Leah Grandy Future historians are facing a crisis in a skill set that has not been a significant issue in the past. As the teaching of cursive writing has been eliminated or greatly diminished from North American elementary school curriculums, we are seeing the arrival of university students to arts programmes unable to read written… Continue Reading
Latest in: Loyalists
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Jeffers Lennox The American Revolution wasn’t simply American. The Early National period was hardly national at all. From 1774 to at least 1815, regional linkages and continental strategies shaped the development of American states and British provinces as people, policies, and ideas traversed a porous and fluid border. Ironically, loyal British colonies were less foreign… Continue Reading
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Bonnie Huskins This dapper fellow is known colloquially as “Loyalist Man.” He welcomes tourists to the Reversing Falls attraction in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada and until a few years ago, sat on the highway welcoming drivers into the “Loyalist City.” I would like to use him today to entice American scholars who are becoming… Continue Reading
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Taylor Stoermer Much has been made lately of the rediscovery of the American Revolution by scholars as a series of questions that remain unresolved. Both veteran historians and those new to the field (although those groups aren’t mutually exclusive) are, through conferences and colloquia and online forums, exploring this ostensibly transformative event of the late… Continue Reading
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Elizabeth Mancke & Scott See In the months since the 19 October election, Canadians – from Justin Trudeau to church groups preparing for Syrian refugees – are reasserting one of the most recognizable tropes about Canada, that the country is an international leader in humanitarian aid and an advocate for multilateral and conciliatory approaches to… Continue Reading
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This response to Christopher Minty’s post on Loyalist Sources was composed collectively by the students of History 3403, a course at the University of New Brunswick devoted specifically to the Loyalists of the American Revolution. Their comments are summarized below by their professor Bonnie Huskins, followed by a brief postscript on the challenges and rewards of… Continue Reading
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Christopher F. Minty “Intractable issues vex loyalist studies.” These were the words Ruma Chopra used in an essay, published in History Compass, in 2013. She’s right. As of mid-2015, loyalist studies has come to an important juncture, and the paths historians, researchers, and students go down in choosing their approaches to loyalist studies, within the… Continue Reading
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Bonnie Huskins William Booth, an 18th-century British military engineer, was a citizen of the Atlantic World.[1] He was posted to various locations throughout the British Empire, beginning in Gibraltar in 1774, where he was eventually promoted to Director of the Mines. He was sent home during the Great Siege (1779-83) due to shell shock, but… Continue Reading
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Christopher Minty Writing in Liberty’s Exiles, Maya Jasanoff argued that the Loyalist Claims Commission was a useful—perhaps the most useful—source available for scholars working on loyalists. They are indeed useful, offering thousands of biographical snippets of a wide range of individuals. Most scholars have used the claims, in some capacity.[1] But, alongside the claims, there… Continue Reading
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