Approaching Social Setting when Analyzing Language Change in the Early Republic

Any study that concentrates on language change should assess factors such as historical context and social structure. However, approaching the phonetic and phonological changes that took place during the Early American Republic (1776–1861) is a complex task since it was a period of considerable social, political and economic reorganization Additionally, although many biographies and studies on selected issues have been written, the scholarship about the period remains unconnected and fragmented. As such, this article exposes the theoretical and methodological preparation for a research on sound change during the Early American Republic by discussing how to undertake data collection and how to approach data analysis.

Inventor-Entrepreneurs: Patents and Patent Licensing in the Early Republic

Independent inventors have limited routes to secure financial returns on the time and capital they invest to develop and realize a new idea. Research into two centuries of inventors has identified their options as licensing patents once they are issued, selling inventions (and patents) to existing companies, forging consulting arrangements with operating firms, or raising funds and starting a business. This article explores patent licensing as an entrepreneurial approach using a case study of the largely unknown licensing program undertaken by Samuel Hopkins after receiving the first U. S. patent. A license agreement signed between Hopkins and Eli Cogswell, a potash manufacturer in Vermont, offers a case study of how an inventor-entrepreneur worked in the early American republic. It also provides insights into the links between intellectual property and entrepreneurship, the mindset of inventor-entrepreneurs, and the challenges of bringing a new technology to market at a foundational moment in U. S. history.

Rival Visions of Nationhood

This chapter studies how immigration policy can be deployed as a key instrument of grand strategy, a site where state actors might use the levers of immigrant and refugee admissions to advance both a comprehensive and integrated set of social, economic, and security goals at home. Indeed, a diverse array of US presidents, lawmakers, and activists have had grand strategies in mind as they pursued major immigration reform. The chapter focuses on a particularly significant effort to remake the US immigration system—the 1960s struggle to dismantle national origins quotas and reopen US gates to immigrants and refugees—in order to illustrate the possibilities and limitations of grand strategizing in this policy realm. One can discern these dynamics in immigration reforms and executive actions from the 1920s to the present, but the successful battle for the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 provides an especially illuminating example. Before turning to this case, however, the chapter first considers immigration control and grand strategy in the early American republic and the rise of rival interests and ideals that make significant policy innovation contingent on incongruous coalitions and uneasy compromises.