Women and the Law

This article is part of a History Compass cluster on ‘Rethinking Gender, Family, and Sexuality in the Early Modern Atlantic World’.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘On Currents and Comparisons: Gender and the Atlantic ‘Turn’ in Spanish America’, Bianca Premo, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 223–237, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00658.x‘Women and Families in Early (North) America and the Wider (Atlantic) World’, Karin Wulf, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 238–247, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00659.x‘Family Matters: The Early Modern Atlantic from the European Side’, Julie Hardwick, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 248–257, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00660.xThe following essay originated as one of these three contributions to a roundtable discussion held at the 14th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June 2008. The roundtable, ‘Rethinking Gender, Family, and Sexuality in the Early Modern Atlantic World’, was meant to be as much invitation as inventory and was astonishingly well attended at 08:00 in the morning, with standing room only for a thoughtful, lively audience whose comments, questions, and suggestions are reflected here (although in no way fully represented). As historians of gender and family in the North Atlantic, European, and Iberian worlds, we had hoped to encourage more central and systematic attention to gender within the Atlantic World paradigm by cataloging some recent works in their fields and pointing the way for future studies. Yet, a funny thing happened on the way to the conference. Independently, each of us began to engage with the challenges of simply inserting family and gender into ‘the Atlantic’ as both as conceptual place and a historical practice. The essays that emerged, therefore, departed from conventional historiographies that survey the state of the field. Rather, these are theoretical and methodological reflections on the implications of de‐centering national and colonial narratives about the history of gender. At a time when transnational historical scholarship on early modern women promises to explode, these essays aim to inspire debate about the conceptual utility of the Atlantic as a paradigm for understanding issues of gender, family, and sexuality, as well as its ramifications for feminist scholarship everywhere.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes David Armitage and Michael Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 11. See, for example, the essays in Armitage and Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World; and the four essays published in Itinerario (32) in 1999, in which Carla Rahn Phillips wrote on the Spanish, Silvia Marzagalli on the French, Willem W. Klooster and Pieter C. Emmer on the Dutch and David Hancock on the English. The idea originated in MacLeod, Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History, 1520–1720 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2008). Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), chap. 6. On this subject of connections, see some of the essays in Caroline A. Williams, ed., Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World: People, Products, and Practices on the Move (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2009). The pioneering work on what a radical Atlantic might look like is Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001). The works of John K. Thornton and Linda M. Heywood provide clues about what a Kongo Atlantic might look like. See, for example, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Jack P. Greene and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Toyin Falola and Kevin Roberts, eds. The Atlantic World, 1450–2000 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008). Horst Pietschmann, ed., Atlantic History: History of the Atlantic System 1580–1830 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2002); Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, eds., Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Williams, ed., Bridging the Early Modern Atlantic World. On collecting, see Daniela Bleichmar and Peter C. Mancall, eds., Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011). For archaeology, see Akinwumi Ogundiran and Toyin Falola, eds., Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). For two studies of identity, see Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden, eds., Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); Paul E. Lovejoy, ed., Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (London: Continuum, 2003). For a single place cast in an Atlantic context, see Peter C. Mancall, ed., The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550–1624 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2007). For two collections on European migration, see Ida Altman and James Horn, ed., To Make America: European Emigration in the Early Modern Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Nicholas Canny, ed., Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration, 1500–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). For the African diaspora, see Jose C. Curto and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds., Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil During the Era of Slavery (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2003). Additional informationNotes on contributorsAlison GamesAlison Games is the Dorothy M. Brown Distinguished Professor of History, Department of History, Georgetown University, Box 571035, ICC 600, Washington, DC 20057-1035, USA.

