What's left of Blackness?

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Susanna Wade Martins

"Between 1720 and 1870, the British countryside went through a revolution. Agricultural productivity rose exponentially to meet the demands of a growing, urbanised and industrialised population. The changes, however, were not just economic; both rural society and the rural landscape were also transformed. Much of the countryside we are familiar with today can be dated to this period, especially in areas where arable agriculture predominates." "In all of this farmers were key players. Moving away from economic analysis, and focusing instead on rural society, Susanna Wade Martins tells their story. She explores how new farming landscapes were the outcome of a crucial relationship: between the landlord, who usually provided the capital to implement new methods, and the tenant farmer, who managed the farm. Bound by a greater net of Parliamentary enclosures, the British landscape was made to serve the end of the nation's industrial expansion. 'Planned landscapes' were not, however, uniform, and there is a need to reveal a complex pattern, with 'improvement' in some areas actually contributing to regional distinctiveness." "Drawing on the details of contemporary accounts from Caithness to East Anglia, this book tells the human and environmental story of the Age of Improvement. It is a book for all those interested in landscape history and the social history of Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."--Jacket.

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Robin D.G. Kelley and Stephen Tuck

"The close diplomatic, economic, and military ties that comprise the 'special relationship' between the United States and Great Britain have received significant attention from historians over the years. Less frequently noted are the countries' shared experiences of empire, white supremacy, racial inequality, and neoliberalism--and the attendant struggles for civil rights and political reform that have marked their recent history. This state-of-the-field collection traces the contours of this other 'special relationship,' exploring its implications for our understanding of the development of an internationally interconnected civil rights movement. Here, scholars from a range of research fields contribute essays on a wide variety of themes, from solidarity protests to calypso culture to white supremacy"--

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Bob Harris

In this study of British politics and political culture in the 18th-century the author reconstructs a political world in which vital issues continued to exercise the minds and emotions of the contemporary political nation.

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Catherine O'Donnell Kaplan

In the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, after decades of intense upheaval and debate, the role of the citizen was seen as largely political. But as Catherine O'Donnell Kaplan reveals, some Americans saw a need for a realm of public men outside politics. They believed that neither the nation nor they themselves could achieve virtue and happiness through politics alone. Imagining a different kind of citizenship, they founded periodicals, circulated manuscripts, and conversed about poetry, art, and the nature of man. They pondered William Godwin and Edmund Burke more carefully than they did candidates for local elections and insisted other Americans should do so as well. Kaplan looks at three groups in particular: the Friendly Club in New York City, which revolved around Elihu Hubbard Smith, with collaborators such as William Dunlap and Charles Brockden Brown; the circle around Joseph Dennie, editor of two highly successful periodicals; and the Anthologists of the Boston Athenaeum. Through these groups, Kaplan demonstrates, an enduring and influential model of the man of letters emerged in the first decade of the nineteenth century.