Category Archives: 18th century

My Oldest Friend

03 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in 18th century, 19th century, 21st century, family

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My oldest friend, by which I mean the friend I have known the longest, leaves the country today. She is off on her first posting as an employee of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and over the next twenty or thirty years she will get to live in all sorts of interesting places.

Her father worked for USAID all during our childhoods, so she has already lived or spent extended periods of time in Peru, Bolivia, Nepal, Ghana, Tanzania, and Bangladesh, not to mention North Carolina, Massachusetts, and the DC metro area. Every summer, she would come back to our hometown in North Carolina with her mother and brother. Her mom had seen too many USAID and foreign service kids grow up without a sense of place, a rootedness, so she determined that my friend and her brother would spend months every year in the town where both their grandparents lived.

Recently, we went out to dinner. My friend had just finished speaking at a panel on “third culture kids,” a term for children whose parents work and live in country or culture different from that of their origin. Most of the literature about third culture kids talks about their distance from their ‘home’ country, the place which issues their passport. I get the sense that coming back to North Carolina helped assuage some of that alienation and differentiation, which was, of course, the point.

Why, you may ask, am I talking about all of this on a blog which focuses more on history and my experiences as a PhD student? Because my friend’s experience resonates with the family about whom I want to write my dissertation. One of the first US consuls in England, married an Englishwoman and had five children, all of whom em/immigrated to the United States at some point in adulthood and there stayed. Were they English or American or something else? These five people are in some ways the cultural precursors of my oldest friend. I can’t say that I wouldn’t be intrigued by their story if I hadn’t grown up with a friend who lived overseas, but neither can I deny an increasing interest in the cultural history of early diplomats and citizens living abroad and their families.

When my friend was applying for the job, I got to sit down with someone and act as a reference. They wanted to know if she was reliable (she is), but also get a sense of how well she would represent the country. I answered, truthfully, that I felt she had grown up knowing that she was a representative of the country, and I thought she did it really well. What did it mean for people (men, women and children) to represent a nation which was only years or months old?

Safe travels, friend. Who knows where the future is going to take either of us.

 

Change vs. Exchange

27 Thursday May 2010

Posted by in 18th century, 19th century, General, Social

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I am reading the Baron Montlezun’s Voyage fait dans les années 1816 et 1817: de New-Yorck à la Nouvelle-Orléans, et de l’Orénoque au Mississippi, although only the part about his visit to Orange County, Virginia (perhaps I might read the rest later). He had a conversation with President Madison, at the latter’s house, where they swapped stories about American Indian boys who were taken into European or European-American communities, educated, and then invariably (in the context of the conversation) returned to their “savage” communities.

There is one translation of Montlezun, published in parts in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography in 1945. The footnote for this conversation adds “For a parallel case taken from North American history, we refer the reader to Smyth, who says that Indians educated at William and Mary in colonial days returned to their savage life, as soon as they went back home.”1

What strikes me is the assumption that the American Indians would stay. Historically, I understand the perspective of the Baron and the President, and even the mid-20th-century scholars, who knew that the European lifestyle was far better than the savage one in the wilderness. It was folly, to them, to abandon it. The actors in their stories who took or invited American Indian boys (because they’re all men in this instance) to “civilization” were probably trying to improve them.

From a modern perspective, however, the first thing that springs to mind is undergraduate year abroad. You go somewhere strange, learn about this other culture, then go home and share your experience with friends and family. Many of the native individuals in the story went at least semi-willingly (the young boy who went to France with General Lafayette was sent by his father, but who knows how he felt about it?). What better way to learn about your allies than to live among them for a while? It’s a strategy which also works with enemies.

There’s not a huge point to this post, merely an observation. Some people may expect foreign students who come to study in the US to become Americanized and remain, but it’s not surprising to us (I hope) that they come, learn, and go home again.

1 L. G. Moffatt and J. M. Carrière. “A Frenchman Visits Norfolk, Fredericksburg and Orange County, 1816.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 53 (1945): 206.

Citizenship and National Identity

19 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by in 18th century, 19th century, 21st century, America, Politics

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This morning on NPR I heard a story about the push for immigration reform, and a rally in Washington to happen this weekend. Senator Russell Pearce of Arizona, who apparently opposes reform, said of the pro-reform marchers “They’re as treasonous and as un-American as anyone I know.” The quote came on the heels of a conversation with woman who works with teenage children of illegal immigrants, trying to keep them out of gangs. The teenagers feel that no opportunity is open to them because of their uncertain immigrant status.

