Starting from a discussion of the constitutional and theological basis of the establishment of the Church of England, Peter Doll relates how in response to the events of this period a colonial Anglican church establishment changed from a merely theoretical ideal to a cornerstone of post-Revolutionary colonial policy in British North America."--BOOK JACKET.
In Catholic and French Forever Joseph Byrnes recounts the fights and reconciliations between French citizens who found Catholicism integral to their traditional French identity and those who found the continued presence of Catholicism an obstacle to both happiness and progress.
Afro-Cuban religions--especially the practice of santería, based on West African traditions--are an essential aspect of contemporary Cuban identity, Christine Ayorinde argues, and their existence has forced the current revolutionary state into bizarre and contradictory positions. Ayorinde's bold assertion confounds official pronouncements about the irrelevance of religion in a modern socialist state. The revolutionary leadership has acknowledged the centrality of Cuba's African heritage, while upholding the idea of a nationhood that transcends racial difference. Ayorinde proposes that the conflict between the desire to recognize the country's African roots and the official commitment to a secular state has created a complex, often paradoxical situation. Despite an ideological campaign to create a new, rational society, African-derived religions are emerging today for the first time from a position of marginality. Cuba now is beset with a sense of disorientation as well as a return to old habits and patterns, including racial inequality. Based mostly inside Cuba, Ayorinde's research includes interviews and conversations with individual Cubans, including practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions from different ethnic backgrounds. Some are movers and shakers in the liberal debate about contemporary religion, some are new initiates, others have been practicing for 50 years or more. Some have been members of the Communist Party; others never have been, and make their living from the practice of their religion. Ayorinde also interviewed both religious and atheist commentators on Afro-Cuban religions and culture, including academics, journalists, party officials, and members of governmental and nongovernmental institutions, many at the forefront of efforts to give santería greater recognition as a central component of the national culture. In addition, the book offers a fresh historical overview of changing religious forms and attitudes in Cuba, examining the encounter with European culture and the Roman Catholic Church, religious practice among slaves in the 19th century, the concept of racial fraternity articulated by Cuban patriot José Martí, and the witchcraft scares of the early decades of the 20th century, when religious practices were associated with criminality. Its emphasis on the period since 1959 and on the current decade, in which the government has begun to rethink aspects of the revolution, places it on the cutting edge of studies that examine contemporary Cuban culture.
In the past two decades, Québec has been racked by a series of controversies in which the religiosity of migrants and other minorities has been represented as a threat to the province’s once staunchly Catholic, and now resolutely secular, identity. In Moments of Crisis, Ian Morrison locates these controversies and debates within a long history of crises within – and transformations of – Québécois identity, from the Conquest of New France in 1760 to contemporary times. He argues that national identity, like all identities, is unstable and prone to moments of crisis. It is in these moments that the nation is articulated and rearticulated, reinforced, and ultimately reproduced. Morrison also argues that, rather than seeking to overcome current controversies by reconsolidating national identity, Québec should look on moments of crisis as opportunities to forge alternative conceptions of community, identity, and belonging.
In Pulpit and Nation, Spencer McBride highlights the importance of Protestant clergymen in early American political culture, elucidating the actual role of religion in the founding era. Beginning with colonial precedents for clerical involvement in politics and concluding with false rumors of Thomas Jefferson’s conversion to Christianity in 1817, this book reveals the ways in which the clergy’s political activism—and early Americans’ general use of religious language and symbols in their political discourse—expanded and evolved to become an integral piece in the invention of an American national identity. Offering a fresh examination of some of the key junctures in the development of the American political system—the Revolution, the ratification debates of 1787–88, and the formation of political parties in the 1790s—McBride shows how religious arguments, sentiments, and motivations were subtly interwoven with political ones in the creation of the early American republic. Ultimately, Pulpit and Nation reveals that while religious expression was common in the political culture of the Revolutionary era, it was as much the calculated design of ambitious men seeking power as it was the natural outgrowth of a devoutly religious people.
