Introduction

Author(s):  
Justin du Rivage

This introductory chapter briefly considers why the British American colonists had broken away from an empire that they had long revered. Americans like to think of themselves as fundamentally different from Europeans—both more democratic and more libertarian. But during the eighteenth century, Britain and its North American colonies were actually becoming more alike. However, the United States followed a different path from the dramatic transformation that painted the globe French blue and British red. That path reflected the fact that the American Revolution was a revolution not for or against monarchy, but against the authoritarian transformation of the British Empire.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Claire Priest

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the origins of the credit economy in the United States. The British American colonial credit economy must be understood as part of the broader financial revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. There were many facets to the eighteenth-century economy: from the politics of empire, to the revolution in government finance, to the Atlantic slave trade, to legal reforms related to land. One pivotal moment was Parliament's Stamp Act of 1765, which many historians view as the act that triggered the American Revolution. The book suggests that the legal commodification of land and slaves as collateral and the creation of legal institutions for recording property titles and foreclosing on mortgages and debts were important underpinnings of the future capitalist society.


1986 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. R. Clayton

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.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Rachel B. Herrmann

This introductory chapter discusses the important role of hunger during the American Revolution. Enduring, ignoring, creating, and preventing hunger were all ways to exercise power during the American Revolution. Hunger prompted violence and forged ties; it was a weapon of war and a tool of diplomacy. In North America, Cherokee, Creek, Delaware, Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), Miami, and Shawnee Indians grew and destroyed foodstuffs during the Revolutionary War, which forced their British and American allies to hunger with them, and to furnish provisions that accommodated Native tastes. By the 1810s, the United States had learned how to prevent Indian hunger, to weaponize food aid, and to deny Indians the power gained by enduring and ignoring scarcity. Meanwhile, people of African descent gained some power by creating white hunger during the Revolutionary War, but more so as formerly enslaved communities, primarily after leaving the new United States and migrating to British colonies in Nova Scotia and then Sierra Leone. After white officials in Sierra Leone realized that colonists' hunger-prevention efforts gave them too much freedom, black colonists lost their hunger-preventing rights. Ultimately, three key behaviors changed and were, in turn, changed by evolving ideas about hunger: food diplomacy, victual warfare, and victual imperialism.


1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Vernadsky

The two great revolutions of the eighteenth century—the American and the French had each in turn and in its own way a profound influence not only on the history of the United States and of France, but directly or indirectly on the history of the whole world.These two powerful currents had a common source in the French ideological movement before the Revolution. The development of American revolutionary thought was of course more closely linked to the English ideology, but there was much contact and cross influence between the English and the French philosophers. Further, the French political and philosophical literature was directly accessible to Americans without intermediary English works. We have only to mention Montesquieu and his principle of the separation of powers which serves as the basis of the Constitution of the United States. Also, the American Revolution influenced in turn political developments in France. One finds the roots of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen not only in France but in America as well.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Singerton

Jonathan Singerton’s is the first work to analyze the impact of the American Revolution in the Habsburg lands in full. He narrates how the Habsburg dynasty first received struggled with the news of the American Revolution and then how they sought to utilize their connections with a sovereign United States of America. Overall, Singerton recasts scholarly conceptions of the Atlantic World and also presents a more globalized view of the eighteenth-century Habsburg world, highlighting how the American call to liberty was answered in the remotest parts of central and eastern Europe but also showing how the United States failed to sway one of the largest, most powerful states in Europe onto its side in the War for American Independence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-12
Author(s):  
Vladislav L. Gorfin ◽  
Alexander M. Rybakov

In the article the authors show the place of Russia in the struggle for the independence of the United States. They reveal the concept of «military neutrality», its essence and content. They define the basic principles of the world colonial system in the XVIII century, the foundations of interrelation between world powers and their colonies. They identify the priorities and interests for the development of foreign policy relations. They establish causal links between the war of the North American colonies of Great Britain for their independence and the policies of a number of European powers (Russia, Great Britain, France), as well as the consequences to which it led. The article considers the history of the struggle for independence and the formation of a new state of the United States of America, the development of foreign policy relations. The authors focus on the history of Russian-American relations in the second half of the XVIII century in the political aspect, and emphasize the increasing penetration of Russia’s influence in the scientific and cultural spheres which directly influenced and enriched the two countries. The relations between Russia and the United States and their history are studied. The history of relations between Russia and Great Britain is shown. The authors analyze the history of attempts to involve the Russian Empire in the war on the side of Great Britain, the position of the Russian government and Catherine II, as well as their attitude to these attempts. The authors give prominence to a number of world political figures and note their personal contribution to the process of struggle for independence and the further development of the United States of America. Unknown moments of their biographies are revealed. Conclusions are drawn about the role and the place of the leading countries of the period under study in the struggle for freedom and independence of the future superpower.


Author(s):  
Marc Saperstein

This introductory chapter provides some passing references to some of the great Jewish preaching traditions of the modern period. It focuses on preaching in Britain and the United States by representatives of the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements (but not by the ultra-Orthodox, whose Yiddish and — in Israel — Hebrew preaching is a very different tradition). The chapter reveals that there is such a multitude of diverse material from the middle of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twenty-first. All these are furthermore conducted by preachers from all over the world — from both eastern and western Europe as well as the United States and the Middle East. Though this chapter's focus is on Britain and the United States, references are also made to these other preachers from around the world.


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