North American Colonies Research Articles

Landbouw in Nieuw Nederland

Abstract Agriculture in New Netherland. Commercial circuits and the function of middlemen in the countryside of seventeenth-century New Amsterdam This article tackles the commercial circuits in the interior regions of New Netherland, where seventeenth-century colonial settlers exchanged goods and services. Research in the Low Countries has shown that rural regions had their own commercial circuits depending on the nature of the products and services that were traded. In some parts of Flanders large farmers acted as powerful intermediaries in these circuits. However, the situation in the North American colony was very different. The combination of ample availability of land and small population size led to almost three-quarters of rural households owning more than enough land, livestock, and horses to be self-sufficient. Transactions in labor and capital therefore played only a minor role, but exchanging goods with merchants in the urban circuit, by contrast, justified an intermediary role. And while contemporary sources speak of fear about the dominance of merchants in setting prices for agricultural goods, our findings show that rural players may actually have operated relatively autonomously and been able to set prices independently of market volatility.

Steam Writing in the Urli Daiz: William Orr, the Canadian Phonetic Pioneer, and the Cause of Phonographic Reform (pp 57-92)

In the early 1850s, a young and reform-minded phonographer named William Orr , based in Oshawa C.W., devised an ambitious plan to promote phonography and reformed spelling throughout Canada West and the British North American colonies. A promoter of Pitman shorthand, the editor and publisher of the journal the Canadian Phonetic Pioneer (1859-1861), and in all probability the country's first phonotypographer, Orr was considered in his own day to be a "fonetic pioneer" and even today can be considered an innovator in the fields of media and communications. This essay reconstructs the life and work of William Orr and the publishing history of the Canadian Phonetic Pioner, traces his involvement in the politics of the international phonographic community, and looks at related mid-century efforts to promote the "art phonographic" (through platform demonstrations, new associations, and Mechanics' Institute classes). "Spelling reform" is placed here, as it was for its practitioners, in the context of other mid-century social reform movements.

Legislaturas revolucionarias: El caso neogranadino (1811-1816)

In contrast to the British North American colonies, the Spanish ones lacked any form of legislative bodies. As a consequence, at the onset of their revolutions in about 1810, their leaders were utterly lacking in parliamentary experience. In the light of this, it can be said that one of the most relevant innovations brought about by independence in Spanish America was the onset of the legislative branch of political power. However, the composition and operation of the earliest among those collegiate powers remains fundamentally unknown to this day. I seek to amend this by recourse to the Neogranadino case and, particularly, the provincial State of Antioquia, whose six successive legislatures are here studied in terms of their member composition and legislative activity.

National aspirations, governance networks and the development of Canada’s animal welfare movement

AbstractThis article discusses the establishment of governance networks related to animal welfare and rights. Situating the animal welfare movement relative to processes of nation-building in British North America and Canada during the nineteenth century, it shows how the movement’s proponents struggled and failed repeatedly to translate the considerable interest that was expressed locally in cities across that nation into a national institution that might better represent the movement at that level and on the international stage. Employing sources including state legislation, federal political debates, newspapers, and published and archival materials generated by a wide range of civil society institutions, it examines the multiple tensions that informed these efforts, and balances them against the considerable headway that the movement made in other contexts during the latter decades of the century. In doing so, the article complements well-developed discussions of state formation in Canada by underscoring the importance of civil society institutions to that process.RésuméCet article discute de l’établissement de réseaux de gouvernance liés à la protection et aux droits des animaux. En situant le mouvement de protection des animaux par rapport aux processus de construction de la nation en Amérique du nord britannique et au Canada pendant le dix-neuvième siècle, il montre comment les partisans du mouvements ont essayé et en plusieurs fois échoué à traduire l’intérêt considérable exprimé localement dans les villes à travers la nation en une institution nationale qui pourrait mieux représenter le mouvement à ce niveau et sur la scène internationale. En employant des sources comprenant la législation étatique, des débats politiques fédéraux, des journaux et des articles publiés et archivés générés par un grand choix d’institutions de société civile, il étudie les multiples tensions qui informent ces efforts et les positionne contre les avancées considérables que le mouvement a connu dans d’autres contextes au cours des dernières décennies du siècle. Ainsi, l’article s’ajoute aux discussions déjà bien développées de la formation de l’état au Canada en soulignant l’importance des institutions de société civile dans ce processus.

