“This iniquitous traffic”: The Kidnapping of Children for the American Colonies in Eighteenth-Century Ireland

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Kelly
Social Forces ◽  
1925 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 240
Author(s):  
Marcus L. Hansen ◽  
Herbert L. Osgood

Author(s):  
Brad A. Jones

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.


Author(s):  
Mark Somos

This chapter explores Carlo Sigonio’s long-term impact by zooming in on the nascent United States of America. It shows that Sigonio was seen as a leading comparative constitutional historian and one of the most cited authorities that would-be reformers turned to in the intense debate on the reform of the British imperial constitution in the second half of the eighteenth century. His analyses of the Roman Empire yielded timeless lessons for metropolitan and colonial administrators alike. Most importantly, Sigonio structured his studies of Roman, Athenian, Hebrew, and medieval Italian laws and customs in a way that revealed these complex historical states’ constitutional essence, making comparative analysis possible. This chapter shows why American lawyers, British politicians, and merchants and soldiers with a true British–American identity, explicitly drew on Sigonio’s analysis of Roman colonization in several reform plans for the British Empire, with particular attention to the American colonies.


1994 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gale

As the end of the eighteenth century approached, Britain experienced many changes in power and prestige: the American colonies had broken away; the philosophy of expansionism and imperial domination was being attacked from within and without, and the primacy of the British fleet and trade organizations was fast becoming a thing of the past. All of these factors, and others, forced a mood of re-evaluation upon the British government and people. Throughout the empire and its colonies the discussion of the merits and morality of the slave trade, for example, reached previously unheard of proportions, as the newly-rediscovered sciences of free-trade economics, moral philosophy, and cultivation technology turned towards the examination of slavery. Nowhere was this more active and adamant than in the Scottish university cities, which had become the centers of intellectual and scientific thought and practice. Thus it is no surprise to find this thematic focus upon the newly strengthened and emboldened Scottish stage. One manifestation was Archibald MacLaren's The Negro Slaves, a play in which can be found the seeds and fruits of the Scottish Enlightenment as it relates to the British abolitionist movement, the economic shift in overseas trade, and the overall milieu of colonial perception.


2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH FOYSTER

One of the most intriguing and challenging problems facing historians of crime and the law is determining what were popular perceptions of criminal behaviour and criminal justice. Each of the articles in this special issue tackles this question by examining the content of British and colonial newspapers that were printed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The choice of this period is significant both for the history of the press, and for that of criminal justice. It was during the eighteenth century that the newspaper became the dominant form of print culture, with readers enjoying an increasing choice of papers that were printed both in London and in the provinces. As literacy rates improved, and because newspaper stories could be read aloud, the audience for newspapers continued to expand. At the same time, the British state attempted new ways of administering criminal justice. The multiplication of the number of offences that carried the death penalty meant that the criminal code gained notoriety as the ‘Bloody Code’, while the Transportation Act of 1718, covering England and Wales, authorized the deportation of English and Welsh criminals to the American colonies. By the end of the eighteenth century London magistrates were experimenting with new methods of urban policing, as fears mounted about how the growing population could be both controlled and protected from crime. Newspapers reported, reflected upon and sometimes debated each of these developments, yet remarkably, it is not until now that historians of crime have analysed in any detail what the content of these newspapers can reveal about contemporary attitudes towards crime and justice.


1965 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
William I. Roberts

In contrast to older views of the passive role of London houses in the American trade, the active influence of a leading English merchant on the business decision-making of his colonial counterparts emerges from this case study.


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