Maya Jasanoff. Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World. New York: Vintage Books, 2011.
The American Revolution was also, in many ways, a civil war. This was likely especially true for the loyalist minority, who experienced the war as a betrayal of their own sense of British identity. Loyalists, Jasanoff shows, were not the conservative reactionaries of contemporary rhetoric or posthumous remembrance. Instead, they often took views on the relationship between provincial subjects and the British government which were remarkably similar to that staked out by the Patriot Whigs. What defined them, ultimately, was loyalty not conservatism.
This study of the roughly 60,000 loyalists--white, free black, and American Indian--who chose to leave the newly independent United States in the wake of the 1783 Treaty traces their exodus around the growing, changing British Empire--what became Canada, the Bahamas, East Florida, Jamaica, Britain itself, Sierra Leone, India--it was a global diaspora, and often involved multiple stops before the exiles (not a few of whom ultimately returned to a United States which by fits and starts became more welcoming to its prodigal subjects-turned-citizens).
By 1815, this process was largely over--the exiles who were still alive were largely dead. During the roughly 30 years of exile, the loyalists had played an outsized role in the creation of a new British Empire, and had also been part of a larger process of constitutional and political development. The British Empire, in contrast to the Republicanism of the United States and France on the one hand, and the despotism of so many other powers on the other, would be marked by a peculiarly British form of liberal, paternal imperialism. The loyalist exiles contributed greatly to this development.
By studying the loyalists and following them after most American histories turn away from them, the American Revolution and the development of early American Republican citizenship can be seen in a new light, in contrast to the loyalist exile experience as they struggled to find new homes in the empire they gave up so much in order to remain loyal to.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
Monday, May 29, 2017
Caribbean Exchanges
Susan Dwyer Amussen. Caribbean Exchanges: Slavery and the Transformation of English Society, 1640-1700. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
Although the bulk of this monograph concerns life in the Caribbean--specifically the English island colonies of Barbados and Jamaica--it is ultimately a work of English history. Amussen studies the ways in which English encounters with Caribbean slavery altered and shaped subsequent legal and cultural conceptions of liberty, race, and gender.
Slavery was not widely practiced in England prior to the colonial era, and so therefore neither English law nor English custom accounted for the institution when English colonists and adventurers in the Caribbean began turning to African slave labor in order to meet labor needs in the new colonies. The institution of plantation slavery had already been developed by other European powers, from whom the English acquired both the template for turning slave labor into wealth through the production of cash crops (sugar, in this case), and often the slaves themselves. Yet at the same time, these colonists thought of themselves as Englishmen, and tried to align both their notions of social hierarchy and English "liberties" with the challenge of managing slave labor and exercising control over the slave population.
It was not an easy, nor an obvious, process. Amussen admits that it is still a mystery as to why the English adopted slave labor; this book outlines the process but cannot answer the mystery as to why it happened. Traditional English forms of labor relations were based on mutual regard and reciprocity; the aggressively profit-oriented form of industrial capitalism which developed in the sugar islands undermined those bonds, even as wealthy planters tried to maintain the paternalist facade.
But ultimately, the slave society which developed began to cleave along lines of race and gender--the latter informing the former as Black men were denied the freedom and self-determination of masculine identity even as Black women were denied the emerging standards of femininity which became to be exclusively identified with White women. The trope of the delicate, upper-class white women who was desired by the dark-skinned 'other' enters into the Anglo world here.
Amussen goes on to argue that this experience with slavery would inform and shape the industrial Britain's attitude towards the growing factory working class. But her story also has much to say about the early Atlantic world, as her Caribbean slave holders are in ongoing communication with the broader Atlantic world as well as the mother country.
Although the bulk of this monograph concerns life in the Caribbean--specifically the English island colonies of Barbados and Jamaica--it is ultimately a work of English history. Amussen studies the ways in which English encounters with Caribbean slavery altered and shaped subsequent legal and cultural conceptions of liberty, race, and gender.
Slavery was not widely practiced in England prior to the colonial era, and so therefore neither English law nor English custom accounted for the institution when English colonists and adventurers in the Caribbean began turning to African slave labor in order to meet labor needs in the new colonies. The institution of plantation slavery had already been developed by other European powers, from whom the English acquired both the template for turning slave labor into wealth through the production of cash crops (sugar, in this case), and often the slaves themselves. Yet at the same time, these colonists thought of themselves as Englishmen, and tried to align both their notions of social hierarchy and English "liberties" with the challenge of managing slave labor and exercising control over the slave population.
