The American Revolution Reborn: Global Perspectives Recap

The 2nd post in my 6 post series recapping the American Revolution Reborn Conference (Part 1: Opening Roundtable)

Global Perspectives on the American Revolution

Chair: Andrew O’Schaughnessy

Panelists

Kate Carte Engel (Southern Methodist University), “Transatlantic Protestantism and the Challenge of the Revolution”

Caitlin Fitz, “The United States in the Age of Revolutions: A Reconsideration”

Aaron Fogleman: “The Changing Nature of Transatlantic Migration in the Age of Revolution”

Ned Landsman: “British Union and American Revolution: Unions, Sovereignty, and the Multinational State”

Biggest Takeaway: Scholars should study the Revolution in a global context because it is useful to compare American experiences with those in Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, & South America.

Biggest Question: Should we expand our periodization of the American Revolution to cover the years 1760 to 1825?

Panel Summary

Engal advocated for more studies that use religion to understand the American Revolution. Up until now the story of the founding has been largely secular, but what happens if we look at the Revolution through the lens of Protestantism? What were the implications of the Revolution for religion?

Fitz would like to see the periodization of the Revolution expanded to 1775-1825. This periodization allows scholars to compare the American Revolution with Latin & South American revolutions. This comparison deepens our understanding of American republicanism and ways of thinking. As Latin & South American countries declared independence they passed legal measures that ended slavery and promoted racial equality. Americans followed these actions in newspapers and no one reacted because the distance of South America from the United States rendered South American events abstract concepts.

Fogleman has found that immigration throughout the Atlantic was much higher from 1777 on than previously expected. Fogleman does not believe in the notion that the Revolution secured slavery and increased racism. When Fogleman studied the American Revolution in the Atlantic context, he found that slavery declined from its 1760s numbers during and after the Revolution.

Landsman believes that American historians have not sufficiently attended to the British aspect of the British Empire. Imperial reformers looked at including the 13 colonies in the formal 1707 union, but by 1763 the Americans had so much sovereignty that the British had little left to give to make the union appealing, aside from the sovereignty of Parliament. Reformers discussed the idea of eventually moving the imperial capital to North America, but British officials were wary of making any concessions that might suggest that the imperial capital would move, especially when America seemed to be pursuing a Republican path.

Official Panel Commentary

Linda Colley

Edward Countryman

Christine Heyrman  

Colley found that the panel provided 3 ways to look at how the American Revolution was a manifestation of trends going on around the world.

1.     Landsman reminds us of the issues of sovereignty, empire, & union. C.A. Bailey referred to the post-1750 era as a global crisis when increasingly expensive warfare raised taxes and provoked discussions of governance and rebellion. We have seen this in North America in the wake of the Seven Years’ War, in the Spanish Empire, the Russian Empire, and even in parts of the Mogul Empire.

2.     Fitz shows historians that we need to reexamine the umbrella term “Age of Revolution.” However, scholars can equally argue that the Age of Revolution was also an Age of Empire. The British Empire became reinvigorated by its defeat. New empires emerged, such as the Napoleonic, Brazillian, & new American empires.

3.     To properly re-birth the American Revolution, both American and British historians need to stop behaving as though the links between their respective societies ended in 1783.

Countryman posited that when scholars look at colonial America they see neo-Europes. However, colonial America had more going on than European settlement. Neo-Europes had a lot of Africans and scholars need to look beyond the neo-Europes to study those Africans. Contestation between European and Native American claimants of North America defines a colonial order that was not just an extension of European order. Countryman also believes that the biggest change wrought by the Revolution was the entry of the young United States into the Westphalian state system.

Heyrman believes that Protestant Nationalism & Internationalism peaked together just after the Revolution. Immigration from Ireland and elsewhere caused the remolding of Protestantism around the Atlantic and animus to Catholicism emerged as a necessary aspect of Protestantism.

Sampling of Question & Answer Remarks

Fogleman argued that slavery experienced the most security before the Revolution. The Revolution created a problem for slavery as it pointed towards emancipation. After the Revolution, slaveholders had to argue the positive good of slavery because others argued that slavery was bad.

Engal believes that scholars should shrink the Revolutionary period to 1763-1792 or 1774-1792. This periodization would allow historians to focus on what really happened during the war without having to study how a particular aspect of the Revolution played out over time. Expanding the Revolutionary periodization is also important, but the two goals should be separate: One group should look at the war and a second group should see how the Revolution played out.

Fogleman: The Revolution was not particularly religious in its causes, but the Revolution happened to a religious people. Americans' religion effected the way they viewed the Revolution and this should be studied.

Tomorrow: Recap of the American Revolution as Civil War

Feel free to agree or engage with the points and questions raised by this conference by leaving a comment.