Now, the history of the South-West and Central America are not my area of expertise. What I know has been gathered haphazardly through media and the occasional lecture. However, the question of who is an American (or rather, what makes someone an American) has resonance. As I’ve discussed in an earlier post, how a person is identified as a citizen or subject of one nation or another was a part of what led to the War of 1812.

I know that there is scholarship on how Americans resident in the (present) US came to conceptualize themselves as a new nation. What this NPR story has me wondering about, in addition to that, is how quickly or slowly did new immigrants become “Americans”? What was the process, social or political, through which a person who moved to the US after 1783 came to be regarded by their neighbors as an American and not a Brit or Frenchman or Italian, or what have you? I am given to understand that slaves, not being thought of exactly as people, were probably not thought of as citizens either. What of indentured servants?

I have no answers to these questions. I know that at the local university there are papers from numerous families from this period, including a family whose children were all born in England to an American father and English mother, but who apparently considered themselves American citizens. Maybe some small part of the answers lie there?

Christmases Past: the Eighteenth Century

19 Saturday Dec 2009

Posted by in 18th century, Christmas

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Fans of the eighteenth century who are curious about Christmas in the American colonies have a number of excellent resources: colonial-era historic sites have dug into records and primary sources to try and find a historical way to interpret Christmas. I’m briefly going to try and describe what Christmas was (and wasn’t) in the 18th century, but if you’re really interested I highly recommend the research available on the web from Colonial Williamsburg. Emma L. Powers’ article Tis the Season is an excellent overview, and there’s a slew of articles on Christmas in Williamsburg – I think my favorite thing about the latter is how all of the decorating articles basically say “the wreaths you see at CW are totally not historical.”

It’s true. The fruit-decked wreaths they put up in Williamsburg are a 20th century invention. Outdoor decorations of the 18th century were probably limited to a bit of greenery. there was not an emphasis on decorations. In Massachusetts area, Christmas was still frowned on. In Virginia and other southern states, it was party time for a fair portion of the population. Some of the various Christian sects, Presbyterians for example, did not mark Christmas with any celebration, and of course the small scattered Jewish populations wouldn’t. The dominant religion was Anglicanism, which does observe Christmas with a special service, and in this time it was one of the few opportunities to take Communion.

The celebration of the season was very much what you find in the Dickens quote I posted a few days ago: dancing, feasting, parties, visiting friends and family. Essentially, the things I love about Christmas now. Goodwill towards all expressed in fun and games and laughter. For me the most surprising thing about the 18th century Christmas was that people didn’t give a lot of gifts, and most gifts were food. Apparently there’s a good historical foundation for the exchange of goodies from Harry & David between my parents and their friends, and my grandfather sending us citrus fruit.

All in all, I think that most of us today could enjoy an 18th century Christmas, at least for a few hours.

What makes a citizen?

12 Wednesday Aug 2009

Posted by in 18th century, America, Quotes, United Kingdom

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Working as I do with a focus on the period between 1780 and 1830, the War of 1812 frequently drifts into focus. It is not a war with which I was very familiar when I started at this job, and I still think there’s a lot more I could know about it (although I have very little interest in all the movements of all the troops).  Still, I am aware that one of the issues which led to the war was continued impressment by the British Navy of people who considered themselves to be citizens of the United States.

I do not know, and admittedly have not taken the time to discover, how exactly one became a citizen of any nation in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Now, of course, we have citizenship applications and tests and ceremonies where you swear an oath, and afterwards you get a new passport. What was it like then?

Yesterday, while in the archives, I came across a letter which mentioned this question of what makes a person a citizen. It is written by a man living in Liverpool, England, to an acquaintance back in the U.S. The man in Liverpool worked for the U.S. Government, and must therefore have considered himself an American, despite having been born before the Revolution. It doesn’t answer my question completely, but it’s an excellent insight into the attitudes which led to a war between the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

“I observe what in America constitutes a citizen of the U. S. differs from what is here considered the Qualification; pro. Ex. a subject of this Country settled since the peace, in the Territories of the U.S. altho’ admitted there a Citizen is nonetheless still held here a subject of this Country.”

Source: James Maury to Thomas Jefferson, [10] November 1791. Papers of James Maury, 1769-1917, Accession #3888 and #3888-a, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.

Quote on History

22 Wednesday Apr 2009

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“Human nature is the same in every age if we make allowance for the difference of customs & Education, so that we learn to know ourselves by studying the opinions and passions of others”
-William Bradford (paraphrasing Hume) in a letter to James Madison, October [1772], original in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Transcription from William T. Hutchinson & William M. E. Rachal, eds. Papers of James Madison, vol 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press , 1962), 73.