Secrecy in the American Revolution

This paper analyzes how the use of various cryptographic and cryptanalytic techniques affected the American Revolution. By examining specific instances of and each country\u27s general approaches to cryptography and cryptanalysis, it is determined that America\u27s use of these techniques provided the rising nation with a critical advantage over Great Britain that assisted in its victory

No Contemptible Commander: Sir William Howe and the American War of Independence, 1775-1777

This thesis examines the period in command of British land forces during the American War of Independence of Sir William Howe. The previously untapped resource of a draft of Howe’s famous narrative to the House of Commons underpins the original contribution made by this thesis, which also draws original conclusions from more familiar documents. Howe’s command is considered in the light of four major factors: his relationship with subordinate officers; the composition and quality of his army; his relationship with the American Secretary, Lord George Germain; and his personal qualities and experience. These four factors are then combined to consider key tactical and strategic decisions made by Howe while in command of the British army in North America. No attempt has been made to examine every decision or event during Howe’s period in command. Rather, those most contentious and controversial events, and those that can be reconsidered using new evidence and new interpretations of existing evidence, have been focussed on. This thesis does not (nor was it intended to) systematically counter the prevailing opinions of Howe set down over more than two centuries of historical works. However, it can be seen that Howe had more reasonable grounds for some of his most contentious decisions than has previously been argued and his overall strategy for 1776 was more coherent than he is generally given credit for

Two Worlds in the Tennessee Mountains: Exploring the Origins of Appalachian Stereotypes

Most Americans know Appalachia through stereotyped images: moonshine and handicrafts, poverty and illiteracy, rugged terrain and isolated mountaineers. Historian David Hsiung maintains that in order to understand the origins of such stereotypes, we must look critically at their underlying concepts, especially those of isolation and community. Hsiung focuses on the mountainous area of upper East Tennessee, tracing this area\u27s development from the first settlement in the eighteenth century to the eve of the Civil War. Through his examination, he identifies the different ways in which the region\u27s inhabitants were connected to or separated from other peoples and places. Using an interdisciplinary framework, he analyzes geographical and sociocultural isolation from a number of perspectives, including transportation networks, changing economy, population movement, and topography. This provocative work will stimulate future studies of early Appalachia and serve as a model for the analysis of regional cultures. David C. Hsiung is associate professor of history at Juniata College. Well organized and accessible, this book would prove ideal for use in Appalachian history courses . . . while telling what happened, Hsiung explains how to do social history. —Journal of Appalachian History Hsiung has given us a book which focuses exclusively on the question of Appalachian difference or, as he puts it, the origins of Appalachian stereotype. —Journal of Social History In demolishing several stereotypes, Hsiung gets tantalizingly close to revealing the sources of regional and national identity. —Journal of American History The originality of this contribution in approach and methodology must certainly be acknowledged, as well as its strongly interpretive character. —The Journal of Southern History Offers a great deal of new information about frontier society as well as imaginative ways of using it. —Georgia Historical Quarterlyhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_appalachian_studies/1020/thumbnail.jp

The Cryptographic Imagination

Originally published in 1996. In The Cryptographic Imagination, Shawn Rosenheim uses the writings of Edgar Allan Poe to pose a set of questions pertaining to literary genre, cultural modernity, and technology. Rosenheim argues that Poe's cryptographic writing—his essays on cryptography and the short stories that grew out of them—requires that we rethink the relation of poststructural criticism to Poe's texts and, more generally, reconsider the relation of literature to communication. Cryptography serves not only as a template for the language, character, and themes of much of Poe's late fiction (including his creation, the detective story) but also as a "secret history" of literary modernity itself. "Both postwar fiction and literary criticism," the author writes, "are deeply indebted to the rise of cryptography in World War II." Still more surprising, in Rosenheim's view, Poe is not merely a source for such literary instances of cryptography as the codes in Conan Doyle's "The Dancing-Men" or in Jules Verne, but, through his effect on real cryptographers, Poe's writing influenced the outcome of World War II and the development of the Cold War. However unlikely such ideas sound, The Cryptographic Imagination offers compelling evidence that Poe's cryptographic writing clarifies one important avenue by which the twentieth century called itself into being. "The strength of Rosenheim's work extends to a revisionistic understanding of the entirety of literary history (as a repression of cryptography) and then, in a breathtaking shift of register, interlinks Poe's exercises in cryptography with the hyperreality of the CIA, the Cold War, and the Internet. What enables this extensive range of applications is the stipulated tension Rosenheim discerns in the relationship between the forms of the literary imagination and the condition of its mode of production. Cryptography, in this account, names the technology of literary production—the diacritical relationship between decoding and encoding—that the literary imagination dissimulates as hieroglyphics—the hermeneutic relationship between a sign and its content."—Donald E. Pease, Dartmouth Colleg

Envisaging a future for slavery: Agostino Brunias and the imperial politics of labor and reproduction

The paintings and prints of Agostino Brunias (1730-1796) served not only to visualise some of the British Empire’s newest colonies following the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, but also to encourage settlement by presenting a utopian vision of slave societies that were content, wealthy and, most importantly, self-sustaining. This paper argues that Brunias’s imagery contributed to the ameliorationist rhetoric that accompanied the rise of abolitionism in Britain. By avoiding scenes of plantation labor, discipline and punishment, and emphasising instead the refinement, robust health and fertility of slaves and free people of color, it purported to confirm that amelioration could safeguard slavery’s future

