Continental Colonies Research Articles

Adam Smith's Unmerited Censure: An Esoteric Reading of a 1764 Pamphlet on Slavery

We explore the 1764 pamphlet, In Vindication of the Continental Colonies of America, from A Censure of Mr Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments. With some Reflections on Slavery in General. Authorship has been attributed to Arthur Lee. We doubt that attribution and here simply treat the identity of the author as unknown. We suggest that this pamphlet has often been misunderstood by modern scholars. On the surface the pamphlet purports to rebut Adam Smith for his having censured American colonists as base wretches and as the refuse of the jails of Europe. We argue that the true intent of the pamphlet was to promote Smith’s rebuke of the slave trade and slavery generally, and to join Smith in the cause against slavery.

Empire's Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers and the Transcontinental Railroad by Manu Karuka

Reviewed by: Empire's Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers and the Transcontinental Railroad by Manu Karuka Wayne Silao Jopanda (bio) Empire's Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers and the Transcontinental Railroad, by Manu Karuka. University of California Press. 2019. xv + 320 pp. $29.95 paper. ISBN 978-0-520-29664-0. The Transcontinental Railroad's legacy is romanticized as stemming from dedicated migrant labor, free market, and U.S. courage to brave the western frontier. Manu Karuka's Empire's Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad is a sharp refutation of this narrative, critiquing it as a fallacy invisibilizing Indigenous presence, racializing migrant labor, and affirming the U.S. colonial project. Karuka labels this process as U.S. countersovereignty, the settler belief that their right to claim the western frontier land supersedes any previous Indigenous community presence. Karuka argues that the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads' union symbolizes this countersovereignty fallacy, one built on the war-finance nexus and the intersection of militarism, capitalism, and state. He traces U.S. countersovereignty as a tool of free market capitalism and white supremacy that also delegitimizes Indigenous presence while flexibly racializing Chinese labor. Empire's Tracks demystifies any notion of the Transcontinental Railroad [End Page 516] being born out of brave pioneers navigating the free market. Karuka references multiple scholars in naming continental imperialism, the replacement of indigenous modes with colonial modes of relationship, and the rise of corporate personhood as foundations to U.S. railroad colonialism. He employs multiple theoretical lens, a wide range of community histories, and a rich archive of political, military, and business documents. The first three chapters frame the book's historical and theoretical context. The first chapter warns researchers about complex obstacles when studying countersovereignty, a topic born out of "rumor communities" (14). Though Karuka cautions about researching through rumors, he recognizes these rumor communities as potential spaces housing marginalized Indigenous and migrant voices. The prose of countersovereignty plays a major role in invisibilizing communities, amplifying white narratives, and normalizing displacement. Karuka questions U.S. imperialism's dominance as settlers failed to eliminate Indigenous modes of relationship. Chapter two centers on three key Indigenous feminist scholars discussing Indigenous modes of relationship being replaced with colonial modes of relationship. Karuka turns to Sarah Winnemucca, Ella Deloria, and Winona LaDuke in tracing this shift. Winnemucca theorizes a definition of colonial modes of relationship connected to sexual violence and war. Deloria offers an understanding of Indigenous modes of relationship as consciousness of place and community building across gender, generation, and species. LaDuke also proposes a shift from conquest focused modes of being towards one centered on survival (36). Chapter three traces global railroad colonialism's genealogy. Karuka demystifies U.S. railroad expansion history as nothing special compared to the rest of the world, building a transnational perspective historicizing multiple moments of railroad colonialism (38). Chapters four through seven focus on specific communities: the Lakota, Chinese railroad workers, the Pawnee, and the Cheyenne, and how railroad colonialism silenced, assimilated, stole from, and devastated these communities. Here, the book demonstrates its strength in balancing historic and political economy centered analysis while deconstructing how railroad colonialism racialized each community. In particular, chapter four examines the tension between the Lakota's modes of relationship and colonial modes of relationship under the context of militarization occupation, while chapter five covers the social construction of Chinese labor as an instrument of railroad colonialism, only to later be villainized as a threat to U.S. colonial modes of relationship. Karuka traces the Chinese workers' distinct positionality as mobile, fluid workers, a characteristic that deems them as neither free nor slave labor (69) [End Page 517] . The final two chapters connect these community cases to an in-depth analysis of continental colonialism and how these infrastructures of power operate in support of and within the definition of whiteness. In chapter eight, Karuka analyzes U.S. railroad colonialism as built on the relationship between state and corporation. He deconstructs the rise of corporate personhood and its connection to shareholder whiteness, both upholding white supremacist racial hierarchies under continental imperialism. Chapter nine provides a fascinating examination of continental imperialism, working through W. E. B. Du...

