Soundings: the Tenth Anniversary Conference
August 9-13, 2005
Tuesday, August 9
Opening Session (Plenary)
Chair: Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University
Emma Rothschild, University of Cambridge and Harvard University, “The Atlantic and Other Oceans”
Tamar Herzog, Stanford University, “‘Us’ and ‘Them’ in an Early Modern Atlantic Context”
Philip Morgan, Princeton University, “The Early Caribbean and the Atlantic World”
Wednesday, August 10
The Atlantic World: Overviews (Plenary)
Chair: Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University
Aaron Fogleman, Northern Illinois University, “The Atlantic World, 1492-1860s: Definition, Theory, and Boundaries”
Douglas B. Chambers, University of Southern Mississippi, “Writing the Black Atlantic: Theory, Method, Practice”
Eric Slauter, University of Chicago, “Literature and the Atlantic World”
Session 1: Indigenous Peoples, Empire, and Law
Chair: Richard Ross, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Jovita Baber, Texas A & M University, “The Changing Geography of the Political Community: The Negotiation of Land, Livestock, Law, and Citizenship in Tlaxcala, New Spain, 1540-1580”
Jeremy Ravi Mumford, Brandeis University, “Native Litigants in the Courts of the Conquerors: Indigenous Lawsuits of Spanish American, in Comparative Perspective”
Denise Ileana Bossy, Trinity College, Hartford, “The ‘Chain of Friendship’: Indians and Empire in Colonial South Carolina”
Session 2: Influences of the Dutch Republic
Chair: James Williams, Middle Tennessee State University
Victor Enthoven, Royal Netherlands Naval College, “The Dutch Revolt and the Atlantic World: Free States, Free Seas, Free Citizens”
Douglas Bradburn, SUNY—Binghamton, “Free Seas, Free States, Free Citizens: Atlantic Continuities in the Dutch Revolt and the American Revolution”
Session 3: The Urban Atlantic
Chair: Sally Hadden, University of Florida
Sheryllynne Haggerty, University of Liverpool, “ ‘Miss fan can tun her han!’ Women, Work, and Income Opportunities in Eighteenth-Century British-American Atlantic Port Cities”
Emma Hart, University of St. Andrews, “ ‘Odious characters’: Urban Middling Sorts in the British Atlantic World”
Mariana L. R. Dantas, Ohio University, “Runaway Slaves and the Shaping of Black Urban Life in the Eighteenth-Century American South”
Session 4: England and America: Conceptual Engagements
Chair: Eliga H. Gould, University of New Hampshire
David Armitage, Harvard University, “The Contagion of Sovereignty: Declarations of Independence in the Atlantic World and Beyond”
Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University School of Law, “Writs to Rights: The ‘Common Law’ in the Age of Revolution”
Session 5: Caribbean Overviews: Production and Survival
Chair: Philip Morgan, Princeton University
Hakiem Nankoe, Cornell University, “Structures of Production in the Caribbean from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries”
Maximilian C. Forte, Concordia University, Montréal, “Extinction: The Historical Trope of Anti-Indigeneity in the Caribbean”
Session 6: The Enlightenment: Atlantic Dimensions
Chair: Emma Rothschild, University of Cambridge and Harvard University
Sandra Rebok, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, “Transatlantic Communication by Thomas Jefferson and Alexander von Humboldt: Two Exponents of the Enlightenment”
Laurent Dubois, Michigan State University, “An Enslaved Enlightenment: Re-Thinking the Intellectual History of the French Atlantic”
Beatriz Helena Domingues, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, “The Amazon and the Uraguay in the Dispute of the New World”
Session 7: Commerce, Colonization, and Networks:Risks, Failures, and Successes
Chair: David Hancock, University of Michigan
Nuran Çinlar, Simmons College, “Judging Risk: The Virginia Company of London and the Decision to Invest in New World Colonization”
