Slave Captain
The Career of James Irving in the Liverpool Slave Trade
James Irving edited by Suzanne Schwarz
Distributed for Liverpool University Press
Synopsis
One of the very few firsthand accounts written by a Liverpool slave ship captain to have survived, this unique and fascinating primary source navigates the reader through the remarkable story of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship captain who was shipwrecked off the coast of Morocco and subsequently enslaved. Schwarz skillfully supplements Irving’s personal journal and letters with useful notes, making this an essential volume for anyone interested in the relationship between the slave trade and the British Empire. Slave Captain is a compelling narrative that will be welcomed by the general reader and scholars alike.
Part One: James Irving’s Career
Introduction
I - Early Career in the Liverpool Slave Trade
II - Irving’s Voyages in the Transatlantic Slave Trade
III - Shipwreck and Enslavement
IV- Freedom and Return to England
Conclusion
Part Two: James Irving’s Correspondence, 1786-1791.
Part Three: Journal of James Irving’s Shipwreck and Ensla
Bio
Suzanne Schwarz is associate professor of history at Liverpool Hope University and the coeditor of Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery.
Cloth $35.00
ISBN: 9781846310676 Published June 2008
For sale in North America only
British Trade with Spanish America, 1763 to 1808
Adrian Pearce with a Foreword by John R. Fisher
Synopsis
In this detailed and accessible volume, Adrian Pearce presents the first major study of British trade with the Spanish colonies to appear in half a century. This landmark analysis traces the development of British commercial relations with Spanish America during a historically-crucial period—the late-eighteenth century, and in particular, the French Revolutionary wars. A rich synthesis of secondary literature as well as a step forward toward understanding the economics of imperialism, British Trade with Spanish America looks to become the standard treatment of its topic in the years to come.
Introductory Essay by Professor John R. Fisher
1. The Origins of British Trade with the Spanish Colonies, Sixteenth Century to 1763
2. The ‘Spanish Trade’, 1763 – 1783: Geographical Expansion and the Free Ports
3. The Comercio de Colonias and the Consolidation of the Free Port System, 1783 – 1796
4. Trade during Wartime (1796 – 1808): The Spanish Licensed Trade in the British West Indies
5. Trade during Wartime (1796 – 1808): British Contraband and the Spanish-American Perspective
6. Trade during Wartime (1796 – 1808): Neutral Trade, the Bullion Contracts, and the ‘Secret Trade’
7. Conclusions
Maps
Statistical Appendix: British Trade with the Spanish Colonies, 1788-1795
Note on Archival Sources
Bibliography for the Study of British Trade with the Spanish Colonies
Bio
Adrian Pearce is a lecturer in Latin American history at Nottingham Trent University.
Series: Liverpool University Press - Liverpool Latin American Studies
Cloth $85.00
ISBN: 9781846311130 Published March 2008
For sale in North America only
Genres of the Credit Economy
Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain
Mary Poovey
Synopsis
How did banking, borrowing, investing, and even losing money—in other words, participating in the modern financial system—come to seem like routine activities of everyday life? Genres of the Credit Economy addresses this question by examining the history of financial instruments and representations of finance in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.
Chronicling the process by which some of our most important conceptual categories were naturalized, Mary Poovey explores complex relationships among forms of writing that are not usually viewed together, from bills of exchange and bank checks, to realist novels and Romantic poems, to economic theory and financial journalism. Taking up all early forms of financial and monetary writing, Poovey argues that these genres mediated for early modern Britons the operations of a market system organized around credit and debt. By arguing that genre is a critical tool for historical and theoretical analysis and an agent in the events that formed the modern world, Poovey offers a new way to appreciate the character of the credit economy and demonstrates the contribution historians and literary scholars can make to understanding its operations.
Much more than an exploration of writing on and around money, Genres of the Credit Economy offers startling insights about the evolution of disciplines and the separation of factual and fictional genres.
Bio
Mary Poovey is the Samuel Rudin Professor in the Humanities and professor of English at New York University and author of, most recently, A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society.
Cloth $59.00
ISBN: 9780226675329 Published April 2008
Paper $24.00
ISBN: 9780226675336 Published April 2008
Liverpool and Transatlantic Slavery
Edited by David Richardson, and Anthony Tibbles and Suzanne Schwarz
Distributed for Liverpool University Press
Synopsis
As Britain’s dominant port for the slave trade in the eighteenth century, Liverpool is crucial to the study of slavery. And as the engine behind Liverpool’s rapid growth and prosperity, slavery left an indelible mark on the history of the city. This collection of essays, boasting an international roster of leading scholars in the field, sets Liverpool in the wider context of transatlantic slavery. The contributors tackle a range of issues, including African agency, slave merchants and their society, and the abolitionist movement, always with an emphasis on the human impact of slavery.