Empire, Religion, and Revolution in Early Virginia, 1607–1786

James B. Bell has authored two recent books on colonial religion and compiled an online biographical dictionary (accessible by paid subscription at www.jamesbbell.com) of 1,281 men who ministered to the Church of England in the continental colonies. One might therefore expect to find new evidence, or old evidence newly digested, on the 534 men who served the English church in Virginia during the colonial and revolutionary eras. A good deal of that exists here, including useful tables of names, parishes served, dates of tenure, and (mainly English) universities attended, along with a discussion of two seventeenth-century clerical libraries—one never used in Virginia because its owner died on his voyage out. Otherwise Empire, Religion, and Revolution in Early Virginia tells a familiar story using familiarly sparse evidence. Since the Anglican Church of Virginia left little documentation of its activities, what can historians say about it? Bell tells us that Virginia's Anglican Church was not like the Church of England in Ireland, but this potentially interesting comparison is not developed (beyond repetition of its institutional contrasts). Also left hanging are contrasts with the Church of England itself, back home, and with the much more vigorous Congregational cultures of the New England colonies (which, of course, left too much evidence). With relatively little direct evidence, more thought might have been given to functional (rather than merely institutional) comparisons with churches elsewhere in the Anglophone Atlantic, or Bell might have established new contexts in Virginia, following (for instance) the provocative and rewarding example of Rhys Isaac's The Transformation of Virginia (1982). But Bell curiously sees Isaacs's work as “focus[ed] without perspective” on religious issues and thus lacking in “true understanding” (pp. 4–5). This odd judgment perhaps derives from Bell's insistence on studying the English churches in Virginia as the Church establishment, as a whole entity that can and should be compared to other religious establishments in more settled places. Once those parameters are established, not much can be said, for “the church” in Virginia was unsuccessful at doing not very much, and the Englishness it managed to embody harmed it during and after 1776. Conversely, as Isaac and others have made clear, Virginia's churches, acting as congregations or, more accurately, as parish vestries, did play a coherent part in shaping the Old Dominion—as welfare agencies, as purveyors of values, standards, and styles, as meeting places, and as agents of Anglicization. As such, they were embraced by some and rejected by others, engendering several interesting narratives. Here we learn only, and once again, and repeatedly, that “the church” in Virginia was not a success.

The Issue of Tridentine Marriage in a Composite North Atlantic World

This article examines the transfer and the impact of the marriage stipulations enacted by the Council of Trent in French and British North America over a lengthy period of time from the early seventeenth century through 1738. It first examines marriage between two Native partners in the regions of Canada (the French settlement along the St. Lawrence River) and Acadia. It then considers marriages between residents of European origin and Natives. The article argues that in the 1660s the debate over the implementation and the effectiveness of any marriage policy lost its centrality. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century the issue of improper marriages among French inhabitants resurfaced in the West (Pays d’en Haut, Louisiana) as a consequence of contact with large Native nations that vastly outnumbered the population of European origin. In the Illinois country and in Louisiana the issue of intermarriage was further complicated by the presence of Africans, most of whom were enslaved. As for the British continental colonies, ethnic intermixing and intermarriage proceeded at a pace that, most probably, was not substantially different from New France, although, given the illegal and minuscule presence of a Catholic community, no evidence survived showing any intermarriage having been performed in compliance with Tridentine discipline or otherwise. In the end, however, this article shows that marriage policies, devised in Europe and implemented in North America, had in fact little real impact on the development of the relationship between Europeans and Native peoples.