This article is part of a History Compass cluster on ‘Rethinking Gender, Family and Sexuality in the Early Modern Atlantic World’. The cluster is made up of the following articles: ‘On Currents and Comparisons: Gender and the Atlantic ‘Turn’ in Spanish America’, Bianca Premo, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 223–237, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00658.x ‘Women and Families in Early (North) America and the Wider (Atlantic) World’, Karin Wulf, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 238–247, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00659.x ‘Family Matters: The Early Modern Atlantic from the European Side’, Julie Hardwick, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 248–257, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00660.x The following essay originated as one of these three contributions to a roundtable discussion held at the 14th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June 2008. The roundtable, ‘Rethinking Gender, Family, and Sexuality in the Early Modern Atlantic World’, was meant to be as much invitation as inventory and was astonishingly well attended at 08:00 in the morning, with standing room only for a thoughtful, lively audience whose comments, questions, and suggestions are reflected here (although in no way fully represented). As historians of gender and family in the North Atlantic, European, and Iberian worlds, we had hoped to encourage more central and systematic attention to gender within the Atlantic World paradigm by cataloging some recent works in their fields and pointing the way for future studies. Yet, a funny thing happened on the way to the conference. Independently, each of us began to engage with the challenges of simply inserting family and gender into ‘the Atlantic’ as both as conceptual place and a historical practice. The essays that emerged, therefore, departed from conventional historiographies that survey the state of the field. Rather, these are theoretical and methodological reflections on the implications of de‐centering national and colonial narratives about the history of gender. At a time when transnational historical scholarship on early modern women promises to explode, these essays aim to inspire debate about the conceptual utility of the Atlantic as a paradigm for understanding issues of gender, family, and sexuality, as well as its ramifications for feminist scholarship everywhere.

This article is part of a History Compass cluster on ‘Rethinking Gender, Family and Sexuality in the Early Modern Atlantic World’.The cluster is made up of the following articles:‘On Currents and Comparisons: Gender and the Atlantic ‘Turn’ in Spanish America’, Bianca Premo, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 223–237, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00658.x‘Women and Families in Early (North) America and the Wider (Atlantic) World’, Karin Wulf, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 238–247, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00659.x‘Family Matters: The Early Modern Atlantic from the European Side’, Julie Hardwick, History Compass 8.3 (2010): 248–257, doi: 10.1111/j.1478‐0542.2009.00660.xThe following essay originated as one of these three contributions to a roundtable discussion held at the 14th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June 2008. The roundtable, ‘Rethinking Gender, Family, and Sexuality in the Early Modern Atlantic World’, was meant to be as much invitation as inventory and was astonishingly well attended at 08:00 in the morning, with standing room only for a thoughtful, lively audience whose comments, questions and suggestions are reflected here (although in no way fully represented). As historians of gender and family in the North Atlantic, European and Iberian worlds, we had hoped to encourage more central and systematic attention to gender within the Atlantic World paradigm by cataloging some recent works in their fields and pointing the way for future studies. Yet, a funny thing happened on the way to the conference. Independently, each of us began to engage with the challenges of simply inserting family and gender into ‘the Atlantic’ as both as conceptual place and a historical practice. The essays that emerged, therefore, departed from conventional historiographies that survey the state of the field. Rather, these are theoretical and methodological reflections on the implications of de‐centering national and colonial narratives about the history of gender. At a time when transnational historical scholarship on early modern women promises to explode, these essays aim to inspire debate about the conceptual utility of the Atlantic as a paradigm for understanding issues of gender, family, and sexuality, as well as its ramifications for feminist scholarship everywhere.