This collection brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to offer perspectives on national identity formation in various European contexts between 1600 and 1815. Contributors challenge the dichotomy between modernists and traditionalists in nationalism studies through an emphasis on continuity rather than ruptures in the shaping of European nations in the period, while also offering an overview of current debates in the field and case studies on a number of topics, including literature, historiography, and cartography.
This core textbook gathers an international team of historians to present a comprehensive account of the central themes in the histories of Britain, British America, and the British Caribbean seen in Atlantic perspective. This collection of individual essays provides an accessible overview of essential themes, such as the state, empire, migration, the economy, religion, race, class, gender, politics, and slavery. This new and revised edition brings this text up to date with recent work in the field of Atlantic history and extends its scope to cover themes not treated in the first edition, notably the history of science and global history. Placing the British Atlantic world in imperial and global contexts, this book offers an indispensable survey of one of the liveliest fields of current historical enquiry. This text is a primary resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of History, particularly those taking modules on Early Modern British History, Colonial American History, Early American History, Caribbean History, Atlantic History and World History. Together, the essays also provide a useful starting point for researchers in British, American, imperial and Atlantic history. New to this Edition: - Updated and expanded to take account of new research - Two new essays treating 'Science' and 'The British Atlantic World in Global Perspective' - Timeline of British Atlantic history - A revised Introduction and updated guides to further reading
Making a new case for separating citizenship from nationality, this book comparatively examines a key selection of nation-states in terms of their definitions of nationality and citizenship, and the ways in which the association of some with the European Union has transformed these definitions. In a combination of case studies from Europe and the Middle East, this book’s comparative framework addresses the question of citizenship and ethnic conflict from the foundation of the nation-state, to the current challenges raised by globalization. This edited volume examines six different countries and looks at the way that ethnic or religious identity lies at the core of the national community, ultimately determining the state’s definition and treatment of its citizens. The selected contributors to this new volume investigate this common ambiguity in the construction of nations, and look at the contrasting ways in which the issues of citizenship and identity are handled by different nation-states. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars studying in the areas of citizenship and the nation-state, ethnic conflict, globalization and Middle Eastern and European Politics.
In this penetrating biography of Thomas Bradbury Chandler, S. Scott Rohrer takes readers deep into the intellectual world of a leading loyalist who defended monarchy, rejected rebellion and democracy, and opposed the American Revolution. Talented, hardworking, and erudite, this Anglican minister from New Jersey possessed one of the Church of England’s most outstanding minds. Chandler was an Anglican leader in the 1760s and a key strategist in the effort to strengthen the American church in the years preceding the Revolution. He headed the campaign to create an Anglican bishopric in America—a cause that helped inflame tensions with American radicals unhappy with British policies. And, in the 1770s, his writings provided some of the most trenchant criticisms of the American revolutionary movement, raising fundamental questions about obedience, subordination, and rebellion that undercut Whig assertions about republicanism and popular control. Working from Chandler’s library catalog and other primary sources, Rohrer digs into Chandler’s political and religious beliefs, exploring their origins and the events in British history that shaped them. An intriguing and thoughtful reappraisal of a consequential figure in early American history, this biography will captivate students, scholars, and lay readers interested in politics and religion in Revolutionary-era America.
Until relatively recently, the connection between British imperial history and the history of early America was taken for granted. In recent times, however, early American historiography has begun to suffer from a loss of coherent definition as competing manifestos demand various reorderings of the subject in order to combine time periods and geographical areas in ways that would have previously seemed anomalous. It has also become common place to announce that the history of America is best accounted for in America itself in a three-way melee between "settlers", the indigenous populations, and the forcibly transported African slaves and their creole descendants. The contributions to British North America in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries acknowledge the value of the historiographic work done under this new dispensation in the last two decades and incorporate its insights. However, the volume advocates a pluralistic approach to the subject generally, and attempts to demonstrate that the metropolitan power was of more than secondary importance to America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The central theme of this volume is the question "to what extent did it make a difference to those living in the colonies that made up British North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that they were part of an empire and that the empire in question was British?" The contributors, some of the leading scholars in their respective fields, strive to answer this question in various social, political, religious, and historical contexts.