Six theses on forced labor in the Portuguese empire of continental Africa

Forced labor in Portugal’s African colonies during the twentieth century is often generalized in the literature as a “simple continuation” of slavery because the historiography related to the continental territories of Portugal’s third African empire has been overly influenced by the situation of São Tomé e Príncipe, where this “continuation” was the case. This article defends six theses: 1. In Portugal’s continental colonies, the end of the slave trade and the beginning of forced labor did not succeed each other through a regime of transition, but rather of rupture. 2. The introduction of forced labor was not a Portuguese “archaism” but a modern capitalist rupture. 3. Forced labor was able to function only in the framework of an articulation of the modes of production by maintaining a subalternized domestic production, which subsisted thanks to an acute gender oppression. 4. It was not the case of the law promulgated in Portugal being “erroneously applied in the colonies”. 5. This legislation was racist not only in terms of phenotype, but also in its function as a discrimination founded on the sphere of production, defining the exclusion of an entire people. 6. It is this situation that paradoxically nourished the ideology of assimilation

Testing the genetic predictions of a biogeographical model in a dominant endemic Eastern Pacific coral (Porites panamensis) using a genetic seascape approach

The coral fauna of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) is depauperate and peripheral; hence, it has drawn attention to the factors allowing its survival. Here, we use a genetic seascape approach and ecological niche modeling to unravel the environmental factors correlating with the genetic variation of Porites panamensis, a hermatypic coral endemic to the ETP. Specifically, we test if levels of diversity and connectivity are higher among abundant than among depauperate populations, as expected by a geographically relaxed version of the Abundant Center Hypothesis (rel-ACH). Unlike the original ACH, referring to a geographical center of distribution of maximal abundance, the rel-ACH refers only to a center of maximum abundance, irrespective of its geographic position. The patterns of relative abundance of P. panamensis in the Mexican Pacific revealed that northern populations from Baja California represent its center of abundance; and southern depauperate populations along the continental margin are peripheral relative to it. Genetic patterns of diversity and structure of nuclear DNA sequences (ribosomal DNA and a single copy open reading frame) and five alloenzymatic loci partially agreed with rel-ACH predictions. We found higher diversity levels in peninsular populations and significant differentiation between peninsular and continental colonies. In addition, continental populations showed higher levels of differentiation and lower connectivity than peninsular populations in the absence of isolation by distance in each region. Some discrepancies with model expectations may relate to the influence of significant habitat discontinuities in the face of limited dispersal potential. Environmental data analyses and niche modeling allowed us to identify temperature, water clarity, and substrate availability as the main factors correlating with patterns of abundance, genetic diversity, and structure, which may hold the key to the survival of P. panamensis in the face of widespread environmental degradation.

Population genetic structure of the Daubenton’s bat (Myotis daubentonii) in western Europe and the associated occurrence of rabies

The Daubenton’s bat is widespread and common in the UK and countries bordering the English Channel and North Sea. European bat lyssavirus 2 (EBLV-2), a rabies virus, has been detected in Daubenton’s bats in the UK and continental Europe. Investigating the relatedness of colonies and gene flow between these regions would allow regional estimates of the movement of Daubenton’s bats and thus the potential for disease transmission. The genetic structure of the Daubenton’s bat in western Europe was investigated by analysing variability at eight microsatellite loci. Genetic diversity was found to be high at all sites (H E = 0.73–0.84), with little differentiation between bats sampled in the UK and continental Europe. Mantel tests indicated a significant correlation between geographic distance and pair-wise F ST (P = 0.000), between colonies sampled in Scotland and northern England. However, this was not continuous throughout the sampled range, with evidence of panmixia within the area sampled in continental Europe. Assignment tests show no evidence that the (potential) EBLV-2 sero-positive and virus positive bats were more likely to have originated from the continental rather than UK populations. There is no sufficient significant genetic differentiation amongst most UK and continental colonies to conclude that EBLV-2 is maintained in the UK by immigration. Results show that it is likely to be maintained at a low endemic level within the UK. The relative genetic uniformity of UK and continental populations implies that there is no migration barrier to EBLV-2, between these regions.

