Roundtable Conclusion: Food and Hunger in Vast Early America

June 21, 2019 By Rachel Herrmann in Roundtables Tags: Animals, food, Hunger, legal history, Poison, Starvation, Technology, violence, Vocabulary 1 Comment

Today, Rachel Herrmann concludes our food roundtable. You can read Carla Cevasco’s introduction here, Zachary Bennett’s post here, Bertie Mandelblatt’s here, and Rachel Winchcombe’s here. We hope we gave you some things to think about.

This week I spent three days reading three books, and I watched these posts go out into the world while thinking about my comps. I remember my comps year as the year of graduate school when I was more stressed than I can ever recall feeling, for such a protracted period of time, in my life.[1] But I think that it was the state of food history in 2009-10, when I was reading for my comps, that contributed to this feeling of panic.

I don’t mean the state of food studies; that discipline was already healthily expanding. I mean food history. I found comprehensive exams stressful because I knew that I wanted most to speak to early Americanists and early Atlanticists (and I think the distinction was more pronounced back then), but I was not convinced that there were very many early American food histories. There were food histories on other periods and other geographies; there were food studies books on single commodities like sugar and chicken and interdisciplinary food studies collections with foundational essays on method; there was some relevant work on alcohol, and on animals; and it felt like there was no roadmap for my dissertation.[2] Continue reading →

Q&A: Edward Rugemer, author of Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance in the Early Atlantic World

January 15, 2019 By Emily Yankowitz in Interviews with Historians, Recent Scholarship, Review / Q&A Tags: Atlantic World, Caribbean, Edward Rugemer, legal history, Slavery Leave a comment

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Today at The Junto, we’re featuring an interview with Ed Rugemer about his new book, of Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance in the Early Atlantic World, which Casey Schmitt reviewed yesterday. Ed Rugemer is an Associate Professor of History and African American Studies and the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of History at Yale University. A historian of slavery and abolition, Rugemer’s first book The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War was published by Louisiana State University Press and his work has appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly, Journal of Southern History, Slavery and Abolition, and the Journal of the Civil War Era.

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Review: Edward Rugemer, Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance in the Early Atlantic World

January 14, 2019 By Casey Schmitt in Book Review, Recent Scholarship, Review / Q&A Tags: Atlantic World, Caribbean, Edward Rugemer, legal history, Slavery Leave a comment

Today The Junto reviews Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance in the Early Atlantic World by Yale Associate Professor of African American Studies and History, Edward Rugemer. Stay tuned for a Q&A with the author tomorrow!

Historians have long argued that enslaved people’s resistance to bondage shaped the political economies, legal structures, and societies of the early Atlantic World. As a comparative history of slavery in Barbados, Jamaica, and South Carolina, Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance coheres around “the existential struggle between the master and the slave” that forms the core dialectic between control and resistance at the heart of slavery (1). Edward Rugemer places these slave societies in comparison because, as he argues, they developed out of the same legal genealogy rooted in seventeenth-century English imperial expansion but experienced the end of slavery in dramatically different ways. In just over three hundred pages, the book traces the dialectic between control and resistance in these societies “after an epic struggle of eight generations” (2). Rugemer’s approach combines a synthesis of a rich body of scholarship on the development of legal systems of bondage with strategic archival research. And, as the book demonstrates, the “combination of similarities and differences” between Jamaica and South Carolina yields “a novel approach to understanding the political dynamics of slave resistance and their relation to the law” (3).

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Why We Doubt Capable Children: Constructing Childhood in the Revolutionary Era

April 17, 2018 By Julia M Gossard in Childhood & Youth, Commentary, Research, Vast Early America Tags: 18th Century, adulthood, age, Atlantic World, childhood, children, Citizenship, consent, legal history, majority, minority, vastearlyamerica, voting, youth 2 Comments

Mann_Page_Elizabeth_Page_John_Wollaston “My friends and I might still be 11, and we might still be in elementary school, but we know . . . that we have seven short years until we too have the right to vote.”^[1] Speaking at the March for Our Lives event, 11-year old Naomi Wadler eloquently reminded us that childhood is ephemeral. Since they are future voters, she warned Capitol Hill to take the words, emotions, and pleas of children seriously. In many ways, she was also speaking to Florida State Representative Elizabeth Porter who recently exclaimed, “The adults make the law because we have the age, we has [sic] the wisdom, and we have the experience.”[2] For many like Rep. Porter, there has been something disturbing in this moment of youth activism. It cuts to the core of social stability based on the patriarchal family order—that children are subordinate, passive members of society. We inherited this idea from the eighteenth-century revolutionary era, a point in time when age became a main determinant in who could be considered a citizen and an adult. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Candace Jackson Gray interviews Paul Finkelman

December 27, 2016 By The Junto Moderator in Academia, Interview, Interviews with Historians, Special Features Tags: Interview, legal history, Paul Finkelman, race, Slavery 1 Comment

Photo is courtesy of Keydron K. Guinn, Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Morgan State University

Paul Finkelman is currently the John E. Murray Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, where he teaches Constitutional Law and a seminar on the law of slavery. He received his PhD in U.S. history from the University of Chicago and his BA in American Studies from Syracuse University. He specializes in American legal history, slavery and the Founders, American slave law, modern human trafficking, the Civil War era, U.S. Constitutional history and law, the legal history of race relations, the history of Civil Liberties, the history of the electoral college, Constitution and firearms regulation, and Baseball and Law. He is the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and more than forty books. His next book, Supreme Injustice: Slavery and America’s Highest Court, will be published by Harvard University Press in 2017. His work on legal history and constitutional law has been cited four times by the United States Supreme Court, numerous other courts, and in many appellate briefs. He was an expert witness in the famous Alabama Ten Commandments Monument Case and in the law suit over the ownership of Barry Bonds’ 73rd home run ball. He has also recently worked with HeinOnline to create a free database called Slavery In America and the World: History, Culture, and Law, which he discusses below. This interview was conducted by Candace Jackson Gray at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD on November 30 and December 1, 2016. Continue reading →