Constitutional aspects of ecological safety in relation to offshore wind farms in the British and Polish legal systems

Guasco’s study reframes the history of English slaveholding by placing it in the context of human bondage in the early modern English world. Bondage and slavery were, he argues, familiar as ideas and experiences to Englishmen of the period: The early development of slavery does not represent a radical shift but an adaptation of existing models and experiences.Guasco builds his argument across six chapters. The first chapter maintains that the English were familiar with slavery through the Bible and Protestant theology, through the history and laws of Rome as taught in England’s grammar schools and universities, and through narratives of English history that identified conquerors—Danes or Normans—as enslaving the English. Furthermore, serfdom continued to limit the freedom of a significant number of English men and women during the sixteenth century, and penal slavery was a governmental experiment during the mid-Tudor period.The second chapter explores English encounters with slavery around the world, particularly in the Mediterranean: The English (however disingenuously) prided themselves on their freedom, but enslavement, particularly of war captives, was familiar. In the third chapter, Guasco turns to the ways in which English privateers attempted to use alliances with Africans against the Spaniards in the Americas. The Africans, however, did not see the English as natural allies; they used them strategically to gain freedom from Spain. The fourth chapter examines the experience of, and narratives about, the “thousands” of English sailors enslaved in the early modern Mediterranean. Guasco suggests that far more of them died than returned; those who managed to return were often treated as apostates, having converted to Islam rather than embrace martyrdom.The final two chapters look at how slavery was transplanted into English America, from the earliest days onward. Guasco emphasizes the multiple models of slavery available to colonists, its practice in the Spanish colonies, debates about the enslavement of Indians, and the ways in which early colonies adapted bondage to control behavior. When the early colonists began to acquire African slaves, they treated them as slaves before they had legal structures to do so, and only gradually moved away from Spanish models of slavery, with their high levels of manumission. The book thus demonstrates both that English men and women were familiar with slavery and that the ultimate structure of plantation slavery was not a foregone conclusion.Guasco also examines slavery and freedom in the English imagination. The English had a concept of slavery regardless of any actual practice. He points to the hypocrisy behind the English view of its brand of freedom as uniquely humane. Guasco has read widely, and produced a rich account of the English cultural experience of slavery during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century. However, there are blind spots in his coverage. His search for forms of bondage and slavery is not always true to their wider context, particularly their intersection with other historical developments in English society. What is more important, the attempts to enforce villeinage during the sixteenth century or the broad resistance to them from all levels of English society? How were ideas about slavery connected to ideas about gender and sexuality? More importantly, given the political resonance of the concept of slavery in England, what was the political use of such language? Since this book is primarily a cultural history, with an episodic structure, change over time on the English side is not always visible in it, but few historians of England would move as seamlessly as Guasco from the 1540s to the 1640s. Guasco is not, in general, reflective about his methods, or his sources. A bibliography would have helped.Such caveats, however, do not detract from the significance of Guasco’s work. Slaves and Englishmen provides a persuasive account of bondage in English experience that will challenge historians of both colonial America and early modern Britain.

Reviewed by: Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World by Michael Guasco Heather Dalton Guasco, Michael, Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World ( Early Modern Americas), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014; cloth; pp. 328, 8 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US $45.00, £29.50; ISBN 9780812245783. Although slavery was not legal in the English-speaking world until 1661 when Barbados and Virginia introduced the necessary legislation, English men, and indeed English women, had long been entangled in the practice. In Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic World, Michael Guasco sets out to investigate the nature of that entanglement and explore how the English thought, wrote about, and practised slavery from the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth century. Guasco suggests that 'we have rarely devoted as much attention to the meaning of human bondage as we have to the origins of racial slavery in the early Anglo-Atlantic world' and that his book seeks to 'redress that oversight' (p. 5). He argues that ideas about slavery and a 'willingness to take advantage of human bondage' shaped English colonialism from the beginning (p. 5). This starting point — the beginning of English colonialism — means that Guasco concentrates, for the most part, on the late-sixteenth century onwards. Although he does refer to those English traders who experienced the fluidity of the late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Iberian Atlantic, he does not really explore their experiences or their influence back home. Nor does he look at the practices and influences of those slave-holding Genoese, Florentine, and Venetian merchants who resided in Southampton and London during the period and whose influence on local merchants is recorded in the guild and notary archives of England, the Low Countries, and the Iberian Peninsula. [End Page 210] Slaves and Englishmen focuses on ideas rather than practices. Guasco expertly illustrates the dichotomy faced by those English citizens willing to find out more about slavery and think through its moral implications. Not only had vestiges of serfdom survived into the sixteenth century, but both Christian and classical texts failed to provide clear-cut guidance. While the Old Testament could be read as 'a story of