Private Relations in Iranian Islamic Civil Code

Civil law or private Body of law developed from Roman law and used in continental Europe and most former colonies of European nations, including the province of Quebec and the U.S. The most significant codifications of modern civil law were the French (Napoleonic code) and the German (German civil code). The basis of law in civil-law jurisdictions is statute, not custom; civil law is thus to be distinguished from common law. In civil law, judges apply principles embodied in statutes, or law codes, rather than turning to case precedent. French civil law forms the basis of the legal systems of The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, Spain, most of France's former possessions overseas, and many Latin American countries. German civil law prevails in Austria, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, and certain countries outside Europe, such as Japan, that have westernized their legal systems. The term is also used to distinguish the law that applies to private rights from the law that applies to criminal matters: our means civil law opposed criminal law, I must avowal that Iranian Islamic civil law influenced by French & German code; though our civil code different from them because we have great jurisprudence sources in civil law and according to the Iranian constitution all code must based on FIFG. Now I perfect talk about some topics as legacy and will, persons, Guardianship, Nationality, Domicile, Continuously Absent Persons, Marriage, temporary marriage, Dowry and Divorce.

The Canadian Pacific Railway as a model for the Trans-Siberian Railway

In the debates surrounding the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway was used as a model. This article traces how eyewitness accounts of Canadian settlement patterns were used by Russian entrepreneurs to argue the case for the financing and organisation of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Given the tense international political climate at the end of the 19th century, the Trans-Siberian also became a focus for imperial rivalry. This article gives a good overview of comparative colonial enterprise in two great continental colonies.

Some caveats about the ‘Atlantic’ paradigm

AbstractAtlantic history is becoming increasingly fashionable. For colonial North American history in particular, this new perspective has proven genuinely liberating. It has allowed historians to escape the traditional teleological narratives of the nation. The colonial history of what would later be the United States has long been cast in rather narrow conceptual and geographical terms. Narratives exploring the vicissitudes and exploits of European settlers, as they allegedly went about creating the foundations of the new nation somewhere on the northeast coast, had crowded the field. This paradigm has come tumbling down as scholars now study developments in areas well beyond the British continental colonies. Historians currently maintain that the territories that came together to form the original union were part of a much larger Atlantic, namely, colonial British, French, Dutch, and Spanish worlds, each made up of a multitude of historical actors. This change of perspective, to be sure, is most welcome.

Tennis: a cultural history

The origins of tennis - the monk's racket the tennis games of the Middle Ages the language of tennis tennis in renaissance literature tennis in the German ballhouse lawn tennis - the sturdy bastard lawn tennis in America continental colonies - lawn tennis in France lawn tennis under the Kaiser.