Bio
David Richardson is professor of economic history at the University of Hull and coeditor of Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity, and Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Anthony Tibbles is Keeper of the Merseyside Maritime Museum.
Suzanne Schwarz is professor of history at Liverpool Hope University and author of Slave Captain: The Career of James Irving, soon to be republished by Liverpool University Press.
Cloth $75.00
ISBN: 9781846310669 Published March 2008
Maps: Finding Our Place in the World.
Foreword by John McCarter.
Akerman, James R. and Robert W. Karrow, Jr., editors
Maps are universal forms of communication, easily understood and appreciated regardless of culture or language. This truly magisterial book introduces readers to the widest range of maps ever considered in one volume: maps from different time periods and a variety of cultures; maps made for divergent purposes and depicting a range of environments; and maps that embody the famous, the important, the beautiful, the groundbreaking, or the amusing. Built around the functions of maps—the kinds of things maps do and have done—Maps confirms the vital role of maps throughout history in commerce, art, literature, and national identity.
The book begins by examining the use of maps for wayfinding, revealing that even maps as common and widely used as these are the product of historical circumstances and cultural differences. The second chapter considers maps whose makers employed the smallest of scales to envision the broadest of human stages—the world, the heavens, even the act of creation itself. The next chapter looks at maps that are, literally, at the opposite end of the scale from cosmological and world maps—maps that represent specific parts of the world and provide a close-up view of areas in which their makers lived, worked, and moved.
Having shown how maps help us get around and make sense of our greater and lesser worlds, Maps then turns to the ways in which certain maps can be linked to particular events in history, exploring how they have helped Americans, for instance, to understand their past, cope with current events, and plan their national future. The fifth chapter considers maps that represent data from scientific instruments, population censuses, and historical records. These maps illustrate, for example, how diseases spread, what the ocean floor looks like, and how the weather is tracked and predicted. Next comes a turn to the imaginary, featuring maps that depict entire fictional worlds, from Hell to Utopia and from Middle Earth to the fantasy game World of Warcraft. The final chapter traces the origins of map consumption throughout history and ponders the impact of cartography on modern society.
A companion volume to the most ambitious exhibition on the history of maps ever mounted in North America, Maps will challenge readers to stretch conventional thought about what constitutes a map and how many different ways we can understand graphically the environment in which we live. Collectors, historians, mapmakers and users, and anyone who has ever “gotten lost” in the lines and symbols of a map will find much to love and learn from in this book.
Co-published with the Field Museum. 336 p., 198 color plates. 8-1/2 x 11 2007
Cloth $55.00 ISBN: 978-0-226-01075-5 (ISBN-10: 0-226-01075-9) Fall 2007
Building the Devil's Empire: French Colonial New Orleans
by Shannon Lee Dawdy
Two years ago, the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina inspired emotional elegies to the long and colorful history of New Orleans. But until now, the story of French New Orleans has remained largely untold. Building the Devil’s Empire is the first comprehensive history of the city’s early years, tracing the town’s development from its origins in 1718 as an imperial experiment in urban planning through its revolt against Spanish rule in 1768.
Shannon Lee Dawdy’s picaresque account of New Orleans’s wild youth features a cast of strong-willed captives, thin-skinned nobles, sharp-tongued women, and carousing travelers, as well as the sounds and smells that created the texture of everyday life there. During the French period, the city earned its reputation as the devil’s town, where laws were lax and pleasures abundant. Though New Orleans’s roguish character is sometimes exaggerated, Dawdy traces its early roots in the city’s political independence, active smuggling rings, and peculiar demographics—a diverse mix of Africans, Indians, Europeans, and Creoles all involved in the contentious process of building a new society. Dawdy also widens her lens to reveal the port city’s global significance, examining its role in the French Empire and the Caribbean, and she concludes that by exemplifying a kind of rogue colonialism—where governments, outlaws, and capitalism become entwined—New Orleans should prompt us to reconsider our notions of how colonialism works.
By the end of the French period, New Orleans was one of the most modern—and most American—towns in the New World. As the city enters a new phase in its history, Building the Devil’s Empire paints a rich and thoughtful portrait of its founding.
336 p., 7 color plates, 8 halftones, 5 maps, 1 figure, 2 tables. 6 x 9 2008
Cloth $35.00spec ISBN: 978-0-226-13841-1 (ISBN-10: 0-226-13841-0) Spring 2008
The Slave Trade Debate: Contemporary Writings For and Against
Bodleian Library, editor
Distributed for the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
More than fifty years before the question of slavery launched the United States into the bloody turmoil of the American Civil War, Britain wrestled passionately with the same issues. A flood of pamphlets published by both abolitionists and slavery proponents fueled the debate, and they are now collected here in this fascinating volume in commemoration of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, 1807.
