Great Grievance: Benjamin Franklin and Anti-Convict Sentiment

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-46
Author(s):  
Jennie Jeppesen
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Newspaper Article ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Colonies

Abstract Perhaps the best known argument that the early American colonies despised convict labour was the Rattlesnake newspaper article penned by Benjamin Franklin. And yet, was there actually a wide-spread anti-convict sentiment? Or was Franklin a lone voice railing against perceived British insults? Framed around the claims made by Franklin, this article is an investigation of primary evidence from the colonies of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, in an attempt to better contextualize Franklins writing against colonial law and other colonial writers and correct the prevailing historical narrative that there was an anti-convict movement.

An Analysis of Symbolic Images in The Scarlet Letter

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 1725
Author(s):  
Haihong Gao
Keyword(s):  
Work Experience ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Scarlet Letter ◽  
The Scarlet Letter ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
American Law ◽  
Deep Meaning ◽  
Symbolic Images

The Scarlet Letter was written by Nathanial Hawthorne in 1850, with the background of seventeenth Century of the early American colonies, taking the tragic love between pastor Arthur Dimmesdale and a woman named Hester's as content, which revealed the dim of American law, and hypocrisy of religion. So this novel filled with the religion plot and conveyed the humanity feelings. This paper focuses on the symbolic technique to analyze The Scarlet Letter. By rethinking and criticizing the Puritanism, this paper wants to reveal the dark side of man nature and arouse readers ’thought on morality. Predecessor researchers analyzed The Scarlet Letter from the aspects of feminist, religion and moral. But this paper turn view, it analyze the novel from symbolic images technique. This paper consists of three parts. The first part introduces the author, including his background, study and work experience, and the influence of his novels. The second part introduces the symbolism, including its definition and effect. In the third part, in order to reveal the hypocrisy of the religious at that time, to reveal the rebellious spirit of women, I will interpret the symbolic images from three aspects: the nature, color, time. Through the analysis of the symbolic images, readers can find the deep meaning of the context, which can strengthen people’s understanding of the characters, scenes and the plot of the novel. This can promote the comprehensive understanding of this greatest novel.

scholarly journals William Bartram: a Maker and Painter of America’s Image in its Enlightenment

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Jagas
Keyword(s):  
Natural Science ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Critical Time ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Enlightenment ◽  
William Bartram ◽  
Scientific World

The American Enlightenment of the eighteenth century was a critical time in the early years of the emergent nation as Americans increasingly explored and investigated all fields of knowledge, from philosophy to natural science. One lesser-known early American of the period, who was especially significant to early American natural science, was the naturalist William Bartram (1739-1823), whose most vital role in the American Enlightenment was that of helping America assert itself in a scientific world largely dominated at the time by European scientists. In this respect, Bartram reinforced the efforts of men like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin to prove America to be a capable nation able to act independently. Bartram’s work also helped to develop and advertise the image of America to the world as a young and growing nation. This paper, therefore, while first seeking to explore Bartram’s critical role as a maker and painter of America’s image during its Enlightenment, also displays some of the critical difficulties (outside of its politics) facing early America.

Early American Rebels

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noeleen McIlvenna
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Poor Whites ◽  
Connected Group ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Poor White ◽  
White Settlers ◽  
Bacon's Rebellion

During the half century after 1650 that saw the gradual imposition of a slave society in England’s North American colonies, poor white settlers in the Chesapeake sought a republic of equals. Demanding a say in their own destinies, rebels moved around the region looking for a place to build a democratic political system. This book crosses colonial boundaries to show how Ingle's Rebellion, Fendall's Rebellion, Bacon's Rebellion, Culpeper's Rebellion, Parson Waugh's Tumult, and the colonial Glorious Revolution were episodes in a single struggle because they were organized by one connected group of people. Adding land records and genealogical research to traditional sources, Noeleen McIlvenna challenges standard narratives that disdain poor whites or leave them out of the history of the colonial South. She makes the case that the women of these families played significant roles in every attempt to establish a more representative political system before 1700. McIlvenna integrates landless immigrants and small farmers into the history of the Chesapeake region and argues that these rebellious anti-authoritarians should be included in the pantheon of the nation’s Founders.

