• “Miseries in the name of Liberty”

    A Review of Alan Taylor’s American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2021). Todd Webb This bleak and brilliant book offers a history of the antebellum United States in the wider context of its North American neighbours. That story, for Alan Taylor, was dominated by three processes: the… Continue Reading

  • Debating (American) Democracy

    Jerry Bannister Like everyone else this evening, I’m struggling to keep up with the news. What’s striking about the latest crisis in the United States is that, even at the very heart of American power, there remains so much confusion about what’s happening on the ground in Washington. Despite the ocean of tweets, there is… Continue Reading

  • Britishness and Whiteness in Early Canadian Culture

    Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy In the September 28, 2017 issue of the New York Review of Books, Fintan O’Toole explained Brexit as the consequence of a rebirth of English nationalism: “Brexit is a peaceful revolution but it is unmistakably a nationalist revolt. It is England’s insurrection against … the belief that contemporary nationality must be fluid, open,… Continue Reading