The American Revolution Reborn: Opening Roundtable

Today I depart from my regular post schedule to bring you a 6 post series recapping the American Revolution Reborn Conference, the first conference dedicated to the American Revolution since the Bicentennial. The conference took place in Philadelphia between Thursday May 30 and Saturday June 1. Nearly 300 people attended. Academics, public historians, and enthusiasts alike contributed to the conversation, which centered on 4 themes: Global Perspectives on the American Revolution, the American Revolution as a Civil War, Violence and the American Revolution, & Power and the American Revolution. Roundtable discussions opened and closed the conference.

I hope that these posts will add more context and depth to the tweets attendees sent from the conference. (Michael D. Hattem has storifyed the tweets). Between today and Monday, I will post brief summaries of each panel and roundtable. This conference raised a number of questions and points that scholars of the American Revolution should be aware of.

Opening Roundtable

Moderator: Daniel Richter

Discussants: Jane Kamensky & Edward Gray

Biggest Takeaway: The ideological and social arguments of the American Revolution explain why the Revolution happened. Scholars must study how it happened to “rebirth” the study of the Revolution.

Biggest Question: Should new scholarship ignore ideology or use it as a tool to get at how the Revolution happened and how contemporaries conducted the war and politics?

Panel Summary

Since the 1960s nearly all scholarly and popular works portray the American Revolution as either a story of how the colonists conducted a revolution of ideas or how poor, downtrodden colonists caused the Revolution by advocating and pushing for social change. Kamensky, Gray, and other audience members advocated that new scholarship on the Revolution should depart from the old historiography. Kamensky & Gray took the first steps in their [amazon_link id="0199746702" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Oxford Handbook of the American Revolution[/amazon_link]; none of its 632 pages discuss ideology.

Sampling of Audience Remarks

Thomas Slaughter questioned whether there has ever been a debate surrounding the Revolution. He believes that scholars will need to grapple with power, gender, class, slavery, and the larger problems of the British empire to create better narratives. Historians will also need to engage and debate the ideological argument.

Linda Colley would like historians to compare the American Revolution with other revolutions. Comparison will allow scholars to see new avenues of exploration for their topics.

Fredrika Teute believes that historians need to wrap their minds around the reality and rhetoric of enslavement. Neither the ideological nor the social history-centered narratives knew how to incorporate and deal with slavery.

Tomorrow: Recap of the Global Perspectives panel

Feel free to agree or engage with the points and questions raised by this conference by leaving a comment.

How to Network: My Interview with Jennifer Polk, Ph.D.

This week I had the good fortune to interview Jennifer Polk, Ph.D., founder of the blog From Ph.D. to Life. Since December, Jen has written about her transition from academia to real life and her quest to find a fulfilling (and paying) career. Jen’s website serves as a valuable resource for anyone who is thinking about how to apply their historic skills to other history-related work or about transitioning to a non-history career. When you visit Jen’s site you will find that many of her posts are the Q & A sessions she has conducted with educators, researchers, writers, project managers, career coaches, and public speakers. These sessions are the result of Jen’s quest to learn more about different careers as well as how others with advanced degrees have found jobs that they love.

As I am also transitioning from Ph.D. to life, I reached out to Jen to find out more about her transition and how she has managed to network with so many different people.

How does Jen Network?

When I asked Jen about networking she stated, “The challenge of networking is that you are asking people for help and seeking help is difficult.”

After graduation, Jen wanted to learn about what other people do for a living. Her friends helped her ease into networking by introducing her to spouses and colleagues with interesting careers. These friendly interviews gave her the confidence to interact with strangers.

Jen uses the Internet to research different career possibilities. When she finds an interesting position or company, she searches their webpage to find a person who might talk to her. In one instance she found an advertisement for a museum consulting firm in her city. She went to the firm’s website and clicked through the employee bios. Jen found that she and a V.P. of the company shared a common link: They both held doctorates in history from the same university. Jen believed that this common connection might induce the V.P. to help her with information, so she sent him an e-mail. Jen admitted that “it is intimidating to reach out to someone you don’t know,” but she also stated that “the worst that can happen is that they say “no” or ignore you.” Jen’s instincts about the common bond proved correct. A week after she sent her e-mail, the V.P. replied that he would by happy to sit down for a conversation. (Click here to read Jen’s interview.)

After months of networking, Jen is still pleasantly surprised by how positively people react when she reaches out to them for her blog Q & As. She has found that people are excited and eager to help, “people like to help and they like to talk about themselves and give advice.”

Why Historians Make Good Networkers

I enjoyed meeting Jen and hearing about her transition experience. She taught me a lot about how to network and convinced me that I shouldn’t be afraid to ask people for help. After all, the worst that can happen is that the person says “no.” However, that outcome seems unlikely. The people Jen has contacted have been eager and excited to help.

My conversation with Jen also helped me to realize that historians are well positioned to network; we possess all of the skills needed to reach out and connect with other people. Historians know how to research and we like to interact with people. Okay, so most of the people we interact with are long since dead, but we seek them out anyway in the papers and works they left behind. We seek them out because we want them to help us answer questions we have about the topics, periods, people, thoughts, and cultures we study. We receive their help when we read, interrogate, and contextualize the papers and possessions they left behind. This one-sided engagement allows us to better understand and connect with our historical people. Networking with the living is not so dissimilar.

