Roundtable: Academic Book Week: Alternative Entries To Familiar Topics

November 12, 2015 By Ken Owen in Academic Book Week, Roundtables, Special Features Tags: academic v. popular history, book review, cricket, historiography 1 Comment

When I consider the non-early-American history books that have had the greatest impact on the way I think, two stand out in particular. One is Ross McKibbin’s The Evolution of the Labour Party, 1910-1924; the other, CLR James’s Beyond A Boundary. The former is the most obviously “academic” of the two; the opportunity to write a Junto post primarily concerned with cricket, however, means that today I’ll focus on the latter.[1]

Both books influenced me for their creativity in approaching politics and society. McKibbin’s insight that “political action is the result of social and cultural attitudes which are not primarily political” has remained with me ever since; a useful reminder that in writing political history, we have to try and find ways of recovering political mindsets not only by looking at what political actors say, but also the many and varied ways they actually do things. James, too, calls for an approach to studying the past that looks beyond a narrow scope of inquiry, in his famous question ‘What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?’ Continue reading →

Re-Writing the American Revolution: Kathleen DuVal’s Independence Lost

August 27, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Book Review, Review / Q&A Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, American Revolution, book review, Chickasaws, Choctaws, Creeks, Digital History, George Galphin, Gulf Coast, historiography, Indians, microhistory, Southern Confederacy, Spain, Spanish America, Treaty of Paris, War for American Independence 7 Comments

**Kathleen Duval, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 2015).**

When most people think about the American Revolution and its cast of characters, names like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and George Washington spring to mind. On the British side, people might think of John André, Benedict Arnold, John Burgoyne, and, sometimes, Lord Dunmore. Though some of these people appear in Kathleen DuVal’s latest book, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, most of DuVal’s narrative centers around people who seldom feature in books or articles on the American Revolution. It is not the American Revolution that most people know. Indeed, “The American Revolution on the Gulf Coast,” DuVal writes, “is a story without minutemen, without founding fathers, without rebels. It reveals a different war with unexpected participants, forgotten outcomes, and surprising winners and losers.” Continue reading →

Guest Review: Keith Grant on Jonathan Den Hartog, Patriotism and Piety

August 17, 2015 By The Junto Moderator in Book Review, Guest Posts Tags: book review, Federalism, Politics, religion 4 Comments

Today’s guest post is a book review from Keith Grant, a PhD candidate in History at the University of New Brunswick, Canada. He is also the co-editor of Borealia, a new group blog on early Canadian history. We strongly encourage everyone to bookmark this new and exciting blog.

Jonathan J. Den Hartog, Patriotism & Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015).

Patriotism Religion was an “engine of politics” in the early American republic. Jonathan Den Hartog explains how religion energized (and then, ironically, diverted energy from) Federalist politics, and how the national vision of Federalists changed American religion. He considers northern evangelical Federalists such as John Jay (and his two sons), Caleb Strong, and Elias Boudinot, Unitarian Federalists including John Adams, and Federalists with a southern accent, Henry De Saussure and Charles Pinckney. These individuals are located, through impressive archival research, in a web of interpersonal relationships. Continue reading →

The Writer Assumes All Responsibility

July 13, 2015 By Roy Rogers in Commentary, Graphic History: Sequential Art & History, Roundtables, Special Features Tags: American Revolution, Andrea Mutti, book review, Brian Wood, colonial New York, colonial Vermont, graphic novels, historical fiction, historical memory, Rebels, Roundtable 5 Comments

For the week of July 13-17, The Junto is hosting “Graphic History: Sequential Art & History,” a roundtable examination of relationship between history and graphic novels. We will explore graphic novels as historical fiction, as histories, and their uses in the classroom. For our first entry, Roy Rogers reviews a new comic book series about the American Revolution from award-winning writer Brian Wood.

What does a historical epic of the American Revolution look like in the twenty-first century? Continue reading →

Review: Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition

June 25, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Book Review, Review / Q&A Tags: academia, American history, American Philosophical Society, American Revolution, book review, Carl Becker, Eric Foner, History, Jessica Roney, Johns Hopkins, Mobilization, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, political culture, Political history, Politics, Richard Ryerson, The Junto, voluntary associations 2 Comments

Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: The Origins of American Political Practice in Colonial Philadelphia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).

