Review, Rebecca Brannon and Joseph Moore, eds. The Consequences of Loyalism

April 22, 2019 By Emily Yankowitz in Review / Q&A Tags: American Revolution, book review, Edited collections, Eighteenth Century, historiography, Interdisciplinarity, Loyalists, Recent scholarship, University of South Carolina Press 1 Comment

Brannon, Rebecca, and Joseph S. Moore, eds. The Consequences of Loyalism: Essays in Honor of Robert M. Calhoon. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2019).

If you are studying or researching Loyalists in some way, Robert M. Calhoon’s name is bound to come up. The “dean of American Loyalist studies,” as Joseph Moore terms him, is a well-esteemed scholar, writer, and mentor who has been the leading voice in American Loyalists historiography for decades.”[1] By engaging Loyalists in a multi-dimensional fashion, Calhoon’s work elucidated the now-incontrovertible inference: that Loyalists were multi-dimensional figures who were not too different from their revolutionary counterparts. In fact, the irrefutability of this idea is no doubt due in part to his work. In honor of him, Rebecca Brannon and Joseph Moore edited a Festschrift titled The Consequences of Loyalism. Continue reading →

Part of the Long History of Child Trafficking: 18th-Century French Louisiana

June 27, 2018 By Julia M Gossard in Childhood & Youth, Opinion, Vast Early America Tags: Child Trafficking, children, Eighteenth Century, France, French Louisiana, kidnapping, migration, Mississippi Company, Opinion, pronatalism, vastearlyamerica, youth 2 Comments

2005-0011 As we continue to learn more about the seizure and internment of migrant infants and children, both along the U.S.-Mexico border and in ICE raids throughout the nation, historians have asked us to wrestle with our long history of child-snatching, family separation, and child trafficking. I’ve read these pieces with a keen sense that while this is a particularly acute theme in American history, separating and abducting children from their families has been a tactic that many regimes have used for centuries to bolster their power. Whether we’re discussing slavery, the expulsion of Moriscos from Spain, or even pronatalist policies to populate early modern colonies, trafficking children has been an enduring state tactic. As a historian of #VastEarlyAmerica, with a focus on the French context, I keep thinking about the growth of the Louisiana colony in the eighteenth century. In addition to the forced migration and abduction of thousands of enslaved Africans, many of whom were children and adolescents, eighteenth-century French Louisiana was also populated with trafficked French children. Continue reading →

The Sacred and the Secular in Early National Virginia

June 2, 2016 By Roy Rogers in Commentary, Opinion, Recent Scholarship Tags: American Revolution, Eighteenth Century, historiography, religion, religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia, Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom 6 Comments

Is revolutionary Virginia the birthplace of American secularism?

My attention was returned to this critical question by a recent twitter exchange between Annette Gordon-Reed and Sam Haselby (and others) along side a recent piece by Haselby in Aeon.[1] The scuffle between Gordon-Reed and Haselby focuses on the time-is-a-flat-circle question of Thomas Jefferson’s religious beliefs. Was he a secularist? Some variant of Christian? A Unitarian? An atheist? Haselby’s Aeon piece takes a different tack, arguing that the American founding represented a “rogue wave of rationality in a centuries-long sea of Protestant evangelising, sectarianism and God-talk.” Haselby marks out the Founders—particularly Jefferson and James Madison—as “visionary secularists” who created a secular republic, which was eventually co-opt by decidedly non-secular political and cultural forces. He singles out late eighteenth-century Virginia as the primary canvas upon which the great artists of American secularism worked.[2] Continue reading →

Early America Comic Con: Drawing the American Revolution

November 23, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Academia, Methodology, Pedagogy Tags: academia, American Revolution, British Atlantic world, British perspectives, caricatures, cartoons, Comic Con, Comic Con early America, digital pedagogy, Eighteenth Century, images, James Gillray, Long eighteenth century, pedagogy, Print Culture, Satire, scholarship, teaching 1 Comment

Chan Lowe/Tribune Content Agency

“Welders make more money than philosophers,” Marco Rubio said in a recent G.O.P. debate. “We need more welders and less philosophers,” he continued, proudly. It was a decent line from the presidential hopeful. But not long after these words echoed around the Milwaukee Theatre, it was shown to be a somewhat clumsy statement, not least when seen alongside figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (comparative wages: philosophers & welders). Thus over the days following Rubio’s line, it was caricatured, with one cartoonist picking up on Rubio’s wording. This G.O.P. presidential candidate is not alone: All of the 2016 presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican, have been caricatured. So, too, are their worldwide equivalents on a regular basis. Continue reading →

Guest Post: A Series of Fortunate Events: Navigating the Eighteenth-Century World with George Galphin

September 4, 2015 By Christopher F. Minty in Guest Posts, Research Tags: British Empire, colonial America, connections, Creeks, David Library of the American Revolution, Eighteenth Century, Eighteenth-century history, Escotchaby, George Galphin, Georgia, historiography, History, Indians in the American Revolution, Ireland, Metawney, Native Americans, Recent scholarship, Sempoyaffee, Sir William Johnson, sociability, social networks, southern history, violence 14 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Bryan Rindfleisch, Assistant Professor of History at Marquette University. Bryan received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma, in 2014, where he specialized in early American, Native American, and Atlantic world history. His book manuscript focuses on the intersections of colonial, Native, imperial, and Atlantic histories, peoples, and places in eighteenth-century North America.

It’s inevitable. At some point, a friendly conversation about my research—with family and friends, colleagues, students, or even a random stranger at the local coffee shop—will take an unfortunate turn. All it takes is that one question: “Who is George Galphin?” Continue reading →