‘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.

Sovereignty over Islands in the Pacific

1941 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Orent ◽  
Pauline Reinsch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Central Pacific ◽  
Commercial Aviation ◽  
Central Pacific Ocean ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Pacific

Recently, certain small uninhabited islands in the central Pacific Ocean have assumedsudden importance for the British Empire and the United States. Their value as landing places for commercial aviation and as strategic bases for air and naval forces is being increasingly recognized. Acquired during the past century by Great Britain and the UnitedStates, many of these islands have been the object of conflicting claims to sovereignty by the two nations. To clarify their status, it has been found desirable to review the past practice of these states and to examine those factors which were considered adequateto create sovereign rights over uninhabited islands in the Pacific.

The British Elections of December, 1923

1924 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 331-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Thomas Morgan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Election ◽  
British Isles ◽  
British Government ◽  
British People

Not only were the results of the British national election of last December momentous for the British people themselves, but it may be doubted whether any other election in the country's history ever excited as much interest in foreign lands. The United States was much concerned at the possibility of Great Britain erecting a tariff wall around not only the British Isles but the British Empire as well. The dominions were vitally interested. The whole of Europe awaited with increasing anxiety the decision of the British electorate, as upon it depended to some degree, at any rate, the next step of the British government in the settlement of the all-important problem of reparations upon which the reconstruction of Europe depended.

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.

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?

The Transatlantic Financial Crisis of 1837

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen W. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Commodity Prices ◽  
The United States ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
Global Movements

The Transatlantic Financial Crisis of 1837 produced a global depression that lasted until the mid-1840s. Falling cotton prices, a collapsing land bubble, and fiscal and monetary policies pursued by individual actors and financial institutions in the United States and Great Britain were all responsible. A comprehensive understanding of the panic must take into account the global movements of gold and silver that linked Mexico, China, the United States, and Great Britain in complex networks of credit and debt. In the United States, businesses, banks, and individuals declared bankruptcy; states defaulted on their debts; commodity prices dropped; credit instruments lost their value; and unemployment rose amid a general atmosphere of pessimism and an erosion of confidence. The severity of the panic prompted politicians and financial theorists to reevaluate their ideological assumptions regarding the proper role of governmental regulation in an economy. In a larger sense, the panic demonstrated how the expansion of slavery in the United States, British imperialism, financial speculation, and recurring cycles of boom and bust were emerging as defining features of modern capitalism.

scholarly journals Sufism in the West

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 121-123
Author(s):  
Markus Dressler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
North America ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
The West ◽  
Islamic Mysticism ◽  
Muslim Majority

This edited volume, along with David Westerlund’s edited Sufism in Europeand North America (RoutledgeCurzon: 2004), are pioneering works, sincethe systematic study of this topic is still in its infancy. Its introduction andnine chapters bring together anthropological, historical, Islamicist, and sociologicalperspectives on questions of identity as regards Sufism’s doublemarginalization within a non-Muslim majority environment and within thebroader Islamic discourse. The Sufis’ need to position themselves againstand reconcile themselves with a variety of others causes western Sufis toemploy a fascinating kaleidoscope of strategies ranging from assimilation toconfrontation and appropriation.Jamal Malik’s introduction surveys Islamic mysticism and the “majorthemes of diasporic Sufism” (pp. 20-25). He presents the complex interrelatednessof ethnic, cultural, religious, and generational identities andaddresses important issues concerning representation, knowledge production,and adaptation. His conclusion that “Sufism – intellectually as well associologically – may eventually become mainstream Islam itself due toits versatile potential, especially in the wake of what has been called thefailure of political Islam worldwide” (p. 25), however, is rather bold.Nevertheless, as Ron Geaves shows, one has to acknowledge that, at leastin Great Britain and the United States, Sufis have begun to confront anti-Sufi rhetoric more openly. He describes Sufi-Muslim attempts to monopolizethe term ahl al-sunnah wa al-jam`ah (people of the tradition and the ...

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.

scholarly journals Book Review: Abolition and Antislavery: A Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic

2016 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 248
Author(s):  
Mike Tosko
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southern United States ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Social Equality ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
Labor Exploitation ◽  
The Right

This encyclopedia covers the rise and proliferation of abolitionist movements in the United States and the subsequent consequences of the emancipation of the former slaves. While outside international influences on American slavery existed—particularly Great Britain—the focus here is on both the Northern and Southern United States. Of course, banishing slavery did not lead to immediate social equality, and in fact many abolitionists did not ever desire this type of equality. This work also traces the subsequent controversial issues that emerged following abolition, such as new forms of labor exploitation, the right to own land and to vote, and the use of violence and intimidation to keep African Americans in inferior social and economic positions.

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