It was not an easy, nor an obvious, process. Amussen admits that it is still a mystery as to why the English adopted slave labor; this book outlines the process but cannot answer the mystery as to why it happened. Traditional English forms of labor relations were based on mutual regard and reciprocity; the aggressively profit-oriented form of industrial capitalism which developed in the sugar islands undermined those bonds, even as wealthy planters tried to maintain the paternalist facade.
But ultimately, the slave society which developed began to cleave along lines of race and gender--the latter informing the former as Black men were denied the freedom and self-determination of masculine identity even as Black women were denied the emerging standards of femininity which became to be exclusively identified with White women. The trope of the delicate, upper-class white women who was desired by the dark-skinned 'other' enters into the Anglo world here.
Amussen goes on to argue that this experience with slavery would inform and shape the industrial Britain's attitude towards the growing factory working class. But her story also has much to say about the early Atlantic world, as her Caribbean slave holders are in ongoing communication with the broader Atlantic world as well as the mother country.
Sunday, May 7, 2017
Revolutionary Backlash
Rosemarie Zagarri. Revolutionary Backlash: Women and Politics in the Early American Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Traditional histories of political involvement by women generally begin Antebellum reform movements, culminating in the Seneca Falls convention which has long served as the traditional starting point of formal feminism in American history. Without denying the importance of Seneca Falls or the Antebellum feminist movement in general, Zaggari argues that that particular "feminist moment" is best understood not as the birth of a new level of activism by women, but rather as the culmination of decades of prior political activity by women, and the reaction which ultimately limited it. The Early Republic had been a period in which white women had a much higher degree of public participation in political life than subsequent generations would be accorded. The reasons why that was, and why women lost that freedom of participation, are tied to the role in which race and gender defined full citizenship in the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian years.
Women in the early Republic had many concerns about their rights--"rights" much more broadly defained than suffrage. The language of the Revolution was universal in scope, and just as African-Americans used that language to argue for full inclusion in the polity after independence, so did white women argue that civil law, family law, and other social and legal strictures required their consent just as the Revolution itself had laid claim to legitimacy based on the consent of the governed.
For a time, there was room and even encouragement for female participation in the political realm, even if most white men resisted the revolutionary logic of extending freedom and equality to women and African-Americans. Female patriots gave legitimacy to Revolutionary and Whig rhetoric And during the early national period there was initially a generally welcoming attitude towards "female politicians" speaking and writing on behalf of Federalist and Republican positions. However, involving women in partisan politics threatened their gendered role as protectors of social morality and private, domestic harmony. The quest to push women out of politics began.
Within a few decades it succeeded, so much so that by the late 1820's many older women found that they could surprise their daughters and granddaughters by explaining that in their youth women were allowed and sometimes even encouraged to take independent positions on political matters and even enter the public sphere while doing so.
Traditional histories of political involvement by women generally begin Antebellum reform movements, culminating in the Seneca Falls convention which has long served as the traditional starting point of formal feminism in American history. Without denying the importance of Seneca Falls or the Antebellum feminist movement in general, Zaggari argues that that particular "feminist moment" is best understood not as the birth of a new level of activism by women, but rather as the culmination of decades of prior political activity by women, and the reaction which ultimately limited it. The Early Republic had been a period in which white women had a much higher degree of public participation in political life than subsequent generations would be accorded. The reasons why that was, and why women lost that freedom of participation, are tied to the role in which race and gender defined full citizenship in the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian years.
Women in the early Republic had many concerns about their rights--"rights" much more broadly defained than suffrage. The language of the Revolution was universal in scope, and just as African-Americans used that language to argue for full inclusion in the polity after independence, so did white women argue that civil law, family law, and other social and legal strictures required their consent just as the Revolution itself had laid claim to legitimacy based on the consent of the governed.
For a time, there was room and even encouragement for female participation in the political realm, even if most white men resisted the revolutionary logic of extending freedom and equality to women and African-Americans. Female patriots gave legitimacy to Revolutionary and Whig rhetoric And during the early national period there was initially a generally welcoming attitude towards "female politicians" speaking and writing on behalf of Federalist and Republican positions. However, involving women in partisan politics threatened their gendered role as protectors of social morality and private, domestic harmony. The quest to push women out of politics began.
