“This Most Atrocious Crusade Against Personal Freedom” Anti-abolitionist Violence in Boston on the Eve of War

2021 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-81
Author(s):  
Patrick T.J. Browne
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Mob Violence ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Political Tactics

Abstract This essay explores increasing organization among anti-abolitionists in Boston on the eve of the Civil War and the combination of mob violence and political tactics they employed in an attempt to silence abolitionists. This opposition did not fade away on its own but was actively shut down by abolitionists who knew how to navigate politics and public opinion.

American Public Opinion and the Civil War in Bosnia

1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen E. Bennett ◽  
Richard S. Flickinger ◽  
Staci L. Rhine
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil War

Appointment With Destiny

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-120
Author(s):  
Mihajlo Mihajlov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Ethnic Conflict ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Independent Path ◽  
Political Persuasion

Apart from Mukovan Djilas, Mihajlo Mihajlov is considered as the most famous dissident in the Balkans--a former prisoner-of-conscience in Tito's Yugoslavia. This brief but comprehensive, autobiographical retrospective recounts some major hilights in Mihajlov's odyssey ushered in by his intellectual travelogue, Moscow Sunmer 1964, first published in full in The New Leader. Mihajlov became an embarrassment not only to Josip Broz Tito and the Soviet leaders, but also to those in die West who landed Tito's "independent path to socialism." Yet others correctly perceived Mihajlov's quest for freedom of thought, speech, press, association, religious, philosophical and political persuasion as a classic benchmark of basic human rights and freedoms characterizing open, pluralistic, democratic polities. Indeed, the Westem press contributed to the pressure of world public opinion, which helped free Mihajlov, and, as he claims, even kept him alive. In a region divided by inter-ethnic conflict and civil war, Mihajlov's struggle for the rule of law and human dignity epitomizes hopes for a better future.

ECONOMIC RUNAWAYS: PATRONAGE, POVERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF ‘FREEDOM’ ON SIERRA LEONE'S MARITIME FRONTIER

Africa ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Diggins
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Commercial Fishing ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Labour Exploitation ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Village Life

ABSTRACTAs a result of the autopsy of Sierra Leone's civil war, we have become familiar with a rather dystopian vision of ‘traditional’ economic life in that region. Combatants often described their family villages as spaces where profound inequalities were hidden within households; where labour exploitation was woven through kinship relations. This article follows several young men who fled conditions of bonded labour in their rural homes: not to join the war but to seek a new life in the commercial fishing economy. Elsewhere across the postcolonial world, there is a rich ethnographic literature illustrating that people on the fringes of the global capitalist order respond with profound unease as their economic lives become ever more strongly regulated by impersonal market forces. Less often acknowledged is the possibility that, for some people, in some contexts, severing social relations might be exactly what they want, and that therein lies the greatest appeal of an economic life characterized by market transactions. For the young men described in this article, commercial fishing appeared to offer a level of personal ‘freedom’ unimaginable within the patron–client structures of village life. However, most find themselves drawn rapidly back into new forms of extractive relationships.

Cross-Cuttingness, Cleavage Structures and Civil War Onset

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Sawat Selway
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Significant Determinant ◽  
Ethnic Fractionalization ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Cleavage Structure ◽  
Civil War Onset

This article seeks to further our understanding of how social structure affects the onset of civil war. Existing studies to date have been inconclusive, focusing only on single-cleavage characteristics of social structure, such as ethnic or religious fractionalization. This study argues that models that do not take into account the relationship between cleavages (or cleavage structure) are biased and thus reach faulty conclusions. With the focus on the cleavages of ethnicity and religion, the effects of two characteristics of cleavage structure on civil war onset (cross-cuttingness and cross-fragmentation) are defined and tested. A new index of ethno-religious cross-cuttingness (ERC), derived from national public opinion surveys, reveals that ERC is a significant determinant of civil war onset when interacted with ethnic fractionalization.

London's ‘Monster’ Petition of 1680

1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Knights
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Geographical Economic

ABSTRACTThe unrest in London during the ‘Exclusion Crisis’ filled Charles II with fear and foreboding of a new civil war. Yet although recent research has highlighted the important role played by the capital's inhabitants in the period, the evidence available for studying the groups of radicals involved has been sketchy and fragmentary. This article uses a new source, in the form of a mass petition, signed by almost 16,000 citizens, which was presented to the king in January 1680. It offers a unique opportunity to measure public opinion during one of the most turbulent periods of the Restoration, and to test assumptions about the character of the opposition to the king. After a discussion of the aims and conduct of the campaign, a prosopographical study of some of the most readily identifiable signatories provides the basis for a detailed examination of the political, religious, geographical, economic and social dimension of the petition. Finally, London's popular reaction to national politics is considered in terms of its effectiveness in altering royal policy, and its impact on the rest of the country.

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