Published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press – serie

Analyzing the rise and subsequent fall of international piracy from the perspective of colonial hinterlands, Mark G. Hanna explores the often overt support of sea marauders in maritime communities from the inception of England's burgeoning empire in the 1570s to its administrative consolidation by the 1740s. Although traditionally depicted as swashbuckling adventurers on the high seas, pirates played a crucial role on land. Far from a hindrance to trade, their enterprises contributed to commercial development and to the economic infrastructure of port towns.English piracy and unregulated privateering flourished in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean because of merchant elites' active support in the North American colonies. Sea marauders represented a real as well as a symbolic challenge to legal and commercial policies formulated by distant and ineffectual administrative bodies that undermined the financial prosperity and defense of the colonies. Departing from previous understandings of deep-sea marauding, this study reveals the full scope of pirates' activities in relation to the landed communities that they serviced and their impact on patterns of development that formed early America and the British Empire.

Over the vast distances and rough terrain of the Revolutionary War, the tactics that Daniel Morgan had learned in Indian fighting--the thin skirmish line, the stress upon individual marksmanship, the hit-and-run mobility--were an important element of his success as a commander. He combined this success on the battlefield with a deep devotion to the soldiers serving under him. In a conflict that abounded in vital personalities, Morgan's was one of the most colorful. Illiterate, uncultivated, and contentious, he nevertheless combined the resourcefulness of a frontiersman with a native gift as a tactician and leader. His rise from humble origins gives forceful testimony to the democratic spirit of the new America.

An intellectual dialogue of the highest plane achieved in America, the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson spanned half a century and embraced government, philosophy, religion, quotidiana, and family griefs and joys. First meeting as delegates to the Continental Congress in 1775, they initiated correspondence in 1777, negotiated jointly as ministers in Europe in the 1780s, and served the early Republic--each, ultimately, in its highest office. At Jefferson's defeat of Adams for the presidency in 1800, they became estranged, and the correspondence lapses from 1801 to 1812, then is renewed until the death of both in 1826, fifty years to the day after the Declaration of Independence. Lester J. Cappon's edition, first published in 1959 in two volumes, provides the complete correspondence between these two men and includes the correspondence between Abigail Adams and Jefferson. Many of these letters have been published in no other modern edition, nor does any other edition devote itself exclusively to the exchange between Jefferson and the Adamses. Introduction, headnotes, and footnotes inform the reader without interrupting the speakers. This reissue of The Adams-Jefferson Letters in a one-volume unabridged edition brings to a broader audience one of the monuments of American scholarship and, to quote C. Vann Woodward, 'a major treasure of national literature.' |In a compelling story of the installation and operation of U.S. bases in the Caribbean colony of Trinidad during World War II, Harvey Neptune examines how the people of this British island contended with the colossal force of American empire-building at a critical time in the island's history. He explores the military-based economy, relationships between U.S. servicemen and Trinidadian women, and the influence of American culture on local music (especially calypso), fashion, labor practices, and everyday racial politics. Neptune also places this history of Trinidad's modern times into a wider Caribbean and Latin American perspective, highlighting how Caribbean peoples sometimes wield ""America"" and ""American ways"" as part of their localized struggles.

This is the most complete picture yet of the early plantation economy. Lorena Walsh offers an enlightening history of plantation management in the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland, ranging from the founding of Jamestown to the close of the Seven Years' War and the end of the ""Golden Age"" of colonial Chesapeake agriculture. Walsh focuses on the operation of more than thirty individual plantations and on the decisions that large planters made about how they would run their farms. She argues that, in the mid-seventeenth century, Chesapeake planter elites deliberately chose to embrace slavery. Prior to 1763 the primary reason for large planters' debt was their purchase of capital assets - especially slaves - early in their careers. In the later stages of their careers, chronic indebtedness was rare. Walsh's narrative incorporates stories about the planters themselves, including family dynamics and relationships with enslaved workers. Accounts of personal and family fortunes among the privileged minority and the less well documented accounts of the suffering, resistance, and occasional minor victories of the enslaved workers add a personal dimension to more concrete measures of planter success or failure.