Written during the 1780s and 1790s, the pamphlets confront the issues surrounding slavery, such as the Rights of Man, the economic health of the British colonies, poverty in England, and, most prominently, the economic and moral condition of the African slaves. The authors on both sides of the debate—including such prominent figures as the eventual King William IV, Sir John Gladstone (father of the future Prime Minister William Gladstone), and the leading abolitionist William Wilberforce—draw upon biblical scriptures to justify their positions, providing illuminating insights into the theological debates of the time as well. Also included in the volume are an excerpt of abolitionist James Ramsay’s journal and an informative introduction that places the writings in their historical and social contexts. The Slave Trade Debate is an essential resource for scholars of transatlantic slavery and British history.
398 p. 5 x 7-3/4 2007
Paper NAM $25.00sp ISBN: 978-1-85124-316-7 (ISBN-10: 1-85124-316-X) Spring 2007
Cartographies of Travel and Navigation
Akerman, James R., editor
Series: (NLHC) The Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography
Finding one’s way with a map is a relatively recent phenomenon. In premodern times, maps were used, if at all, mainly for planning journeys in advance, not for guiding travelers on the road. With the exception of navigational sea charts, the use of maps by travelers only became common in the modern era; indeed, in the last two hundred years, maps have become the most ubiquitous and familiar genre of modern cartography.
Examining the historical relationship between travelers, navigation, and maps, Cartographies of Travel and Navigation considers the cartographic response to the new modalities of modern travel brought about by technological and institutional developments in the twentieth century. Highlighting the ways in which the travelers, operators, and planners of modern transportation systems value maps as both navigation tools and as representatives of a radical new mobility, this collection brings the cartography of travel—by road, sea, rail, and air—to the forefront, placing maps at the center of the history of travel and movement.
Richly and colorfully illustrated, Cartographies of Travel and Navigation ably fills the void in historical literature on transportation mapping.
344 p., 11 color plates, 81 halftones, 4 line drawings. 6 x 92006 Series: (NLHC) The Kenneth Nebenzahl, Jr., Lectures in the History of Cartography
Cloth $55.00spec ISBN: 978-0-226-01074-8 (ISBN-10: 0-226-01074-0) Fall 2006
The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America.
Richard B. Sher
The late eighteenth century witnessed an explosion of intellectual activity in Scotland by such luminaries as David Hume, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, James Boswell, and Robert Burns. And the books written by these seminal thinkers made a significant mark during their time in almost every field of polite literature and higher learning throughout Britain, Europe, and the Americas.
In this magisterial history, Richard B. Sher breaks new ground for our understanding of the Enlightenment and the forgotten role of publishing during that period. The Enlightenment and the Book seeks to remedy the common misperception that such classics as The Wealth of Nations and The Life of Samuel Johnson were written by authors who eyed their publishers as minor functionaries in their profession. To the contrary, Sher shows how the process of bookmaking during the late eighteenth-century involved a deeply complex partnership between authors and their publishers, one in which writers saw the book industry not only as pivotal in the dissemination of their ideas, but also as crucial to their dreams of fame and monetary gain. Similarly, Sher demonstrates that publishers were involved in the project of bookmaking in order to advance human knowledge as well as to accumulate profits.
The Enlightenment and the Book explores this tension between creativity and commerce that still exists in scholarly publishing today. Lavishly illustrated and elegantly conceived, it will be must reading for anyone interested in the history of the book or the production and diffusion of Enlightenment thought.
842 p., 45 halftones, 16 line drawings, 7 tables. 6 x 9 2006
Cloth $40.00 ISBN: 978-0-226-75252-5 (ISBN-10: 0-226-75252-6) Fall 2006
Reconstructing the Commercial Republic: Constitutional Design after Madison.
Stephen L. Elkin
James Madison is the thinker most responsible for laying the groundwork of the American commercial republic. But he did not anticipate that the propertied class on which he relied would become extraordinarily politically powerful at the same time as its interests narrowed. This and other flaws, argues Stephen L. Elkin, have undermined the delicately balanced system he constructed. In Reconstructing the Commercial Republic, Elkin critiques the Madisonian system, revealing which of its aspects have withstood the test of time and which have not.
The deficiencies Elkin points out provide the starting point for his own constitutional theory of the republic—a theory that, unlike Madison’s, lays out a substantive conception of the public interest that emphasizes the power of institutions to shape our political, economic, and civic lives. Elkin argues that his theory should guide us toward building a commercial republic that is rooted in a politics of the public interest and the self-interest of the middle class. He then recommends specific reforms to create this kind of republic, asserting that Americans today can still have the lives a commercial republic is intended to promote: lives with real opportunities for economic prosperity, republican political self-government, and individual liberty.
