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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual History

Tracing The Dispossession Of The Enslaves Black Woman And A Potential For Resistance., Lila R. O'Conell Jan 2023

Tracing The Dispossession Of The Enslaves Black Woman And A Potential For Resistance., Lila R. O'Conell

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.


Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine Jun 2020

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …


A Tangled Web: Quakers And The Atlantic Slave System 1625 – 1770., Kate Freedman Nov 2018

A Tangled Web: Quakers And The Atlantic Slave System 1625 – 1770., Kate Freedman

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation re-contextualizes the Quakers’ history as anti-slavery pioneers by exploring the crucial economic role that the slave-based economies of the British West Indies played in establishing the Quakers as a powerful sect in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Atlantic world. Quakers were driven by their faith to foster a spirit of equality inside and outside of their meetings. They were among the first European religious sects to allow women to preach, to oppose violence and war, and, beginning in the middle of the eighteenth-century, to ban the practice of enslaving other human beings within their membership. Yet the Quakers …


The American Whig Party And Slavery, Mitchell Rocklin Sep 2018

The American Whig Party And Slavery, Mitchell Rocklin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explains why the American Whig Party consisted of the most anti-slavery and pro-slavery segments of American politics during the Second Party System (1834 to 1854), as well as why it broke up. I argue that slavery was a major reason for the creation and continuation of the party, particularly in the South. A common Whig political culture – economically capitalistic while also emphasizing the integrity of the “social fabric” over individualism – helped spur both northern and southern Whigs to oppose Democrats over slavery from opposite perspectives. Southern Whigs honestly and understandably saw themselves as more pro-slavery, prioritizing …


The Two Conversions Of John Newton: Politics & Christianity In The British Abolitionist Movement, Megan Keller Jan 2018

The Two Conversions Of John Newton: Politics & Christianity In The British Abolitionist Movement, Megan Keller

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis interrogated the relationship between abolition and the evangelical revival in Britain through the life of John Newton. Newton, though not representative of every abolitionist, was a vital figure in the movement. His influence on Hannah More and William Wilberforce along with his contributions to the Parliamentary hearings made him a key aspect of its success. How he came to fulfill that role was a long and complex journey, both in terms of his religion and his understanding of slavery. He began his life under the spiritual direction of his pious, Dissenting mother, became an atheist by nineteen, and …


This Species Of Property: Slavery And The Properties Of Subjecthood In Anglo-American Law And Politics, 1619-1783, John N. Blanton Feb 2016

This Species Of Property: Slavery And The Properties Of Subjecthood In Anglo-American Law And Politics, 1619-1783, John N. Blanton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This Species of Property examines the development of the law and practice of slavery in the 17th and 18th century Anglo-American empire through analysis of common law court decisions in England, Massachusetts, and Virginia. The dissertation argues that there was a long and vibrant debate over the legitimacy of the chattel principle – the definition of enslaved persons as a type of property – and that enslaved people and their allies pushed for the recognition of the legal humanity or subjecthood of the enslaved in colonial and metropolitan courts. This antislavery legal tradition culminated in the famous Somerset …


Memory As Torchlight: Frederick Douglass And Public Memories Of The Haitian Revolution, James Lincoln May 2015

Memory As Torchlight: Frederick Douglass And Public Memories Of The Haitian Revolution, James Lincoln

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The following explores how Frederick Douglass and others used public memories of the Haitian Revolution during the nineteenth century.