In this richly illustrated study, the first book-length exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States, Wendy Bellion investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with illusory art shaped their understanding of knowledge, representation, and subjectivity between 1790 and 1825. Focusing on the work of the well-known Peale family and their Philadelphia Museum, as well as other Philadelphians, Bellion explores the range of illusions encountered in public spaces, from trompe l'oeil paintings and drawings at art exhibitions to ephemeral displays of phantasmagoria, ""Invisible Ladies,"" and other spectacles of deception. Bellion reconstructs the elite and vernacular sites where such art and objects appeared and argues that early national exhibitions doubled as spaces of citizen formation. Within a post-Revolutionary culture troubled by the social and political consequences of deception, keen perception signified able citizenship. Setting illusions into dialogue with Enlightenment cultures of science, print, politics, and the senses, Citizen Spectator demonstrates that pictorial and optical illusions functioned to cultivate but also to confound discernment. Bellion reveals the equivocal nature of illusion during the early republic, mapping its changing forms and functions, and uncovers surprising links between early American art, culture, and citizenship. |In the first book-length exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States, Bellion investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with illusory art shaped citizens' understanding of knowledge, representation, and subjectivity between 1790 and 1825.

Maps were at the heart of cultural life in the Americas from before colonization to the formation of modern nation-states. The fourteen essays in Early American Cartographies examine indigenous and European peoples' creation and use of maps to better represent and understand the world they inhabited. Drawing from both current historical interpretations and new interdisciplinary perspectives, this collection provides diverse approaches to understanding the multilayered exchanges that went into creating cartographic knowledge in and about the Americas. In the introduction, editor Martin Bruckner provides a critical assessment of the concept of cartography and of the historiography of maps. The individual essays, then, range widely over space and place, from the imperial reach of Iberian and British cartography to indigenous conceptualizations, including ""dirty,"" ephemeral maps and star charts, to demonstrate that pre-nineteenth-century American cartography was at once a multiform and multicultural affair. This volume not only highlights the collaborative genesis of cartographic knowledge about the early Americas; the essays also bring to light original archives and innovative methodologies for investigating spatial relations among peoples in the western hemisphere. Taken together, the authors reveal the roles of early American cartographies in shaping popular notions of national space, informing visual perception, animating literary imagination, and structuring the political history of Anglo- and Ibero-America. The contributors are: Martin Bruckner, University of Delaware Michael J. Drexler, Bucknell University Matthew H. Edney, University of Southern Maine Jess Edwards, Manchester Metropolitan University Junia Ferreira Furtado, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil William Gustav Gartner, University of Wisconsin–Madison Gavin Hollis, Hunter College of the City University of New York Scott Lehman, independent scholar Ken MacMillan, University of Calgary Barbara E. Mundy, Fordham University Andrew Newman, Stony Brook University Ricardo Padron, University of Virginia Judith Ridner, Mississippi State University |Maps were at the heart of cultural life in the Americas from before colonization to the formation of modern nation-states. The fourteen essays in Early American Cartographies examine indigenous and European peoples' creation and use of maps to better represent and understand the world they inhabited.

The Science of the Soul challenges long-standing notions of Puritan provincialism as antithetical to the Enlightenment. Sarah Rivett demonstrates that, instead, empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s. In an unprecedented move, Puritan ministers from Thomas Shepard and John Eliot to Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards studied the human soul using the same systematic methods that philosophers applied to the study of nature. In particular, they considered the testimonies of tortured adolescent girls at the center of the Salem witch trials, Native American converts, and dying women as a source of material insight into the divine. Conversions and deathbed speeches were thus scrutinized for evidence of grace in a way that bridged the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the worldly and the divine. In this way, the ""science of the soul"" was as much a part of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural philosophy as it was part of post-Reformation theology. Rivett's account restores the unity of religion and science in the early modern world and highlights the role and importance of both to transatlantic circuits of knowledge formation. | The Science of the Soul challenges long-standing notions of Puritan provincialism as antithetical to the Enlightenment. Sarah Rivett demonstrates that, instead, empiricism and natural philosophy combined with Puritanism to transform the scope of religious activity in colonial New England from the 1630s to the Great Awakening of the 1740s.

