Guest Post: The Problem of Loyalism before the American Revolution

September 11, 2013 By Christopher F. Minty in Guest Posts, Historiography, Recent Scholarship Tags: American Revolution, colonial New York, Loyalism, Loyalists, New York City 13 Comments

Today’s guest poster is Christopher Minty, a PhD candidate at the University of Stirling. His dissertation focuses on Loyalists in New York.

Patriots and Loyalists

Over the past four years, I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a group of colonists who would go on to become Loyalists in the American Revolution. My dissertation examines 9,341 future Loyalists during the imperial crisis, 1763–1775, in New York and, essentially, tries to follow their collective paths to either voluntarily signing their name to a declaration, petition and/or subscription list affirming their continued allegiance to the prevailing political order or taking the oath of allegiance. Continue reading →

Review of “New Netherland in a Nutshell”

February 28, 2013 By Michael D. Hattem in Book Review Tags: colonial America, colonial New York, Firth Haring Fabend, New Netherland Institute, Public History, Review 6 Comments

Public history can take many forms. We, here at The Junto, are committed to engaging with and covering public history regarding early America. The New Netherland Institute is an excellent example of an organization dedicated to bringing early American history to the public. I want to use this space to talk about its most recent publication, Firth Haring Fabend’s New Netherland in A Nutshell: A Concise History of the Dutch Colony in North America.

Fabend is an independent historian (though she holds a PhD in American Studies from NYU) and is the author of numerous books of fiction as well as two award-winning works of history also dealing with New Amsterdam, both of which were published by Rutgers University Press. Continue reading →