Reading French Sources for a Better Understanding of the American Revolution – Leïla Tnaïnchi
Seeing the American Revolution through French eyes allows historians to have a more global understanding of this major event. The French correspondence of Benjamin Franklin and the archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs offer us many details about launching the United States as a sovereign state. These sources help us to understand the difficulties American commissioners Benjamin Franklin, Arthur Lee, John Adams, and John Jay faced, their strategies,…
Our Shared Legacy – Hugo Toudic & Céline Spector
Self-knowledge sometimes requires complete distance from the familiar. Such is the famous method used in the Persian Letters, the epistolary novel that was a landmark of the Enlightenment and brought fame to the young Montesquieu. In this tale, two young Persians travel to Paris and observe, half amused, half dismayed, the delights of life in an already decadent capital. Their outsider’s view enables the European reader to take a lucid…
The French-American Alliance through the Eyes of Chastellux and Vioménil – Iris de Rode
As the author of a doctoral dissertation and two books exploring French participation in the American Revolution, my examination of this historical epoch unfolds from a unique vantage point – the French perspective. A pivotal aspect of my research involves delving into untapped source material from private French collections. Foremost among these are the private papers of French Major General François-Jean de Chastellux (1734-1788), who served directly under General Rochambeau.…
Winter 2024
The Winter 2024 issue of Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is out now and available on Project MUSE.
Teaching EAS: An Introduction – Carina Seagrave
EAS Miscellany’s series “Teaching EAS” highlights the many ways we can teach early American studies in our classes. Whether this consists of using an EAS article or how we discuss a particular topic in our classrooms, Teaching EAS aims to provide guidance to high school, college, and university educators in their lesson planning. We invite you to use our lesson plan template to demonstrate how you approach different topics in…
A Walking Tour of Thomas Prince’s London – Christopher Trigg
Harvard graduate Thomas Prince (1687-1758) visited London twice between 1709 and 1711. In his travel journal (now in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society) the future minister of Boston’s Old South Church wrote of his excitement at arriving in “the Greatest and most Flourishing City of the Universe.”1 My article in the Fall 2023 issue of Early American Studies discusses the numerous poetic transcriptions that Prince made in that…
Teaching EAS: Asheesh Kapur Siddique’s “The Ideological Origins of ‘Written’ Constitutionalism”
EAS Miscellany encourages educators to integrate articles from our journal into the classroom. As a part of our new series “Teaching EAS,” we invite you to use this lesson plan as a model for designing your curriculum and teaching Early American Studies articles. If you would like to create other lesson plans using EAS articles, please download our template here and share your plan with us. Teaching EAS: “The Ideological Origins of ‘Written’…
Interview with Ilka Brasch, Author of the Fall 2023 Free Access EAS Article
Why did you choose to research your topic? What interested you about the topic? I initially read Hugh Henry Brackenridge’s political satire Modern Chivalry because I am fascinated by literature that is somewhat puzzling, written in a fragmented or meandering style, that is self-reflexive and offers narratives or opinions that need historical contextualization to be understood. I was also drawn to texts of the Early Republic that have a unique…
Fall 2023
The Fall 2023 issue of Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal is out now and available on Project MUSE.
Murrin Prize Winners
The John M. Murrin Essay Prize is awarded for the best article published in Early American Studies each year. Murrin, an early American historian who spent most of his career at Princeton University, was a dedicated and stalwart member of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies community from its founding. The prize is awarded to honor his mastery of the essay form. The following is a comprehensive list of Murrin…