Revisiting New England’s Legal Development: Review of Chandler, Law and Sexual Misconduct

March 31, 2016 By Sara Damiano in Book Review Tags: book review, colonial history, legal history, Maine, Massachusetts, New England, Rhode Island, Sexuality Leave a comment

Revisiting New England’s Legal Development: Review of Chandler, <i>Law and Sexual Misconduct</i>

**Abby Chandler, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750: Steering Toward England (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015).**

Between 1650 and 1750, the courts of Maine, Rhode Island, and Essex County, Massachusetts heard 1,843 cases concerning sexual misconduct. These suits, which concerned matters including rape, sodomy, adultery, and sex outside of marriage, are the subject of Abby Chandler’s new book, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750: Steering Toward England (Ashgate, 2015). By examining three jurisdictions not previously studied by historians of law and sexuality, Chandler complicates standard narratives of the extent to which New Englanders adhered to English law. She also engagingly reconstructs the familial and neighborhood conflicts that shaped individual cases.[1]

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Guest Post: Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750

October 13, 2015 By Jessica Parr in From the Archives, Guest Posts Tags: 17th Century, 18th Century, legal history, New England, Sexuality, women's history 1 Comment

Abby Chandler is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. She received her PhD from the University of Maine at Orono. Her first book, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750: Steering Towards England is due to be released by Ashgate in November.

Chandler Cover My forthcoming book, Law and Sexual Misconduct in New England, 1650-1750: Steering Toward England, uses sexual misconduct trials to examine the ways in which the growing Anglicization of the New England colonies played a role in the daily lives of ordinary colonists. Such trials may seem an unusual source base for studying broader political change, but their frequency and consistency allowed me to track the often subtle shifts toward more Anglicized legal systems. Likewise, both men and women were routinely charged with sexual misconduct, which allowed me to examine these shifts from male and female perspectives. This is the story of two widows in Essex County, Massachusetts, and their very different experiences with the Puritan dominated legal system of the seventeenth century and the Anglicized legal system of the eighteenth century.

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Legal Professionalization and the American Revolution

October 7, 2015 By Mark Boonshoft in From the Archives, Research, Uncategorized Tags: American Revolution, Colonial law, John Murrin, Joseph Hawley, lawyers, legal history, Writs of Assistance 9 Comments

John Adams thought that James Otis set the whole American Revolution in motion in 1761. Otis’ argument against writs of assistance, in a legal case that year, Adams wrote, “was the first scene of the first Act of opposition to the Arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the Child Independence was born.”[1] Of course, Adams also though that July 2nd would be the most famous date in history. So forgive me for at least questioning Adams’ view that the “Writs of Assistance Case” basically jumpstarted the Revolution. That said, I do think the evidence base for the “Writs of Assistance Case” suggests that it was a major turning point in the development of the colonial legal profession. Picking up on themes in yesterday’s guest post by Craig Hanlon, the case may help make sense of the connections between legal professionalization and the American Revolution. Continue reading →

Autumn Reads

August 19, 2015 By Sara Georgini in Lists, Recent Scholarship Tags: 19th Century, Adams, Africa, American Indians, American Revolution, Amistad, Antebellum South, Archives, Atlantic World, braddock, Caribbean, Charleston, Civil War, Confederacy, cultural history, Democracy, Diplomacy, diplomatic history, Early Republic, Founders, French Atlantic, Gender, George Washington, historiography, History of Medicine, Jefferson, John Adams, legal history, London, Methodology, museums, Nat Turner, Native Americans, New England, New York, Pirates, Politics, Print Culture, prisoners, Publishing, Quaker, Quakers, religion, religious history, renaissance, Romanticism, Slavery, southern history, Spanish Empire, theatre, Thomas Jefferson, university press, Virginia, visual culture, War of 1812, Washington Leave a comment

“Valley of the Catawissa in Autumn,” Thomas Moran (ca. 1862)

Fall brings new early American titles to explore. Enjoy our Spring Reads 2015 list, too, and share your finds below!

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Recap: “So Sudden an Alteration” Conference (9-11 April 2015)

April 24, 2015 By Jessica Parr in Conferences Tags: 18th Century, 19th Century, academia, American Revolution, Archives, Atlantic History, capitalism, Conference, conferences, Constitution, cultural history, Digital History, Early Republic, Gordon Wood, legal history, Massachusetts Historical Society, Political history, Print Culture, social history, visual culture, Woody Holton 1 Comment

Two weeks ago, 175 historians descended upon the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) in Boston for a three-day conference that considered the political, social, economic, and global parameters of the American Revolution. The conference consisted of eight panels (with pre-circulated papers), two keynotes, and some special presentations on digital projects. The conference proceedings were live-tweeted under #RevReborn2, and fellow Juntoist Joseph Adelman provided some live coverage on the blog. The Junto has also had some post-conference commentaries, including “You Say You Want a Revolution” by Joseph Adelman and “The Suddenness of the Alteration: Some Afterthoughts on #RevReborn2” by Michael Hattem.