Copyrighting American History: International Copyright and the Periodization of the Nineteenth Century

IN THE LATTER part of the nineteenth century, east coast city dwellers in the United States had difficulty repressing a sense of their own persistent cultural inferiority vis-à-vis London and Paris. At the same time a great many old-stock Americans were dismayed by the stream of immigrants coming to these shores whose diversity called the future cohesion of the Republic into question almost as seriously as the issue of slavery had done in the decades before the Civil War. In such a climate of opinion, the unabashed provinciality of Frederick Jackson Turner's (1861-1932) paper "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," delivered at a meeting of the newly founded American Historical Association in connection with the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1892), began within less than a decade to resound like a trumpet call, though whether it signalled advance or retreat remained profoundly ambiguous....

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Conclusion

Remaking North American Sovereignty ◽

10.5422/fordham/9780823288458.003.0012 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 251-260

Author(s):

Frank Towers

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

North American ◽

American History ◽

Comparative Studies ◽

Future Research ◽

Nation State ◽

Research Questions ◽

National Framework

Whereas the introduction to this volume focused on the question of sovereignty and the nation-state, our conclusion takes stock of another important theme of this volume, writing North American history outside of a national framework. Riding the crest of a wave of studies on transnational and global comparative studies of the nineteenth century, historians working in this field would do well to pause briefly to take stock of its achievements, limitations, and future research questions....

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The Jeffersonian Electoral College in the Nineteenth Century

Presidential Elections and Majority Rule ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190060152.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 49-88

Author(s):

Edward B. Foley

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

American History ◽

Majority Rule ◽

Manifest Destiny ◽

Electoral College ◽

Andrew Jackson ◽

Winner Take All ◽

Take All

The Jeffersonian Electoral College performed as expected until, after the rise of Andrew Jackson, plurality winner-take-all became the prevailing method among states for appointing electors. Even then, the Jeffersonian Electoral College has usually operated consistently with the compound version of majority rule that the Jeffersonians had in mind. Using a mathematical measure, one can identify which elections clearly comply with the Jeffersonian conception of compound majority rule and which, by contrast, require further analysis to confirm their conformity to majoritarian principles. Undertaking this analysis, only two elections in nineteenth century—1844 and 1884—clearly contravene the Jeffersonian expectation for how the system was supposed to work. Of the two, the so-called accident of 1844 was hugely consequential for the rest of American history: the winner, James Polk, took the nation to war against Mexico in order to expand territory, particularly for slavery, according to his vision of Manifest Destiny.

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