Educating the Neglected Majority: The Struggle for Agricultural and Technical Education in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec by Richard A. Jarrell

Reviewed by: Educating the Neglected Majority: The Struggle for Agricultural and Technical Education in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec by Richard A. Jarrell Anthony Di Mascio Richard A. Jarrell. Educating the Neglected Majority: The Struggle for Agricultural and Technical Education in Nineteenth-Century Ontario and Quebec (Montréal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 2016) Educating the Neglected Majority is the late Richard A. Jarrell's study of the movement for agricultural and technical education in 19th-century Ontario and Québec. Led by ambitious educational reformers – a group which included legislators, journalists, manufacturers, and philanthropists – Upper and Lower Canada (later Ontario and Québec) took part in the earliest attempts in the North Atlantic world to institute agricultural and technical instruction for the working class. Jarrell was a professor in the Faculty of Science at York University before his death in 2013. A prolific researcher and writer on the history of Canadian science and technology, often with a particular focus on science and technical education, Jarrell's background situates him well to offer the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. Jarrell's analysis is divided into two parts. The first part considers the shape and form of agricultural and technical education in pre-Confederation Canada. Through an analysis of the agricultural press, the minutes of nascent agricultural societies, provincial exhibitions, and an insightful reading of surviving government records, Jarrell demonstrates that the prime movers and shakers in Canadian educational politics were ahead of their time in the promotion of agricultural education in Upper and Lower Canada, and even made efforts to establish agricultural colleges. Nevertheless, convincing the farmer that sending a child away for such an education was worth the effort was another matter still. The few private agricultural schools that did spring up before Confederation tended to attract few students and funds, and died shortly after their founding. Despite interest from educational leaders such as Jean-Baptist Meilleur and Egerton Ryerson, "simply building up the common-school systems in Canadas East and West took all the available energy and money." (63) Universities did not fill the void in the early years, and tended to focus on liberal education intended to prepare students for other careers. Pre-Confederation efforts in technical education were led mainly by supporters of informal mechanics' institutes. From its beginnings in England in 1823, the movement spread quickly throughout the British North American colonies, with the Montréal Mechanics' Institution firmly in place by 1828. The Rebellion of 1837–1838 slowed the movement down, but new mechanics' institutes, particularly in Canada West, began to appear in the 1840s. While libraries were their main attraction, they also served an array of purposes, from better training and education to organized social activities. Jerrell shows us that mechanics' institutes served a vast population, including not only those in the manual trades but also people from commerce, education, a variety of professions, and many of Upper and Lower Canada's political elite. The "Victorian middle class," the author reminds us, "rarely conceived of leisure time in a frivolous way but rather believed it must be constructive and uplifting." (71) The development of more formal technical education in pre-Confederation Canada, however, was dismal. One bright spot, though, was the emergence of engineering programs at both the University of Toronto and McGill University in Montréal. The second part of this book considers developments in post-Confederation Canada and the campaign for advancements in agricultural and technical education in the two provinces until the early [End Page 312] 20th century. For the farmer in search of formal education, this era was one of major advancement. Successive provincial governments in Ontario assumed the state's role in providing financial stimulation toward agricultural development and education. The Ontario College of Agriculture in Guelph was one such investment at the macro level, while at the micro level Ontario acknowledged its responsibility to fund the growing number of private, and increasingly specialized, agricultural associations. This was seemingly the right approach, according to the author. "Ontario's agricultural sector was far more complex at the end of the century, and its educational response was as good as any on...

