The American Revolution and the Habsburg Monarchy

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.

Truth and Privilege

Truth and Privilege is a comparative study that brings together legal, constitutional and social history to explore the common law's diverging paths in two kindred places committed to freedom of expression but separated by the American Revolution. Comparing Nova Scotia and Massachusetts, Lyndsay Campbell examines the development of libel law, the defences of truth and privilege, and the place of courts as fora for disputes. She contrasts courts' centrality in struggles over expression and the interpretation of individual rights in Massachusetts with concerns about defining protective boundaries for the press and individuals through institutional design in Nova Scotia. Campbell's rich analysis acts as a lens through which to understand the role of law in shaping societal change in the nineteenth century, shedding light on the essential question we still grapple with today: what should law's role be in regulating expression we perceive as harmful?