Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers

Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers

Author: Tamara Plakins Thornton

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2016-02-10

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1469626942

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In this engagingly written biography, Tamara Plakins Thornton delves into the life and work of Nathaniel Bowditch (1773-1838), a man Thomas Jefferson once called a "meteor in the hemisphere." Bowditch was a mathematician, astronomer, navigator, seafarer, and business executive whose Enlightenment-inspired perspectives shaped nineteenth-century capitalism while transforming American life more broadly. Enthralled with the precision and certainty of numbers and the unerring regularity of the physical universe, Bowditch operated and represented some of New England's most powerful institutions—from financial corporations to Harvard College—as clockwork mechanisms. By examining Bowditch's pathbreaking approaches to institutions, as well as the political and social controversies they provoked, Thornton's biography sheds new light on the rise of capitalism, American science, and social elites in the early republic. Fleshing out the multiple careers of Nathaniel Bowditch, this book is at once a lively biography, a window into the birth of bureaucracy, and a portrait of patrician life, giving us a broader, more-nuanced understanding of how powerful capitalists operated during this era and how the emerging quantitative sciences shaped the modern experience.


Rebel at Large

Rebel at Large

Author: Philip Van Buskirk

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2009-10-21

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 078645489X

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This diary is one of the most unusual produced during the Civil War because it contains very little about military life. Early in the war Van Buskirk abandoned his regiment, working as a schoolmaster, farmhand, and casual laborer. He wrote of the suffering civilians endured at the hands of contending armies. But he also found time to chronicle his fascination with handsome young lads he encountered during his life as a deserter--unwittingly providing modern readers an illuminating glimpse of class differences and sexual mores. Naval, social and sexual historians, in particular, will find much valuable source material.


Agreeable News from Persia

Agreeable News from Persia

Author: D.T. Potts

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-09-06

Total Pages: 2077

ISBN-13: 3658360321

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Eighteenth and nineteenth century European, British and American newspapers constitute a rich and largely untapped source of contemporary, often eyewitness accounts of historical events and opinions concerning Iran from the late Safavid (1712) through the Qajar (c. 1797-1920) period. This study collects and annotates thousands of articles published in the Colonial and early Republican American newspapers, from the first mention of events in Persia in the American press (1712) to the death of Mohammad Shah (1848), unlocking for the first time a wealth of information on Iran and its place in the world during the 18th and early 19th century.


How the Few Became the Proud

How the Few Became the Proud

Author: Heather Venable

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2019-11-15

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1682474828

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For more than half of its existence, members of the Marine Corps largely self-identified as soldiers. It did not yet mean something distinct to be a Marine, either to themselves or to the public at large. As neither a land-based organization like the Army nor an entirely sea-based one like the Navy, the Corps' missions overlapped with both institutions. This work argues that the Marine Corps could not and would not settle on a mission, and therefore it turned to an image to ensure its institutional survival. The process by which a maligned group of nineteenth-century naval policemen began to consider themselves to be elite warriors benefited from the active engagement of Marine officers with the Corps' historical record as justification for its very being. Rather than look forward and actively seek out a mission that could secure their existence, late nineteenth-century Marines looked backward and embraced the past. They began to justify their existence by invoking their institutional traditions, their many martial engagements, and their claim to be the nation's oldest and proudest military institution. This led them to celebrate themselves as superior to soldiers and sailors. Although there are countless works on this hallowed fighting force, How the Few Became the Proud is the first to explore how the Marine Corps crafted such powerful myths.


Social Reform in the United States Navy, 1798-1862

Social Reform in the United States Navy, 1798-1862

Author: Harold D Langley

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2015-03-15

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1612517757

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In the decades before the American Civil War various political, social, and religious groups agitated for reforms in American society that would be in keeping with its professed democratic and national principles. One such organization was the American Seaman’s Friend Society, which lobbied for improvements in the enlistment, discipline, and treatment of sailors in the Merchant Marine and the Navy. Their causes were embraced by some naval officers, members of Congress, and a few Secretaries of the Navy. This history explores the circumstances and people in and out of the Navy who eventually convinced Congress to enact reforms to improve the conditions of service of naval enlisted men and to lay the foundation for a career enlisted force.


The Emergence of Public Opinion

The Emergence of Public Opinion

Author: Murat R. Şiviloğlu

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-25

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1108126049

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Nineteenth-century Ottoman politics was filled with casual references to public opinion. Having been popularised as a term in the 1860s, the following decades witnessed a deluge of issues being brought into 'the tribune of public opinion'. Murat R. Şiviloğlu explains how this concept emerged, and how such an abstract phenomenon embedded itself so deeply into the political discourse that even sultans had to consider its power. Through looking at the bureaucratic and educational institutions of the time, this book offers an analysis of the society and culture of the Ottomans, as well as providing an interesting application of theoretical ideas concerning common political identity and public opinion. The result is a more balanced and nuanced understanding of public opinion as a whole.


An American Seafarer in the Age of Sail

An American Seafarer in the Age of Sail

Author: Barry Richard Burg

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 0300056370

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Philip Van Buskirk enlisted in the U.S. Marines in 1846, when he was twelve years old. Beginning in 1851, he recorded his thoughts and experiences on board ship, providing a firsthand account of the countries he visited, the brawling nation in which he lived, and the everyday life and homoerotic exploits of the sailors and marines who sailed with him. In this intimate portrait, the author draws on Van Buskirk's unconventional and revelatory diaries and on social, religious, and medical writings of the time.