The English Empire in America, 1602–1658:
Beyond Jamestown
L H Roper
Empires in Perspective
Hb: c.256pp: March 2009
978 1 85196 992 0: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
This study situates the colonisation of Virginia, the centrepiece of early English overseas settlement activity, in the social and political landscape of the early seventeenth century. Roper explores how the early development of the colony was viewed from both sides of the Atlantic, using the documentary record of key figures in the Virginia Company, as well as the colonisers themselves. He paints a vivid picture of a political culture characterised by patronage, the pursuit of personal agendas and fierce grappling for factional advantage, as ‘Old World’ political behaviour was successfully transplanted to the colony. At the same time however, he shows how local concerns and identity competed with the Stuart monarchy’s attempts to centralise state affairs on the other side of the Atlantic.
Roper rejects the prevailing view of the early colonisers, the Virginia Company and Crown ministers as bumbling incompetents whose mismanagement nearly caused the failure of the Jamestown project. Rather, he argues, they had a clear sense of purpose for the colony, and successfully adapted and crafted inherited political systems to a very new situation.
The American Colonies and the British Empire, 1607–1783
Editor: Steven Sarson
Consulting Editor: Jack P Greene
Part I: Volumes 1–4: c.1600pp: May 2009
978 1 85196 948 7: 234x156mm: £350.00/$625.00
Part II: Volumes 5–8: c.1600pp: April 2010
978 1 85196 949 4: 234x156mm: £350.00/$625.00
This eight-volume edition traces the evolution of imperial and colonial ideologies during the British colonisation of America. It covers the period from the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia in 1607 to the end of the American Revolutionary War in 1783. At the start of the seventeenth century, colonies were largely autonomous private enterprises. Over time, however, British governments grew more interventionist as they became increasingly alarmed by the colonists’ economic and political liberties.
The works covers a wide range of ideas on empire and colonies from both sides of the Atlantic. Varied and often incompatible imperial and colonial ideas were espoused by British political economists, politicians, administrators, colonial governors and other officials, as well as by colonists. Sources include pamphlets, reports, sermons and letters. Almost all the texts are reproduced in full.
The edition benefits from a general introduction, introductions to Parts I & II, headnotes, endnotes and a consolidated index in the final volume. The editorial material takes into account recent intellectual, theoretical and methodological approaches pioneered in empire studies. This edition will be important for scholars of Atlantic History, American and British History and Empire Studies.
• Over fifty complete texts set early American history within the colonial context
• Contains new transcriptions of previously unpublished and difficult-to-access manuscript material
• Sources are drawn from archives in the US and the UK
• New editorial apparatus includes a general introduction, introductions to Parts I & II, headnotes and endnotes
• Consolidated index in the final volume
Thomas Paine and America, 1776-1809
Editor: Kenneth W Burchell
6 Volume Set: c.2400pp: June 2009
978 1 85196 964 7: 234x156mm: £495.00/$840.00
From his migration to America in 1774 to his death in New York City in 1809, Thomas Paine’s ideology was at the centre of American political and social debate. In fact, his ideological influence is still felt in modern-day America. His pro-Independence pamphlet, Common Sense (1776) convinced many colonists to reject monarchy and Englishmen’s rights in favour of a broader interpretation of republicanism and the natural rights of mankind. Famously, General George Washington ordered that Paine’s inspirational American Crisis (1776) be read to his troops before the Battle of Trenton, which helped turn the tide at a critical juncture in the War of Independence.
This six-volume facsimile edition brings together rare texts from books, periodicals and newspaper contributions to unearth the contemporary American response to Thomas Paine. Responses to Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason and Letter to George Washington are included.
This edition complements Pickering & Chatto’s highly successful editions on eighteenth-century radical thought, including The Political Writings of the 1790s. It will be important for scholars of Eighteenth-Century Studies, American History, Radical History and Political Science.