Claudia Schnurmann, Universität Hamburg, “Reconstructing a Seventeenth-Century Commercial Network: The Atlantic Activities of Cornelis Jacobs Moy, Andrew Russell, and Jacob Leisler”
Silvia Marzagalli, Université de Nice, ”Adapting to a Changing Atlantic World? Opportunities and Limits of Eighteenth-Century Merchant Houses: The Case of the Gradis Family of Bordeaux”
Thursday, August 11
Session 8: The Transfer of Ideas: Newton, Malebranche, and Adam Smith
Chair: Mark G. Spencer, Brock University
Scott Breuninger, University of South Dakota, “ 'Social Gravity’ and the Translatio Tradition in Early American Theories of Empire”
Stephen A. Wilson, Hood College, “Anglo-French Platonism and Religious Conceptions of Civic Life in Colonial New England”
Stewart Davenport, Pepperdine University, “ ‘Das Adam-Smith Problem' in the Antebellum North and Two Protestant Attempts at a Solution”
Session 9: The French Atlantic: Scholarly Reticence and Revolutionary Memory
Chair: Silvia Marzagalli, Université de Nice
Cécile Vidal, Université Pierre Mendès France, Grenoble 2, “The Reluctance of French Historians to Address Atlantic History”
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, California State University, San Marcos, “Atlantic Amnesia: Memory and the Haitian Revolution in the United States and France”
Session 10: “Whiteness”: Definition and Retention
Chair: Ignacio Gallup-Díaz, Bryn Mawr College
Linda L. Sturtz, Beloit College, “ ‘White’ African Jamaican? A Tale of Two Roses”
Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss, Texas A&M University, “ `The young female destined to live and die in the colonies’: Elite White Efforts to Control Martinique’s White Women, 1802-1830”
Teaching Atlantic History (Plenary)
Chair: John Navin, Coastal Carolina University
Roundtable Panel:
Rosalind Beiler, University of Central Florida
Laurent Dubois, Michigan State University
Ignacio Gallup-Díaz, Bryn Mawr College
Nancy Hagedorn, SUNY—Fredonia
Dennis Maika, Fox Lane High School, Bedford, NY
Dayo Nicole Mitchell, University of Oregon
Cécile Vidal, Université Pierre Mendès-France, Grenoble 2
Session 11: New Views of the Black Atlantic
Chair: Joseph Miller, University of Virginia
Roquinaldo Ferreira, Universidad Federal de Fluminense, “Biography and Mobility: Merchants, Slaves, and Free Africans in the Atlantic World: Angola and Brazil, 1650-1850”
John C. Coombs, Florida International University, “Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake–West Indian Commerce and the Coastwise Trade in Slaves”
Ty M. Reese, University of North Dakota, “Rum and Romauls: The Consequences of Consumption at Cape Coast, 1750-1807”
Session 12: Views of Native Americans
Chair: Nancy Hagedorn, SUNY—Fredonia
Ulrike Kirchberger, Universität Bayreuth, “The British Clergy’s Perception of American Indians in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World”
Katherine Hermes, Central Connecticut State University, “Captain Cook and Cultural Relativism: The American Indian in the Atlantic and Pacific Worlds”
Session 13: Atlantic Migration: Networks and Communities
Chair: Aaron Fogleman, Northern Illinois University
Rosalind Beiler, University of Central Florida, “Communication Networks and the Dynamics of Migration, 1660-1730”
Peter Vogt, Moravian Congregation at Niesky, Germany, “ ‘Every where at Home’: The Eighteenth-Century Moravian Movement as a Transatlantic Religious Community”
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, Université de Paris 8, “Refugees or Émigrés? The Huguenot, Royalist, and Saint-Domingue Migrations to America”
Session 14: French Counter-Revolutions
Chair: Laurent Dubois, Michigan State University
Darrell Meadows, Library of Congress, “Refugee Planters and Revolutionary Legislators: Welfare, Exile, and the Haitian Counter-Revolution, 1794-1802”
Miranda Spieler, University of Arizona, “Slaves, Freed People, and the Revolutionary Rights Tradition, 1789-c.1799”
Session 15: Constitutional Ideas, South and North
Chair: Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University
