John Leamy\u27s Atlantic Worlds: Trade, Religion, and Imperial Transformations in the Spanish Empire and Early Republican Philadelphia

John Leamy (1757–1839) accumulated a substantial fortune through trade with the Spanish Empire following the American Revolution. This immigrant from Ireland, via southern Spain, was the key player in establishing Philadelphia\u27s dominant role in Cuban markets during the 1790s. Unlike his Protestant competitors, as a high-profile Catholic, Leamy nurtured successful personal and commercial relationships with those Spanish imperial bureaucrats charged with regulating the trade. In the new century, as the Spanish Empire destabilized, Leamy adjusted both his business strategies and religious practices. With his Catholic loyalties in flux, he led the lay trustees of St. Mary\u27s during the Hogan Schism and moved towards Episcopalianism. John Leamy\u27s actions throw into relief how republicanism emboldened challenges to ecclesiastical authority and encouraged denominational flexibility, even as he maneuvered to rekindle his ties with Spain in the 1820s and 1830s

Supply, Demand, and the Making of a Market: Philadelphia and Havana at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

In his 1984 assessment of the state of historical research, The Transatlantic Economy, Jacob Price comments: The writing of most early American economic history has concentrated upon supply. For many branches of the economy, the great unexplored frontier may well be demand. The relationship between Philadelphia and Havana is a case in point. From the onset of the American Revolution until well past the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the port cities of Havana and Philadelphia were inextricably linked. As their own rich hinterlands expanded, and as established transatlantic trade routes disintegrated, Havana and Philadelphia grew ever closer, exerting profound influences upon their respective regional economies and merchants. Spaniards and Cubans alike considered Philadelphia the principal entrepôt for United States foodstuffs shipped to the island while Havana emerged as the leading market for American exports through Philadelphia. This close relationship between the two ports predated the strong links between the newly independent nation and the Spanish colony that characterized most of the nineteenth century and contributed to the War of 1898. However, it was during the early years, from the l779os through the 1820s, that the fortunes of Philadelphia and Havana were most deeply affected by their reciprocal trade

The Music is Nothing if the Audience is Deaf : Moving Historical Thinking into the Wider World

Readers of Historically Speaking are certainly no strangers to practicing and reflecting upon “historical thinking”; witness the 2008 publication of several essays and interviews in the Historians in Conversation series, as well as explicit or implicit references to its nature and process in virtually all recent issues. Still, most academic historians, scholars, and authors of popular works of history rarely connect with what goes on in terms of historical thinking in K 12 classrooms in more than a casual usually parental way. To be sure, ongoing controversies such as those involving the Texas social studies standards, the role assigned to slavery in textbook accounts along with commemorations of the outbreak of the Civil War, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s recently issued report card for state standards for U.S. history, and the yearly polls every July 4th that suggest how poorly Americans understand their Revolution provoke a collective beating of breasts followed, in some circles, by ritual finger pointing at K 12 educators. Unfortunately, with the conspicuous exception of collaborative opportunities presented by the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching American History Grants program, there is little constructive and sustained interaction between those who teach at the university or college level and those who prepare the very students we eventually encounter in our own classrooms. The essays by Fritz Fischer, Bruce Lesh, and Robert Bain each offer compelling reasons for why the larger historical community, if not the general public, should be paying much greater attention to issues involvingthe training and professional development of K 12 teachers, the effective instruction of U.S. history high school students, and the pedagogical challenges of teaching increasingly popular and state mandated courses in world history

Getting the Facts Straight: New Views of Mexico and Its Peoples in Recently Adopted U.S. History Textbooks in Texas

Every six years, the Texas State Board of Education holds public hearings as part of the complex process of adopting or approving primary and secondary school textbooks for free distribution to over 1,100 public school districts. Publishers vie to capture a share of this extremely large and lucrative market by placing their products in one of usually five approved slots in each subject category. The significance of the textbook approval process extends far beyond the borders of the Lone Star State, since sales of titles successful in Texas often soar nationwide as well. In an interesting coincidence, the commemoration of 1492 has overlapped with the Texas adoptions cycle for eighth- and ninth-grade U.S. history textbooks. Those who follow these proceedings naturally expected the big story to be the extent to which the new U.S. history books reflected themes, such as multiculturalism, inspired by the Columbus quincentenary

Everybody’s Alamo : Revolution in the Revolution, Texas Style

In the fall of 2000, I did what once seemed unthinkable: I willingly began to teach a first-year seminar, Remembering the Alamo: Myth, Memory and History. Few veteran instructors of the U.S. history survey might question my desire to take a break from that always challenging responsibility. But why would a female Yankee whose research involves Atlantic trades and empires settle upon such an unlikely topic? To some extent, the answer is personal, and represents my slow coming to terms with the universal symbol of the city I have called home since 1985. Yet my intensified commitment to remembering the Alamo happily coincides with a development of much wider significance. In the last few years, scholars, curators, historical reenactors and self-styled Alamoheads have transformed our understanding of the Texas Revolution and with it, of course, the Alamo. Some readers of this journal may be aware of the shift through Stephen Harrigan\u27s best-selling novel, The Gates of the Alamo, published in 2000. His is a fine piece of fiction indeed. But the time was also ripe for a serious historical account of the first battle of the Alamo, along with a fresh assessment of the subsequent battles over preservation of the site and interpretation of its meaning(s). To offer both in one monograph is a formidable undertaking, but Randy Roberts and James Olson have succeeded admirably with A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory

