuing centrality of documents and archives to the bureaucratic manifestation of the imperial constitution in the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution.

scholarly journals “No Intrigue Is Spared”: Anglo-American Intelligence Networks in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic

Itinerario ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Matthijs Tieleman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
Postal Services ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract This article surveys previously underexamined American and British intelligence networks that operated in the Netherlands during the eighteenth century and demonstrates the relevance of the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic to the larger history of the Netherlands, early modern Europe, and the revolutionary Atlantic. The Dutch Republic's favourable geographic location, its postal services, its sophisticated press, and its mercantile economy made it an ideal place to extract information and build intelligence networks, shaping power politics in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic. Additionally, this article illustrates how these Anglo-American intelligence networks affected the Dutch Republic and the revolutionary Atlantic. In the late 1770s, American revolutionaries successfully deployed their intelligence network to unleash a propaganda campaign that aimed to convince the Dutch public of their cause. By infiltrating the liberal and sophisticated Dutch printing press, the American revolutionaries not only succeeded in fostering political support among the Dutch public; they also created a transatlantic intellectual exchange with the Dutch opposition that laid the foundations of the Dutch Patriot movement of the 1780s and ultimately the dissolution of the Dutch Republic as a whole in 1795.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Whyman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
History Of The Book ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literate Society

The introduction shows the convergence and intertwining of the Industrial Revolution and the provincial Enlightenment. At the centre of this industrial universe lay Birmingham; and at its centre was Hutton. England’s second city is described in the mid-eighteenth century, and Hutton is used as a lens to explore the book’s themes: the importance of a literate society shared by non-elites; the social category of ‘rough diamonds’; how individuals responded to economic change; political participation in industrial towns; shifts in the modes of authorship; and an analysis of social change. The strategy of using microhistory, biography, and the history of the book is discussed, and exciting new sources are introduced. The discovery that self-education allowed unschooled people to participate in literate society renders visible people who were assumed to be illiterate. This suggests that eighteenth-century literacy was greater than statistics based on formal schooling indicate.

Resisting Independence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad A. Jones
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Daunting Task ◽  
Close Study ◽  
New Nation

This book maps the loyal British Atlantic's reaction to the American Revolution. Through close study of four important British Atlantic port cities — New York City; Kingston, Jamaica; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Glasgow, Scotland — the book argues that the revolution helped trigger a new understanding of loyalty to the Crown and empire. The book reimagines loyalism as a shared transatlantic ideology, no less committed to ideas of liberty and freedom than the American cause and not limited to the inhabitants of the thirteen American colonies. The book reminds readers that the American Revolution was as much a story of loyalty as it was of rebellion. Loyal Britons faced a daunting task — to refute an American Patriot cause that sought to dismantle their nation's claim to a free and prosperous Protestant empire. For the inhabitants of these four cities, rejecting American independence thus required a rethinking of the beliefs and ideals that framed their loyalty to the Crown and previously drew together Britain's vast Atlantic empire. The book describes the formation and spread of this new transatlantic ideology of loyalism. Loyal subjects in North America and across the Atlantic viewed the American Revolution as a dangerous and violent social rebellion and emerged from twenty years of conflict more devoted to a balanced, representative British monarchy and, crucially, more determined to defend their rights as British subjects. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, as their former countrymen struggled to build a new nation, these loyal Britons remained convinced of the strength and resilience of their nation and empire and their place within it.

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