Age Of Atlantic Revolutions Research Articles

Which Stranger's Disease? Immigration, Immunization, and the Whitening of Cuba in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions.

In 1804, Cuban physician Tomás Romay tried and failed to create the first yellow fever vaccine. The article analyzes his experimental efforts, foregrounding the enslaved and enlisted subjects at the center of this early vaccine trial. Though a scientific failure, this brief experiment, the desires and logics embedded within it, and the measures deployed in its wake - in the form of European whitening campaigns - allow us to consider the political uses of immunity during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. Historicizing these events within the wider geopolitics of the Caribbean, the article explicates the central role that yellow fever immunization played in Cuban authorities' attempts to shore up their political and economic sovereignty in the midst of anti-colonial and anti-slavery resistance. As such, it shows how yellow fever and its threat to social and economic order fits within a broader history of vaccination as a mechanism of colonial governance. Finally, by situating Cuban efforts to prevent yellow fever alongside the health concerns of enslaved people - concerns that arguably informed their resistance to slavery - the article also demonstrates how ideas about immunity and political belonging increasingly intersected through whiteness as an elite ideal in the era that Cuba first became a slave society.

Micah Alpaugh. Friends of Freedom: The Rise of Social Movements in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions.

Micah Alpaugh. <i>Friends of Freedom: The Rise of Social Movements in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions</i>.

Economic Equality in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

Economic Equality in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

Ideas of Revolution in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

This article examines the concepts of revolution that political actors employed during the age of Atlantic revolutions (c.1760–1830) and how they used these concepts to analyze, compare, and connect the era's political events. The article begins by briefly recapitulating the evolving meanings of revolution in the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth. The capacious concept of a “revolution of government” that developed in the eighteenth century remained in regular use into the 1820s as a key conceptual tool to imaginatively connect otherwise disparate political movements/phenomena. Revolutionaries also created two new concepts, “total” and “limited” revolution, that were crucial to drawing political distinctions, especially between the American and French revolutions. These three concepts of revolution, I argue, all gave late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century actors an unusual degree of flexibility—which did not exist before or after the period—in describing the temporal and causal dynamics of revolutionary change.

Friends of Freedom: The Rise of Social Movements in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions by Micah Alpaugh

Alpaugh’s Friends of Freedom provides an integrated narrative of the rise of social movements, political protest, and revolutionary mobilization in the eighteenth century in the United States, Britain, Ireland, France, and Haiti. The author contrasts his own work with that of Palmer, who undertook a similar project more than half a century ago in The Age of the Democratic Revolution.1 Like Alpaugh, Palmer argued that common ideals motivated eighteenth-century revolutionaries on both sides of the Atlantic, but as Alpaugh points out, Palmer’s account portrays the American and French Revolutions as “more simultaneous than interrelated” and has little to say about slavery or Haiti. Alpaugh answers these deficiencies, elucidating interconnections between events in various parts of the Atlantic World and highlighting the importance of abolitionism as a precocious protest movement that developed arguments and tactics that would later be adopted by revolutionaries in every place he examines.Alpaugh has overcome daunting challenges in producing this book. Drawing on material from archives in France, Britain, Ireland, and the United States, and engaging with scholarship in a range of historical fields, he has pulled his material together effectively, telling coherent stories and making his argument clear. The book operates on two scales. On the large scale it is divided into two halves, Part I emphasizing the influence of the American Revolution, and Part II tracing the widespread impact of the French Revolution, with French Revolutionary influences ultimately crossing the Atlantic to become manifested in the formation of U.S. party politics. Within this broad framework, the eight chapters in Part I and the five chapters in Part II tell smaller-scale discrete stories including, for example, the struggles of various Protestant groups in America to secure religious liberty and the campaigns of the United Irishmen in the 1790s. This structure allows Alpaugh to recount local developments clearly while emphasizing their Atlantic contexts.The book had to be divided in this way. The overall story is too rich, detailed, and intricate to be conveyed in a single uninterrupted narrative. But there is a noticeable tension between Alpaugh’s claims about interconnected Atlantic revolutions, giving primacy to the American and French Revolutions, and his smaller-scale efforts to recount local developments accurately in detail. The struggle for Protestant American religious liberty, for example, started long before the American Revolution, as did the transatlantic struggle over slavery. In both instances, while the American and French Revolutions changed the terms of argument in important ways, Alpaugh strains to acknowledge the diverse range of voices engaged in the long-running debates.In discussing abolition, Alpaugh emphasises the role of Quakers and white evangelical Protestants who championed new tactics and lines of argument to recruit allies in America, Britain, and France. Africans and people of African descent enter the analysis only mid-stream. On the twelfth page of his discussion of abolitionism in America, Alpaugh introduces Black abolitionists with a paragraph starting, “African-Americans advanced their own cause” (183). Similarly, in the chapter on abolitionism in Britain, Black abolitionists appear only after eight pages discussing white abolitionist leaders. “Blacks living in England,” he writes, “allied for the cause” (205). Black leaders figure more prominently in Alpaugh’s discussion of the Haitian Revolution, but he is emphatic that they were responding to events in France and French debates, and he criticizes historians who fail to center their analysis on the influence of the French Revolution.While Africans and people of African descent figure in the book’s narrative, many inhabitants of the Atlantic world who contributed to the tumult of the revolutionary era—indigenous Americans, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin Americans—are left out. Alpaugh has demonstrated that Atlantic history is intrinsically liberating, releasing us from the confines of national narratives, but—especially if historians wish to work from archival materials—a fully inclusive, comprehensive history of the Atlantic World will almost always be out of reach.