Anglican Confirmation, 1662–1820 by Phillip Tovey

Reviewed by: Anglican Confirmation, 1662–1820 by Phillip Tovey Martha F. Bowden Phillip Tovey. Anglican Confirmation, 1662–1820. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Pp. xii [H11001] 201. $149.95. Mr. Tovey emphasizes the historical context of Anglican confirmation in the eighteenth century, spreading a net wide enough to include not just British parish churches, but the wider imperial map, including the North American colonies and the Indian subcontinent. The intention is to subvert misperceptions caused by viewing the eighteenth-century church through "Victorian lenses." His review of the twentieth-century scholarship that began to dismantle Victorian ecclesiastical historiography is useful, but omits a number of revisionist historians such as Jeremy Gregory, B. W. Young, and Peter B. Nockells. Some of them are drawn into the later discussion, but the groundbreaking collection, The Church of England c.1689–c.1833: From Toleration to Tractarianism (1993), edited by J. Walsh, C. Haydon, and S. Taylor, does not appear. The Victorian two-step theory of initiation, forgiveness (baptism) followed by reception of the Spirit (confirmation), which became the accepted orthodoxy, was not part of most eighteenth-century theologians' view of the rite, nor was confirmation universally considered a sacrament. Mr. Tovey's very thorough research is a useful [End Page 84] reminder that the church in this period was not the sleepy, complacent organization that is also the legacy of Victorian history-making. He demonstrates a church engaged in concerned scrutiny of the meaning and proper procedures for confirmation, the place of catechizing, and the qualifications of candidates, revealing the very different theologies of baptism that ground the arguments. Samuel Clarke believed that confirmation was required to provide full membership in the church, when confirmands entered into the covenant introduced in baptism; Thomas Bray did not believe in "automatic baptismal regeneration." Richard Baxter's famous description of the chaos attending his confirmation, long considered normative, appears to be an exception. Thus it is unfortunate that the frontispiece, showing a bishop laying hands on a group of young men kneeling at a communion rail, dates from 1885. It may indicate the paucity of images of church practices in the earlier period, but it is solidly Victorian. The chapters cover theology, liturgy, sermons, practice, case studies of five dioceses, and the Anglican communion in North America. Because confirmation was eliminated in 1645 with the abolition of the Book of Common Prayer and not reinstated officially until the Restoration there were many congregants in 1660 who had never been confirmed. Mr. Tovey disputesS. L. Ollard's claim, however, that the vast numbers of candidates at eighteenth-century confirmation services, sometimes more than 3,000, indicated a need to "catch up." He points out that in that case, the numbers would diminish as the century progresses, but they do not. He also refutes Ollard's contention that catechizing was neglected in the period. The variety of catechetical materials and descriptions of practice in visitation returns demonstrate that Laurence Sterne, whom Mr. Tovey does not mention, and whom Ollard points to as exceptional for instructing youth at the parsonage rather than catechizing them briefly at Evensong, was in fact in line with many of his contemporaries. The chapter on sermons illustrates changing practice in the period. As he indicates, the confirmation rite calls for neither readings from scripture nor a sermon, but there is some evidence that the service normally included both; the sermons are easier to establish, because there are so many in print. Here again, the history of the practice is illuminating, because earlier in the period, the sermon was normally preached, not by the bishop, but by another clergyman. By the end of the century, though, it was normative for the bishop to preach, supporting the argument that confirmation was increasingly accepted as an episcopal act as the century went on. Here, however, the dates of publication can be misleading. Thomas Secker's sermon published in 1790 is used as evidence of increasing episcopal involvement late in the period, but this publication must be a reprint since Secker died in 1768. It is less easy to establish what the lectionary might have been; later versions of the Book of Common Prayer have passages from...

Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic

Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic

East or west? Migration routes and wintering sites of Northern Gannets Morus bassanus from south-eastern Iceland

Northern Gannets (Morus bassanus) are distributed in eastern and western North Atlantic breeding populations. The species’ colonies in Iceland lie between the European and North American colonies. To better understand their migratory patterns and to explore potential connections between the western and eastern populations, geo-location devices were used to track the migrations of Northern Gannets from Iceland. Findings support ringing records in demonstrating a primarily south-eastward movement following the breeding season, with no tracked birds wintering in western Atlantic waters. Fifteen successfully tracked adult birds wintered over a range of about 5000 km on continental shelf seas from NW Scotland to NW Africa with areas of concentration off Africa and in the Celtic Sea. Direct distance from the colony to the most distant point reached ranged from 1200 to 6100 km. Trips amounted to 16,100–33,500 km over the entire migration/winter period. While birds heading for NW Africa mostly showed a relatively straight migration direction, several round trips were recorded in (N)W Europe. Migration trips and over-winter colony absence lasted between 126 and 189 days. Birds departed from the colony from 9 to 24 September and returned from 19 January to 27 March. Timing and duration of migration and wintering periods varied substantially among individuals. Gannets staying in the waters of NW Africa experienced much higher sea surface temperatures than birds wintering further north, suggesting higher thermostatic costs for the latter.