Within a few decades it succeeded, so much so that by the late 1820's many older women found that they could surprise their daughters and granddaughters by explaining that in their youth women were allowed and sometimes even encouraged to take independent positions on political matters and even enter the public sphere while doing so.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Sex & Citizenship in Antebellum America
Nancy Isenberg. Sex & Citizenship in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Isenberg locates the roots of Antebellum feminism in discussions and activism predating the Seneca Falls convention. She also considers the broader goals of antebellum feminists, who saw suffrage as a means to an end rather than a particular goal in its own right. And that end was to achieve "co-equality", a concept which posited that in a republican society women needed to be allowed the ability to speak for themselves and defend their personal sovereignty--including control over their own bodies--while at the same time living in a separate, gendered sphere. Antebellum feminists were engaged in a complex struggle to redefine the role of women both in their private lives and in the public sphere.
This struggle was complicated because feminists understood that the implications of republican thought--particularly in a society which had sanctioned race-based chattel slavery--on those regarded as "dependents" was fraught with challenges. Women had to find ways in which to engage in a public sphere which was gendered as a (white) male theater of action.
The push for "personhood", then, had to contend both with societal norms restricting the legitimacy of feminine engagement with politics, and longstanding legal norms denying women the agency and legal autonomy to speak or act on their behalf. The push for rights--the right to divorce, the right to own property, guardianship of their own children, etc.--was the real goal of antebellum feminism. Suffrage and appeals to abstract notions of citizenship were a means to an end.
Isenberg locates the roots of Antebellum feminism in discussions and activism predating the Seneca Falls convention. She also considers the broader goals of antebellum feminists, who saw suffrage as a means to an end rather than a particular goal in its own right. And that end was to achieve "co-equality", a concept which posited that in a republican society women needed to be allowed the ability to speak for themselves and defend their personal sovereignty--including control over their own bodies--while at the same time living in a separate, gendered sphere. Antebellum feminists were engaged in a complex struggle to redefine the role of women both in their private lives and in the public sphere.
This struggle was complicated because feminists understood that the implications of republican thought--particularly in a society which had sanctioned race-based chattel slavery--on those regarded as "dependents" was fraught with challenges. Women had to find ways in which to engage in a public sphere which was gendered as a (white) male theater of action.
The push for "personhood", then, had to contend both with societal norms restricting the legitimacy of feminine engagement with politics, and longstanding legal norms denying women the agency and legal autonomy to speak or act on their behalf. The push for rights--the right to divorce, the right to own property, guardianship of their own children, etc.--was the real goal of antebellum feminism. Suffrage and appeals to abstract notions of citizenship were a means to an end.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Many Thousands Gone
Ira Berlin. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.
This synthetic history of slavery in the United States from the early Virginia colony through the Revolutionary period at the very end of the eighteenth century divides the (future) United States into four main areas for the purposes of slave societies--the North, the Chesapeake/Upper South, the Lowcountry/Lower South, and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Berlin acknowledges that other divisions could have been possible--the Upper South could have been split between Tidewater and Piedmont, for one example--but makes a convincing argument that his categories are both valid and useful. Any further delineation might very well have made the study too complex.
Berlin also makes a distinction between a "society with slaves" versus a "slave society." The latter is completely organized around slave holding both as a central economic activity and an organizing social principle, while the former describes a society in which slave holding is legal and possibly even widely practiced but does not dominate social and economic life.
Within those spatial and conceptual frames, Berlin summarizes the state and development of slavery in each region, over the course of three different time periods. Part One recounts the "Charter Generations", the experience of the early slaves in North America, who were frequently creoles who were cosmopolitan natives of the Atlantic World. Part Two recounts the "Plantation Generations" who experienced the slow development of indigenous slavery in mainland North America. Part Three recounts the "Revolutionary Generation" who experienced the disruptions of the late-18th century revolutions--revolutions which both offered new avenues for freedom yet paradoxically led to Northern "free"states in which African-American life was increasingly compromised and constricted; and a rapid growth and spread of plantation slavery across the Lower South, a region which would ultimately encompass both the old Lowcountry and the Lower Mississippi.
The book ends at the dawn of the 19th century and the cotton revolution which would exacerbate the spread of slavery and lead the southern United States to ever more aggressively defend the slave society cotton helped create.