liberation', passages like Leviticus25.44–46 condoned slavery, as did sections of the New Testament. The classical texts read by learned English men and women were equally confusing: on the one hand extolling individual freedom while, on the other, condoning slavery as a natural state (pp. 15–18). The situation was further clouded by the fact that just as Englishmen were becoming familiar with slavery, and the enslavement of Africans in particular, they realized that they too could be enslaved — particularly in the Mediterranean, seen as an 'epicentre of bondage and captivity' (p. 56). By Elizabeth I's reign, conflicts between Protestants and Catholics and between England and Spain were increasingly seen as a battle between freedom and slavery. This 'fed into the notion that the English were, ipso facto, anti-slavery' (p. 21). However, while such a stance may have been popular in theory, it was hardly convenient in practice. Only those opportunistic Englishmen who demonstrated flexibility survived and prospered in the Atlantic world. This meant that while commentators claimed that England's invasion of Ireland would 'liberate the mass of poor, downtrodden Irish from a bondage that was imposed on them by their own lords' (p. 49), Englishmen sailing, fighting, and trading in the Atlantic were learning about and tolerating the idea of African slavery even before they embraced it (p. 68). They were integrating Africans into their households and businesses through conversion, servitude, and miscegenation, and were among the first to write about Africans in the Americas. Guasco's comment that these Englishmen were largely 'smugglers and pirates' (p. 86) is somewhat simplistic however, for during this period, divisions between merchant, trader, smuggler, and pirate were blurred and constantly shifting. Whatever their status, Englishmen tended to cohere to a smug rhetoric, which invariably characterized the Spanish as cruel colonizers and themselves as liberators. This meant that while Africans and indigenous Americans were being cast as allies, the geographer and writer Richard Hakluyt felt justified in...

Reviewed by: The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World Karen Oslund (bio) The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World. By John F. Richards. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. xiv+682. $75. The Unending Frontier is an ambitious contribution to the fields of early modern history, world history, and environmental history. John Richards identifies a series of environmental changes occurring as a result of developing state structures in the early modern period—among them, the settlement of frontiers, biological invasions from the Old World to the New, and the search for new energy resources. He traces these changes through an impressive number of case studies, including Tokugawa Japan, colonial Brazil, and the indigenous people of Russian Siberia, as well as the better-known examples of the Spanish in the New World and early modern Britain. As these examples demonstrate, people all over the early modern world faced similar environmental issues, such as the pressure that expanding states and rising populations placed on the land. Richards describes different strategies by which various states met these challenges. His juxtaposition of chapters on early modern Britain and Tokugawa Japan is particularly effective. While Japan dealt with the crises of late-eighteenth-century famines with severe austerity measures, forest conservation programs, and intensification of fishing and whaling, the Tudor and Stuart rulers sought to expand their resources by draining wetlands and by switching the primary energy source from wood to coal in response to the depletion of the forests. As Richards notes, the British failure to recognize limits to growth was the more usual for early modern states, and the chapters on frontier settlement in Russia, whaling and walrus hunting, and Dutch and Chinese settlement on Taiwan provide other examples of the "windfall mindset in frontier societies" (p. 619) that Richards argues characterizes the early modern world. This book could have been even more interesting for historians of technology if the comparison between different ideologies of control of nature presented in the chapters on Japan and Britain had been pursued consistently throughout the entire volume, rather than treating the various chapters as self-contained narratives about different early modern societies and their treatment of the environment. As it stands, historians of technology will probably find the final section of the book the most useful. "The World Hunt" discusses the fur hunt in North America and Siberia, whaling and walrus hunting, and cod fishing in the North Atlantic. In the previous three sections, some of the details about technologies of land reclamation or logging tend to be glossed over; here Richards gives more attention to the comparative analysis of different techniques of whaling and fishing. Although [End Page 861] the book is not directly aimed at historians of technology, and does not provide any new analytic approaches to this field, it is a useful synthesis of information about a variety of tools and technologies used in the early modern world. The major weakness of Richards's book is in fact its analytic content. The Unending Frontier, as Richards explains in the preface, grew out of his teaching of environmental history and world history and reflects his deep commitment to world history as both a pedagogic and scholarly field. The book is an invaluable resource for anyone teaching similar courses, and also useful for classes in early modern European history, Atlantic history, or colonial American history. However, its breadth does not lend itself to close and rigorous argument, even in the chapter on the Mughal Empire, which is Richards's field of expertise. At times repetitious, this lengthy volume would have benefited from more careful editing, especially in the chapter on Russia, which conflates the time line of events and is likely to confuse the general reader. This does not prevent Richards from setting forth interesting insights in individual chapters—showing, for example, that in colonial Mexico and Brazil, Spanish and Portuguese settlement initially reduced pressure on land resources rather than increasing it, although this entailed devastating effects on the native populations. Readers of The Unending Frontier cannot fail to be persuaded by the amount of evidence presented for Richards's main contention, that during the early...

