“Judge Stockton was Most Particularly Importunate”

The influence of executive political elites increases in times of crisis. During the Covid pandemic and refugee crisis, the local level was particularly affected within Germany's politico-administrative system, which features a high degree of local autonomy and strong mayors. This article provides novel insights into mayoral leadership in times of crisis by presenting empirical evidence from a survey of full-time mayors across Germany. It finds that mayoral leadership is highly context specific. Mayors’ relationships with their councils are influenced by institutional factors including Land, municipality size, and the degree of party politicisation, while mayor’s cooperation with the administration is more complex. Consociational and competitive structures, in contrast, can only partially explain patterns of mayoral leadership in Germany. In terms of task-oriented leadership, implementation and coalition building are especially important in times of crisis while less agenda-setting is relevant for German mayors. The vectors ‘leading down’ towards the administrative arena and ‘leading out’ towards the council and citizens are prioritised, while ‘leading up’ towards higher tiers of the politico-administrative system is neglected. Strategic leadership for German mayors in times of crisis is less relevant since they focus on crisis management.

Reviewed by: American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals during the Revolutionary Era by Craig Bruce Smith Andrew Robertson (bio) Keywords Honor, Ethics, Honor culture, Virtue, Dueling American Honor: The Creation of the Nation's Ideals during the Revolutionary Era. By Craig Bruce Smith. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. 367. Cloth, $35.00.) Craig Bruce Smith has written a different study of honor. Rather than opening on the battlefield or the dueling ground, the book begins with the delegates arriving at Carpenters' Hall for the First Continental Congress in 1774. Before the Revolution began, these Americans shared an understanding of honor and virtue. When many of these same delegates met two years later to declare independence, they pledged their sacred honor to the cause. Smith argues that common and well-defined conceptions of honor, virtue, and ethics united Americans in the patriot cause. As a consequence, "Americans from expansive gender, social and racial categories transformed them as their own" (2). As individuals came to understand honor and virtue as synonymous with ethical precepts, they adapted understandings of honor and virtue to direct their conduct. Smith argues that as these broadened and deepened ethical understandings from the American Revolution created a "continuing ethical ideology" (7). Smith offers us a refreshing and original perspective on the role of ethics in the American Revolution and its aftermath. He sees this ethical interpretation of the Revolution not as challenging economic, political, and social considerations; he offers us instead a complementary narrative. The author urges his readers to take the moral purposes of the [End Page 394] American Revolution and its participants seriously. In this endeavor, Smith directs his attention not only to the elite but also to men and women of the middling and lower orders and also to African Americans, both free and enslaved. For Smith, this "egalitarian shift" in ethics contrasts with "the violent, hierarchical and oppressive aspects of honor culture" (9). Smith acknowledges the importance of honor culture, especially to elite men from the South. Smith argues for regional variations in what was defined as "honor"; for Bertram Wyatt-Brown's southerners, virtue and honor were inseparable. Smith contrasts John Adams as the emblematic New Englander who argued for the supremacy of virtue over honor. The institutions that played the most important role in instilling notions of virtue and honor among elite young men were the colleges. The standard texts in moral philosophy would have included Shaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning Virtue, Hutcheson's Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, and later Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. For Hutcheson and Shaftesbury, honor and virtue were closely related. For Adam Smith, however, virtue was acquired by merit and honor was the adherence to the rules of society. The other source for a wider circle of young men and women to imbibe the principles of honor and virtue was the colonial resistance of the 1760s and 1770s. In 1775, as British troops engaged New Englanders in battle, the notions of honor and virtue, national and personal, northern and southern, gradually blended together. Smith quotes Joseph Warren's observation that henceforward the struggle for independence was not only a political choice; it was an ethical choice as well. Americans of all ranks believed their national honor was based in the moral superiority of their cause. In the early years of the Revolutionary War women like Mercy Otis Warren, Abigail Adams, and poet Hannah Griffitts were at pains to describe the superiority of national honor based in virtue. Washington, on the other hand, was instrumental in creating some collective conception of military virtue. Washington argued for a form of Stoic conduct; Roger Stevenson argued in Military Instructions for Officers that true honor was founded on religion. There were tensions between civilian and military conceptions of honor and virtue: American civil society had fashioned an egalitarian conception of national honor, while the officer corps had internalized a [End Page 395] sense of honor based on hierarchy and rank. Nowhere did these contradictory notions come into more obvious conflict than in the recruitment of free African Americans into New England army units. Smith argues that after the conclusion of the Revolutionary...