Best known for his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries, St. George Tucker (1752-1827), a lawyer and judge in the state and federal courts of Virginia, played a central role in the legal history of post-Revolutionary Virginia and of the new nation. This comprehensive three-volume edition of Tucker's law reports and selected loose papers, edited by Charles F. Hobson, is an unsurpassed archive for studying the ""republicanization"" of the common law as it unfolded in the commonwealth of Virginia. In addition, Tucker's papers provide an invaluable source for tracking Virginia's efforts to establish a system of state superior courts operating alongside the older county court system dating from the colonial period. Tucker's reports fill a documentary gap caused by the 1865 fire that destroyed Virginia's higher court records. The editor's general introduction supplies an informative overview of Tucker's life and judicial career. Editorial aids and appendixes include a guide to Tucker's abbreviations, a short-title bibliography, a glossary of selected legal terms, a biographical register of the Virginia bench and bar, and correspondence and documents relating to the rupture between Tucker and Spencer Roane.

In 1719, Jean-Francois-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny, son of a Paris lawyer, set sail for Louisiana with a commission as a lieutenant after a year in Quebec. During his peregrinations over the next eighteen years, Dumont came to challenge corrupt officials, found himself in jail, eked out a living as a colonial subsistence farmer, survived life-threatening storms and epidemics, encountered pirates, witnessed the 1719 battle for Pensacola, described the 1729 Natchez Uprising, and gave account of the 1739–1740 French expedition against the Chickasaw. Dumont's adventures, as recorded in his 1747 memoir conserved at the Newberry Library, underscore the complexity of the expanding French Atlantic world, offering a singular perspective on early colonialism in Louisiana. His life story also provides detailed descriptions and illustrations of the peoples and environment of the lower Mississippi Valley. This English translation of the unabridged memoir features a new introduction, maps, and a biographical dictionary to enhance the text. Dumont emerges here as an important colonial voice and brings to vivid life the French Atlantic.

Through an intensive study of party origins in the state of New York, this volume reexamines and reevaluates the whole of the Democratic Republican movement. It will compel changes in present concepts of anti-Federalist and Republican connections with banking, mercantile, land-speculation, and manufacturing interests.Originally published in 1967.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This summary essay and the heavily annotated bibliography covering the period from the first colonization to 1826 are primarily intended to aid the scholar and student by suggesting areas of further study and ways of expanding the conventional interpretations of early American history.Originally published in 1935.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

George Croghan--land speculator, Indian trader, and prominent Indian agent--was a man of fascinating, if dubious, character whose career epitomized the history of the West before the Revolution. This study is based on Croghan's long-lost personal papers that were found by the author in an old Philadelphia attic.Originally published in 1959.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This study describes the courts of vice-admiralty as they existed in the American colonies at the beginning of the revolutionary struggles, analyzes the changes in the courts and their jurisdiction from 1763 to the outbreak of the war, and examines the American objections to the vice-admiralty system.Originally published in 1960.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This biography of William Plumer--New Hampshire lawyer, politician, senator, and governor--furnishes unique insight into state, local, and national politics in the formative period of party development. Plumer was an important participant in the American political scene for forty years.Originally published in 1962.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Moses Brown carried on a wide range of business activities, seeking profit as capital for humanitarian purposes. He became a reluctant participant and eventually a leader in many reform movements--crusades against slavery and war; efforts to provide education for the underprivileged, orphans, and Afro-Americans; and programs of urban redevelopment and public health.Originally published in 1962.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