This chapter focuses on various and comparative experiences of different populations of women in unfree labor systems in the early modern Atlantic world, beginning with indigenous women in the Americas who suffered the violent consequences of Spanish conquest. It discusses gendered contexts shaping slavery in West Africa, the Caribbean, and South America; the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade; and the consequences for unfree and free women in different communities of North America during the period of international trade in human beings. It centers the experience of sexual exploitation inherent in labor systems in which women brokered no power over their bodies and reproductive lives, elucidating the limitations of archives in which women’s perspectives are largely silenced. Efforts at evacuating the lives of marginalized women from the silences in the archives have offered new insights into women’s lives and changed understandings about everyday experience in the early modern Atlantic world.

Creolization and Contraband: Curaçao in the Early Modern Atlantic World

Reviewed by: Treating the Public: Charitable Theater and Civic Health in the Early Modern Atlantic World by Rachael Ball Ruth MacKay Rachael Ball. Treating the Public: Charitable Theater and Civic Health in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Louisiana State UP, 2016. 212 Pp. RECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN AN IMPORTANT TREND toward linking the Iberian Peninsula to its New World colonies and territories with the understanding that by crossing the ocean—in both directions, often multiple times—people, ideas, practices, and objects underwent transformations and were enriched and altered by contacts on either end. Rachael Ball’s book, her first, takes plays and theater troupes on this voyage, thus offering an original, intriguing, and entertaining way of tracking the survival and meaning of cultural practices. In addition to giving us a transatlantic look at theater, she adds two layers: the first is the link between theater and public health institutions or charity efforts, often run by religious confraternities; the second is a comparison between the Spanish experience and that of cities in England, Ireland, and Virginia. The theater scene in Madrid and throughout Spain, as is well known, was exciting, active, and raucous. No other European country could compare. Its deep bench of playwrights and entrepreneurs benefited from a unique arrangement between municipal entities and theater; as hospitals depended upon ticket sales to finance patient care and alms-giving, the theaters, though shut down now and again for health reasons or for royal mourning periods, were ensured a relatively secure livelihood, notwithstanding some vocal critics of this popular entertainment on moral grounds. The pairs of cities Ball presents for comparative purposes are Madrid and London, Seville and Bristol, Mexico City and Dublin, and Puebla and Williamsburg. At first glance these are fascinating pairings, seeming to offer a potential wealth of material and angles from which to better understand the two great Atlantic empires. The final chapter, the book’s strongest (it also appeared as an excellent article in Sixteenth Century Review [vol. 46, no. 3, 2015]), is thematic rather than geographic, looking at antitheatrical sentiment and writings in early modern Spain and England. The critical genre enjoyed considerable success in both [End Page 117] places, but precisely because Spanish theater was so firmly lodged in cities’ welfare structures, and also because the physical playhouses (the corrales) were often lodged in central locations and thus were guaranteed massive (and mass) attendance, moralistic warnings and rants did not do as well in the south, though Spanish polemicists could cite the ancients as eloquently as the British did when it came to bemoaning the sinfulness and depravity of the stage. Ball makes a point throughout the book of examining women’s role, and roles, in theater. In Spain they were on stage and off, behind the scenes, in the audience (separate from the men), and in front of the house. In England and its colonies, however, they were harder to find. The scandal of women’s presence, be it in the audience or on stage, was part of the impulse behind antitheatrical literature, which argued that loose morals incited the general decline of civility and politics. Ball further speculates that the spectacle of women at the theater also spurred an endless array of concerns over sexual identity and gendered behavior. In the wonderful words of Pedro de Guzmán (words that supplied Ball with the title to her above-mentioned article), public theater was “a cathedra of pestilence and the plague of the city” (142). Madrid’s theater scene is probably the richest of those Ball describes, and it is well known. Less known to this reviewer were the scenes in Mexico City and Puebla, which offer interesting and entertaining examples of how class and colonial relations were enacted within the confines of the theater, at times mirroring the metropolis, at times taking syncretic directions. Both Mexican cities continued the Spanish custom of linking theater and charity or health, and theater furthermore was one of the staging grounds of jurisdictional conflict, a longstanding peninsular tradition. Ball describes Mexico City’s precolonial tradition of religious spectacle and ritual, which was certainly theatrical; however, I’m not sure it tells us much about later commercial institutions...