Book Review| July 01 1977 The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission Publications: The Connecticut Revolution Bicentennial Booklets, vols. XI-XV, Volume XI, Connecticut’s First Family: William Pitkin and His Connections, volume XII, Connecticut Signer: William Williams, volume XIII, Connecticut’s Revolutionary Cavalry, volume XIV, Connecticut’s Revolutionary Press, volume XV, Connecticut Women in the Revolutionary Era The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission Publications: The Connecticut Revolution Bicentennial Booklets, vols. XI-XV, Volume XI, Connecticut’s First Family: William Pitkin and His Connections, volume XII, Connecticut Signer: William Williams, volume XIII, Connecticut’s Revolutionary Cavalry, volume XIV, Connecticut’s Revolutionary Press, volume XV, Connecticut Women in the Revolutionary Era, Glenn Weaver, Bruce Colin Daniels, Bruce P. Stark, John T. Hayes, Charles L. Cutler and Catherine Fennelly. Louis Leonard Tucker Louis Leonard Tucker Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Connecticut History Review (1977) 19: 64–76. https://doi.org/10.2307/44370338 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Louis Leonard Tucker; The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission Publications: The Connecticut Revolution Bicentennial Booklets, vols. XI-XV, Volume XI, Connecticut’s First Family: William Pitkin and His Connections, volume XII, Connecticut Signer: William Williams, volume XIII, Connecticut’s Revolutionary Cavalry, volume XIV, Connecticut’s Revolutionary Press, volume XV, Connecticut Women in the Revolutionary Era. Connecticut History Review 1 January 1977; 19 64–76. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/44370338 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressConnecticut History Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Book Review| January 01 1976 The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission Publications: The Connecticut Revolution Bicentennial Booklets, vols. VI-X, Volume VI, Connecticut’s Loyalists, volume VII, Connecticut Education in the Revolutionary Era, volume VIII, Connecticut’s Seminary of Sedition: Yale College, volume IX, Connecticut’s War Governor: Jonathan Trumbull, volume X, Connecticut Attacked: A British Viewpoint, Tryon’s Raid on Danbury The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission Publications: The Connecticut Revolution Bicentennial Booklets, vols. VI-X, Volume VI, Connecticut’s Loyalists, volume VII, Connecticut Education in the Revolutionary Era, volume VIII, Connecticut’s Seminary of Sedition: Yale College, volume IX, Connecticut’s War Governor: Jonathan Trumbull, volume X, Connecticut Attacked: A British Viewpoint, Tryon’s Raid on Danbury, Glenn Weaver, Robert A. East, J. William Frost, Louis Leonard Tucker, David M. Roth and Robert McDevitt. Howard T. Oedel Howard T. Oedel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Connecticut History Review (1976) 17: 42–64. https://doi.org/10.2307/44369949 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Howard T. Oedel; The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission Publications: The Connecticut Revolution Bicentennial Booklets, vols. VI-X, Volume VI, Connecticut’s Loyalists, volume VII, Connecticut Education in the Revolutionary Era, volume VIII, Connecticut’s Seminary of Sedition: Yale College, volume IX, Connecticut’s War Governor: Jonathan Trumbull, volume X, Connecticut Attacked: A British Viewpoint, Tryon’s Raid on Danbury. Connecticut History Review 1 January 1976; 17 42–64. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/44369949 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressConnecticut History Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviewed by: Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era by Mike Bunn John Paul Nuño Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era. By Mike Bunn. ( Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2020. Pp. xiv, 289. $28.95, ISBN 978-1-58838-413-3.) In recent years, scholars have begun addressing the historiographical gap that relegated West and East Florida to the status of forgotten British North American colonies, especially in the traditional narrative of the American Revolution. Even to a greater extent than for East Florida, scholarship on West Florida has been particularly sparse, except for older foundational texts by Cecil Johnson and, later, Robin Fabel. More recently, Andrew McMichael's Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785–1810 (Athens, Ga., 2008) and Kathleen DuVal's Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York, 2015) have shed light on the colony's history. The latter recontextualizes and complicates the traditional narrative of the American Revolution for a general audience. DuVal focuses on historical figures whose lives illuminate important themes and the contingent nature of the period. Entering into the fray is Mike Bunn's Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era, which is also aimed at a general audience but provides more of a comprehensive narrative focused on the creation and eventual conquest of British West Florida. Bunn is a public historian, the director of Historic Blakeley State Park, and the editor of Muscogiana, a journal of the Muscogee County, Georgia, Genealogical Society. His book fits well within his efforts to educate the public. He explains to his readers that he seeks to present a "broad arc of the life of the colony" while demonstrating that the history of West Florida, once seen as inconsequential, is "worth telling and remembering" (p. xii). Bunn embarks on this mission by taking a chronological approach that details the British founding of the colony and ambitious plans to develop it. Of note here is the ineffective leadership of Governor George Johnstone, who fostered political