Spain and the Spanish American Wars of Independence: The Comisión de Reemplazos, 1811–1820

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-237
Author(s):  
Michael P. Costeloe
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Administrative System ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
Secretary Of State ◽  
Red Tape ◽  
Council Of State ◽  
Constitutional Regime

A prominent feature of Spain's response to the rebellions of its Latin American colonies, both during the constitutional régime of 1810–1814 and the absolutist system of Ferdinand VII from 1814–1820, was wide-spread bureaucratic confusion. When José García de Léon y Pizarro became Secretary of State in 1816, he found the whole question of the pacification of America in a deplorable state which had reached ‘un punto de exasperación increíble’1 In a Council of State session of December 1816, the Navy Minister, José Vázquez de Figueroa, angrily denounced the red tape and inefficient administrative system in which decisions were lost in ‘una verdadera lucha de papeles’.2

MOVING FROM PERIPHERY TO CENTRE: THE NON-BRITISH IN COLONIAL NORTH AMERICA

1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 903-910
Author(s):  
Emily Clark
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
City Government ◽  
Early America ◽  
State University ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Early American History ◽  
Early American ◽  
Louisiana State University

Life and religion at Louisbourg, 1713–1758. By A. J. B. Johnston. London: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1984, paperback edition, 1996. Pp. xxxii+227. ISBN 0-7735-1525-9. £12.95.The New Orleans Cabildo: Colonial Louisiana's first city government, 1769–1803. By Gilbert C. Din and John E. Harkins. London: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. Pp. xvii+330. ISBN 0-8071-2042-1. £42.75.Revolution, romanticism, and the Afro-Creole protest tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868. By Caryn Cossé Bell. London: Louisiana State University Press, 1997. Pp. xv+325. ISBN 0-8071-2096-0. £32.95.Hopeful journeys: German immigration, settlement and political culture in colonial America, 1717–1775. By Aaron Spencer Fogleman. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Pp. xii+257. ISBN 0-8122-1548-6. £15.95.Britannia lost the war of American independence but still reigns over the historiography of colonial North America. This is a problem now that historians of early America have embarked on an attempt to apply an Atlantic world perspective to colonial development. The complex web of human, cultural, economic, and political encounters and exchanges among Europe, Africa, and the Americas spreads well beyond the familiar terrain of Britain and its thirteen mainland colonies. While the histories of Indians and enslaved Africans are beginning to find their way into the historical narrative of early America to challenge the British hegemony, non-British Europeans remain virtually invisible, except as opponents in the imperial wars that punctuated the colonial era. These four books illustrate obstacles that must be overcome to remedy this gap and offer glimpses of the rewards to be gained by drawing the history of continental Europeans previously treated as peripheral into the centre of the major debates currently shaping early American history.

New Light on the Chancery Side of Virginia's Evolution to Statehood

1968 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin K. Singleton
Keyword(s):  
Early American ◽  
American Colonies

The assertion that ‘Equity in the early American colonies is a subject that still awaits complete research’ is more true of some colonies than of others. Because of marked differences in founding and internal growth, the colony-by-colony approach has been conceded to be appropriate; but this piecemeal approach has resulted in the overwriting of Massachusetts's meagre and testy involvement with the chancery style of justice, while Virginia's much richer involvement has received too little treatment.

scholarly journals Towards an Ethical Hermeneutics of Journalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-93
Author(s):  
Duygu Onay-Coker
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narrative ◽  
News Item ◽  
Newspaper Article ◽  
Ethical Perspective ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Critical Media ◽  
Turkish Cypriot

This paper applies a Ricœurian ethics in a two-fold personal/societal critique, choosing as a case study the representation of an “other” in a newspaper article. The personal critique uses a historical narrative (my own) as a window. Through it, we see hysterical stories about national enemies—in this case the Greek Cypriots—imposing themselves upon the developing consciousness of a growing child. I describe my awakening—through Ricœur’s idea of the creativity of language—from the spell of these dominant normative national narratives to the possibility of re-reading them creatively. Ricœur’s blueprint for engagement with such narrative structures holds out the promise of reading them in an ethical manner, and this is achievable through his linguistic hospitality. From there, this study, analyzing the ethical predicaments of mainstream journalism from the perspective of critical media studies, problematizes the issue of otherness in the news. The example taken up, a current Turkish newspaper article covering a Turkish Cypriot Parliamentarian’s remarks in session regarding the experiences of 1974 Cyprus, reveals how this otherization is actually constructed under the name of the journalistic profession. This essay then borrows a Ricœurian ethical perspective with a view to making news language more hospitable, repositioning both news organizations and news items alike within Ricœur’s ethical paradigm of leading a good life with and for others within just institutions. This conceptualization of the news item itself as a just institution is a change that journalists could make in order to bring the news more in line with a Ricœurian sense of ethics and away from the current dominant practices in mainstream journalism.

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