Reviewed by: Intestine Enemies: Catholics in Protestant America, 1605–1791 ed. by Robert Emmett Curran Michael S. Carter Intestine Enemies: Catholics in Protestant America, 1605–1791. Edited by Robert Emmett Curran. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2017. 320 pp. $34.95. Robert Emmett Curran, distinguished scholar of early American Catholic history and a professor emeritus of history at Georgetown, has produced a valuable and effectively-organized single-volume [End Page 100] documentary sourcebook on English-speaking Catholicism in the early modern Atlantic world. Intestine Enemies, drawing on the editor's comprehensive familiarity with the available primary sources, is a welcome contribution to a growing, yet still inadequately studied, field of early British-American Catholic history. Intestine Enemies is organized into ten sections. "Beginnings, 1605–1629" focuses on Jacobean and Carolingian-era English colonies from the perspectives of English Catholic planters in Newfoundland, as well as non-Catholics fearing Catholic inroads into their territories. This section includes documents reflecting Roman Propaganda Fide fears and concerns about anti-popery and the spread of Protestantism into North America. "Peace and a New Order, 1781–1791," the final section dealing with the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, includes familiar texts such as selections from Bishop Carroll's correspondence and the "Address from the Roman Catholics of America" to President Washington, yet also includes more obscure material such as the correspondence of Joseph Mosley with his sister Helen on the subject of his conflicted feelings about the "new order" for Catholics following the American victory. The intervening sections cover the themes of the planning and settlement of Maryland, the establishment of the first instances of religious toleration in the English-speaking world, the upheavals of and effects of the Glorious Revolution upon not only Maryland's Catholic leadership but New York's as well, and debates over Catholic rights and liberties during the Revolutionary era. Of particular value are the sections including material from the British West Indies, often neglected in volumes covering early American Catholic history. The selections also include a diverse array of genres: private letters, newspapers, legal documents, internal political documents, sermons, and others. Likewise, throughout the entire collection a wide variety of authorial and thematic perspectives are included, both Catholic and Protestant, clerical and lay, theological and political, private and public, elite and popular. Admirably, in addition to its more inclusive Atlantic World scope and approach to early American Catholic history, Intestine [End Page 101] Enemies is not conceived from the perspective of "anticipating" the eventual emergence of the U.S. republic, but approaches each period covered on its own terms, reflecting the particular contemporaneous concerns and anxieties of each generation and geographical area treated. Intestine Enemies is obviously intended, as its editor notes, to function as a complement to his excellent recent monograph Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1571–1783 (2014). It is ideal for use in both upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level courses in history and religion, either along with Curran's monograph, or without. A great deal of archival material which will be largely unfamiliar to many readers—material not otherwise easily procured—is included in the volume. For its inclusion of a broader geographic and thematic scope, it is like Curran's monograph on the same subject, refreshingly notable if for nothing else. With its historically-rich commentary and contextualization, and its high production values throughout, it is difficult indeed to imagine a better version of this book. [End Page 102] Michael S. Carter University of Dayton Copyright © 2018 American Catholic Historical Society

Extended Abstract Abstract: Minimal contemplation of damages under Iranian legal and contractual liability systems is the reason leaves the constant temptation of a legal study (compared to other legal systems and the common experiences especially formed in the field of international trade). Consequently, review of the methods for evaluation of damages and reconsideration of the notions brought in modern world (with a glance at the economic requirements of the developing countries such as Iran) seems inevitable. Having studied the methods of evaluating the damages caused by non-performance of the obligations in English legal system (as well as exploring the latest studies in this field) and also a number of most reputable international legal instruments such as CISG, Undroit, PECL and DCFR, we tried to support an interpret under Iranian law which goes beyond the current contemplations regarding the damages. Analyzing the economic outcomes of Restitution, Expectation and Reliance methods as well as more recent theories such as Incomplete Contracts and Efficient Breach (besides the studies based on economic analysis of law during the years of 20th century), with due regard to the necessities of the local market and during the short term at least, we can rely on a justifiable basis like Expectation. Extended Abstract Introduction: Minimal contemplation of the institution of damages under Iranian legal and contractual liability systems is the reason leaves the