This synthetic history of slavery in the United States from the early Virginia colony through the Revolutionary period at the very end of the eighteenth century divides the (future) United States into four main areas for the purposes of slave societies--the North, the Chesapeake/Upper South, the Lowcountry/Lower South, and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Berlin acknowledges that other divisions could have been possible--the Upper South could have been split between Tidewater and Piedmont, for one example--but makes a convincing argument that his categories are both valid and useful. Any further delineation might very well have made the study too complex.
Berlin also makes a distinction between a "society with slaves" versus a "slave society." The latter is completely organized around slave holding both as a central economic activity and an organizing social principle, while the former describes a society in which slave holding is legal and possibly even widely practiced but does not dominate social and economic life.
Within those spatial and conceptual frames, Berlin summarizes the state and development of slavery in each region, over the course of three different time periods. Part One recounts the "Charter Generations", the experience of the early slaves in North America, who were frequently creoles who were cosmopolitan natives of the Atlantic World. Part Two recounts the "Plantation Generations" who experienced the slow development of indigenous slavery in mainland North America. Part Three recounts the "Revolutionary Generation" who experienced the disruptions of the late-18th century revolutions--revolutions which both offered new avenues for freedom yet paradoxically led to Northern "free"states in which African-American life was increasingly compromised and constricted; and a rapid growth and spread of plantation slavery across the Lower South, a region which would ultimately encompass both the old Lowcountry and the Lower Mississippi.
The book ends at the dawn of the 19th century and the cotton revolution which would exacerbate the spread of slavery and lead the southern United States to ever more aggressively defend the slave society cotton helped create.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
From Resistance to Revolution
Pauline Maier. From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991, 1972
The process by which once-loyal British subjects in the North American colonies became radicalized and turned against the government of a "mother country" in just a decade is the subject of Maier's now-classic study. By looking at published writings from the era as well as correspondence, she places the rise of the Patriot movement in the larger context of both British imperial history and the legal tradition colonists inherited.
The book is divided into three parts. Part One, "Traditions", recounts the heritage of acceptable resistance and public demonstrations against perceived governmental overreach which British law and custom had long tolerated and even protected. Understanding the forms in which colonial opposition to such British initiatives as the Stamp Act and so forth took is much easier when the reader is aware of this legacy.
Part Two, "Resistance", studies the early years of post-French and Indian War discontent and increasingly organized dissent in the context of British law and colonial conditions. The need to justify resistance in terms of social and cultural norms guided many of the actions taken. The Sons of Liberty and other early Patriots operated within colonial societies still wedded to traditional, corporate forms, so the importance of consensus (or at least the outward appearance of such) and propriety were stressed. "Mobs" were often restrained and even the most rabble-rousing leaders spoke out against the violations of norms.
Part Three, "From Resistance to Revolution", begins by putting the colonial resistance movement as it stood in the late 1760's in a broader context, stressing the connection between the colonists and their perceived allies in Parliament, the City of London, Ireland, and elsewhere. But as "corruption" seemed to clip the wings of most British radicals on the other side of the Atlantic, the colonists came to feel that they were on their own; a realization which fed their increased willingness to consider separation as an option well before the outbreak of actual hostilities in 1775, let alone the summer of 1776.
In the end, Americans embraced republicanism as an alternative to the British constitutional order in which earlier resistance had been based once they concluded that that order had been corrupted beyond hope. They moved towards republicanism in a deliberate move to establish a new ideological basis for continued resistance and then rebellion and revolution.
The process by which once-loyal British subjects in the North American colonies became radicalized and turned against the government of a "mother country" in just a decade is the subject of Maier's now-classic study. By looking at published writings from the era as well as correspondence, she places the rise of the Patriot movement in the larger context of both British imperial history and the legal tradition colonists inherited.
The book is divided into three parts. Part One, "Traditions", recounts the heritage of acceptable resistance and public demonstrations against perceived governmental overreach which British law and custom had long tolerated and even protected. Understanding the forms in which colonial opposition to such British initiatives as the Stamp Act and so forth took is much easier when the reader is aware of this legacy.
Part Two, "Resistance", studies the early years of post-French and Indian War discontent and increasingly organized dissent in the context of British law and colonial conditions. The need to justify resistance in terms of social and cultural norms guided many of the actions taken. The Sons of Liberty and other early Patriots operated within colonial societies still wedded to traditional, corporate forms, so the importance of consensus (or at least the outward appearance of such) and propriety were stressed. "Mobs" were often restrained and even the most rabble-rousing leaders spoke out against the violations of norms.