American cultural myth and the orphan archetype

Abstract The following article defines and explores the power of myth in shaping societal attitudes. The author discusses cultural myth as it pertains to a nation’s self-image and conception of its past. The American cultural myth is examined in detail to help discover the roots of unsustainable aspects of American thinking. The author discusses the history of the North American colonies, challenges faced by early settlers, and the belief systems that formed the roots of the American cultural myth. The article goes on to explore how early events brought about the evolution of the legendary American cowboy and how the cowboy mythos is closely tied to the hero’s journey and psychological development. The author maintains that the Puritan mindset, the cowboy ideal and present-day circumstances have forged a national psyche resembling the Jungian orphan archetype. The author’s hope is that by understanding the root causes of some of the nation’s difficulties we may begin healing many of the spiritual wounds of the past and set off on a path towards stronger and healthier community bonds.

Judicial Independence in British North America, 1825–67: Constitutional Principles, Colonial Finances, and the Perils of Democracy

It is well known that “formal” judicial independence—appointment on good behavior rather than at pleasure—was established in Britain with the 1701 Act of Settlement, and, like many other aspects of the English constitution, not exported to the colonies of either the First or the Second Empire. Its absence formed one of the allegations against the crown in the American Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the New Republic accordingly included a federal judicial independence provision. British imperial policy in North America after the Revolution regarding judges continued as before, so that formal judicial independence was not established until 1834, and then only in Upper Canada (now Ontario). In the other three principal British North American colonies this was later still. What is now Quebec (Lower Canada) received good behavior appointments in 1843, and Nova Scotia in 1848. In the other colonies that joined the Canadian Confederation in 1867 (New Brunswick) or within a few years afterwards (British Columbia, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island), good behavior appointments were introduced for the first time only when the colony joined Confederation.

Plan Versus Execution: The “Ideal City” of New Amsterdam. Seventeenth-Century Netherlandic Town Planning in North America

New York History Summer / Fall 2015© 2015 by The New York State Historical Association 265 Plan Versus Execution: The “Ideal City” of New Amsterdam. Seventeenth-Century Netherlandic Town Planning in North America Jeroen van den Hurk Had Willem Verhulst executed the plans conveyed to him by the Dutch West India Company for New Amsterdam in 1625, it would have been one of the first planned cities in North America.1 Verhulst’s instructions retained principles of town planning that were then common in the Dutch Republic, based on the latest Italian theories. But for unknown reasons , he never fully executed them. Instead of becoming a well-planned, fortified settlement, New Amsterdam became a town reminiscent of old world cities like its namesake Amsterdam. The directors of the West India Company (WIC) did not show as much interest in their North American colony as they did in privateering and conquering Iberian forts and settlements in the South Atlantic. The WIC had obtained broad powers and authority in West Africa and America in its 1621 charter from the Dutch States General, following in the footsteps of the highly successful Dutch East India Company, which had received its own charter for the Asian sphere long before (1602). Because of an old, ongoing war with Spain (1568–1648), both organizations resorted quickly to violence, seizing many of their early colonial possessions from Spanish and Portuguese enemies. Still, the WIC’s charter did allow peaceful colonization as well, and in 1624 the company agreed to send the first permanent settlers to the territory known as New Netherland. Working with Native American counterparts, Dutch fur traders had been the only occasional visitors before then. Now with the first settlers New Netherland would begin the transition from fur trading outpost to genuine colony.2 1. The Spanish and the French began settling in North America by the second half of the sixteenth century, but none of their efforts seem as well documented as that of the Dutch West India Company. See John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965), chaps. 2–3. 2. For the WIC, see Henk den Heijer, De Geschiedenis van de WIC (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2002). 266 ■ NEW YORK HISTORY Willem Verhulst was “provisional director” of New Netherland (i.e., governor) from 1625 to 1626. The first colonists had disembarked on Noten Eylant (now called Governor’s Island) before he arrived, and some had even moved as far south as the Delaware River and as far north as presentday Albany, where the most intensive fur trading occurred. Though few in number, the colonists were scattered over hundreds of miles. Verhulst came with a second wave of people and livestock in 1625 and probably oversaw the original Dutch planting and construction on the southern shores of Manhattan Island.3 The written records that gradually emerged from these developments form a vast, rich source of information on colonial North America, shedding light on early New Netherland society and the colony’s material culture. The WIC’s instructions to Verhulst cover a wide range of issues. Of interest for this article are the specific guidelines for establishing a permanent settlement.4 The town planning approach and procedures found in Verhulst’s instructions were not unique to the WIC; they stemmed from fifteenthcentury Italian innovations that the Dutch had since adopted and developed for their own ends. More specifically, the company seems to have drawn on Spain’s Laws of the Indies and the work of a Flemish mathematician and engineer named Simon Stevin (1548–1620). Established by the Spanish crown in 1573, the Laws of the Indies created uniform standards and procedures for planning colonial towns and their surrounding lands (among other purposes).5 Stevin’s work was not as narrowly “colonial” in scope, but one could in theory apply his ideas anywhere, including America. He envisioned the ideal city along the orthogonal lines of the Roman castrum (fort or encampment), combining defensive, commercial, and social elements. The WIC did not adopt the rectangular shape and orthogonal lines of Stevin’s plan for New Amsterdam. However, he did impact how the town...

Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime That Should Haunt America by Gary Clayton Anderson

Reviewed by: Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime That Should Haunt America by Gary Clayton Anderson Ashley Sousa Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime That Should Haunt America. By Gary Clayton Anderson. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014. Pp. [x], 462. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-8061-4421-4.) In Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime That Should Haunt America, Gary Clayton Anderson argues that colonial and United States policies toward and treatment of Native Americans were not genocidal, but are instead better understood as ethnic cleansing. Anderson examines the Indian policies of the British North American colonies and the United States from 1607 to the end of the allotment era, drawing on dozens of episodes to support his argument that Euro-Americans, from colonial governors to presidents and frontier settlers, pursued ethnic cleansing as a consistent, stated Indian policy. [End Page 135] Anderson’s argument is strongest where he shows, in painstaking detail, a centuries-long effort by colonists and American citizens, by means fair and foul, to strip Indians of their land. He ably illustrates this effort across different eras of Indian policy and regions of what is now the continental United States. Whether this constitutes a policy of ethnic cleansing is less clear, as he offers no definition of ethnic cleansing beyond mentioning the prohibition of forced deportation and relocation of populations under international law. His argument would benefit from drawing more on the theoretical scholarship on genocide and ethnic cleansing. On the question of genocide his intervention is less convincing, owing to inconsistencies in how he defines genocide. Anderson calls the legal definition of genocide—the one set out in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide—a “dead letter” because it allows too many crimes and perpetrators to fall under its definition (p. 4). He relies on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as the standard against which to characterize violence against native peoples because he contends that for violence to be considered genocide, “a legitimate government must plan, organize, and implement the crime” (p. 13). Even with this narrower scope, he adds his own criteria to further refine the definition, maintaining that no genocide could have been perpetrated against native peoples because “large numbers of Indians survived” (p. 4)—a criterion inconsistent with the legal definition. Anderson’s argument is also confused by his inconsistent definition of “Indians.” In some cases, he treats native peoples as one group, which allows him to emphasize the large number of Indian survivors of white violence. This has the effect of diminishing the severity of violence perpetrated against Indian people while treating them as a monolithic group rather than as hundreds of distinct societies that engaged and experienced colonialism differently. In other cases, he argues that the deaths of specific groups in particular episodes of violence “hardly equal the numbers of those killed under other regimes,” suggesting that the murder of a few hundred or few thousand people does not constitute genocide (p. 217). Scholars familiar with particular regions or episodes covered in the book might take issue with Anderson’s use of evidence in certain cases. For example, in his discussion of California’s Indian policy, he fails to account for the explicitly genocidal rhetoric espoused by the state’s political leadership, including at least two governors, as well as their funding of militias bent on exterminating Indians. Such omissions cast doubt on his conclusion that “there is no evidence that any state or federal governmental entity ever supported” the actions of California militias that planned to exterminate the Indian population (p. 217). As an intervention into the growing field of scholarship on the question of genocide in North America, Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian deserves the attention of scholars in the field, as well as those teaching courses in the field of Native American history that grapple with the genocide question. Whether or not readers agree with Anderson’s conclusions, his arguments and evidence will surely provoke lively conversations. [End Page 136] Ashley Sousa Middle Tennessee State University Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association

