Tag: Slavery

Special Features

Thomas Paine and the Haitian Revolution: The Transformation of an Anecdote – Anthony Rizzuto

In 1802, the political writer Henry Redhead Yorke went looking for Thomas Paine in Paris. Asking after the erstwhile celebrity revolutionary in a bookstore, he was upbraided by a chorus of four individuals cursing the English American radical. They had just heard troubling news out of the Caribbean: the French attempt to master the uprising of formerly enslaved Blacks in their colony of Saint-Domingue (soon … Continue reading Thomas Paine and the Haitian Revolution: The Transformation of an Anecdote – Anthony Rizzuto

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Facing the Archive from the Present, Roundtables, Special Features

The Language of Symbols and the Unspoken – Sherri V. Cummings

While reading Bradley’s and Michael’s pieces, I began to realize that as historians of early America we are driven to examine the lives and experiences of our subjects on their own terms while navigating the silences and erasures of the colonial archive. By using nuanced methodologies, we are able to remove the lens of western discourse to shed new light on Native American and African … Continue reading The Language of Symbols and the Unspoken – Sherri V. Cummings

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Facing the Archive from the Present, Roundtables, Special Features

“Looking Over Bet’s Shoulders: The Archive and the Albany Arson Plot” – Michael Monescalchi

In the prologue to Facing East from Indian Country, Dan Richter claims that it is nearly impossible for scholars who are interested in recovering disenfranchised persons’ perspectives “to see the world through [the] eyes” of those we study.1 Rather than despair over the archive’s limitations, however, he offers a solution to this problem, arguing that we must try to look over our subjects’ shoulders to “reconstruct … Continue reading “Looking Over Bet’s Shoulders: The Archive and the Albany Arson Plot” – Michael Monescalchi

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Facing the Archive from the Present, Roundtables, Special Features

The Ethics of Narrating the Past – Sherri V. Cummings

What are the ethics of narrating the past? I often wrestle with this question while researching the quotidian lives of African women and their daughters, in slavery and precarious freedom, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Saidiya Hartman, in her essay “Venus in Two Acts,” reminds us to respect the “shrieks, the moans, the nonsense and the opacity,” of their experiences despite the want, … Continue reading The Ethics of Narrating the Past – Sherri V. Cummings

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Facing the Archive from the Present, Roundtables, Special Features

Cultivating Curiosity: Phillis Wheatley in Newport – Michael Monescalchi

To more imaginatively engage with the early American archive, I think that we should go into every archive—and approach every text we read—without any kind of wishful thinking. Instead, we should be open-minded and curious about what we uncover. One of the ways that I’ve been able to enhance my curiosity is to move beyond the individual writers I research and learn more about the … Continue reading Cultivating Curiosity: Phillis Wheatley in Newport – Michael Monescalchi

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Special Features, Teaching EAS

Teaching EAS: Rachel Herrmann’s “Consider the Source: An 1800 Maroon Treaty”

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: … Continue reading Teaching EAS: Rachel Herrmann’s “Consider the Source: An 1800 Maroon Treaty”

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Interviews

Interview with Jordan B. Smith, Wayne D. Rasmussen Award Recipient

Why did you choose to research the making of rum in Barbados? What led you to explore the role of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans in the creation of rum? This article is part of a larger project examining the invention of rum and its emergence as a quintessentially Atlantic commodity in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Atlantic world. The project has several inspirations. One was … Continue reading Interview with Jordan B. Smith, Wayne D. Rasmussen Award Recipient

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Source Highlights, Special Features

What is an Early American Treaty? – Rachel B. Herrmann

In the summer of 2011, I was in the National Archives in Kew, London, to read papers in the Sierra Leone Original Correspondence collection. I was researching a dissertation that became a book about hunger and the American Revolution, when I did something that most historians have done.1 I read a document that was peripherally related to my research, recorded some initial observations, and moved … Continue reading What is an Early American Treaty? – Rachel B. Herrmann

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Resource Guides

Sugar and Slaves Resource Guide

As we mark  the 50th anniversary of Richard S. Dunn’s path-breaking book Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713, we wish to draw attention to the myriad ways Dunn’s work influenced subsequent scholars in the field, including many Early American Studies authors. Dunn’s pioneering social history on the English West Indies not only depicted the rise of … Continue reading Sugar and Slaves Resource Guide

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