Friends of Freedom: The Rise of Social Movements in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions by Micah Alpaugh

Friends of Freedom: The Rise of Social Movements in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions by Micah Alpaugh

The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott

Reviewed by: The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution by Julius S. Scott Ronald Angelo Johnson The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. By Julius S. Scott. London: Verso, 2018. ISBN 978-1-78873-247-5. 272 pp. $34.95 hardcover, $24.95 paperback. Rarely have so many scholars owed as much to one historical study as they do to The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution. When Julius Scott completed his doctoral dissertation at Duke University in 1986, his research spurred some of the most influential works on the Age of Atlantic Revolutions over the subsequent three decades. Thirty-two years after Scott's doctoral defense, the work was formally published for the first time; reading the book now, one can see glimpses of the classic works produced upon its foundation, including books by Ada Ferrer, Jane Landers, Matthew J. Smith, Rebecca Scott, and Jean Hébrard.1 This study links life in British-, French-, and Spanish-controlled territories of the Caribbean and South America through the Haitian Revolution. In each of the five chapters of captivating storytelling, the author weaves the region's disparate languages and societal practices into a cohesive narrative of collective strides toward freedom, involving peoples of different ethnic groups. His analysis of ruling practices blurs the lines of demarcation between the colonized territories to identify "Afro-America," a region in constant protest against European economic oppression and cultural subjugation. The book emphasizes the cosmopolitan environments of Caribbean port cities to illuminate the interconnectedness among peoples under the control of the planter class across the territories. According to Scott, "Larger cities like Kingston, Cap Français, and Havana could properly be termed capitals of Afro-America. . . . [T]he growing coastal cities nurtured the most complex patterns of mobility and presented the most vexing problems of control for all the colonial powers" (15). As imperial gains expanded the economic importance of urban areas, the hustle and bustle of port cities provided safe haven for fugitive freedom seekers and attracted upwardly mobile free people of color for generations. Chapter 1 introduces readers to ventures toward greater liberty across the eighteenth century. European slaveholders, governors, and merchants believed themselves to be the "masters" of Afro-America. Yet an unquenchable desire for freedom showed itself in the ingenuity and grit of the region's marginalized inhabitants. The ubiquitous presence of involuntary bondage and its inhumane effects on the lives of the enslaved permeate Scott's narrative. Still, the hope and promise of lives beyond slavery are never far from the book's primary subjects. Musicians, maroons, and marauders, they all understood their value as human citizens. The [End Page 156] cruelties and injustices inflicted upon these populations could not dampen their spirit striving to be free. Scott focuses the reader's attention on the constant drive toward freedom demonstrated by individuals as well as groups. Prior to 1986, much of the historical scholarship published in North America about the Haitian Revolution and about European enslavement of Black people in the Atlantic World gave preference to the English-language writings of elitist, European intellectuals. The Common Wind employs the resourcefulness of marginalized peoples across the Caribbean as the historical lens through which to bring into view the injustices of the Atlantic trade system based on stolen lives and labor. Scott observes, "The activities of runaway slave communities in Jamaica did not go unnoticed in nearby Cuba, underscoring the fact that the histories of the maroon societies in the two islands in the eighteenth century were closely intertwined" (11). Across the rest of the book, the author does not segregate the Caribbean into different sectors and does not present a collection of loosely related case studies. Instead, he treats the Caribbean as the Caribbean, a cooperative system of lives and commerce linked together across different islands and territories. One of Scott's greatest contributions to the historical profession remains his revelation of "the common wind," the regional network of communication that existed in varying forms from Caracas, Venezuela, to Charleston, South Carolina. He reminds readers, "The books, newspapers, and letters which arrived with...

Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826

Jews in the Americas, 1776–1826

Daniel O’Connell, Repeal, and Chartism in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

Previous articleNext article No AccessDaniel O’Connell, Repeal, and Chartism in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions*Matthew RobertsMatthew RobertsSheffield Hallam University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 90, Number 1March 2018 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/695882 Views: 1228Total views on this site © 2018 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776–1838 by Michel Ducharme

<i>The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776–1838</i> by Michel Ducharme

Abolition and Republicanism over the Transatlantic Long Term, 1640-1800

This article compares and contrasts the conceptualization and transnational circulation of abolitionist ideas in the mid-seventeenth century English Revolution and the late-eighteenth-century “Age of Atlantic Revolutions.” Our method stresses both continuity and change across time and Atlantic space in the multiple efforts republicans made to eradicate human bondage. In both the mid-seventeenth century and the late eighteenth century, major political revolutions informed the ideas and actions of those who opposed slavery. As revolutionary fervor spread in the late eighteenth century, conservatives reacted with repressive attempts to contain the radicalism that was spilling over into the closely guarded domain of economic enslavement.

Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: The Luso-Brazilian World, c.1770–1850, by Gabriel Paquette

Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions: The Luso-Brazilian World, c.1770–1850, by Gabriel Paquette

Michel Ducharme.The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776–1838. Translated by Peter Feldstein.

Michel Ducharme.<i>The Idea of Liberty in Canada during the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, 1776–1838</i>. Translated by Peter Feldstein.

The idea of liberty in Canada during the age of Atlantic revolutions, 1776-1838

The idea of liberty in Canada during the age of Atlantic revolutions, 1776-1838

Atlantic Worlds

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...

Imperial Portugal in the age of Atlantic revolutions: the Luso-Brazilian world, c. 1770-1850

As the British, French and Spanish Atlantic empires were torn apart in the Age of Revolutions, Portugal steadily pursued reforms to tie its American, African and European territories more closely together. Eventually, after a period of revival and prosperity, the Luso-Brazilian world also succumbed to revolution, which ultimately resulted in Brazil's independence from Portugal. The first of its kind in the English language to examine the Portuguese Atlantic World in the period from 1750 to 1850, this book reveals that despite formal separation, the links and relationships that survived the demise of empire entwined the historical trajectories of Portugal and Brazil even more tightly than before. From constitutionalism to economic policy to the problem of slavery, Portuguese and Brazilian statesmen and political writers laboured under the long shadow of empire as they sought to begin anew and forge stable post-imperial orders on both sides of the Atlantic.

“To establish a community of property”: Marriage and race before and during the Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) was the greatest social upheaval in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. The paper presents results from the first systematic study of marriage during this event, which included slave rebellion (1791), general emancipation (1793) and political independence from France (1803). The article focuses on a single colonial parish, leveraging a sample of roughly 1000 contracts by comparing them with similar documents from same region in the 1760s and 1780s. Ironically, amid a revolution that was ostensibly eliminating slavery and racism, the interracial marriages that had once been common in this parish virtually disappeared. The wealthy “mulatto” families who had been free long before 1791 intensified their pre-Revolutionary pattern of endogamy and cousin-marriage. In the meantime, French male immigrants of the sort who, before the Revolution, had allied with these established clans, now shunned these marriages.

Legal Regulation of Marital Relations: An Historical and Comparative Approach

How have the legal regulations of marriage evolved over time in different countries? To answer this question, various sources from legal codes, case studies and 40 reports to the Commission to Eliminate Discrimination against Women were analysed. Marriage codes, be they western, Islamic or Chinese, traditionally obliged the wife to obey the husband by Divine law. During the age of Atlantic revolutions, laws generally made this obedience more binding before relaxing constraints to give more freedom to wives at the beginning of the twentieth century and even complete equality in a few countries by 1920. In 2003, 83 countries had egalitarian marriage rights, 38 admitted the husband as the head of the family and 57 maintained the obligatory obedience of the wife. If legal equality within marriage had progressed in Europe and America, it still is an objective in half the other countries.

British History: A Plea for a New Subject

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.-J. C. Beaglehole, of the Victoria University of Wellington, was until his death in 1970 the doyen of New Zealand historians and-together with J. W. Davidson of the Australian National University, who died in 1973-a leader in developing historical consciousness and historiography in the South Pacific world area. His editions of the journals of Captain Cook and his Life of Captain James Cook (published in 1974 by Stanford University Press) are not only masterpieces of scholarship and insight into the eighteenth century but unrivaled in their penetration of oceanic, as well as merely maritime, history. The New Zealand Historical Association maintains an annual lecture in his memory, and the essay which follows was originally delivered as the first Beaglehole Memorial lecture when that association met at the University of Canterbury in May 1973. It was subsequently printed in the New Zealand Journal of History (vol. 8, no. 1, April 1974) and is republished here with minor alterations by the generous permission of that journal's editors. What follows is a modified version of an essay in historical restatement, which owes much to John Beaglehole's own vision and his understanding of what vision is.