In the battle for empire that was the Seven Years' War, France's Sugar Islands, Guadeloupe and Martinique, were stakes as important as the Dominion of Canada. This book sketches the background strategy that led William Pitt to send an expedition to capture them, but it is chiefly the story of the campaign itself.Originally published in 1955.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This absorbing appraisal of colonial South Carolina political history is developed in three parts: The Age of the Goose Creek Men,"" covering 1670-1712; ""Breakdown and Recovery--in which the central dispute was over local currency--1712-43; and ""The Rise of the Commons House of Assembly, 1743-63.""Originally published in 1966.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This is the biography of a wily Scots settler who arrived in New York in 1675 and became one of the colony's wealthiest and most powerful citizens. His career illustrates the growing breach between English and American approaches to political and administrative problems.Originally published in 1961.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

England's Glorious Revolution of 1688 created a major crisis among the British colonies in America. Following news of the English Revolution, a series of rebellions and insurrections erupted in colonial America from Massachusetts to Carolina. Although the upheavals of 1689 were sparked by local grievances, there were also general causes for the repudiation of Stuart authority.Originally published in 1964.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This is the first full-length biography of Rufus King. It emphasizes politics and diplomacy but also presents a well-rounded appraisal of King's personality, outlook, and interests. Many little-known facets of King's life are illuminated, including his relationship to the Burr-Hamilton duel.Originally published in 1968.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This collection of Franklin's political writings contains more than double the number previously recognized as his. Much of this writing was performed during the intensive press campaigns for repeal by parliament of obnoxious measures, such as the Stamp Act and Townshend Acts. His letters reveal the adjustment he was making in his private ideas of British empire and American rights.Originally published in 1950.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

These journal accounts and letters form one of the most engaging and readable accounts of the American Revolution. Written with directness, simplicity, and charm by the wife of the commanding general of Brunswick troops in the British army, the narrative reveals the conditions in revolutionary America.Originally published in 1965.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This illustrated story of America's first architect is based on material from a number of contemporary sources in the colonial period. Harrison's buildings reflect the classical mode, and they fortunately survived the Revolution. His designs include the King's Chapel, Boston; the Synagogue, Newport; and Christ Church, Cambridge.Originally published in 1949.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

The political history of Georgia--the youngest and smallest of the thirteen colonies--condenses into a relatively short span much of the colonial history of America. Abbot's study of the colony of Georgia, from the time it came under the administration of the Crown in 1754 until the beginning of the American Revolution, tells the story of unprecedented expansion and growth against a backdrop of fast-developing crisis throughout the Empire.Originally published in 1959.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This diary of Hamilton's journey through the northern colonies provides an interesting account of the life and times during the colonial period. It is a brilliant account of a typical cultured gentleman of the age and background of his times. As a physician, the diarist views life with a realistic eye.Originally published in 1948.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Hall has made the first detailed investigation of Polly Baker. It leads through the exciting world of eighteenth-century journalism, literature, and statecraft. Ben Franklin occupies a position in the story second only to Polly Baker herself. Evident throughout is the tendency of people, even in an age of enlightenment, to believe what they see--provided they see it in print.Originally published in 1960.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

The formal side of Adams is reconciled with his remarkably colorful private life by Shaw's penetrating grasp of the whole man. Considerable attention is given to his clash of wills with Franklin in Europe and his later relationship with Jefferson. The account of Adams's twenty-five years of retirement after losing the presidency resolves some of the dilemmas arising from the long career of a man who was never really suited by temperament for politics.Originally published in 1976.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

This collection of outstanding essays in the history of early American law is designed to meet the demand for a basic introduction to the literature of colonial and early United States law. Eighteen essays from historical and legal journals by outstanding authorities explore the major themes in American legal history from colonial beginnings to the early nineteenth century.Originally published in 1969.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Baron Ludwig von Closen-Haydenburg's lively account of his campaigns in America as aide-de-camp to Rochambeau during the Revolution is at last available here in published form. This is not only a translation but a critical edition that identifies the numerous eighteenth-century sources the Baron used in rewriting his journal in later years.Originally published in 1958.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.