The best interactions take place when you find another person who shares something in common with you. Jen conducts research before she initiates contact. When she reaches out to someone she leads with what they share in common: an alma mater, an advanced degree, interests, an experience. After establishing this common ground, Jen asks for help. Historians study people and know that most people will respond favorably to requests for assistance when they feel connected to them. Moreover, historians are capable of making the most out of each networking opportunity because we know how to ask questions of our sources.

Networking will play an important role in my quest to turn my passion for history, research, and writing into a career that pays. I am grateful for the wisdom Jen imparted and I look forward to following and learning from her career journey at From Life to PhD.

What Do You Think?

Do you possess helpful networking wisdom or have you had a networking experience that you would like to share?

Do you use or know of other skills that historians possess that we can use to find or further our careers?

Why Join a Professional Historical Association?

Being a historian can be expensive. In addition to all the costs we shoulder (research trips, journals, books, reproduction fees, computers, software, etc.), we must decide whether to spend money on memberships to professional historical associations. If you can swing it, I believe you should join at least two professional historical associations: the American Historical Association (AHA) and the primary organization for your specific historical field.  

Why join the AHA? 

The American Historical Association is the organization for our guild, even if you work outside of academia. The organization advocates for government funding for archives and historical research, and it keeps tabs on legislation that has the potential to either benefit or hinder our work. Basically, they focus on and monitor potentially important issues so we can concentrate on our historical pursuits.

The AHA also facilitates the largest discussion forum for issues relating to the profession. Non-Academic historians should particularly care about this work as one of the organization's main conversations is about how to dissolve the gap between academic and non-academic historians.

Aside from this advocacy work, I find that the AHA has 3 practical benefits that makes membership worth the cost:

1. Subscription to Perspectives on History: AHA's publication about the guild, Perspectives provides short, concise articles about technology and software that can improve our productivity, how other historians work and teach, happenings we should be aware of, and updates on the organization's advocacy work.

2. Fellowship and Prize Board: Historians need fellowships and the AHA makes it easy to search for them on their website and, as the association for the guild, most prize-granting organizations advertise through them.

3. Reduced Admission to the Annual Conference: The annual conference focuses on the profession not a specialty. The conference features many networking opportunities, panels where historians from different fields make connections across time and place, and a plethora of panels that discuss methods to improve the way we work or techniques we can use to market ourselves to potential employers. Read Kenneth Pomeranz's Perspectives article for more on why the AHA offers a great conference.

Why Join an Organization for Your Specialty?

Specialty-focused organizations provide journals and annual conferences that keep their members abreast of the work and conversations going on among historians of the same sub-field. Membership in these organizations is particularly important for non-academic historians as we work apart from the scholars who drive the historiography. As it becomes more difficult for historians to formally publish their work, especially for those of us who lack institutional affiliation, we must keep abreast of the conversations in our field so we can keep our work relevant and know how to pitch ourselves to editors.

Leaving the Academy: How To Become an Independent Historian

Do I want to be an academic historian? I began having doubts about my career path during my last three years in graduate school. I had applied to grad school to become professionally-trained version of David McCullough. However, in my first quarter I replaced that goal with a desire for an academic career. No one forced this ambition on me per se, but my seminars, department workshops, and training were all geared towards preparing me for a tenure-track job. After imbibing on this academic dream for seven years, I found it difficult to confront the fact that I did not want to be a traditional academic. At first, I pushed my doubts from my mind by focusing on my dissertation. As my dissertation neared completion, I turned my attention to academic job applications. I told myself that getting a job would vanquish my fears about an academic career. Last year, I opened rejection letters and e-mails from nearly every university I had applied to. Even the two campus interviews I went on did not pan out. Through it all I remained surprisingly upbeat. Rejection, my positive attitude, and a job opportunity for my partner in Boston made me address the fact that I was pursuing an academic job for all the wrong reasons.

It took me over a year to admit that I really wanted a non-academic career. With all of its promises for intellectual stimulation, I found my decision to leave the academy a hard pill to swallow. Moreover, I want to be a historian. I yearn to produce original, high-quality scholarship that will be accessible to a broad audience. I also desire the opportunity to earn the respect of my academic peers. Although all are lofty goals, the latter will be the most difficult to achieve; many academic historians shun outsiders and view non-tenured or non-tenure-track historians as amateurs little deserving of their time. Still, I am up for the challenge.

Presently, I am working as an independent historian. I am revising my dissertation into a book, writing articles for academic journals and popular history magazines, and working to improve my writing and editing skills. I plan to use this blog as a forum: a place to share my successes and failures in figuring out ways to get paid for my work, methods for getting around the various barriers that come with being unaffiliated with an academic institution, my passion for history, and any tools and/or techniques that improve or hamper my ability to research and write.