Marcela Ternavasio, Universidad Nacional de Rosario and CONICET, “The Division of Powers and Divided Sovereignty: The U.S. Experience in the River Plate Periodical Press during Independence”
Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe, Evanston, Illinois, “Concepts and Constitutions: Federalism Crosses the Atlantic”
Denise A. Spellberg, University of Texas, Austin, “Could a Muslim Be President of the United States? The Atlantic View of Islam”
Session 16: Nature as Actor: Eruptions and Earthquakes
Chair: Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University
Margarita Gascón, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones, Argentina, “Environment, Natural Catastrophe, and Imperial Expansion into the Southernmost Borderlands: Seventeenth-Century Patagonia and Arauco”
S. Max Edelson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Aftershock: The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and the Fate of Empire in the Atlantic World”
Friday, August 12
Session 17: Reconstructing West Indian Slave Voices
Chair: Dayo Nicole Mitchell, University of Oregon
James Robertson, University of the West Indies, Mona, “ `Sufficient on our bare word (as we know not the meaning of an oath)’: Ventriloquilizing Jamaica’s Slaves and the Early Politics of Antislavery”
Gunvor Simonsen, European University Institute, Florence, "Conjugality, Conjugal Conflicts, and Afro-Caribbean Patriarchy: Exploring Violence and Adultery in the Danish West Indian Courts”
Session 18: Responses to Revolution in the Early Republic
Chair: Douglas Bradburn, SUNY—Binghamton
Daniel Kilbride, John Carroll University, “Race, National Characters, and American Responses to European Revolutions, 1789-1848”
Monica Henry, Université François-Rabelais, Tours, “Joel Roberts Poinsett, a North American Diplomat in Spanish America, 1811-1829”
Session 19: New World Forests, Pirates, and Maritime Strength
Chair: David Hancock, University of Michigan
Nuala Zahedieh, University of Edinburgh, “New World Resources and the Expansion of England’s Merchant Marine, 1660-1775”
Guy Chet, University of North Texas, "Frontier Violence in the North Atlantic: The Campaign Against Piracy and the Quest for Governmental Legitimacy in the Modern State”
Session 20: Missions, Seminaries, and Convents: Indigenous Catholicism
Chair: R. Jovita Baber, Texas A & M University
Matt O’Hara, New Mexico State University, “An Eighteenth-Century ‘Great Debate’: Indians and Religious Vocations”
José Gabriel Martínez-Serna, Southern Methodist University, “Jesuit Frontiers and Indian Ethnogenesis in Seventeenth-Century Spanish America”
Marie Christine Duggan, Keene State College, “Structural Change in the Colonial Mission Economy: The Blow from Spain”
Session 21: Creating State, Nation, and Identities
Chair: Gustavo Paz, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Erika Pani, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, “When Independence Wars Are Civil Wars: Reconstructing the Body Politic”
Jordana Dym, Skidmore College, “Conceiving Central America: Public, Patria, and Nation in the Gazeta de Guatemala, 1797-1807”
Session 22: Interrogating the Sources: Art, Estate Records, and Fiction
Chair: Eric Slauter, University of Chicago
Rosalie Smith McCrea, University of Ottawa, “The Caribbean in the Metropolitan Imagination, or Atlantic Republicanism and Creole Beckford”
John F. Campbell, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, “Writing it Right: Forensic Semantics on the Golden Grove Estate, Jamaica, 1770-1789”
Matthew Mason, Brigham Young University, “Slavery, Servitude, and British Representations of Colonial North America”
Session 23: Honduras, Curaçao, and Cartagena:Trans-Imperial Pivots
Chair: Wim Klooster, Clark University
Linda M. Rupert, Duke University, “The Development of a Trans-Imperial Region between Curaçao and Tierra Firme”
Jennifer L. Anderson, New York University, “Better Judges of the Situation: Environmental Realities and the Problems of Imperial Authority in the Bay of Honduras”