Supply, Demand, and the Making of a Market: Philadelphia and Havana at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century

In his 1984 assessment of the state of historical research, The Transatlantic Economy, Jacob Price comments: The writing of most early American economic history has concentrated upon supply. For many branches of the economy, the great unexplored frontier may well be demand. The relationship between Philadelphia and Havana is a case in point. From the onset of the American Revolution until well past the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the port cities of Havana and Philadelphia were inextricably linked. As their own rich hinterlands expanded, and as established transatlantic trade routes disintegrated, Havana and Philadelphia grew ever closer, exerting profound influences upon their respective regional economies and merchants. Spaniards and Cubans alike considered Philadelphia the principal entrepôt for United States foodstuffs shipped to the island while Havana emerged as the leading market for American exports through Philadelphia. This close relationship between the two ports predated the strong links between the newly independent nation and the Spanish colony that characterized most of the nineteenth century and contributed to the War of 1898. However, it was during the early years, from the l779os through the 1820s, that the fortunes of Philadelphia and Havana were most deeply affected by their reciprocal trade

Atlantic Intersections: Early American Commerce and the Rise of the Spanish West Indies (Cuba)

An Atlantic approach to the history of early American trade challenges traditional British opinions and, indeed, much Anglo-American scholarship regarding the commercial prospects of the new United States. Contemporary Spanish observations, in contrast to the more familiar and widely cited ones in English, correctly predicted the post-Revolutionary War integration of American and Spanish imperial markets. As political, diplomatic, and economic upheavals broke down the old mercantilist system, U.S. merchants quickly succeeded in exploiting their comparative advantage in the expanding Atlantic economy. The debate over the decline of the British West Indies is amplified by examining the concurrent rise of the Spanish West Indies, particularly Cuba, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

Merchants and Diplomats: Philadelphia’s Early Trade with Cuba

When Valentín de Foronda, Spain\u27s new consul-general for the United States, disembarked in Boston in 1802, he did not linger in New England. Instead, he made his way first to New York and then to Philadelphia, from where he decided to oversee the expanding network of Spanish officials stationed up and down the North American coast. In doing so, Foronda not only followed in the footsteps of Bourbon predecessors, but also tacitly confirmed that U.S. trade with the Spanish Empire remained centered in the Pennsylvania port

Did NAFTA Rewrite History? Recent Mexican Views of the United States Past

As a young graduate student residing in Mexico City in the mid-1970s, I often wondered what it would be like to teach United States history to university students there. The challenges appeared formidable. Not only did it seem that anti-Yankeeism was an integral component of Mexican intellectual identity in the waning years of Luis Echeverría\u27s presidency, but the major bookstores carried few assignable (or affordable) titles. A handsomely produced, hardback Spanish version of Samuel E. Morison and Henry S. Commager\u27s The Growth of the American Republic, first published in English in 1930, was the only textbook consistently in stock, and there appeared to be little current work on mainstream topics in United States history by Mexicans. On subsequent visits to the capital, I encountered a one-volume Spanish paperback edition of the textbook compiled by Willi Paul Adams, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, along with relatively less costly Spanish translations of Alexis de Tocqueville\u27s Democracy in America and a couple of Richard Hofstadter\u27s books, but not much else. When I lectured at the University of Costa Rica in 1980, I was informed that the only available textbook in translation was Carl Degler et al., The Democratic Experience, which was distributed throughout Latin America, mainly under the auspices of the United States Information Agency (USIA). Since that time, I have been told that Spanish American university students of United States history are supposed to be fluent in English and therefore capable of reading the few prized library copies of untranslated textbooks, such as Bernard Bailyn et al., The Great Republic. I have also been reminded by colleagues that my experiences and perceptions are not unique, that they reflect, in the words of one, a nearly universal phenomenon in Latin America

Anglo-American Merchants and Stratagems for Success in Spanish Imperial Markets, 1783-1807

When Josiah Blakeley, consul of the United States at Santiago de Cuba, wrote these lines to Secretary of State James Madison on November 1, 1801 he had recently been jailed by administrators on that island. This remarkable situation notwithstanding, his sentiments still neatly express the paradox of trade between the United States and Spanish Caribbean ports. The expanding hinterlands of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore furnished North American merchants with ever increasing, exportable food supplies and led to fierce competition for new markets at the end of the eighteenth century. At the same time, Spain\u27s American colonies remained chronically, often desperately, short of food-stuffs. Imperial bureaucrats at many levels consistently recognized this problem, yet they imposed numerous trade restrictions. Even more than the dizzying pace of war and peace itself after 1793, these restrictions made North American commerce with the Spanish Caribbean volatile, risky and undesirable for many. This essay focuses not upon those who were deterred from the trade, but rather upon a small network of North Americans who, despite the uncertainties, chose to operate within these markets. First, the salient characteristics of their businesses are outlined. Then, it is argued that their behavior departed from the models postulated for American merchants that have been developed by students of the period. As opposed to luck or \u27imaginative innovation\u27 or aggressive individualism, the key factor emphasized here is cultural flexibility.5 Moreover, the research is drawn from archives, both foreign and domestic, that are not often consulted by Anglo-Americanists. At the very least, this strategy allows a more correct identification of the individuals involved in trade with the Spanish Empire