• First major collection to explore the American response to Thomas Paine
• Full editorial apparatus includes a general introduction, headnotes, endnotes and a consolidated index in the final volume
• Each facsimile page is digitally cleaned and enhanced, significantly improving on the quality and legibility of the original text
Slavery in North America:
From the Colonial Period to Emancipation
General Editor: Mark M Smith
Volume Editors: Peter S Carmichael, Timothy Lockley and Jonathan Daniel Wells
4 Volume Set: c.1600pp: December 2008
978 1 85196 966 1: 234x156mm: £350.00/$625.00
From the founding of Jamestown to the American Civil War, slavery and abolition shaped American national, regional and racial identities. Even now, slavery and its legacy remains the most emotive and divisive aspect of US history.
This four-volume reset edition draws together rare sources relating to American slavery systems. The chronological spread of sources reveals changes in the material and intellectual underpinnings of slavery over time. Moreover, the arrangement of the sources reveal the geographical diversity of slavery across North America, and offer scholars access to the experience of a wide range of constituencies from slaves and slave-owners, through abolitionists and pro-slavery ideologues, to travellers and plantation visitors. The complicated role that slavery played in the ideological construction of Confederate nationhood is also explored. The texts included in this edition are rare and difficult-to-access or are transcribed from manuscripts for the first time.
The edition includes extensive editorial material including a general introduction, volume introductions, headnotes, endnotes and a consolidated index in the final volume. It will be vital for scholars of the History of Slavery, the History of Abolitionism and American History.
• Draws together a wide range of previously uncollected and rare sources
• Thirty-eight texts are reproduced in full
• Several manuscript sources are transcribed for the first time
• Full editorial apparatus includes a general introduction, volume introductions, headnotes and endnotes
• Consolidated index in the final volume
The Rise and Fall of the American System:
Nationalism and the Development of the American Economy, 1800–1837
Songho Ha
Financial History
Hb: c.256pp: September 2009
978 1 85196 999 9: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
The American System was implemented by the US government after the American-British War of 1812 to develop a national domestic market. This study explores the rise and fall of the system between the end of the war in 1815 and the Panic of 1837. Ha argues that the American System started as an expression of American nationalism but resulted in intensifying sectional conflicts within the young republic. It was only implemented in minor cases and a truly national market failed to emerge. In 1840, the South bought just 8% of the East’s production and even less of the West’s. Focusing on the political aspects of the American System, Ha investigates the underlying causes of its failure.
Readership
Economic History, Political History, American History
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: What was the American System?
Chapter 2: Emergence of the American System: 1800–15
Chapter 3: Growth of the American System and Emerging Sectional Crisis over Slavery: 1815–24
Chapter 4: Implementation of the American System: 1824–29
Chapter 5: Decline and Demise of the American System, 1829–37
Chapter 6: Conclusion: The American System and American Society and Economy, 1800–37
The Enlightenment in America, 1720–1825
Editor: Jose R. Torre
Given the significance the new world held in the minds of Enlightenment thinkers, it is remarkable that scholars have not more fully documented the Enlightenment in America. So far, the body of work on the American Enlightenment has focused almost exclusively on two areas – politics and religion. In contrast, scholars have paid little attention to the polyglot efforts of American doctors, scientists, engineers, botanists, poets and other Enlightenment actors. Enlightenment in America fills this significant gap in the discourse.
It seeks to more fully define and identify the Enlightenment in America. Over the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries, Americans were fascinated by the exciting developments in botany, husbandry, medicine and other pursuits. While these narratives are not unknown to specialists, many scholars and students have no available set of sources to draw these seemingly disparate efforts together. Highlighting these efforts will firmly place the American Enlightenment alongside its brethren in the Atlantic Enlightenment.
Enlightenment in America will modify the periodization for the American Enlightenment. Americans did accept an early and moderate Enlightenment characterised by the work of Locke and Newton. The collection highlights the uniquely functional nature of the Enlightenment in America. For Enlightenment era thinkers knowledge could not be divorced from utility. This goal seems to have been most fully realized in the United States. By highlighting both the material and intellectual elements of the Enlightenment, Enlightenment in America will help re-conceptualise the Enlightenment as more than an intellectual idea.