416 p. 6 x 9 2006
Cloth $35.00spec 0-226-20134-1 Spring 2006
Financial Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America Rich
Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen
When you think of the founding fathers, you think of men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin—exceptional minds and matchless statesmen who led the colonies to a seemingly impossible victory over the British and established the constitutional and legal framework for our democratic government. But the American Revolution was about far more than freedom and liberty. It was about economics as well.
Robert E. Wright and David J. Cowen here chronicle how a different group of founding fathers forged the wealth and institutions necessary to transform the American colonies from a diffuse alliance of contending business interests into one cohesive economic superpower. From Alexander Hamilton to Andrew Jackson, the authors focus on the lives of nine Americans in particular—some famous, some unknown, others misunderstood, but all among our nation’s financial founding fathers. Such men were instrumental in creating and nurturing a financial system that drove economic growth in the nascent United States because they were quick to realize that wealth was as crucial as the Constitution in securing the blessings of liberty and promoting the general welfare. The astonishing economic development made possible by our financial founding fathers was indispensable to the preservation of national unity and of support for a government that was then still a profoundly radical and delicate political experiment.
Grand in scope and vision, Financial Founding Fathers is an entertaining and inspiring history of the men who made America rich and steered her toward greatness.
216 p. 6 x 9 2006
Cloth $25.00 0-226-91068-7 Spring 2006
American Taxation, American Slavery
Robin L. Einhorn
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the war for independence may have been long over, but the true conclusion to the American Revolution was still being written. The choices in the 1800 election could not have been starker: Federalist John Adams prized the need for strong central government and national unity. Republican populist Thomas Jefferson championed weaker government, states’ rights, and individual liberties. Or so we think. American Taxation, American Slavery casts the Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800 in a dramatically different light, tracing the enduring appeal of antigovernment rhetoric in the United States to slavery rather than to love of liberty and freedom.
We are all familiar with the states’ rights arguments of proslavery politicians who wanted to keep the federal government weak and decentralized. But here Robin Einhorn shows the deep, broad, and continuous influence of slavery on this idea in American politics. From the earliest colonial times right up to the Civil War, slaveholding elites feared strong and democratic government as a threat to the institution of slavery. American Taxation, American Slavery shows how their heated battles over taxation, the power to tax, and the distribution of tax burdens were rooted not in debates over personal liberty but rather in the rights of slaveholders to hold human beings as property. Along the way, Einhorn exposes the antidemocratic origins of the enduringly popular Jeffersonian rhetoric about weak government, showing that state governments were actually more democratic—and stronger—where most people were free.
A strikingly original look at the role of slavery in the making of the United States, American Taxation, American Slavery will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of American government and politics.352 p., 6 line drawings, 2 maps, 10 tables. 6 x 9 2006
Cloth $35.00 0-226-19487-6 Spring 2006
The First Wall Street: Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, and the Birth of American Finance
Robert E. Wright
When Americans think of investment and finance, they think of Wall Street—though this was not always the case. During the dawn of the Republic, Philadelphia was the center of American finance. The first stock exchange in the nation was founded there in 1790, and around it the bustling thoroughfare known as Chestnut Street was home to the nation's most powerful financial institutions.
The First Wall Street recounts the fascinating history of Chestnut Street and its forgotten role in the birth of American finance. According to Robert E. Wright, Philadelphia, known for its cultivation of liberty and freedom, blossomed into a financial epicenter during the nation's colonial period. The continent's most prodigious minds and talented financiers flocked to Philly in droves, and by the eve of the Revolution, the Quaker City was the most financially sophisticated region in North America. The First Wall Street reveals how the city played a leading role in the financing of the American Revolution and emerged from that titanic struggle with not just the wealth it forged in the crucible of war, but an invaluable amount of human capital as well.
This capital helped make Philadelphia home to the Bank of the United States, the U.S. Mint, an active securities exchange, and several banks and insurance companies—all clustered in or around Chestnut Street. But as the decades passed, financial institutions were lured to New York, and by the late 1820s only the powerful Second Bank of the United States upheld Philadelphia's financial stature. But when Andrew Jackson vetoed its charter, he sealed the fate of Chestnut Street forever—and of Wall Street too.
Finely nuanced and elegantly written, The First Wall Street will appeal to anyone interested in the history of the United States and the origins of its unrivaled economy.
218 p., 3 line drawings, 9 tables. 6 x 9 2005
Cloth $25.00 0-226-91026-1 Fall 2005
August 7, 2008