Nikolaus Böttcher, Freie Universität Berlin, “Slave Trade, Contraband, and the Inquisition in the Caribbean, 1610-1650”
Session 24: Language, Writing, and Intermediaries in Portuguese America
Chair: Beatriz Helena Domingues, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Foracândida
D. M. Barros, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Bélem, “ ‘Papera’: The Use of Written Portuguese as Part of the Policy for the ‘lingua geral’ in Colonial Amazonia”
M. Kittiya Lee, Tulane University, “Speaking by the Sea: Interlingual Coastal Trade in Brazil, 1500-1550s”
Session 25: Seafarers: Black Labor and White Fears
Chair: Michael Jarvis, University of Rochester
Emma Christopher, Monash University, “Black Maritime Workers in Britain and the Fight for Freedom”
Philip Levy, University of South Florida, “Man-Eating and Menace on Richard Hore’s 1536 Expedition to America”
Session 26: Dutch Networks
Chair: Victor Enthoven, Royal Netherlands Naval College
Wim Klooster, Clark University, “Between Virginia’s Eastern Shore and the Maas Estuary: Natives and Strangers in the Atlantic Tobacco Business, 1620-1650”
James Williams, Middle Tennessee State University, “Dutch Communication Networks in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World”
Saturday, August 13
Session 27: Challenging the Imperial State: Wild Radicals and Polite Burgesses
Chair: David Armitage, Harvard University
John Donoghue, University of Pittsburgh, “The Western Design and Radical Republicanism”
James G. Patterson, Centenary College, “Politicization and Agrarianism in the West of Ireland, 1791-1803”
Louis H. Roper, SUNY-New Paltz, “Parliaments and American Politics: Charles I and Virginia, 1638”
Session 28: Slave Resistance and Rebellion
Chair: Douglas B. Chambers, University of Southern Mississippi
Gloria Chuku, Millersville University of Pennsylvania, “ ‘Igbo Landing’ Facts and Fiction: A Preliminary Study of Igbo Slave Resistance in South Carolina”
Ignacio Gallup-Díaz, Bryn Mawr College, “Early Modern Panamá’s Rebellious Slaves in Atlantic Context”
Session 29: History and Biography:Individual Lives in Atlantic Context
Chair: Rosalind Beiler, University of Central Florida
Neil Kennedy, Brock University, Ontario, “Between a Rock and a Metropole: Richard Norwood’s Atlantic Bermuda”
Mark Quintanilla, Hannibal–La Grange College, “ ‘From a dear and worthy land’: An Irish Colonist in the West Indies”
Bradford J. Wood, Eastern Kentucky University, “Finding the Atlantic World: James Murray in North Carolina”
Session 30: The Impact of Spanish Empire: Cuba, Africa, Central Europe
Chair: Linda Salvucci, Trinity University, San Antonio
Evelyn Powell Jennings, Saint Lawrence University, “Slavery as an Instrument of Empire in Colonial Havana, 1763-1840”
David Aworawo, University of Lagos, “ ‘A Tale of Two Islands’: The Social and Political Development of Cuba and Fernando Po under Spanish Rule until 1890”
William O’Reilly, University of Cambridge, “Voyagers to the East: The Atlantic Reconquest of Europe”
Session 31: Río de la Plata and the Wider World:“The Atlantic was an agent of civilization”
Chair: Jordana Dym, Skidmore College
Gustavo Paz, Universidad de Buenos Aires, “Reporting Atlantic News: Newspapers and the Rise of the Public in Late Colonial Argentina”
Beatriz Dávilo, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, “The Río de la Plata on the Atlantic Scence: The Importation of Social Habits, Cultural Patterns, and Political Values from the Anglo-Saxon World, 1810-1827”
Session 32: Construction of Space
Chair: Melanie Perreault, Salisbury University
James Taylor Carson, Queen’s University, Ontario, “When is an Ocean Not an Ocean? Geographies of the Atlantic World”
Elvira Vilches, North Carolina State University, “Atlantic Crossings and Valuation in Early New World Historiography”
Session 33: Closing Remarks
Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University