The role of national defence in British political debate, 1794-1812

This thesis examines the role of national defence in British parliamentary politics between 1794 and 1812. It suggests that previous analyses of the late eighteenth-century political milieu insufficiently explore the impact of war on the structure of the state. Work by J.E. Cookson, Linda Colley, J.C.D. Clark, and Paul Langford depicts a decentralised state that had little direct involvement in developing a popular “British” patriotism. Here I argue that the threat of a potential French invasion during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France provoked a drive for centralisation. Nearly all the defence measures enacted during the period gave the government a much greater degree of control over British manpower and resources. The readiness of successive governments to involve large sections of the nation in the war effort through military service, financial contributions, and appeals to the British “spirit”, resulted in a much more inclusive sense of citizenship in which questions of national participation and political franchise were unlinked. National identity was also affected, and the focus on military defence of the British Isles influenced political attitudes towards the regular army. By 1810, however, the nation was disillusioned by the lengthy struggle with France. The result of lingering political weakness was that attention shifted from national defence onto domestic corruption and venality. The aftermath of the Irish Act of Union, too, demonstrated the limits of attempts to centralise the policy of the whole United Kingdom. Significantly, however, the debates over the relationship between the centre and the localities in the 1830s and 1840s, and the response to a new French invasion threat in the 1850s and 1860s, revived themes addressed during the 1790s and 1800s. The political reaction to the invasion threats between 1794 and 1812 ultimately had more in common with a Victorian state bureaucracy than an eighteenth-century ancien régime.AHRC funded Newton Trust funde

\u3cem\u3eThe Kohn-Hennig Library: A Catalog\u3c/em\u3e

August Kohn and his daughter Helen Kohn Hennig were two of South Carolina\u27s greatest book collectors. The object of their collecting was South Caroliniana, in all its variety. Their combined library of more than four thousand titles, now a part of the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, includes novels, short stories, and poetry; biographies, sermons, and military histories; pamphlets, maps, and periodicals; and much more. The collection includes both the exceedingly rare and the too easily overlooked (a rich collection of pamphlets, promotional material, and business histories). No corner of the state is excluded, and no subject ignored. The library is particularly rich in Jewish material, a topic especially dear to both collectors. But the wide range of titles catalogued in The Kohn-Hennig Library will inspire, intrigue, and fascinate readers, researchers, and collectors everywhere. In addition to identifying all the titles in that collection, this publication pays tribute to Kohn and Hennig, to book collectors everywhere, and to the joys of book collecting. The volume includes essays by Allen H. Stokes, executive director of the South Caroliniana Library, and Belinda Gergel, a retired history professor and former president of the Historic Columbia Foundation. Excerpted from USC Press

Charles William Frederick Dumas and the American Revolution (1775-1783 )

No American historian has in recent ears attempted to elucidate the career of Charles William Freerick Dumas during the American Revolution. Diplomatic historians such as Samuel Flagg Demis and John Bassett Hoore have written that C. W. F. Dumas, although an important figure in our diplomatic history, has not yet been given the attention due his service to the United States. It is the purpose of this investigation to examine the Revolutionary service of this relatively unknown American agent

Admiral Peter Rainier and the Command of the East Indies Station 1794-1805

Admiral Peter Rainier and the Command of the East Indies Station 1794-1805. Peter Rainier was the longest serving commander on the East Indies station by some margin, and the longest serving commander of any of the navy’s stations in the long Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This thesis illustrates the issues that needed to be addressed on this station and considers how successfully Rainier dealt with them. It will also suggest that he remains so little known amongst the pantheon of British admirals of the Napoleonic era because the traditional measure of value of a naval commander is success in battle. Although Rainier had a reputation as a fighting captain, as a commander in chief he saw action only in combined operations. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that skill other than fighting battles is important. Rainier’s thorough knowledge of the station, his capacity to work with people over whom he had no authority, his ability to protect a rapidly expanding and wealth creating trade, and his administrative and financial professionalism, enabled him to play an important, if secondary, part in the establishment of the Second British Empire which, arguably, had a far greater impact on British history than all but the most seminal battle. The East Indies Station had a number of unique elements that heavily influenced the actions of its commander in chief. The two-way communication process between Rainier and the Admiralty could take a whole year. Its thirty million plus square mile area meant that communication and logistics within the station needed long term planning. It was still relatively unfamiliar to British navigators, and charting it was still in progress. The relationship between the admiral and the East India Company, the official government of British India, could make or break the success of both the navy and the Company. With his diplomatic skills and wide experience of the station, Rainier worked with its officials and army commanders to defend current British possessions in the East Indies and India, to extend them to such an extent that, by his return to Britain, they were the foundation of the second British Empire. During this period the centre of power on the station moved eastwards as the value of trade with China overtook that with India – Rainier had to take this into account when allocating his resources. The constraints on navigation and timing caused by the narrow channels in the East Indies and by the weather made it easier for enemy vessels to know by which route the British trade would travel. Rainier had to cover potential threats off Macao, through the Straits of Bali, Banda, Sunda and Malacca, in the Bay of Bengal, off Madras, around Ceylon and between Bombay and the Persian Gulf. When possible he had to cover the French naval base at Mauritius. With a limited number of vessels, of which some were always in need of repair, Rainier was often on the defensive. Acquisition of new colonies opened new trading routes which, together with his commitment to trade protection, led to a steady, if often unregulated, expansion in British trade. His attention to detail and his management skills also allowed him to establish an efficient logistics, victualling and financial operation. What Rainier achieved has to be seen in the context of the complexity of his station and the role of the East India Company. Then it stands far above the level of its absolute achievement. This thesis shows that Rainier’s organization and man management skills, unruffled nature, sound strategic judgement made him a “Safe Pair of Hands”, ideal for such a detached but important command

The idea of an Arab caliphate in British Middle Eastern policy in the era of the Great War

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