Capture In recent years, early American political history has received considerable attention. A range of historians have enriched our understanding of how Americans participated in and contributed to politics in the early republic.[1] Popular politics during the colonial period has received less attention.[2] But in Governed by a Spirit of Opposition, part of Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia, Jessica Choppin Roney focuses on politics in Philadelphia prior to the American Revolution. In so doing, she makes an important contribution to the field of early American history. Continue reading →

Q&A: Abigail Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire

May 7, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Interview, Recent Scholarship, Review / Q&A Tags: 17th Century, 18th Century, book review, British Atlantic, British Empire, capitalism, Cromwell, historiography, indentured servitude, Jamaica, political economy, Slavery 2 Comments

Abigail Swingen is an Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX). She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. She specializes in the Early Modern British Atlantic Political Economy. Competing Visions of Empire is her first book and was reviewed here yesterday. The following is part of our (relatively) new tradition of reviewing a book and then offering a Q & A with the author the following day. [NB: You can find my review from yesterday here.] Continue reading →

Review: Abigail Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire

May 6, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Book Review, Recent Scholarship, Review / Q&A Tags: 17th Century, 18th Century, book review, British Atlantic, capitalism, indentured servitude, Jamaica, Oliver Cromwell, Royal African Company, Slavery 1 Comment

**Abigail L. Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).**

There have been some fantastic new contributions of late that explore connections between slavery, economics, and empire. In his 2008 analysis of the American political economy, economic historian Gavin Wright concluded that the dependence on slave labor came not because of any institutional efficiency on the part of plantations, but rather, that no other form of coerced labor could have been made to meet the labor demands. Sven Beckart’s Bancroft Prize-winning book, Empire of Cotton, analyzes connections between cotton, and the slave labor behind it, and the rise of modern capitalism. Ed Baptist’s book, The Half Has Never Been Told, explores slavery’s role in the making of American capitalism.

Continue reading →

Review: Andrew Beaumont, Colonial America & the Earl of Halifax, 1748-1761

April 21, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Book Review, Guest Posts Tags: American Revolution, Andrew Beaumont, Board of Trade and Plantations, book review, British Empire, colonial America, Guest Posts, imperial history, imperial reform, Political history, The Earl of Halifax 3 Comments

**Andrew D. M. Beaumont, Colonial America & the Earl of Halifax, 1748–1761. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.**

Andrew Beaumont has written a provoking biography of George Montagu Dunk, second earl of Halifax (1716–1771) that covers the crucial period between 1748 and 1761. This book offers a re-evaluation of how we understand colonial American politics and, by implication, it forces us to reconsider the origins of the American Revolution.It also reorients our understanding of British figures who wanted to centralize the Empire during the eighteenth century. For Beaumont, we should look less at the familiar cast of characters: George Grenville; the Earl of Bute; William Pitt, later Lord Chatham; and Lord North. There are others, of course. But, we are familiar with these men. We know their stories. We know their contributions. Beaumont does not argue that we should look away from these men. Rather, he argues that we should look at other “ambitious men” and how they affected the British Empire. In this book, Beaumont examines the “Father of the Colonies,” the Earl of Halifax. Continue reading →

Review: Shelby M. Balik, Rally the Scattered Believers

February 27, 2015 By Seth in Book Review, Recent Scholarship Tags: 19th Century, book review, Early Republic, New England, religion Leave a comment

**Shelby M. Balik, Rally the Scattered Believers: Northern New England’s Religious Geography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.**

Rally the Scattered Believers At the beginning of February, Wake Forest University hosted a symposium marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Nathan Hatch’s The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale University Press). The list of participants was a “who’s-who” of American religious history: Catherine Brekus, Sylvester Johnson, Mark Noll, Amanda Porterfield, Harry Stout, Grant Wacker (on more of a “who’s-that?” note, I was there, too, feeling honored but absurdly under-credentialed in that company). Each offered reflections on the book’s influence and reach, on his or her personal experience with it, on how its arguments have aged. Hatch, now the president of Wake Forest, offered an eloquent response. (Video of the event is available here.) Continue reading →

The Junto

A Group Blog on Early American History

Tag Archives: book review

Roundtable: Academic Book Week: Alternative Entries To Familiar Topics

Re-Writing the American Revolution: Kathleen DuVal’s Independence Lost

**Kathleen Duval, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 2015).**

Guest Review: Keith Grant on Jonathan Den Hartog, Patriotism and Piety

Jonathan J. Den Hartog, Patriotism & Piety: Federalist Politics and Religious Struggle in the New American Nation (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015).

The Writer Assumes All Responsibility

Review: Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition

Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: The Origins of American Political Practice in Colonial Philadelphia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).

Q&A: Abigail Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire

Review: Abigail Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire

**Abigail L. Swingen, Competing Visions of Empire: Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015).**

Review: Andrew Beaumont, Colonial America & the Earl of Halifax, 1748-1761

**Andrew D. M. Beaumont, Colonial America & the Earl of Halifax, 1748–1761. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.**

Review: Shelby M. Balik, Rally the Scattered Believers

**Shelby M. Balik, Rally the Scattered Believers: Northern New England’s Religious Geography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.**

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Kathleen Duval, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 2015).

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Jessica Choppin Roney, Governed by a Spirit of Opposition: The Origins of American Political Practice in Colonial Philadelphia (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014).

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Shelby M. Balik, Rally the Scattered Believers: Northern New England’s Religious Geography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.

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**Kathleen Duval, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 2015).**

**Shelby M. Balik, Rally the Scattered Believers: Northern New England’s Religious Geography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.**