constant temptation of a legal study (compared to other legal systems and the common experiences especially formed in the field of international trade). Consequently, review of the methods for evaluation of damages and reconsideration of the notions brought in modern world (with a glance at the economic requirements of the progressive countries such as Iran) seems inevitable. Theoretical Framework: This study attempts to reconsider, at the very first point, the concept of “actual harm” under the Iranian legal system (as well as the contractual liability system) which leaves a major impact on our economic ambiance. We, as the Iranian lawyers, are acquainted with the phrase “there remain the possibility for the actual harms only to be compensated” (or claimed to be compensated). In light of the modern world progresses (as well as the theories rendered during the same) and the complexities of the relations therein, we have to apparently reconsider the veracity of the said phrase. The point, in our view, is laid in our contemplation of the institution of damages as a remedy for breach which lead us to go beyond the restitution of the aggrieved party’s former status. This is, indeed, the role of economic notions in modern world which enables the similar construes. Methodology: During this article and having studied the methods of evaluating the damages caused by non-performance of the obligations in English legal system (as well as exploring the latest studies in this field) and also a number of most reputable international legal instruments such as United Nations Convention on International Sale of Goods, Undroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts, Principles of European Contract Law and Draft Common Frame of Reference, we tried to support a construe under Iranian law which goes beyond the current contemplations regarding the damages. Results & Discussion: United Nations Convention on International Sale of Goods (“CISG”), having considered the methods for valuation of damages in Articles 75 and 76, has also invalidates both the subjective and objective tests in claiming the damages. In other words, the modern world necessitates to even remove the subjective test in the course of appraisal of damages (as referred in Article 76 of CISG). In addition, other major international instruments have almost paved the same path and approved the methods of “buying the goods in replacement” and “current price of the goods”. This point reveals when we come up with Article 7.4.13 of the Undroit Principles of International Commercial Contracts (“Unidroit”) and compare the same with Article 230 of IRI Civil Code. Thus, the institution of damages is mainly designed to cover the expectations of the parties before entering into a contract and we can, consequently, come to conclusion that “Restitution Basis”, as a minimal construe of the same, shall stand in exterior of the territory of damages. Analyzing the economic outcomes of “Restitution”, “Expectation” and “Reliance” methods as well as more recent theories such as “Incomplete Contracts” and “Efficient Breach” (besides the studies based on economic analysis of law during the years of 20th century), with due regard to the necessities of the local market and during the short term at least, we can rely on a justifiable basis like “Expectation”. Conclusions & Suggestions: Taking the foregoing into account, we have to remark on a few points as follows: 1) The legislator’s approach to the institution of damages shall be varied at the very first stage so as the efficiency of the contractual liability system be improved (in terms of legal view point and more particularly in terms of economic point of view). Providing a set of certain and practical methods for valuation of damages, empowers the parties to measure the risks (and the scope thereof) and cover the same through the means such as insurance. Accordingly, the proposed techniques by the international instruments are so close to our dominant notions under Iranian (and Fiqhi) framework. Having done the same, the given approach in our system will become more consistent with the prevailing methods in Common Law (realization of “Expectation Basis” as the pioneer ways suggested by the classic division of Fuller and Perdue). 2) Concentration on the criminal feature of the liquidated damages assists us to guide the appetite of the legal system to Expectation and Reliance Basis as the real outcomes of the concept of damages while the Restitution Basis may be analyzed within the area of termination and the consequences thereof. 3) Insofar as we know, the law on adjustment of the contractual terms has a major impact on modern theories raised in this respect. However, even if the re-negotiation of the said terms enables the parties to achieve a sort of post efficiency, this kind of adjustment would certainly damage the former distribution of the contractual risks as considered by the parties in prior. So, in order to design an efficient scheme for the parties, we have to consider (inasmuch as viable) the nature of the given risks and the manner to cover the same. By the way, comparing the effects of such studies with the key notions of the Iranian legal system, the economic impacts of the relevant methods on a progressive economy such as Iran shall not be ignored. That is the reason we propose not to copy the ultra-modern theories such as “Incomplete Contracts” and “Efficient Breach” and focus on the “Expectation Basis”.

