Presidential Address: Council and Cabinet in the Mainland Colonies

1955 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 161-176
Author(s):  
H. Hale Bellot
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Executive Functions ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
The United States ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
The West ◽  
Presidential System

The cabinet in Great Britain is an emanation of the privy council. The councils in the royal colonies upon the American mainland, like those in the West Indies, were, in the language of the royal instructions to colonial Governors, ‘our’ councils, and at the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a prospect of a like development overseas. Yet it did not occur. The offspring of the colonial council in America is the senate of the United States. That body, like the colonial councils, has both legislative and executive functions. At the start it numbered a mere twenty-six members; and it was expected that the president, following the practice of colonial governors, would seek its advice in the discharge of his office. His cabinet had a quite different pedigree. It was envisaged in 1787 as something ‘[our Government] has always wanted, but never yet had.’ But it was, and still is, a meeting, not of ministers having seats in one or other of the houses of the legislature and collectively responsible to it, but of heads of departments individually responsible to the president. And it was historically, not a cabinet after the English model in a state of arrested development, but paradoxically a device of the legislature adapted to a presidential system. Why, it may be of interest to enquire, did this happen?

scholarly journals ‘True, Publick and Notorious’: The Privateering War of 1812

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Faye M. Kert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
United States Navy ◽  
West Indies ◽  
The United States ◽  
War Of 1812 ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
The West ◽  
The Government ◽  
British North American

During the War of 1812, hundreds of private armed vessels, or privateers, carrying letters of marque and reprisal from their respective governments, served as counterweights to the navies of Great Britain and the United States. By 1812, privateering was acknowledged as an ideal way to annoy the enemy at little or no cost to the government. Local citizens provided the ships, crews and prizes while the court and customs systems took in the appropriate fees. The entire process was legal, licensed and often extremely lucrative. Unlike the navy, privateers were essentially volunteer commerce raiders, determined to weaken the enemy economically rather than militarily. So successful were they, that from July 1812 to February 1815, privateers from the United States, Britain, and the British provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (as well as those sailing under French and Spanish flags) turned the shipping lanes from Newfoundland to the West Indies, Norway to West Africa, and even the South Pacific into their hunting grounds. In the early months of the war, privateers were often the only seaborne force patrolling their own coasts. With the Royal Navy pre-occupied with defending Britain and its Caribbean colonies from French incursions, there were relatively few warships available to protect British North American shipping from their new American foes. Meanwhile, the United States Navy had only a handful of frigates and smaller warships to protect their trade, supported by 174 generally despised gunboats. The solution was the traditional response of a lesser maritime power lacking a strong navy—private armed warfare, or privateering.

Caribbean Commission

1947 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 368-368
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
West Indies ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
The West ◽  
Rules Of Procedure ◽  
The Caribbean

The Caribbean Commission, formally established on October 20, 1946, by the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands and France, held a third meeting of its four national sections consisting of representatives of the above mentioned countries at Curacao, Netherlands West Indies, in December, 1946. Particular items on the agenda included 1) discussion of the activities of the Commission's Secretariat, 2) rules of procedure for the Commission and the West Indian Conference, and 3) appointment of the budget. Attention was directed to the implementation of the recommendations of the second session of the West Indian Conference, which was held in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands of the United States, in February, 1946. Such recommendations reflected the effort of the member powers to coordinate their activities with a view to improving the economic and social well-being of Caribbean inhabitants.

The Origins of Western Dermatology

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 255-266
Author(s):  
J. Barrie Ross
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Defining Moments ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

Objective: On the premise that historical background makes the present more understandable, this review covers the origins of Western dermatology from its Greek and Roman origins through the Middle Ages to the defining moments in the late eighteenth century. Background and Conclusion: The development of major European centers at this time became the background for future centers in the eastern United States in the midnineteenth century and, finally, to the West Coast of the United States and Canada by the midtwentieth century.

4. A Constabulary Navy

2018 ◽  
pp. 34-44
Author(s):  
Craig L. Symonds
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
United States Navy ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Southern Border

After 1820, the day-to-day duties of the United States Navy involved dealing with smugglers, pirates, and the illegal slave trade and so deploying the large ships of the line was deemed unnecessary. Also, the successful completion of treaties with both England and Spain demilitarized the Great Lakes and stabilized the country’s southern border, easing concerns about a future foreign war. ‘A constabulary navy: pirates, slavers, and manifest destiny (1820–1850)’ describes the peacetime navy activities carried out by small squadrons of sloops and schooners acting as a constabulary force on distant stations abroad, mainly in the Mediterranean, but also in the West Indies, off Africa, in the Pacific, off Brazil, and in the East.

1. Drinking and temperance

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-27
Author(s):  
W. J. Rorabaugh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Heavy Drinking ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Temperance Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
Viable System ◽  
The Revolution

‘Drinking and temperance’ describes the history of alcohol consumption in the United States and the introduction of the temperance movement. From the earliest European settlers to the fighters of the Revolution, Americans were among the world’s heartiest drinkers, producing their own corn beer and importing rum from the West Indies. The British blockades during the war meant access to rum was lost. Americans began to distill whiskey from corn instead, which became the country’s patriotic drink. Problems associated with heavy drinking resulted in reformers creating the temperance movement, a cause that was then taken up by Protestant preachers. In the 1850s, evangelicals lobbied for statewide prohibition laws, but there was no viable system of enforcement.

‘A Noble Empire in the West’: Young Ireland, the United States and Slavery

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-191
Author(s):  
Ian Delahanty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
The West ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Daniel O'connell ◽  
Political Relationship

Young Ireland nationalists conciliated slaveholding and proslavery Americans in the mid-1840s by situating Irish debates over American slavery within a broader discussion of Ireland's status in the British Empire. As Irish nationalists sought to redefine Ireland's political relationship to Great Britain, many came to see material and rhetorical support from the United States as indispensable to their efforts. Unlike Daniel O'Connell, Young Irelanders proved willing to overlook slavery in the United States because they believed that an Irish-American alliance could be mobilised to critique British imperialism and potentially to gain greater autonomy for Ireland. Debates among Irish nationalists over accepting aid from slaveholding and proslavery Americans, therefore, bring into focus where O'Connell and Young Ireland differed with regard to Ireland's sufferings under the Union and involvement in the Empire.

Is Globalisation Yesterday’s News?

Itinerario ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
A. G. Hopkins
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
United States ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lively Debate ◽  
The Subject

Globalisation is now a fashionable topic of historical research. Books and articles routinely use the term, though often in a loose manner that has yet to realise the full potential of the subject. The question arises as to whether globalisation, as currently applied by historians, is sufficiently robust to resist inevitable changes in historiographical fashion. The fact that globalisation is a process and not a single theory opens the way, not only to over-general applications of the term, but also to rich research possibilities derived in particular from other social sciences. One such prospect, which ought to be at the centre of all historians’ interests, is how to categorise the evolution of the process. This question, which has yet to stimulate the lively debate it needs, is explored here by identifying three successive phases or sequences between the eighteenth century and the present, and joining them to the history of the empires that were their principal agents. These phases, termed proto-globalisation, modern globalisation, and postcolonial globalisation provide the context for reviewing the history of the West, including the United States, and in principle of the wider world too.

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