ContentsPublication details
4 Volume Set: c.1600pp: June 2008
978 1 85196 936 4: 234x156mm: £350.00/$650.00
British and American Letter Manuals, 1680–1810
4 Volume Set
Editor: Eve Tavor Bannet
In 1687, John Hill recommended that in the face of emigration, colonization and a growing transatlantic market, letter manuals should disseminate letter-writing skills throughout the Atlantic world, making it possible to maintain a ‘good correspondency’ with provincial outposts, commercial contacts, and distant family or friends. During the next century, letter manuals became the most popular form of conduct literature. They were marketed to and used by a wide spectrum of society, from maidservants and apprentices, through military officers and merchants, to gentlemen, courting couples, parents and children. This four-volume facsimile edition makes available the most influential manuals from both sides of the Atlantic.
Letter manuals taught their readers conventions and practices of letter writing and reading designed to overcome regional differences in language and culture and to create a single standard of polite communication. At the same time, London manuals were transformed and adapted to local needs and tastes throughout the Atlantic world, by regional printers who made Scottish and American manuals a proto-nationalist genre.
Modern readers can use letter manuals to learn the commonplaces which correspondents were taught to repeat and vary in their own letters, and to see how departures from these commonplaces functioned as significant statement. These conventions were familiar to writers from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, and Samuel Richardson to Walter Scott. The edition will be vital to scholars interested in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Atlantic History, History of the Book and Reading.
- The first thematic edition of letter manuals - an overlooked genre which was aimed at social classes ignored by more familiar conduct literature
- Demonstrates how letter manuals reflected and created local difference on either side of the Atlantic
- Can be used as an interpretative guide for analysing historical letters and epistolatory novels
New editorial material includes a general introduction, volume introductions, headnotes, endnotes and a consolidated index
Editor
Eve Tavor Bennet is at the University of Oklahoma
Publication details
4 Volume Set: 1712pp: February 2008
978 1 85196 918 0: 234x156mm: £350.00/$595.00
British Pamphlets on the American Revolution, 1763–1785
Editor: Harry T. Dickinson
From the end of the Seven Years War to the British acceptance of complete American Independence, British colonial policy was the subject of an intense print debate on both sides of the Atlantic. Until now, scholarly attention has focused on the American literature. This eight volume facsimile edition of selected rare British pamphlets widens the debate.
British opinion on the American crisis was sharply divided. What was the constitutional legitimacy of Britain’s American policies? Should the colonies be forcefully subdued? Should their bid for independence continue unopposed? Or should peaceful attempts at reconciliation aim to keep them within the British Empire? If the colonies were lost, what would the consequences be for Britain?
The pamphlets reproduced here represent the multi-faceted debate on both sides of the political divide in Britain. They are organised chronologically in two parts, taking the start of American armed resistance in 1775 as the dividing point. All of these rare documents are republished for the first time and are reproduced in full.
The edition will be of interest to those studying American Studies, British Studies, Empire and Colonial History, Atlantic Studies, and Eighteenth Century History.
* Editorial matter includes a general introduction, introductions to each part, headnotes to each pamphlet, endnotes, a chronology to each part, and a consolidated index
* The first time these rare documents have been republished
* All texts reproduced in full
* Sourced from libraries in the US and the UK
* Each facsimile page is digitally cleaned and enhanced, significantly improving on the quality and legibility of the original
Contents
Publication details
Part I: Volumes 1–4: 1760pp: May 2007
978 1 85196 886 2: 234x156mm: £350.00/$595.00
978 1 85196 887 9: 234x156mm: £350.00/$595.00
Gilbert Imlay: Citizen of the World
Wil Verhoeven
This monograph is the first book-length biography of the American Gilbert Imlay (?1754–?1828), Revolutionary War veteran, land-jobber, travel-writer, novelist, entrepreneur, agent provocateur – and infamous lover of Mary Wollstonecraft. The book concerns an Imlay little known to those working in Romantic Studies, so includes a reconstruction of Imlay’s early life in New Jersey; an account of his activities as a land speculator; the intriguing relations he had with a spate of historical characters; and his involvement with the Girondist government’s plans to launch a revolt in the Western Territory against the US to destabilize Spanish rule in Louisiana. Previously undocumented details of Imlay’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade are also included.
