Today’s post is by David Chan Smith, author of “The Hudson’s Bay Company, Social Legitimacy, and the Political Economy of Eighteenth-Century Empire” in the January 2018 edition of the William and Mary Quarterly. The six reviewers! This was my first thought when asked how my article on the political economy of empire had changed from its initial submission… Read More
This is the second piece in a series of posts by Laurel Daen on the history of the copper and wood printing block process used to produce the William and Mary Quarterly until the mid-twentieth century. Laurel wrote the pieces in preparation for the OI’s 75th anniversary while she was Lapidus Initiative Communications Coordinator in 2016. A Look at Printing Illustrations… Read More
This past Saturday, the Virginia Consortium of Early Americanists convened for their fourth annual meeting at the University of Richmond. Founded in 2014 in order to provide a forum for the wealth of scholarship focused on early American history in Virginia, each year the program evolves and the number of attendees grows. To facilitate this process and continue… Read More
This post, by OI author Daniel Livesay, comes to us courtesy of the UNC Press blog. Daniel Livesay is the author of Children of Uncertain Fortune: Mixed-Race Jamaicans in Britain and the Atlantic Family, 1733-1833, published with our friends at the University of North Carolina Press. By tracing the largely forgotten eighteenth-century migration of elite mixed-race individuals from… Read More
The spring semester of the Omohundro Institute Colloquia series began last night with a presentation by Richard Godbeer of Virginia Commonwealth University. Four more colloqs will follow in the next few months. Here, W&M Ph.D. candidates Kristen Beales and Peter Olsen-Harbich share their takes on what value attending the sessions even though only postdoctoral work is presented. The… Read More
Our thanks to Laurel Daen for researching and writing this series of posts in preparation for the Omohundro Institute’s 75th anniversary while she was the Lapidus Initiative Communications Coordinator in 2016. A Look at Printing Illustrations in the WMQ in the Mid-Twentieth Century Part I In 2018, the OI celebrates its 75th anniversary. At this momentous occasion, it only… Read More
The Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture is delighted to announce that Catherine E. Kelly begins this month as our Editor of Books. Her appointment brings the OI’s books program into an exciting new era. Its deep traditions and reputation for excellent scholarship are a vital foundation for the innovations we seek to foster and support. Read More
Today’s post accompanies “Freedom and the American Revolution,” episode 166 of Ben Franklin’s World and part of the Doing History 2: To the Revolution! series. You can find supplementary materials for the episode on the OI Reader app, available through iTunes or Google Play. History is a primary context for every decision we make; our understanding of the past—our own as individuals and collectively—is background, framework, presumption, and rationale. It’s not always conscious, and it’s not always exact or even correct. But it is there, informing us. It isn’t the case, either, that history is inescapable, or the past makes any specific future inevitable. Individuals and communities large and small can make change happen suddenly or deliberately. But when we recognize change, it is because we know what came before. Read More
by Nadine Zimmerli, Associate Editor of Books "We had no ardent spirit of any kind among us" Member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, December 25, 1805 'Tis the season. I am daily reminded of this by cheerful notices in my inbox from my alma mater's bookstore and other retailers, which interrupt the steady flow of more relevant messages from OI authors and from colleagues at the University of North Carolina Press. The juxtaposition is a stark one, because the retail and the publishing messages structure my annual calendar in divergent, and conflicting, ways. Emails prompting me to buy gifts or to donate to charitable causes are centered on the upcoming holidays, culminating in celebratory gatherings with friends and family in late December. Work-related messages are focused on the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in early January (one of the most important conferences for editors) and a bi-annual marketing meeting at UNC Press the second week of January, when we'll discuss publication schedules and the best strategies for promoting Fall 2018 books. Even though academic life follows the well-known rhythms of the holidays, with the fall semester ending in mid-December, the festive season does not at all align with the rhythms of academic publishing. It even poses a bit of an unwelcome interruption right before two crucial meetings. Read More
Today’s post accompanies “The Age of Revolutions,” episode 165 of Ben Franklin’s World and part of the Doing History 2: To the Revolution! series. You can find supplementary materials for the episode on the OI Reader app, available through iTunes or Google Play. In February 1784, just over a month after the U.S. Congress had ratified the Treaty of Paris and proclaimed the end of the war for Independence, the ice damming New York’s harbor finally receded. In its wake came a small, square-sterned ship: the Empress of China.[1] What set the Empress apart from the other ships leaving New York that winter was its ambition. It was bound for Canton, China – Guangzhou – a port no other American ship had yet reached. Seeking that distant destination, the ship was loaded with more than just ginseng and Spanish dollars as it sailed down the East River; it bore Americans’ hopes for a new era of prosperity, too. Read More
Lauren Coats (Associate Professor of English and Director, Digital Scholarship Lab) and Andrew Sluyter (Professor of Geography and Anthropology) of Louisiana State University, in conjunction with LSU Libraries, received one of three awards made last year for the Lapidus Initiative Fellowships for Digital Collections. In concert with other OI projects promoting creative use of digital tools and materials,… Read More
Hamilton, a quintessentially American story, has arrived in London. While many American commenters and historians have focused on the “Ten Dollar Founding Father without a Father” and his compatriots, the racial politics of the founding period and the intentional casting of the musical, and the gendered politics of the Schuyler sisters and the Reynolds Affair, with Hamilton in London… Read More