divisiveness in the colony. The author then devotes several chapters to themes such as settlement, daily life, and earning a living. He also includes an [End Page 147] informative chapter on the Indian trade despite acknowledging that most of his work does not focus on the Indigenous population. His decision to include this chapter is vital since Florida's Native peoples had the power to significantly shape events on the ground. Toward the second half of the book, Bunn returns to a chronological scope by outlining the events of the American Revolution on the Gulf Coast. Readers will find James Willing's notorious incursion into West Florida and Bernardo de Gálvez's stereotype-defying performance as an effective Spanish colonial administrator and military leader particularly interesting. This book is primarily a synthesis of secondary works, in which the author is well versed, supplemented by primary sources from the British Colonial Office and published archival materials. The text serves a general audience that would benefit from an introduction to the nuts and bolts of the British colonization of West Florida. However, an academic reader may find that the end-notes, which are condensed in one note at the end of each paragraph, are not always clearly delineated. Further, the text would benefit from a tighter conceptual and thematic focus. Nonetheless, it succeeds in its objective of showing that the history of the colony enriches our understanding of the American Revolution. Bunn's work contributes to the larger project of presenting more nuanced narratives of southern history to the public, which is not inconsequential. John Paul Nuño California State University, Northridge Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

Reviewed by: Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era by Mike Bunn Timothy C. Hemmis Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era. By Mike Bunn. Montgomery: NewSouth Books, 2020. 288 pp. $28.95. ISBN 978-1-5883-8413-3. Mike Bunn's Fourteenth Colony: The Forgotten Story of the Gulf South During America's Revolutionary Era paints a vibrant portrait of the brief history of British West Florida. It is a much-welcomed narrative of the rise and fall of the British in the Gulf South. Often in the story of American history, the events in the Gulf South are an afterthought; however, in this well-researched and well-written account Bunn traces the simple origins of British West Florida to its eventual fall in 1780. Many people are well aware of the thirteen colonies that would eventually become the United States of America. However, many often do not realize there were other British colonies in the New World. Even though it is hotly debated among colonial scholars as to which colony held the title of the fourteenth, Bunn argues that British West Florida fits the description because it was "well used in literature" at the time of the American Revolution (xii). Despite the odd scholarly debate, it does not really affect the history of the Gulf South and its importance to the story of America. Bunn structures his book around the humble beginnings of British West Florida, specifically focusing on Pensacola and Mobile. Early on, West Florida was not a popular colony for the British, but it had immense commercial potential as it was near the lands of the Creek and Choctaw tribes, and that Native American trade sustained the colonial economy. Bunn points out that few British migrants moved to the Gulf South because of its inhospitable weather and tropical diseases. The first settlers tended to gravitate toward ports on the Gulf [End Page 330] of Mexico, like Mobile or Pensacola. But he notes that there were many land claims and grants in the region, especially near the Mississippi River. For example, he tells the story of Anthony Hutchins, who moved his family from the Carolinas to settle in West Florida near Natchez in hopes of obtaining farming lands for a large plantation (77). He demonstrates that Natchez was not a settled metropolis, but rather a frontier outpost that had the appeal of being near the Mississippi River and fertile lands. Despite these positive attractions, Bunn points out that the population of West Florida was relatively small with about 6,000 people in 1779 (83). The author examines daily life in the colony, which included the difficulties of contending with a wide variety of tropical diseases. West Florida became a notoriously hazardous environment to live in, as dangers lurked around every corner. Although this reviewer would have liked more discussion of hurricanes and how they affected the daily life of the colony, this section was enlightening as the environment is often a forgotten aspect of the colonial experience. Bunn also highlights the commercial life in West Florida and explains the agricultural practices of the region. In this chapter, the author mentions the role of slaves in the colony, which has often been overlooked. Additionally, Bunn correctly suggests that the cattle industry flourished in West Florida. Bunn describes Dauphin Island---which today is a popular vacation destination for Alabama beachgoers---as "one big cattle pen" during the colonial period (116). The most familiar part of Bunn's narrative were the chapters on the Revolutionary War. The infamous Willing Raid was a key part of Bunn's narrative, as it was the only time American patriots made an invasion of West Florida. The author demonstrates that this operation was more of a personal vendetta than one of any military importance. The objective of the Willing expedition was one of nuisance and commercial disruption, and it only rallied settlers against the American cause. However, the heart of the book really focuses on Spanish governor of Louisiana Bernardo de Gálvez's military campaign against the British. Here the narrative seems to be more [End Page 331] from...