Though his life provides a fascinating biography in its own right, the book highlights how Imlay unwittingly acted as an intermediary between figures of greater significance, whose diverse ideas, ambitions and schemes he frequently borrowed and disseminated across the Atlantic and across continents, whilst invariably serving his own interests.
Much of the text is based on original documentary sources (including Imlay’s largely unknown letters), gathered from a variety of rare book and manuscript collections. It will be of interest to scholars of Romanticism, politics, biography and book history.
Wil Verhoeven is professor of American culture at the University of Groningen. In 2002-3 he held the Charles H. Watts chair in the history of the book and historical bibliography at Brown University. His publications include two edited collections: Revolutionary Histories: Transatlantic Cultural Nationalism, 1775-1815 (Palgrave, 2002) and Epistolary Histories: Letters, Fiction, Culture (with Amanda Gilroy; University of Virginia Press, 1999). He is general editor of a series of anti-Jacobin novels for Pickering & Chatto (2005), and has also edited George Walker’s The Vagabond (Broadview Press, 2004) and co-edited Gilbert Imlay’s The Emigrants (with Amanda Gilroy; Viking Penguin, 1998). He is currently writing a monograph on British radicals and American land speculators, American Arcadia: Transatlantic Emigration and British Radicalism, 1789-1800, and is general editor of The Novels and Selected Plays of Thomas Holcroft for Pickering & Chatto (forthcoming).
ContentsPublication details
Hb: c.256pp: February 2008
978 1 85196 859 6: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
Teaching Bibliography, Textual Criticism, and Book History
Edited by Ann R Hawkins, Texas Tech University
Book history has developed in recent years as an increasingly dynamic, cross-disciplinary endeavour. Building on the widespread interest in material culture, visual culture, and media studies, a new vitality has been brought to this area of research.
Teaching Bibliography, Textual Criticism, and Book History, an exciting and original new monograph, offers a variety of approaches to incorporating discussions of book history or print culture into graduate and undergraduate classrooms. Through twenty-five collected essays, it considers the book as a literary, historical, cultural, and aesthetic object.
Given the growing popularity of book history across numerous fields, this collection represents many viewpoints and diverse backgrounds. The essays will therefore appeal to university teachers incorporating textual studies and research methods into their courses, either as a component or as a central focus.
Contributors:
Martin Antonetti, Smith College; Susanna Ashton, Clemson University; Timothy Barrett, University of Iowa Center for the Book; Terry Belanger, University of Virginia Rare Book School; Lisa Berglund, Buffalo State University; John Buchtel, Johns Hopkins University; Bruce Cammack, Texas Tech University; Tatjana Chorney, Saint Mary’s University, Canada; Jean Lee Cole, Loyola College in Maryland; Erik Delfino, Catholic University of America; Mirjam Foot, University College, London; Ian Gadd, Bath Spa University College; Sean Grass, Texas Tech University; R. Carter Hailey, The College of William and Mary; Maura Ives, Texas A & M University; Erick Kelemen, Independent Scholar; Thomas Kinsella, Richard Stockton College; Matthew Kirschenbaum, University of Maryland, College Park; D W Krummel, University of Illinois at Urbana; Jennifer Phegley, University of Missouri, Kansas City; John T Shawcross, University of Kentucky; Sydney Shep, Wai-te-ata Press at Victoria University of Wellington; Steven Escar Smith, Texas A & M University; Willman Spawn, Bryn Mawr College; Deirdre Stam, Long Island University; Daniel Traister, University of Pennsylvania.