“Her Humble Estate”: Poverty and Widowhood in Seventeenth-Century New York

New York History Summer / Fall 2015© 2015 by The New York State Historical Association 318 “Her Humble Estate”: Poverty and Widowhood in Seventeenth-Century New York Abby Shelton In 1668, four years after the British assumed control of New Netherland, Aeltie van Breeman faced the first of three court cases designed to collect the debts of her recently deceased husband. First, Theunis Spitsbergen claimed that Van Breeman owed him ninety-seven schepels of wheat for some wooden boards. The widow defended herself by saying that “her husband has perished and that she kn[e]w nothing about the debt.”1 When Gerrit Swart sued for another of Van Breeman’s debts the same day, she claimed that “on account of her poverty she can not pay it.”2 The following year the administrators of Jan Andriesz’s estate prosecuted debts against Van Breeman. But Aeltie could “not give any information about it either.”3 Van Breeman’s testimony in these three cases reveals that she was ill prepared for the vicissitudes of widowhood. The impoverished widow claimed to know nothing of her husband’s business dealings. Perhaps this was due to her own disinterest or incompetence, or perhaps Jan van Breeman was a domineering, patriarchal figure who shared few of his business transactions with his wife. Van Breeman possibly also pled ignorance as part of a legal strategy. But court and public records from colonial New Netherland and New York tell another story. The legal and economic privileges granted women in New Netherland and early New York did not shape the lives of all women in the colony equally. Though much of the historiographical literature on this topic suggests that women under Dutch law possessed legal and material advantages that Anglo-American New Yorkers did not, widowhood could prove an economic, physical, and emotional trial for women of Dutch and Anglo descent alike. 1. “Theunis Spitsbergen, plaintiff, against Aeltie van Breeman, defendant,” A.J.F. van Laer, trans. and ed., Minutes of the Court of Albany, Renesselaerswyck and Schenectady, 1668–1685, 3 vols. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1932), 1:23 (hereafter cited as MCARS). 2. MCARS, 1:22. 3. MCARS, 1:103. Shelton Poverty and Widowhood in Seventeenth-Century New York 319 Early American women’s historians have only been studying the place of widows in seventeenth-century North American colonies for about forty years.4 Many women’s historians assume that marriage characterized the experience of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women, yet in doing so they ignore widows, who comprised as much as ten percent of the AngloAmerican population. Furthermore, as many as half of all Anglo-American women found themselves widowed at some point in their lives.5 Many of the first historians of Anglo-American women argued that women’s participation in the courts and their control over property declined with the coming of the eighteenth century and the “Anglicization” of colonial law. In particular, Lois Green Carr and Lorena Walsh suggested that women in seventeenth-century Maryland had greater autonomy in marriage and property rights than women in England or other colonies, but then Maryland colonists lost those freedoms in the eighteenth century as native-born populations grew.6 This argument was augmented by Cornelia Hughes Dayton’s study of colonial Connecticut courts. Dayton made the case that as Connecticut shed its Puritan legal heritage and adopted English common law in the late seventeenth century, women were increasingly barred from the courtroom.7 More recent studies have begun to counter the notion that women’s participation in the public square declined in the eighteenth century and instead have focused on how widows created a unique place for themselves in colonial economies and the social order as unmar4 . The two earliest studies of Early American widows are Alexander Keyssar, “Widowhood in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts: A Problem in the History of the Family,” Perspectives in American History (1974): 83–119.and John Faragher, “Old Women and Old Men in Seventeenth-Century Wethersfield, Connecticut,” Women’s Studies 4 (1976): 11– 31. Keyssar and Faragher’s articles were followed by Lois Green Carr and Lorena Walsh, “The Planter’s Wife: The Experience of White Women in...

Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic ed. by Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, David J. Silverman