Journal Article The American Revolution and the British Empire. By R. Coupland, M.A., C.I.E., Fellow of All Souls College and Beit Professor of Colonial History in the University of Oxford, Associate Member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. [The Sir George Watson Lectures for 1928, delivered before the University of London in the winter of 1928–1929.] (New York: Longmans, Green and Company. 1930. Pp. vii, 331. $4.50) and British Policy and Canada, 1774–1791: a Study in 18th Century Trade Policy. By Gerald S. Graham, M.A., A.M., Ph.D., late Sir George Parkin Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge. [Royal Empire Society, Imperial Studies, no. 4.] (New York: Longmans, Green and Company. 1930. Pp. xi, 161. $4.00) Get access The American Revolution and the British Empire. By Coupland R., M.A., C.I.E., Fellow of All Souls College and Beit Professor of Colonial History in the University of Oxford, Associate Member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. [The Sir George Watson Lectures for 1928, delivered before the University of London in the winter of 1928–1929.] (New York: Longmans, Green and Company. 1930. Pp. vii, 331. $4.50.) British Policy and Canada, 1774–1791: a Study in 18th Century Trade Policy. By Graham Gerald S., M.A., A.M., Ph.D., late Sir George Parkin Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge. [Royal Empire Society, Imperial Studies, no. 4.] (New York: Longmans, Green and Company. 1930. Pp. xi, 161. $4.00.) C. E. Fryer C. E. Fryer McGill University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 36, Issue 4, July 1931, Pages 807–808, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/36.4.807 Published: 01 July 1931

Honor, virtue, and ethics are the driving forces behind this fresh look at the American Revolution. Such a focus may strike some scholars as quizzical or even downright dangerous; Craig Bruce Smith anticipates these objections as he introduces his careful and colorful study American Honor: The Creation of the Nation’s Ideals during the Revolutionary Era. Smith analyzes “American variants of honor that are in several ways unique to a nonaristocratic Western nation” (251 n. 4). He highlights several distinct features of American honor, particularly Benjamin Franklin’s notion of “ascending honor”: Franklin believed that an ethics-based meritocracy ought to supersede older notions of hereditary honor (12). And so Smith’s book revives the republican synthesis. Its narrative structure echoes Gordon S. Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1991) by tracing the triumph of a natural aristocracy (ethocracy?) over the monarchical Leviathan, followed by a Jacksonian-style fall from grace. For a brief moment, Americans put their best selves in the service of national virtue and the public good, until the ascendance of individualism led to atomization and archaic assertions of personal honor. Republican honor, with its persistent inequalities and loose guardrails against selfishness, gave way in fairly short order. As Jan Lewis wrote in “The Republican Wife: Virtue and Seduction in the Early Republic,” “Republican advocacy of virtue was powerless before persons who had no conscience” (William and Mary Quarterly 44, no. 4 [October 1987]: 689–721, here 715).

