Women and Medicine in Early America

Women from all cultural groups in British North America—European, African, and Indigenous American—played a central role in medicine in early America. They acted as midwives, healers, and apothecaries and drew on a variety of cultural traditions in doing so, even as they shared many beliefs about the workings of the human body. Healing gave women a route to authority and autonomy within their social groups. As the 18th century opened, women healers were able to enter the expanding world of capitalist commerce. Anglo-American women parlayed their knowledge of herbal medicine into successful businesses, and even enslaved midwives were sometimes able to be paid in cash for their skills. However, as academic medicine took more of an interest in topics such as childbirth, women practitioners faced increasingly bitter competition from professionalizing male physicians.

Another Origins Debate: Settler Colonialism in Early Virginia History

William and Mary Quarterly recently initiated an origins debate concerning settler colonialism in America in their discussion of the applicability of that framework to early America. Settler colonialism is a type of colonialism, specifically characterized as dispossession of indigenous people of their land. In respect to British North America, the beginnings of settler colonialism originate in Virginia, where British colonists came into conflict with native people over land not long after their arrival.

The Riel Rebellion and Canadian-American Relations

The Riel Rebellion presents an interesting case in Canadian-American history. For relations between the two nations, already strained by the Civil War, Fenian movements within the United States, and the American rejection of reciprocity, took a turn for the worse in 1869–70 when Canada was suddenly confronted with the insurrection in Rupert’s Land. Beguiled by the evasive dream of becoming a continental republic, Americans had long coveted the lands of their northern neighbour. That the new Dominion of Canada could survive – indeed, could dare to envision its own transcontinental glory – was inconceivable to many Americans. In their own self-interest, they exaggerated the signs of disaffection within the Dominion. And when the Metis of Rupert’s Land forcibly rejected political union with Canada, and certain citizens of British Columbia petitioned President Grant for admission into the United States, it seemed that all British North America was breaking up and that its separate members would soon become a part of the American family to which they “naturally” belonged.

Of God and Reason in XVIII C. British North America

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.

The Origins of Uncontested Adjudication

This brief chapter explores the origins of non-contentious or voluntary jurisdiction, tracing its appearance in Roman law and its incorporation into the practice of civil law systems of Europe. After examining uncontested adjudication in England, this chapter tracks its arrival in British North America. Building on English forms that were themselves rooted in civil law, colonial courts in North America used uncontested process to handle such familiar matters as the probate of decedents’ estates and the exercise of equity and admiralty jurisdiction.