REVIEWS

(1988). Mahan, Sea Power, and the War for American Independence. The International History Review: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 59-67.

The Illicit Trade & Conflict Connection: Insights from U.S. History

Congress a den of self-serving scoundrels but heaped praise on George Washington, the American Cincinnatus. The general personified the dilemma that faced many Britons during the conflict: he was a quintessential English-American gentleman, despite being the enemy. He represented much of what the British Atlantic community thought admirable while commanding an army in a cause that many Britons believed would ruin the empire. He had fought for king and country in the Seven Years' War and had even served with a number of the British officers who commanded the king's troops during the War of Independence. He was not from New England and so was not tarred with the radicalism most Britons associated with the region and blamed for the outbreak of hostilities.1 Nor was he a professional soldier. Instead, Washington was a successful member of Virginia's planting elite, thus having much in common with the country gentlemen who

Journal Article Revolution Downeast: The War for American Independence in Maine. By James S. Leamon. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press and Maine Historical Society, 1993. xviii, 302 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-87023-823-X.) Get access Charles E. Clark Charles E. Clark University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 81, Issue 2, September 1994, Page 660, https://doi.org/10.2307/2081221 Published: 01 September 1994

In the review of the monograph (Alentieva T.V., Timchenko A.I. The Anglo-American War of 1812–1815 and the American Society. SPb.: Alethea publishing house, 2018, 275 p.) about the attitude of the American society to the war it is underlined that the authors of the book focus on the diversification of the public opinion, they analyze in detail reasons for the lack of consolidation in the face of the military threat and show on a large and quite new factual material (including visual) regional features of the United States in the war period. The reviewer recommends reading this monograph.

Reviewed by: In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early America Adrian Chastain Weimer Dierks, Konstantin . 2009. In My Power: Letter Writing and Communications in Early America. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4153-2. Pp. xviii + 356. $45. Networks of communication forged by middle-class letter-writing habits proved a distinct advantage to patriots in the War for American Independence. More broadly, modes of letter-writing contributed an "ideology of agency" in eighteenth-century America. In this important book at the intersection of ideologies of modernity, material culture, and middle class practice, Konstantin Dierks argues that when men, women, and eventually children achieved prowess with the writing of a letter, they gained access to social networks which could help them achieve a more secure, comfortable life. Further, properly manufactured and composed letters became central to a new business culture that prized routinization, procedure, and reliability. Examining not just the content of letters but their visual and material culture, letter-writing manuals, the use of letters in newspapers, postal history, and the cultural, economic, and military work being done by correspondence, Dierks offers a significant re-evaluation of what it meant to be middle-class in the eighteenth century. [End Page 94] When the bourgeoisie wrote letters, which they did with frequency after 1750, they were most interested in self-improvement and self-articulation. Astutely identifying the common phrase "In my power", Dierks argues that men and (some) women wrote in order to express both their agency and their limitations: for an individual letter writer, what was "in my power" and not "in my power". Above all, letter writing involved a commitment to investment in skills and materials, self-discipline, the internalization of social norms for efficiency and courtesy, a duty to keep up relationships, and politeness (or, later, sentimentalism). Aware when they were stretching the conventions in manuals, correspondents strove to tighten familial and economic bonds and to define their position in the world. This "myopic" and self-serving epistolary culture, however, omitted consideration of "dispossession and slavery" in what amounted to the "severing of agency from ethics" central to middle class modernity (182, 114, 8). Whereas in the seventeenth century letters served to affirm the authority of social elites, by the late-eighteenth century letter-writing was perceived as a "universal" medium of communication. This very assumption of "universality", however, elided inequalities in access to education, technologies, and supplies. The abilities, affinities, and networks achieved by letter-writers ultimately led to an "epistolary divide" between middle-class whites and those lower on the social strata. Though briefly noting the participation of enslaved blacks and native Americans in documentary cultures through, for example, the forgery of travel passes, Dierks finds non-whites notably, and culpably, absent from middle class epistolary worlds. While Dierks's main argument is based on this omission of social ethics in epistolary culture, his most fruitful field of positive evidence centers on the history of the post. A fascinating story emerges of the "intrepid experimentation and unfortunate struggle" of men such as Andrew Hamilton and Edward Dummer, who, a half century before Benjamin Franklin, pioneered the colonial postal service (51). Staffed mostly by middle-class men (with the notable exception of the remarkable Baltimore Postmistress Mary Katherine Goddard) the postal service grew into a monumental communications infrastructure. First controlled locally, when it became lucrative the post was subsumed into the British imperial system. Then a full year before independence was declared, the colonial post rebelled. Ousting British postmasters from their positions, sometimes by force, the Parliamentary Post Office became the Constitutional Post Office. Speed of communications became supremely important in maneuvering troops and supplies during the war, with British commanders at a disadvantage when [End Page 95] they had to send letters by boat. A political ideology of freedom of communication existed uneasily with ubiquitous surveillance of the mail for military intelligence or signs of treason. Dierks makes a compelling case for the crucial role played by letters in military strategy and family survival during wartime. Assuming that theology gives way to bureaucracy in English culture, Dierks spends little time on religion and or epistolary networks among religious groups. One wonders, for...

The Newfoundland Fishery: A French Objective in the War of American Independence

This definitive encyclopedia, originally published in 1983 and now available as an ebook for the first time, covers the American Revolution, comes in two volumes and contains 865 entries on the war for American independence. Included are essays (ranging from 250 to 25,000 words) on major and minor battles, and biographies of military men, partisan leaders, loyalist figures and war heroes, as well as strong coverage of political and diplomatic themes. The contributors present their summaries within the context of late 20th Century historiography about the American Revolution. Every entry has been written by a subject specialist, and is accompanied by a bibliography to aid further research. Extensively illustrated with maps, the volumes also contain a chronology of events, glossary and substantial index.