ContentsPublication details
1 85196 834 2: Hb: £60/$99
199pp: 234x156mm: June 2006
Women
Writing Home, 1700–1920
6 Volume Set
General Editor: Klaus Stierstorfer
Volume Editors: Deirdre Coleman, Cecily Devereux, Susan Imbarrato, Charlotte J
Macdonald, Klaus Stierstorfer, Silke Strickrodt and Kathleen Venema
Women Writing Home assembles a wide range of women’s letters from the former British Empire, in the most comprehensive, modern and scholarly reset edition to date.
These letters ‘written home’ are not only straightforward historical sources; they are also representations of the state of the Empire in far-off lands sent home to Britain and, occasionally, other centres established as ‘home’. The letters reveal the many different ways in which women perceived colonial society. Sometimes the new context offered opportunities unavailable at home but often these letter-writing women pined for what they had left behind.
Organised by geographical region, the set pays close attention to the regional and local specificities of colonial situations in various parts of the British Empire: from the settler colonies of North America, Australia and New Zealand to the isolated military and administrative outposts in Asia and the complex ethnic and economic situation of South Africa.
These six volumes of letters are an important research tool for those working in a wide range of disciplines, from history to economics, from literature to cultural and gender studies.
Most of the letters have never before been published
Based on new transcriptions of manuscript sources from archives around the world
Consolidated index
Contents
Volume 1: Africa, edited by Silke Strickrodt
Volume 2: Australia, edited by Deirdre Coleman
Volume 3: Canada, edited by Cecily Devereux and Kathleen Venema
Volume 4: India, edited by Klaus Stierstorfer
Volume 5: Volume 5: New Zealand, edited by Charlotte J Macdonald
Volume 6: USA, edited by Susan Imbarrato
Editorial board
Klaus Stierstorfer at the University of Münster
Deirdre Coleman is at the University of Sydney
Cecily Devereux is at the University of Alberta
Susan Imbarrato is at Minnesota State University, Moorhead
Charlotte J Macdonald is at the Victoria University of Wellington
Silke Strickrodt is at the Humboldt-University Berlin
Kathleen Venema is at the University of Winnipeg
6 Volume Set: 2166pp: 2006
978 1 85196 793 3: 234x156mm: £495.00/$840.00
Early American Economic Thought
Series Editors: William J Barber, Malcolm Rutherford,
Steven G Medema, Marianne Johnson and Warren J Samuels
Historians of America and economic historians will find much to interest them in this innovative selection of texts from early America. The birth of America as a major presence in world economics is the theme of the series, in which we present a comprehensive picture of early American society through the writings of ordinary citizens and figures of authority from the earliest settlers onwards. Authors range from seventeenth century preachers to professional economists in the late nineteenth century.
Many of the texts included in the series are very rare and difficult to locate. These volumes will thus allow academics to view a broad range of primary resource texts, offering a new perspective on the events and themes of the period. The themes that run through the edition are still much in evidence in today's public debate, including monetary policy, taxation, free trade and the economic rights of individuals.
The series is divided chronologically into three sets, covering the early colonial period through to 1900.
Each set has a general introduction
Texts reproduced in facsimile
Accompanying headnotes
Every set indexed
Contents
Editorial board
Warren J Samuels is at Michigan State University. His publications include The Classical Theory of Economic Policy (1966)
Marianne Johnson is at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh
William J Barber is at Wesleyan University, and his publications include A History of Economic Thought (1967)
Malcolm Rutherford is at the University of Victoria. His publications include Institutions in Economics: the old and the new institutionalism (1994)
Steven G Medema is at the University of Colorado, Denver and is author of Ronald H Coase (1994)
Reviews
'...ideal for any library wishing to strengthen its holdings in the history of economics...'
– Robert Whaples, CHOICE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7405 1005
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7405 6216
Email: sales@pickering.chatto.com
Website: www.pickeringchatto.com
August 13, 2008