Reviewed by: Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic ed. by Ignacio Gallup-Diaz, Andrew Shankman, David J. Silverman Alan Tully Anglicizing America: Empire, Revolution, Republic. Edited by Ignacio Gallup-diaz, Andrew Shankman, and David J. Silverman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 320pp. $55.00 (cloth). In April 2013 the McNeil Center of Early American Studies hosted a short conference in celebration of John M. Murrin, longtime faculty member, now emeritus, of Princeton University’s History Department and stalwart supporter of the McNeil Center since its inception as the Philadelphia Center in 1978. Former students of Murrin fittingly focused the program and the resulting Anglicizing America volume of essays around the theme that both informed and served as a spring-board [End Page 350] for much of his scholarship dating from his 1966 Yale doctoral dissertation, “Anglicizing an American Colony: The Transformation of Provincial Massachusetts”—sometimes referred to as the most cited and influential unpublished dissertation dealing with early American history. For Murrin, what he called “Anglicization” was that process by which diverse English colonies in North America, from the late seventeenth century through the immediate pre-Revolutionary years became “increasingly more alike, expressing a shared Britishness in their political and judicial systems, material culture, economies, religious systems and engagement with empire” (p.1). This sweeping Anglicization, he argued, gave coherence and direction to early American history, which with various mutations continued through the Revolution and on into the early decades of national history. John Murrin’s intellectual accomplishments are certainly worthy of celebration. For the last four decades of the twentieth century, his has been one of the truly worthwhile voices reflecting on the history of early America. When Murrin spoke out at conferences and colloquia, and in the sixty-odd articles and the textbook synthesis he wrote, he was always worth listening to. Over the years, he mastered a great deal of the raw archival material of early American history, confronted, interpreted, and built upon a superb knowledge of an increasingly rich historical literature, and generously shared wonderful turns of imagination and originality that could instigate debate and inspire, animate, and challenge others to stretch their reach. He took some delight in shaking both peers and students out of the comfort of familiar narratives. It is in this spirit that some of Murrin’s students have authored essays in this collection. The editors articulate their collective desire to take their mentor’s Anglicization insights beyond mainland colonial America, where Murrin had built his case, forward in time within the national American narrative, as well as more widely into both the multi-empired, diversely colonized, and ethnically and racially complex Atlantic World, and the intersecting American borderlands that evinced a multitude of Native American practices and perspectives. This, however, is not easily done. Once we extend the Anglicization conceptualization in time and space, the framework can easily become either so elastic as to lose its sharpness and salience or so rigid that it fails to acknowledge truly important developments or dimensions that are an inescapable part of the larger canvasses. The strongest parts of this collection are, with two exceptions, in the first part of the book. Murrin’s own introductory essay from 1974 is, as so many of his essays are, concise and clearly articulated, with a through-line emphasizing how Anglicization became a dominant shared [End Page 351] characteristic of the still diverse but maturing mainland North American colonies that lasted into the Revolution and beyond. Andrew Shankman builds on this piece with a valuable synthesis of more recent scholarship that thoroughly demonstrates the continuing relevance of Murrin’s insight. Thereafter, however, because the Anglicization framework is simply not the most fruitful way of framing the issues they choose to explore, even the best essays lose some of their punch. For example, Geoffrey Plank’s essay on early American warfare, which is both edifying and provocative, really juxtaposes North American military practices with those of Europe. The strut of eighteenth-century colonial militia officers may have been British, but the evolution of practices of warfare belong within a broader conceptual framework that at the very least substitutes “Europeanization” for “Anglicization.” As he has done elsewhere, Simon Newman adds...

FORMS AND WAYS OF REALIZATION OF THE RIGHT OF NATIONS AND PEOPLES TO SELF-DETERMINATION IN EUROPE IN THE XVIII‒XX CENTURIES

The article is devoted to the evolution of forms and methods of realization of the right of Nations and peo-ples to self-determination and promising directions for their development and improvement. The author, the article examines the various forms and ways of realiza-tion of the right of Nations to self-determination in his-torical perspective, realized in the independence of North American colonies; in the first period of the French revolution; used in the creation of the Italian Kingdom; the independence of Poland and Finland; in the formation of the USSR, when entering the independent sovereign Republic of Crimea to the Russian Federation and many others. The article deals with the main ways of realization of the right to self-determination: self-determination through equal and free participation of all citizens in the choice of political and socio-economic development of the state, irredentism, secession, Association, integration, cultural and political autonomy. In modern conditions of economic and political development of a number of States related to overcoming the conflicts in which the national factor, acts as a catalyst. In view of this updated theoretical and practical significance of research understanding the various aspects related to the right of Nations and peoples to self-determination.

Trevor Burnard, Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650–1820

This book forum focuses on Trevor Burnard’s book, Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British America, 1650–1820 (University of Chicago Press, 2015). In his book, Burnard argues that white men did not choose to develop and maintain the plantation system out of virulent racism or sadism, but rather out of economic logic. While plantations required racial divisions to exist, their successes were always measured in gold, rather than skin or blood. Burnard argues that the best example of plantations functioning as intended is not those found in the fractious and poor North American colonies, but those in their booming and integrated commercial hub, Jamaica. Ranging over nearly two centuries, from Guyana to the Chesapeake, the book provides many new insights and offers a revisionary interpretation of the connection between slavery and the American Revolution. The three reviewers in general praise the empirical research that underpins the book but challenge some of the conclusions. They also draw attention to a few points that, in their opinion, the author underemphasized or where he could have expanded his argument, for instance the role of support from the British Empire to the plantation system and the role of religion in shaping attitudes to slavery and the plantation system. In his response, Burnard argues against some of the criticism, such as the impact of the fear of slave revolts. In particular, Burnard stresses that his understanding of slavery in the colonial period of American history is that of an outsider to American politics. As such, he argues, his book does not speak to contemporary concerns about rising evidence of racial hatred.