VOLUME 52 (2022)

Atlantic Worlds Jeremy Black Jerry Bannister and Liam Riordan, eds., The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012). Pp. 342. $29.95. A. B. McLeod, British Naval Captains of the Seven Years’ War: The View from the Quarterdeck (Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2012). Pp. 291. $120.00. Gabriel Paquette, Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: The Luso-Brazilian. World, c. 1770–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). Pp. 464. $99.00. Linda M. Rupert , Creolization and Contraband: Curaçao in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012). Pp. 366. $24.95. Gordon M. Sayre and Carla Zecher, eds., The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715–1747: A Sojourner in the French Atlantic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). Pp. 480. $50.00. Cécile Vidal, ed., Louisiana: Crossroads of the Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Pp. 286. $49.95. As intellectual category and strategy, the Atlantic continues to provide a fruitful and malleable theme. There is room, of course, for a measure of skepticism. Indeed, the naval historian Nicholas Rodger once remarked to me that Atlantic history was history with the Atlantic left out. It is certainly the case that not all Atlanticists appear to understand ships, winds, and currents. [End Page 107] There have also been suggestions that a focus on the Atlantic concerns and links of the European powers can lead to an underplaying of their concerns within Europe, and has indeed done so. A similar point can be made about Africa, and a tendency to downplay developments within that continent due to a focus on its Atlantic roles, notably as a source for slaves. History understood from the coast into the interior tends to come with a powerful framework of assumptions. Moreover, there is a political dimension. Within America, there was to be a reaction against the coastal focus of the colonial legacy. In Europe, the European Union can be seen in part as a reaction against the global trading patterns and interests of the Atlantic powers. However, allowing for these and other caveats and issues, the stress on the Atlantic, and on the worlds enacted over and along it, has proved very helpful. Scholarship has operated on a number of different but overlapping levels. The study of Atlantic worlds has brought new energy to the investigation of the European maritime empires. There has also been a valuable comparative focus, with the Atlantic dimension encouraging a consideration of the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish empires and Atlantics as instructive variants on a common theme. The focus on Atlantic worlds also has led to a greater emphasis on the interactive character of the colonial bond, and on the number of constituencies involved, including those not formally imperial subjects. As a result, the study of Atlantic worlds is readily open to transnational stories, concerns, and methods. This is notably so with the history of migration, whether voluntary or coerced—the latter most obviously the case with the slave trade, but also, for example, with convicts. The books under review here reflect the range of subjects encompassed within the wider category, and also the way in which Atlantic history can serve to help locate and evaluate developments in places that are frequently underplayed. The variety of the world being made and remade by Europeans (and others) emerges clearly, and this variety underlines the extent to which it is not helpful to think in terms of inevitable patterns. Linda Rupert’s important, scholarly, and well-written study of the society, culture, and economy of Curaçao under the Dutch West India Company (1634–1791) clearly indicates the extent to which nodal points within the Atlantic system not only played a key role in the development and texture of this system, but were also in turn shaped by it. Curaçao was significant because of its commercial role, notably through illicit trade with Spanish America. This created opportunities for other types of intercolonial exchanges, from architecture to ideas. The resulting activity and profitability encouraged immigration into Curaçao, both voluntary and involuntary. As a consequence, Willemstad, the major town, had a...