Part Three, "From Resistance to Revolution", begins by putting the colonial resistance movement as it stood in the late 1760's in a broader context, stressing the connection between the colonists and their perceived allies in Parliament, the City of London, Ireland, and elsewhere. But as "corruption" seemed to clip the wings of most British radicals on the other side of the Atlantic, the colonists came to feel that they were on their own; a realization which fed their increased willingness to consider separation as an option well before the outbreak of actual hostilities in 1775, let alone the summer of 1776.
In the end, Americans embraced republicanism as an alternative to the British constitutional order in which earlier resistance had been based once they concluded that that order had been corrupted beyond hope. They moved towards republicanism in a deliberate move to establish a new ideological basis for continued resistance and then rebellion and revolution.
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, & Anxious Patriarchs
Kathleen M. Brown. Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, & Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996; published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA.
The role of racism and slavery in establishing the social order in colonial Virginia was already well understood at the time Brown published this provocative study, which argued that gender and race were actually "intertwined components of the social order" (1) which reinforced and informed each other in the construction of the white, patriarchal gentry class which came to dominate society.
Brown anchors her analysis in the English experience in Ireland and the first encounters with American Indians. Beginning with those early interactions with non-English "others", a dichotomy began to develop contrasting English "masculinity" with the less virile, less assertive, less powerful "femininity" of conquered peoples, whether the Catholic Irish or the "pagan" Indians. Gender, then, became the conceptual basis of legitimacy in that maleness was presumed to have a natural mastery over femaleness.
The ways in which this early formulation informed and shaped the development of colonial Virginia as the institution of slavery developed was complex; Brown traces this process through the seventeenth century, particularly focusing on Bacon's Rebellion which she regards as pivotal for many reasons, including because it hastened the identification between full citizenship and the ability and right to bear arms in defense of rights. This right would soon become restricted to white men; one of many steps along the path in which black men would be stripped of the prerogatives of maleness even as black women were denied the status of womanhood which was increasingly restricted to white women--and even then, not all white women. There was a class component at play, but in the end race and gender would triumph over any possibility of a repeat of the Bacon's Rebellion alliance between white indentured servants and African slaves.
The society which emerged would be ruled over by a confident, united gentry class which was at the peak of its powers between 1700 and 1750. It was a gentry in which marriage served to maintain ties and class unity at the top, as well as uniting family fortunes. Marriage was monitored and negotiated by parents and society in order to protect family positions in the upper reaches of the social hierarchy, and gender roles were closely guarded in order to protect the interests of the planter class.
The role of racism and slavery in establishing the social order in colonial Virginia was already well understood at the time Brown published this provocative study, which argued that gender and race were actually "intertwined components of the social order" (1) which reinforced and informed each other in the construction of the white, patriarchal gentry class which came to dominate society.
Brown anchors her analysis in the English experience in Ireland and the first encounters with American Indians. Beginning with those early interactions with non-English "others", a dichotomy began to develop contrasting English "masculinity" with the less virile, less assertive, less powerful "femininity" of conquered peoples, whether the Catholic Irish or the "pagan" Indians. Gender, then, became the conceptual basis of legitimacy in that maleness was presumed to have a natural mastery over femaleness.
The ways in which this early formulation informed and shaped the development of colonial Virginia as the institution of slavery developed was complex; Brown traces this process through the seventeenth century, particularly focusing on Bacon's Rebellion which she regards as pivotal for many reasons, including because it hastened the identification between full citizenship and the ability and right to bear arms in defense of rights. This right would soon become restricted to white men; one of many steps along the path in which black men would be stripped of the prerogatives of maleness even as black women were denied the status of womanhood which was increasingly restricted to white women--and even then, not all white women. There was a class component at play, but in the end race and gender would triumph over any possibility of a repeat of the Bacon's Rebellion alliance between white indentured servants and African slaves.
The society which emerged would be ruled over by a confident, united gentry class which was at the peak of its powers between 1700 and 1750. It was a gentry in which marriage served to maintain ties and class unity at the top, as well as uniting family fortunes. Marriage was monitored and negotiated by parents and society in order to protect family positions in the upper reaches of the social hierarchy, and gender roles were closely guarded in order to protect the interests of the planter class.
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