Translating Hemp into a Transatlantic ‘Band of Reciprocal Interest’: The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce as a 1760s' Actor Network

AbstractInspired by actor‐network theory, this article begins by focusing on the Society of Arts’ overarching aims to encourage improvement and reinforce the bonds between Britain and its North American colonies, but also attends to the details of the controversy over a specific premium for encouraging North American hemp production. This controversy documents the society's negotiation of uncertainty, even as its surface rhetoric promotes a vision of inevitable improvement. This leads to a double vision of the society as a failed tool of mercantilism but also an enduring collective experiment, reinterpreting the tension between nationalism and Enlightenment in its goals.

Unpuzzling American Climate: New World Experience and the Foundations of a New Science.

In the early exploration and colonization of the Americas, Europeans encountered unfamiliar climates that challenged received ideas from classical geography. This experience drove innovative efforts to understand and explain patterns of weather and seasons in the New World. A close examination of three climatic puzzles (the habitability of the tropics, debates on the likelihood of a Northwest Passage, and the unexpectedly harsh weather in the first North American colonies) illustrates how sixteenth- and seventeenth-century observers made three intellectual breakthroughs: conceiving of climates as a distinct subject of inquiry, crossing the hitherto-separated disciplines of geography and meteorology, and developing new theories regarding the influence of prevailing winds on patterns of weather and seasons. While unquantified and unsystematic, these novel approaches promoted a new understanding of climates critical to the emergence of climate science. This study offers new insights into the foundations of climatology and the role of the New World in early modern science.

Racial Awareness in Phillis Wheatley’s Selected Poems

Slavery in America began when Africans were brought in as slaves to the North American Colony of Jamestown Virginia around 1619. Slavery in America lasted for almost four hundred years though the trade was legally abolished by Britain in March 1807 (Walvin 163). Although the trade ended, slavery itself continued to survive. Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) is considered the first prominent Black writer in the United States to publish a book of imaginative writing. She is also the first to start the African-American literary tradition, as well as the African-American women literary tradition. Her work, which was derivative, was published in the collection, Poems on Various Subjects (1773) and in various magazines. Her choice of words was mostly biblical where it helped to camouflage her view on slavery. This paper intends to show that all of Wheatley’s poems actually carried the theme of freedom. She has intelligently used this theme to articulate her desires in a subtle manner. On the surface, the poems are all preaching the greatness of Christianity to the readers and urging them to find solace through religion. She shows her racial awareness and resistance through various themes of the poems that she wrote. This paper highlights Wheatley’s disapproval of slavery through her praise for religion, political commentaries, supporting elegies and death and finally through her escapism into an imaginary world.

Review of John Spitzer and Neal Zaslaw. 2004. The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650-1815 . New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press

Musicological books by more than one author are (with the obvious exception of anthologies) relatively rare. So it is natural to be curious both about the individual contributions that John Spitzer and Neal Zaslaw made to this monumental book and about the nature of their collaboration. In their preface, they explain that “Neal Zaslaw wrote the first drafts of Chapters 3 and 6 [‘Lully’s Orchestra’ and ‘The Orchestra in France’]; the remaining chapters were drafted by John Spitzer. The two of us edited, rewrote, and reedited the entire book together” (v). Their combined labors have resulted in the most comprehensive, accurate, and insightful account ever written of the orchestra’s early history. I need to make this absolutely clear at the outset because my review points to what I feel are some flaws in the book. These observations must be considered in the context of the authors’ overall achievement in so expertly and indefatigably covering such a vast and complex field. The book falls into two large parts. The first part (chapters 1-9) consists largely of a series of chronologically-arranged surveys tracing the development of the orchestra in France, Italy, Germany (by which the authors mean the German-speaking part of Europe), and Britain and its North American colonies (all treated in a chapter inaccurately called “The Orchestra in England”). The second part of the book (chapters 10-14) explores various topics throughout the period indicated by the book’s title, from performance practices, rehearsals, seating, acoustics, and orchestration, to the conductor, the economic status of orchestral musicians, and (in conclusion) “The Meaning of the Orchestra.”