Prior to the nineteenth century the more lucrative public offices under the direct control of the Crown as part of the civil list were given as sinecures to favoured individuals. The use of these sinecures, pensions and other valuable appointments provided the Crown with the means by which it could buy influence and, thereby, undermine the constitutional authority and independence of parliament. In the main, civilian officers of the Crown were not accountable to parliament. Financial accountability for spending on the civil list was sporadic, without sufficient enforcement mechanisms and, therefore, a threat to the liberty of all “Englishmen". The financial and political strains that the American War of Independence placed upon England, combined with the abuse of patronage privileges by the Crown, provoked a movement for economical reform, most often associated with Edmund Burke, which sought the reform of both the civil list and executive accounts as protections for liberty. Crucial to convincing the government of the urgency of reform were reports from the Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts.

CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 34:83-89 (2007) - doi:10.3354/cr034083 Factors affecting hare–lynx dynamics in the classic time series of the Hudson Bay Company, Canada Zhibin Zhang1,*, Yi Tao2, Zhenqing Li3 1State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management on Pest Insects and Rodents in Agriculture, Institute of Zoology, and 2Key Laboratory of Animal Ecology and Conservation Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, PR China 3Laboratory of Quantitative Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, PR China *Email: zhangzb@ioz.ac.cn ABSTRACT: The 10 yr hare–lynx (Lepus americanus– Lynx canadensis) cycles in boreal forest of North America have been well known for >100 yr, but the underlying mechanism is still not fully understood. Prey–predator interactions are generally thought to be the major causative factor for the cycle. The effect of climate on the hare–lynx cycle has been largely ignored. By using partial cross correlation and stepwise multiple regression methods, we re-analyzed the Hudson Bay Company’s well known hare–lynx time series (1847–1903), to evaluate effects of intrinsic self-regulation, prey–predator interactions and El Niño/ Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on hare–lynx dynamics. Our results clearly indicate that the widely cited classic hare–lynx dynamic is mostly explained by intrinsic self-regulation factors, instead of by prey–predator interaction; ENSO has small effects on rates of increase in hare and lynx populations. Snow hare · Lepus americanus · Canadian lynx · Lynx canadensis · PreyÐpredator interaction · ENSO · SOI · Population outbreaks · Self-regulation Full text in pdf format NextExport citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 34, No. 2. Online publication date: July 19, 2007 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2007 Inter-Research.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, British and American men and women began criticizing the slave trade and slavery as violations of the principles of Christianity, natural rights, and political security. A black spokesman for abolitionism was Lemuel Haynes (1753–1833), one of the first African Americans to publish. Haynes served as a minuteman in the American War of Independence and began writing against the slave trade and slavery in the 1770s. After ordination in a Congregational church, he assumed a pulpit in Rutland, Vermont, where he became a leading controversialist, defender of the theology of Jonathan Edwards, and interpreter of republican ideology. He was dismissed from his pulpit in 1818, because his affiliation to the Federalist Party and his opposition to the War of 1812 offended his congregation. The last 15 years of his life were characterized by pessimism about the ability of Americans of the early republic to defeat racism as well as by a defense of Puritanism, which he believed could guide the creation of a free, harmonious, and integrated society.

In 1787, a group of American refugee settlers in the western portion of Quebec, which would become the colony of Upper Canada in 1791, collectively petitioned the Governor General, Lord Dorchester, for schools. They insisted, in fact, on a relatively comprehensive network of schools funded directly through the government purse. Dorchester responded by appointing William Smith, the former Chief Justice of New York State with whom he had formed a political friendship during the American War of Independence, to head a special committee to report on the state of education throughout the entire province. Several hundred copies of the report were printed and released in 1789. The report recommended a government-supported tripartite elementary, secondary, and university school system. The recommendations were not acted upon, but the report's ideas lingered in public discourse for years to come. In the writing of the origins of schooling in Upper Canada, this report has not received considerable attention. Moreover, the intentions and goals of these early settlers advocating for government-aided schooling are characteristically overlooked. In the dominant view, the building of Upper Canada's school system was motivated by the bureaucratization and institutionalization concerns of major school advocates and politicians in the mid-nineteenth century.

Guerrillas assumed a consequential role in the campaigns fought in the Carolinas during the American War of Independence. They attacked British detachments and outposts, held loyalists in check, and severed supply lines. They also collected intelligence for the regular forces. Though far better suited for insurgency than for participation in pitched battles, they nonetheless successfully fought in major actions, particularly at the Battles of Cowpens and Eutaw Springs.

Like revolutionaries throughout the modern world, Americans built a new, stable legal order on property confiscated from their enemies. Early in the American War for Independence, colonial governments collapsed, British courts closed, and ordinary people took the law into their own hands. They created committees that enforced harsh, revolutionary justice. But remarkably, by the end of the War, they were able to develop the stable legal institutions of new governments.

In this book, Jack P. Greene describes the rise of the lower houses in the four southern royal colonies--Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia--that reflects a process occurring throughout the colonies in the period between the Glorious Revolution and the American War for Independence. To determine what it was the Americans were defending in their debate with Britain between 1763 and 1776, Professor Greene defines the specific powers acquired by the lower houses, measures the extent of their authority at the close of the Seven Years' War, and examines the British challenge. He explores the theoretical foundations as well as the practical results of the assemblies' moves, and offers an important new interpretation of the relationship between their rise to power and the coming of the American Revolution.