Reviewed by: Experiencing Empire: Power, People, and Revolution in Early Americaed. by Patrick Griffin Cameron B. Strang Experiencing Empire: Power, People, and Revolution in Early America. Edited by Patrick Griffin. Early American Histories. (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2017. Pp. [x], 269. $39.50, ISBN 978-0-8139-3988-9.) Experiencing Empire: Power, People, and Revolution in Early Americaclearly fulfills its two main purposes: adding to a growing body of work that explores continuities across the Revolutionary era and honoring the career of historian T. H. Breen. Like Breen's own scholarship (which is summarized in an afterword by Joyce E. Chaplin), the chapters range from the early colonial era to the decades after independence. These essays analyze "[t]he relationship between sovereignty—the stuff of empire—and how people manage it" in colonial America, Britain, the French Atlantic, and the imperial United States (p. 11). As Patrick Griffin discusses in his introduction, the Revolutionary era has usually been broken into two periods, each with its own set of historiographical debates. On the one hand, the thirteen years between 1763 and 1776 have generated countless efforts to understand how colonists' pride in being British at the end of the Seven Years' War could have so quickly morphed into a new American identity. The eleven years between 1776 and 1787, on the other hand, have inspired historians to regard 1787 as a "litmus test" for determining the extent to which the Constitution realized the Revolution's most radical aspects (p. 3). Instead of seeing 1776 as either an end or a beginning, Griffin suggests approaching the years between 1763 and 1787 as "the 'imperial-revolutionary' moment," a period when some colonists came to believe that British imperialism had failed and, by fighting to replace British rule with a minimal government, brought about "a near-anarchic state" that only stabilized after the Constitution ordered the United States into a new empire (pp. 19, 20). In other words, empire-imposed order bookended social revolution. Breen offers his own thoughts about "What time was the American Revolution?" in the conclusion (p. 233). More emphatically than Griffin, Breen situates the years between 1760 and 1773 "as a general crisis of imperial rule throughout the Atlantic World" (p. 234). He contends that agitation in Boston was pretty typical of how imperial subjects protested unfair treatment, but Parliament's overreaction to the Tea Party (and not the party itself) pushed this quotidian kind of resistance into a more general mobilization. Breen also posits that the experience of war—not ideology—led many white men to the revolutionary conclusion that they were each other's equals; moreover, he argues that most Americans were brightly optimistic during the years before [End Page 976]the Constitution, despite historians' penchant for taking "elite fears of looming anarchy" at face value (p. 242). Far from undermining the volume as a whole, the subtle but important differences in how Griffin and Breen reenvision Revolutionary time ensure that this collection can encourage further debate rather than attempt to impose definitive answers, a worthy achievement for any volume on something as thoroughly studied as the Revolution. The chapters themselves cover a wide array of subjects, including political economy, military fortifications, and (in Seth Cotlar's fascinating essay on antiquarian John Fanning Watson) nostalgia. Three chapters may be of particular interest to readers of this journal. Owen Stanwood examines attempts to establish wineries in the South from sixteenth-century Florida to eighteenth-century Virginia. Imperial visionaries and Huguenot experts persisted in experimenting with wine because it seemed to offer a path toward a "more virtuous empire" (p. 51). Viniculture, which required German and French laborers, would make slavery less central to colonial society and even ease tensions between colonists and British officials by creating ample work for white colonists as producers of raw materials and, therefore, ensuring that they ceased undermining mercantilism by striving to become manufacturers. Patricia Cleary explores allegations of sexual misconduct against white women in colonial St. Louis. French and Spanish officials cataloged white women's sexual transgressions, especially adultery, but were surprisingly tolerant of these scandals. Cleary argues that this benign neglect stemmed from a mixture of officials...

Running from Bondage by Karen Cook Bell examines the understudied subject of runaway female slaves during America's revolutionary era. The author begins this very good book with a series of questions around which she builds her argument: “How did Black women advance their own liberation during the Revolutionary Era? What regional variations and similarities existed in the flight of enslaved women … How does Black women's flight fit into the larger narrative of slave resistance?” (p. 17). Building upon the research of such scholars as Sylvia Frey and Gary Nash, Bell argues that Black women actively resisted enslavement by fleeing from owners and seeking permanent freedom for themselves and their children. Furthermore, she asserts, “it is imperative to see Black women as visible participants and self-determined figures” in the first wave of abolitionism that began during the American Revolution (p. 160). Relying on runaway advertisements as her key source, Bell organizes her book thematically and chronologically, beginning each chapter with an advertisement focused on a particular enslaved woman. Chapter 2, on prerevolutionary fugitive women, for instance, opens with a 1770 advertisement concerning a literate mulatto woman named Margaret. After disguising herself in men's clothing, Margaret escaped from Baltimore. The publication further explains that she “has been in Barbados, Antigua, the Grenades, Philadelphia” (p. 44). Viewing Margaret's story as “a microcosm of the lives of other fugitive women,” Bell then discusses how, within a rapidly changing Atlantic world, ideas of freedom led other Black women to acts of self-emancipation (p. 45).

