scholarly journals Of God and Reason in XVIII C. British North America

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (28) ◽  
pp. 145-168
Author(s):  
Carlos Acosta Gastélum ◽  

The following article intends the description of the religious and intellectual environment in prerevo-lutionary America. It is divided into two main sec-tions: (1) a religious one where I will cover the most significant elements, and the ideological context of what was the most decisive cultural force in the formation of the new country ?Puritanism?; and (2) another that succinctly describes the particular shape that enlightened thought acquired in that part of the British Empire.A description of eighteenth-century Puritan North America requires a closer look at the ver-sion of Calvinism prevalent in the Northeastern seaboard, and therein to the cultural phenomenon of religious revivalism. Now connected to these variables lie a series of theological conceptions that shaped Puritan belief and practice in manifold ways, and that will be covered in the first section of this work: Arminianism, Antinomianism, Millen-nialism, and Religious Enthusiasm, among others.

1948 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 95-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Graham

UNTIL the eighteenth century, British naval operations rarely strayed outside the strictly European theatre. Engagements in North American waters were isolated enterprises, having little connection with the decisive area of battle which lay off the west coast of Europe in the vicinity of the British Isles. This concentration of forces in home waters was deter-mined as much by structural, technical and hygienic deficiencies as by strategic doctrine. Disease and gales were always the worst enemies, and in the manner bf continental armies, the ships of the Royal Navy sought winter quarters in or after November. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, improvements in naval architecture and the technique of navigation, as well as methods of preserving food and protecting health (slight as they may appear to this age), enabled ships to keep at sea for longer periods, and at greater distances from their home ports.


2010 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 85-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Gregory

ABSTRACTThe position of the Church of England in colonial New England has usually been seen through the lens of the ‘bishop controversy’ of the 1760s and early 1770s, where Congregational fears of the introduction of a Laudian style bishop to British North America have been viewed as one of the key factors leading to the American Revolution. By contrast, this paper explores some of the successes enjoyed by the Church of England in New England, particularly in the period from the 1730s to the early 1760s, and examines some of the reasons for the Church's growth in these years. It argues that in some respects the Church in New England was in fact becoming rather more popular, more indigenous and more integrated into New England life than both eighteenth-century Congregationalists or modern historians have wanted to believe, and that the Church was making headway both in the Puritan heartlands, and in the newer centres of population growth. Up until the early 1760s, the progress of the Church of England in New England was beginning to look like a success story rather than one with in-built failure.


Author(s):  
John W Cairns

This chapter examines the Scottish legal system's engagement with slavery in the eighteenth century as well as Hugo Grotius' thinking on Stoicism and law and its impact on later jurisprudence. Extensive involvement of Scots with the Empire in British North America, the Caribbean and India led to the presence at home of enslaved men and women of African and Indian descent. This created a number of difficulties and challenges for Scots law. The chapter first provides an overview of the problem of slavery in Scotland, along with Stoicism and Neostoicism, before discussing Grotius' account of natural law. It then considers slavery in Grotius' De iure belli ac pacis libri tres before discussing how arguments from the ius naturale and ius gentium as set out by Grotius could be used to justify slavery. It also analyses four civil cases concerning slavery in eighteenth-century Scotland.


Author(s):  
Daniel L. Dreisbach

The Bible has had a significant impact on American law and constitutional tradition. The early colonists who settled in British North America brought with them the English common law, a system of jurisprudence that its leading authorities claimed was based on Christianity. Moreover, laws framed in the colonies, especially in New England’s Puritan commonwealths, drew explicitly and extensively on biblical law. As secular and separationists perspectives gained a following in the second half of the eighteenth century and the centuries thereafter, the Bible’s influence on law faced increasing challenges, and only laws that can be defended on secular grounds have survived into the twenty-first century.


Rough Waters ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 25-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Codignola

This chapter explores the late eighteenth century relationship between North America and the states of the Italian Peninsula, in attempt to challenge the notion of a homogenous Atlantic world. It reveals a myriad of complex networks - commercial, political, and familial - that facilitated trade between Tuscany, Genoa, Naples, British North America, and the United States. It examines these networks primarily through the cod trade, but also considers wheat, tobacco, sugar, and others. It follows case studies of prominent traders, including Filippo Mazzei; Anton Francesco Salucci; Nicola Filicchi; and Stefano Ceronio, and concludes that, despite popular scholarly opinion garnered from factors such as the failure of diplomacy between the nations, trade between the United States and Italy before 1815 was consistently strong and bolstered through business and familial networks.


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