American Revolution Research Articles

Early Black Thought Leaders and the Reframing of American Intellectual History

Abstract: This essay examines the broad impact of African American thought leadership on early American intellectual history. Though marginalized in many mainstream histories of American intellectual life–which often focus on the emergence of Black philosophers and Black professional historians later in the 19th century -- early national Black thinkers helped shape public understanding of critical ideas in American society and politics, including the meaning of citizenship and civil rights, emancipation and equality, and racial justice. African Americans also influenced public discourses on other key topics in American intellectual life, including the nature of human dignity and spiritual redemption in the Second Great Awakening, the meaning of Romanticism and Transcendentalism in American reform culture, and the authority of science and technology in antebellum society. Using the concept of thought leadership as a framing device to understand the power and impact of early Black ideas, I follow recent trends in the field of African American intellectual history that focus on that way that African American men and women became public authorities on key ideas and issues in American culture between the American Revolution and Civil War. Though they did not often occupy positions of educational, institutional, or legal power (the main provinces of intellectual leadership), Black thought leaders had a significant impact on early American intellectual history.

Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History

Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History

Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War

Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War

Human Capital and the Managerial Revolution in the United States: Evidence from General Electric

Abstract This paper estimates the returns to human capital accumulation during the first era of mega-firms in the United States by linking employees at General Electric—a canonical enterprise associated with the “visible hand” of managerial hierarchies—to the 1940 census. I find large returns to higher education through seniority in the hierarchy, span of control, earnings, and selection into management training, using the proximity of land-grant colleges and historical universities to birth states for identification. The findings highlight the human capital determinants of the managerial revolution at a prominent firm, driven by earlier public investments in the US education system.

The American Revolutionary Spirit

The formation of Whitman’s poetics can be explained from various perspectives: mystical experience, Transcendentalism, politics, sexuality, and so on. Among these factors, the essay aims to study Whitman’s poetics in the context of politics, especially concerning the continuation of the spirit of ’76 — the American Revolutionary spirit. The essay emphasizes the influence of Jefferson on Whitman, particularly Jefferson’s ward system — the link so far overlooked — and argues that it has bearing on Whitman’s poetics. Jefferson sought the continuation of the American experiment of self-government, and, in this context, proposed a ward system — the county subdivision into smaller units. I will demonstrate that Whitman the Journalist showed great interest in Jefferson’s ward system, and that this new link puts Whitman’s poetics in a new light; Whitman’s “interior American republic” is a further subdivision of Jefferson’s “ward republic.” Before Whitman sought to solve the paradox of the individual and mass as well as the states and federal government — as the essay argues — Whitman, like Jefferson, needed to grapple with the paradox of the revolutionary spirit which includes contradictory elements, i.e. the spirit of the new and the concern with stability based on it.

The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution, Andrew M. Wehrman

The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution, Andrew M. Wehrman

Legacies of Militarism: Ascriptive Republicanism and the Origins of America’s Contemporary Gun Culture

Abstract Scholars have associated gun culture with liberal individualism, but this is inconsistent with participants’ emphasis on political duty and obligation, the dominance of White men in this space, and the centrality of negative racial and gender priors. I argue that militarism – the valorization of firearms as a sign of good citizenship – is a constitutive part of one dimension of American identity which I call “ascriptive martial republicanism,” which combines the ideal of armed service with White male supremacy. I trace the origins of this conception of Americanism to the American Revolution and the military institutions that developed in the early republic. As a product of the 19th century military establishment, the National Rifle Association (NRA) brought this ideology into the 21st century, long after government abandoned it under pressure from the progressive movements of the 1960s. Through its political and legal advocacy, the group succeeded in making it once again part of the country’s institutional core via Supreme Court decisions. This new institutional regime represents a threat not only to the multicultural ethos but to democratic stability.

Analysis on the Reasons for the Failure of Revolutions: A Comparison Between the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War

The American Revolutionary War aimed for political equality, resulting in the independence of the United States and the retention of the social order. The law established after the movement preserved slavery without making a direct claim. In contrast, the target of the American Civil War was to abolish slavery. It gained legal success but failed to change American society. Treating citizens differently according to their skin colour was banned, however, racial segregation remained in the country. In this paper, the causes of the failure of the two revolutions mentioned above are discussed, focusing on their influences on laws and communities. The principles, aims, and results of the events are compared and contrasted, so as to discover the reasons why revolutions are not able to shape society according to their purposes. Conclusions can be drawn that revolutions do not succeed mainly due to two reasons: either because the laws that line up with the principles of the revolutions are not established as the revolutions themselves do not aim for the principles or because the principles are not carried out in society even if related laws are established, for the domestic force against them is too strong.