LEADERSHIP AND RESPONSIBILITY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR: Essays in Honour of Robert Vogel Edited by Brian P. Farrell Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004. xxix, 273pp, $75.00 cloth (ISBN 0-7735-2643-9), $27.95 paper (ISBN 0-7735-2731-1)A natural consequence of the development of complex national defence organizations in the Second World War was a vastly expanded notion of national leadership, no longer usefully described in terms of discrete decisions by kings, cabinet, and military commanders. Charged with political, military, economic, and social responsibilities, servants of the state represented an array of institutions working toward a common goal in an environment that was more often competitive than communally supportive.Underscoring this diversity in performing national duties, editor Brian P. Farrell of the National University of Singapore offers a Festschrift celebrating the life and work of the late Robert Vogel. Leadership and Responsibility in the Second World War is an eclectic anthology reflecting the wide range of interests of the McGill University professor's colleagues and students. Farrell has marshalled a rather unusual compilation of essays exploring the contributions of military, diplomatic, and even scientific fields during time of war.One of the most satisfying elements of this publication is Vogel's essay on Neville Chamberlain and the issue of appeasement during the interwar years. In an almost-completed draft, Vogel leaves an exceptional legacy of his work that underlines the difficulties of pursuing a position of strength when a state has limited capabilities to support an assertive foreign policy. This becomes an even more thoughtful piece on the propriety of making every effort to avoid war were the reader to contrast Chamberlain's efforts with a doctrine of preemption in the name of national interests. Aaron Krishtalka's essay on the old Tories and their impact on British foreign policy during the Chamberlain years and Trevor Burridge's sampling on Clement Atlee round out this section on statesmen and politicians. Krishtalka offers a unique perspective on party loyalties during times of crisis whereas little is to be gained from Burridge's decidedly uncritical assessment of Atlee.With the slightest of transitions, Neil Cameron opens the section on officials and diplomats by presenting a study on British war scientists. While Churchill's passion for the development of aerial mines and research undertaken by the committee for the scientific study of air defence on constructing a death ray are intriguing side-stories, Cameron describes interestingly how Britain saw Germany not only as a military opponent but as a scientific rival as well. Sidney Aster's offering on the diplomatic difficulties of Sir William Deeds in contending with Soviet foreign ministers Maxim Litvinov and Vyacheslav Molotov is especially commendable. …

Duncan Needham UK Monetary Policy from Devaluation to Thatcher, 1967-1982, Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2014; 272 pp.: 9781137369536. 70 [pounds sterling] (hbk) Duncan Needham has not written a particularly long book, but you may be forgiven for thinking it was, considering the sheer density of the information packed within. Drawing heavily from Bank of England and Treasury archives from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, the author presents an incredibly detailed history of Britain's monetary policy development during a period of severe economic duress. The microscopic attention paid to the main policymakers, academics and commentators of this period is the great achievement of this book. Yet it is also its weakness, since at points Needham is in danger of ascribing too much causal power over the broad economic dynamics of this era to the ideas and actions of these individuals. The slowdown of the post-war boom presented novel and often contradictory challenges for British policymakers, prompting them to rummage in their toolboxes in search of new strategies for alleviating these pressures. Bank official Christopher Dow wrote in 1976 that the 'night-time electrocardiogram recordings of those whose daytime duties gave them close concern with the British balance of payments over the years ... would surely show more disturbance than other peoples' (Dow 2013: 47). As inflation and the money supply began to creep upwards from the late 1960s, further eroding British capital's competitive position, monetary policy became a central site of innovation and contestation. The period from 1967 to 1984--the focus of this book--was one of particularly desperate experimentation with the ideas of a group of economists proposing a new quantity theory of money. Needham's account starts with the formulation of Competition and Credit Control (CCC)--the first major financial deregulation in postwar history--in the years leading up to 1971. To supplement the positive effects of the 1967 sterling devaluation on the current account, monetary policy was tightened; but when this proved insufficient Chancellor Callaghan went to the IMF for the first of a series of loans. These loans came with progressively stricter conditionalities, especially regarding money supply targets. This sparked vigorous debate between the Bank, Treasury and IMF regarding the merits and feasibility of monetary targeting. At the same time, the traditional clearing banks--the institutions British monetary policy was chiefly designed to regulate--were rapidly losing market share to new 'secondary banks', such as building societies, undermining the effectiveness of many of the Banks monetary tools. Most importantly, lending ceilings were becoming increasingly unworkable and painful to