Measuring Colonial Gross Domestic Product: An Introduction

T SHE articles in this special issue of the William and Mary Quarterly are a selection from the papers given at the conference Economy of Early British America: The Domestic Sector, staged at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California, October 27-29, I995. The editors asked me to write this introduction because I organized the conference: I conceived the project, recruited the participants, raised the funding, convened the meeting, and chaired the sessions. My efforts to edit and publish the entirety of the conference proceedings were forestalled by circumstances beyond my control. Thus, I am immensely grateful to the editor of the Quarterly for undertaking to publish revised versions of seven of the papers in this manner. The purpose of the conference was to encourage interested people to think more systematically about how to gauge the performance of the economy of the United States of America during its colonial period. There are several reasons why this seemed an intriguing and important idea to me, to the others who helped organize and sponsor the event, and to those who participated. The colonial gross domestic product (GDP) is the measurement of the sum total value of the goods and services produced by the economy of the thirteen continental colonies and the pre-i800 thirteen states of the United States.1 It tells us, in total, how well that economy functioned as a producing unit. It states the value of all of the work performed by the economy in which the colonists participated. Although GDP is usually compiled on an annual basis when data are plentiful, for the period in question we must resort to other approaches. One approach is to do such calculations for a few benchmark years. Other approaches are suggested in the articles published herein. The more we learn about colonial GDP, the better we can trace the output of the colonies over the two centuries before i8oo and compare it with the two centuries since then.

The market for manufactures in the thirteen continental colonies, 1698‐1776

The market for manufactures in the thirteen continental colonies, 1698‐1776

United States - Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies. By John J. McCusker. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989. 2 vols. Pp. xxix, 1367. $210.00.

United States - Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies. By John J. McCusker. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989. 2 vols. Pp. xxix, 1367. $210.00.

Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies.

Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies.

State lotteries as duopoly transfer mechanisms

Government-sponsored lotteries can be traced back at least as far as Caesar Augustus, who instituted legalized gambling for the purpose of rebuilding Rome (Mote, 1984). We are also told that Queen Elizabeth introduced a lottery in 1549, and that lotteries were used to provide financial support for the Virginia Company's founding of Jamestown (Johnson, 1960). No less authority on the topic than Captain John Smith reported that lotteries were "the reall and substantial food by which Virginia has been nourished." (Johnson, 1960: 161.) Later, lotteries were used by the Continental Congress and several colonies to fund the Revolutionary War, and such venerable institutions as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth benefited from their use (Kaplan, 1984). In more recent times, lotteries provided an important source of revenues for the depressed post-Civil War Southern states. But criticism regarding their moral implications and corruption in their operation is given as the explanation for Congressional action that foreclosed state lotteries in 1895 by prohibiting the use of the mail for distributing lottery tickets and information (Tillett, 1983). In that same year, Congress passed a national income tax, which was struck down by the court. Some might argue that the demise of state lotteries was related to the federal government's attempt to extend its ability to collect

Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies. ByJohn J. McCusker · New York: Garland Publishing Company, Inc., 1989. viii + 1367 pp. Charts, tables, appendixes, bibliographic materials, and notes. 2 vols. $210.

Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments of the Thirteen Continental Colonies. <i>By</i>John J. McCusker · New York: Garland Publishing Company, Inc., 1989. viii + 1367 pp. Charts, tables, appendixes, bibliographic materials, and notes. 2 vols. $210.

The Crisis of Slave Subsistence in the British West Indies during and after the American Revolution

tT HE sharp reduction of trade between the United States and the British West Indies during and after the American Revolution had far-reaching consequences. Before the Revolution the resources of the sugar colonies had been concentrated on producing and exporting tropical staples to the extent that the islands were highly dependent upon the continental colonies for plantation equipment and supplies. Curtailment of trade set in motion a series of crises, resulting in efforts to expand alternative overseas sources of supply and markets, and to diversify the island economies. Most critical was the problem of providing subsistence for the slaves, who had been largely supplied with North American foodstuffs in the preRevolutionary period. Compounding this problem was an unprecedented series of hurricanes and tropical storms that denuded the islands of vegetation and left the inhabitants without reserves of locally grown foodstuffs. The calamities did not end with the Treaty of Paris in I783, for both hurricanes and trade restrictions continued to plague planters and slaves for some years. The responses varied from island to island, but in no case were adequate measures taken to provide insurance against scarcity and famine. Together with war and natural disasters, American secession from the British Empire and British mercantile policies resulted in a subsistence crisis that bore heavily upon the slaves in the West Indies.

Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623-1775

Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623-1775, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974, xiv + 529 pp.Richard B. Sheridan's new and important book is best viewed as a harbinger of things to come. serves a pivotal function in summarizing the existing knowledge of, and pointing new directions for, the study of the colonial sugar industry and it does these things well.Sheridan's own The Development of the Plantations to 1750: An Era of West Indian Prosperity, 1750-1775 (Barbados, 1970) treats both the British and the non-British West Indies in much the same fashion as the book under review here. Carl and Roberta Bridenbaugh's No Peace beyond the Line: The English in the Caribbean, 1624-1690 (New York, 1972) covers the years after the founding of the English colonies in the literate, descriptive manner for which they are well known. Richard S. Dunn's Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1972) is a model of research and analysis, remaining literate while going well beyond the descriptive; with it Dunn has made a significant contribution to the social history of the seventeenth century and created a point of contrast and comparison for the many studies of society in England and the continental colonies both already completed and still in progress. Sheridan's new book supplements those of the Bridenbaughs and Dunn, as well as his own earlier work, and goes beyond them all into other times and other matters.Sugar and Slavery is essentially a description of all aspects of the production and distribution of sugar within the British Empire from the earliest times to the American Revolution. Sheridan touches on almost everything, beginning with the organization and settlement of the islands and continuing through detailed discussions of every aspect of his story to treatments of the imperial impact upon and the imperial implications of every feature of the sugar business. He has assembled great quantities of information, organized them well, written up the whole adequately, and provided the reader with a compendium on the subject of the sugar industry of the British West Indies. It is the contention of this study that, however inhumane, the sugar industry made a notable contribution to the wealth and maritime supremacy of Great (p. xii). Sugar and Slavery will not be easily surpassed.Should anyone be interested in further work in the subject, Sheridan's book suggests what is yet to be done. For instance, he has quite properly made much of the newer materials that he uncovered in his research. His work began as a doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics a quarter-century ago. Since then Sheridan has visited archives in Great Britain, the United States and the Caribbean to find other sources. Among those he has turned to especially good use are the records of individual plantations. Much more can be done with just this type of source, and the recent or imminent publication of four guides will make the task easier. The Guide to Manuscript Sources for the History of Latin America and the Caribbean in the British Isles (Oxford, 1973), edited by Peter Walne, mirrors for Great Britain Kenneth Ingram's Manuscripts Relating to Commonwealth Caribbean Countries in United States and Canadian Repositories (Barbados, 1974). Ingram, the librarian of the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, completed an even more massive survey devoted just to Jamaica as a 1970 thesis for the University of London; we can hope for its imminent publication since it will neatly complement Jerome S. Handler's valuable Guide to Source Materials for the Study of Barbados History, 1627-1834 (Carbondale, 111., 1971). Studies of the organization and operation of individual sugar plantations based on collections of plantation records will provide us with the facility of testing and expanding Sheridan's own work. …

The Economic Development of the Thirteen Continental Colonies, 1720 to 1775

HE last decade has been marked by a quiet renaissance in early T American economic history. Numerous articles and several books have reexamined the colonial period with an approach that emphasizes the use of quantitative data and modern theory. One important topic, however, remains little explored: economic development. Much of the writing on this question has been avowedly impressionistic and,serves to underscore Ralph Andreano's pronouncement about American colonial growth that no period of our national development remains as untouched by testable generalizations as does this one.' Several descriptive essays, while listing such valid reasons for growth as abundant land and a rapidly growing population, shed little light on variations in the pace of expansion or on the relationship between the thirteen colonies and the Atlantic economy.2 At a methodological extreme from such survey articles is a recent econometric model of colonial growth. But this construct is highly abstract and not closely related to the evidence available for the colonial period; the authors confess that it is not a theory to be tested in this book.3 A detailed examination of colonial