Globalization and Empire: Market Integration and International Trade among Canada, the US, and Britain, 1750–1870

AbstractWheat market integration between the US and the UK before the “first era of globalization” (in the second half of the nineteenth century) was frequently interrupted by policy and “exogenous” events such as wars. This paper adds Canada to this story by looking at trade and price data, as well as contemporary debates. This allows us to triangulate the role of policy and wars, since Canada as a small open economy was part of the British Empire. We find that, despite its privileged access to British markets, Canada faced similar barriers to the US, suggesting that membership of the British Empire provided only a modest benefit to trade. We also describe the limitations she faced accessing the US market, in particular after American independence.

Common enemies? Coups, insurgent strength and intra-elite competition: evidence from Latin America

ABSTRACT What is the relation between coups d’etat and civil wars? While a wide set of studies have traced the determinants of internal armed conflicts and coup attempts, the interplay between these contentious processes remains unexplored. Building on different strands of research, this article seeks to explain why, and under what conditions, some regimes experience coup attempts in the midst of civil wars while others do not. Concretely, I posit that coup attempts during internal armed conflicts are more likely to occur when two conditions converge: when insurgents reach a medium-level of strength in situations of intra-elite competition. Key military forces, elite outsiders and coalition insiders interpret this situation as a unique opportunity for changes in the distribution of power and potentially coalesce through the formation of alternative regime coalitions. This argument is tested with a novel dataset on 90 Latin American revolutionary socialist insurgencies active since 1950 and a qualitative case study of the dynamics leading to the 1976 coup d’etat in Argentina, with results supporting the theoretical expectations. These findings contribute to a more detailed understanding of the relation between coups and civil wars, opening the way for further studies on this burgeoning area of research.

Dressing Up the Revolution: The American Revolution in French Style, 1776-1789

Dressing Up the Revolution: The American Revolution in French Style, 1776-1789

A pro-American perspective on the American Revolution: Johann Heinrich Ramberg’s (1763–1840) adaptations of illustrations by Daniel Chodowiecki

The Allgemeines Historisches Taschenbuch, oder Abriss der merkwürdigsten neuen Welt-Begebenheiten (General Historical Pocketbook, or Outline of the most remarkable new world events), published in Berlin in 1784 and supported by the Academy of Arts, contained one of the most important contemporary accounts of the North American Revolution, titled Geschichte der Revolution von Nord-Amerika (History of the North American Revolution) by Matthias Christian Sprengel, professor at Göttingen University. It further contained influential illustrations, among them twelve engravings designed by Academy member Daniel Chodowiecki, each depicting a key motif from the American struggle for independence and its outcome. In the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), an original copy of the pocket book with the Geschichte der Revolution has been preserved, and it is unique in that eleven drawings by Johann Heinrich Ramberg are glued in in addition to the original plates. Ramberg of Hanover was to follow Chodowiecki as the most prolific artist in German book illustration. Several of the drawings are dated 1786 or 1787, when the young Ramberg was a fellow at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, studying under the American history painter Benjamin West. These drawings are examined and published in their entirety here for the first time. An article published in Amerikastudien in 1978 first mentioned the drawings in the Metropolitan Museum and their obvious connection to the Chodowiecki prints, stating they posed a “puzzling iconographic problem” because the German artist in London appeared to change the viewpoint in at least one case. This article follows up on Jantz’s observation. It examines how Chodowiecki’s designs all show the perspective of the British or share a “neutral” outsider perspective. I argue that in nearly all cases, Ramberg moves the observer closer to the action, takes on the perspective of the Americans or one sympathetic to them, shows more emotion and movement than Chodowiecki, and thus invites an emotional reaction from the viewer. The question of whether Ramberg planned publication, though, remains unanswered.

The Philadelphia Bray Schools: A Story of Black Education in Early America, 1758–1845

Abstract: The Associates of Dr. Bray, an Anglican charity, supported schools for Black children in Philadelphia operated by Christ Church and the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas from 1758 to 1845. This narrative history of the schools complements open-source data accessible online through the Magazine of Early American Datasets . These spreadsheets present information pertaining to the schools' operations gleaned from the Associates' archive in the United Kingdom. Besides the very few class lists from the period before the American Revolution, there are more than 90 lists for the Philadelphia schools covering the period from 1821 to 1845 that identify almost four hundred individual pupils and their curricula, providing valuable insight into one of the few opportunities for Black education in early America.

Ties between North Korea and Cuba - North Korea, Tricontinentalism, and the Latin American Revolution, 1959–1970. By Moe Taylor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 227. $110.00 cloth; $110.00 e-book.