impose. In this respect, the evidence presented supports the thesis advanced by Moran (1984). Needham carefully examines the interplay between the Bank's practical knowledge and academic monetarism, as policymakers desperately sought to reframe policy in line with changing conditions. Another catalyst for the monetary policy transformation of CCC was the Bank's frustration with the Treasury and Ministers--a recurring theme throughout the book. After the election of the Conservative Heath government in 1970, Bank officials expected that their requests for high er interest rates to combat inflation would meet a warmer reception; yet they were mistaken. Heath and Chancellor Barber were keen that British capital should utilise its excess capacity, which would not be aided by either more expensive credit or a stronger pound, leading them to reject the Bank's pleas. Needham charts how such stinging rebukes further spurred Bank officials' desperation to circumvent the traditional avenues of monetary control, through the working groups set up in the wake of the IMF consultations. (1) The result was the basic framework of CCC, designed to shift emphasis away from clumsy quantitative lending ceilings towards more flexible use of interest rates to control the broad money supply. …

Reviewed by: Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America by Spencer W. McBride William Harrison Taylor (bio) Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America. By Spencer W. McBride. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017. Pp. 272. $39.50 cloth; $39.50 ebook) For the past couple years, students of early American religious history, especially those focusing on the Revolutionary era, have been flooded with quality scholarship such as Mark Noll's In the Beginning Was the Word (2016), James Byrd's Sacred Scripture, Sacred War (2013), and Jonathan Den Hartog's Patriotism and Piety (2015). Fortunately, the water has only gotten deeper with the addition of Spencer W. McBride's debut work, Pulpit and Nation. McBride takes on the perpetually contested question of religion's role in revolutionary America, and he makes a compelling argument that religion, Christianity especially, was vitally significant to shaping the era. Specifically, he examines how religion was used in the political sphere, and he contends that through the work of "politicized clergymen" and politicians, who often wielded faith as a convenient tool, Christianity was intimately involved in transformative events of the period, including the war for American independence, ratifying the Constitution, and the first national elections. Their work not only shaped Revolutionaryera political culture, but it also helped lay the foundations for how future generations would struggle over American identity. Christianity, politics, and identity, McBride argues, were inseparable in Revolutionary America. Marshaling a diverse set of sources—letters, diaries, personal papers, local church and ruling-body [End Page 105] records, sermons, newspapers, and pamphlets—to his cause, the author reveals the intended and perceived roles of congressional fast days throughout the period and across the colonies/states, before considering the work of chaplains both on the war front and in Congress in the same light. His examination of the political/ecclesiastical experience of three clergymen, Samuel Seabury, James Madison, and John Joachim Zubly, who took different positions toward the war, illustrates that the fates of these ministers in the new nation depended more on their specific political environment and abilities than their stance toward American independence. This multifaceted use of religion within the political realm, two chapters in particular make clear, was taken on by both "politicized clergymen" and politicians during the constitutional debates as well as the party ferment of the 1790s. McBride concludes his study by exploring "the myth of the Christian president," an exemplary process of the contested, but effective, use of religion to shape the era's, and the subsequent era's, political culture (p. 148). Where, then, does McBride stand on the question of whether the United States was founded as a Christian nation? In a sense, we are left with the same answer as Ned Flanders when he asked Reverend Lovejoy whether the destruction of his home was the result of unrepented sin: "Short answer, 'yes' with an 'if.' Long answer, 'no' with a 'but.'" The difficulties in this question, McBride contends, are twofold. First, there are the realities of the era. Instead of portraits of unified and like-minded evangelicals or deists pursuing a common goal of promoting or destroying a Christian nation, the individuals in McBride's study reveal "the interplay of politicized religion and religiously infused politics, as well as the institutional complexity and cultural ambiguity at play in the founding era" (p. 173). Complexity, in other words, was as characteristic of the revolutionary generation as it is of the current generation. The second difficulty, the author rightly notes, is that the roots of the question itself generally lay more in a contest over national identity than in earnest historical inquiry. According to McBride, yes or no will simply not work and efforts to [End Page 106] force the period and people into tidy answers for identity's sake are themselves heirs of the process begun during the Revolutionary era. Pulpit and Nation is an engaging and provocative work and one that is a welcome addition to a crowded field. William Harrison Taylor WILLIAM HARRISON TAYLOR is an associate professor of history at Alabama State University. He is the author of Unity in Christ and Country: American Presbyterians in the...

Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh CityThe scholarly study of banknotes (notaphily) is not a new phenomenon. But it did not take systematic modern form until the 1920s. (Ironically, it emerged under the Weimar Republic just as Germany was entering a three-year period of hyperinflation.) Since then, the number of numismatic associations has grown considerably, as have specialized publications. Banknote News is one relevant example. Banknote News issues breaking stories about international paper and polymer money. Collectors are the primary audience, and the website contains hundreds of links to vendors for people who wish to purchase the bank notes they covet. One of the links directs collectors to the 2014 edition of The Banknote Book. It includes 205 stand-alone chapters, each of which can be purchased separately as a country-specific catalog. (The Vietnam chapter provides detailed information on notes the State Bank of Vietnam issued, but only from 1964 to present, color copies of them, as well as their current market valuations.) The four-volume set currently runs 2,554 pages and details more than 21,000 types and varieties of currency, some dating back centuries.The global community of currency collectors and the desires that shape their relationships to different forms of money provides a useful entry point into Allison Truitt's fascinating book, Dreaming of Money in Ho Chi Minh City. Truitt is similarly interested in state-issued currencies, especially with regard to how people conceptualize the interplay of their material and symbolic properties. But her interests do not end there. The ethnographic focus of the book is instead upon interpersonal relations, as mediated by different currencies (primarily coins, paper, and gold), which she dubs monetary pluralism (pp. 149-150).The author's attention to interpersonal relations enables her to raise new questions about the cultural politics of identity in Vietnam's economic capital, Ho Chi Minh City, which she rightfully acknowledges is not always representative of the country as a whole. Nevertheless, the central questions around which the book is organized are not specific to it. The questions are applicable everywhere, and I reproduce them here for this reason. First, she asks, Can people exert control over state-sponsored infrastructures such as territorial currencies? Second, How do we come to have faith in the currency we handle? Third, How do people personalize money so that it becomes a vehicle for expressing qualities other than exchange value? And, finally, What happens when those efforts fail? (pp. 3-4).The author describes how ordinary people-butchers, unlicensed money changers, small shop owners, street traders, lottery ticket purchasers, and so on-responded to the above questions over the course of six chapters. The first chapter provides a historical account of the problem competing currencies (Indochinese piasters, revolutionary-era financial notes, U.S. dollars, gold bars, and demonetized national currency) posed for people living in the south during the twentieth century. Chapter two features the rise of consumer culture, a process that began during the mid- 1990s when a series of reforms known as Renovation(Doi moi) accelerated the shiftfrom a centralized command-and-control economy to a decentralized marked-based one. Truitt's insights into what this process looked like at the household-level lays the foundation for chapter three. It features the methods prosperous households used to hide their growing wealth and to maintain its value in the face of mounting inflation, a consequence of the country's gradual reintegration into global financial markets. Chapter four reorients the reader's attention to the role fictive currencies, such as spirit money (tien ma), play in Vietnamese ritual life. Particular emphasis is placed upon how subjective debts rather than contractual debts are (re-)produced through social interactions, and the complicated ways they link people over time and across territorial spaces. …

Language is a communicative tool that in the possession of politicians holds the power to be persuasive and aggressive, empowering and uniting, or disruptive and dividing. Previous research has relied on numerous methodological approaches to analyze political discourse from different viewpoints to reveal the manner in which politicians as part of political institutions transform and manipulate language. The current investigation performs a critical discourse analysis (CDA) based on the framework developed by Van Dijk (1993,1997) in order to demonstrate the speech act realization in a total of 14 political speeches delivered by American presidents Biden, Trump, and Obama and Mexican presidents López Obrador, Peña Nieto, and Calderón made from 2010-2022 at the onset of three crises: Russia-Ukraine, the COVID-19 Pandemic, and the U.S.-Mexico Border Crisis. The method of CDA incorporates the Speech Act theory of J.L Austin (1962) and Searle (1969), the Cooperative Principle of Grice (1975), and the Politeness theory of Brown & Levinson (1978) through a mixed-methods approach for obtaining quantitative and qualitative data. The pragmatic dimension of the investigation aims to address the following research questions: (1) What type of speech act realization occurs in the presidential discourse of Mexican and American presidents during times of crisis? Does these presidents’ discourse reveal any significant similarities or differences between the types of speech acts employed in their discourse?; (2) What does the implementation of specific speech acts in the political discourse reveal about the cultural and political differences between the United States and Mexico?; (3) What do the speech acts in the corpus reveal about the ways in which different political elites conceptualize their power and exhibit an image as a leader to their respective audiences? The results of the investigation revealed captivating similarities and differences in speech act frequencies, discursive strategies, ideologies, and political identity in the political discourse of Mexican and American presidents.