Ties between North Korea and Cuba - North Korea, Tricontinentalism, and the Latin American Revolution, 1959–1970. By Moe Taylor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 227. $110.00 cloth; $110.00 e-book.

The Arms Trade and American Revolutions

Abstract This essay argues that the international arms trade bound the revolutions in British North America, Saint-Domingue, and Spanish America in dependent relationships. Throughout the colonial era, an informal arms control regime made it impossible for Europe’s American subjects to mass-produce war material or buy enough on the open market to equip independence through war. As became clear by late 1776, even the hemisphere’s best-connected colonists could not overcome this obstacle. Only the decisions of France and Spain to secretly arm and then openly support the British North Americans made their revolution a success. But as France and Spain would soon come to realize, US independence fatally undermined the early modern arms control regime that had kept independence a practical impossibility in their own colonies. North American merchants became the indispensable arms dealers to the hemisphere’s later revolutionaries, first in Saint-Domingue and then across mainland Spanish America. Crucially, though, the United States never offered terms remotely as generous as those it had enjoyed during its own independence struggle. Rather than rely on imperial patronage or republican solidarity, Haitians and Spanish Americans had to navigate a cutthroat market to obtain the tools of independence. That comparative disadvantage would haunt their postcolonial histories.

“Without the smallest recompense”: Scottish loyalist women in revolutionary North Carolina

ABSTRACT Loyalism has a long history in the British Atlantic world, running much deeper than the years comprising the American Revolution. These stories, however, have often been pushed to the margins of our understanding of the era. In North Carolina, categorising colonial residents into the binaries of “rebel” or “loyalist” is problematic. This is further complicated by the introduction of gender as a factor, given the lack of access to and engagement with the public sphere that women experienced. While greater attention is being given to women in the Revolution, southern women’s stories are often marginalised in favour of the “hotbeds” of revolution, like Boston, Philadelphia, or New York. By studying Scottish women loyalists in early North Carolina, Sherman argues, we may come to understand better the influence of gender, ethnicity, and region on the experiences of those in Revolutionary America.

Constructions of Race and Revolution in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Porter”

Abstract: In this essay, Ian Marshall analyzes Ernest Hemingway’s writing methodology in his short fiction, paying particular attention to constructions of labor, landscape, and African American male identity. Marshall argues that Hemingway was incapable of imagining a black working-class revolution, or a racially unified working-class revolution in the United States. This inability shapes his characters actions, particularly George, the main African American character in “The Porter,” and contributes to our understanding of revolutionary and social class consciousness in the U.S. as presented in Hemingway’s fiction.

Property in the American Revolution

Property in the American Revolution

The Ideological Origins of “Written” Constitutionalism

ABSTRACT: Americans have long argued that during the Age of Revolutions, the “early modern” world became “modern” thanks to a set of political innovations in the nature of government. Paramount among these was the creation of nation-states founded on the “invention” of written constitutions—beginning with the new United States, whose form of written constitutionalism served as a model for other polities. This article challenges that narrative. Building on recent scholarship on the coproduction of writing practices and state formation, it argues that the mode of constitution-making inaugurated in the aftermath of the American Revolution represented less a moment of origin than an ideological project of revising the relationship between document and statecraft characteristic of the early modern British Empire. Early American elites sought to portray the written constitution of empire as archaic as they defined their own species of written constitutionalism as an innovation, one they posited as the template for a normative form of the “modern” state.

Народное Единство в Чили и теория двоевластия в работах Рене Савалеты Меркадо

The Popular unity in Chile (1970-1973) with its radical social program after the victory in the elections of 1970 faced the problem of power, its completeness, effectiveness of implementation and preservation of leadership functions. This problem was acute for the forces that were part of the ruling coalition and that supported it from the outside. Hav-ing almost no historical experience on which to base their reflections on the complex question of a single, consolidated power and state in-stitutions, Chilean left-wing intellectuals inevitably turned to the lega-cy of the classics, to the experience of the Russian revolution, which suggested as obvious parallels the problems of dual power in the revo-lution, critical balance and the actions of the parties to overcome it in their favor. 50th anniversary of the dramatic military coup that put an end to the historical experiment of the popular government of Salvador Allende and the "Chilean path to socialism" We offer an analysis of the works and ideas of the outstanding Bolivian intellectual René Zavaleta Mercado (1935-1984), who was a contemporary and witness of those events, and who left interesting works on this topic, where the main outline of his theoretical-political work was aspects related to the category of dual power, addressed to the analysis of the experience of National Unity as part of the Latin American revolutionary experience of the twentieth century.