Making a Republic Imperial
Thursday, March 28, 2019
The Library Company of Philadelphia
1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA
Friday, March 29, 2019
McNeil Center for Early American Studies
3355 Woodland Walk, Philadelphia, PA
How and why did the newly independent United States become an empire? The answer to this question is not obvious. Before the American Revolution, the colonies and the continent beyond them were spaces of contest, collaboration, and competition among European empires, Native American powers, and enslaved and free African Americans. The founding generation of the early republic added its own imperial ambitions to this mix, revealing competing visions for the new nation, intense debate in the new citizenry about whether and how quickly the republic should expand, what role it should play among international states, and what its character and purpose should be. Some began calling their nation an “empire” almost as soon as they started calling it a republic, while others wondered if the idea of an expansive republic was a contradiction in terms. Yet in just seven decades, the fledgling republic had become an imperial juggernaut with ambitions to rule a continent and beyond. By the 1840s, the United States had refined its tools for dispossessing Native peoples and asserted a political economy grounded in black enslavement. It had conquered an immense amount of territory and claimed the Pacific Ocean as its western boundary, while setting its imperial sights upon regions, peoples, and resources much further afield.
At this conference, six panels of scholars will use empire as an analytical framework for thinking and writing about the early republic. They will employ a wide variety of methods and approaches to investigate how and why the new nation became an empire, and to explore the meaning and utility of empire as a category of analysis for understanding the history of the early republic.
Conference Program
THURSDAY, MARCH 28
All sessions at the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia
9:00–9:45AM Registration & Coffee
9:45–10:00AM Welcome
Cathy Matson, PEAES and University of Delaware
Daniel K. Richter, McNeil Center and University of Pennsylvania
10:00–11:30AM Indigenous Sovereignty and the Ambitions of U.S. Empire
Chair: Michael Blaakman, Princeton University
Emilie Connolly, New York University
“Strategies of Succession and the 1797 Treaty of Big Tree”
Lauren Brand, Southern Nazarene University
“Facing West in Indian Country”
Garrett Wright, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Ambassadors to the Federal City: Central Plains Indians Discover the American Empire”
Comment: Elizabeth Ellis, New York University
11:30AM–12:00PM Break
12:00–1:30PM Industry, Trade, and the Imperial State
Chair: Cathy Matson
Susan Gaunt Stearns, University of Mississippi
“Selling the West: Frontier Merchants and Imperial Authority, 1780-1811”
Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Miami University of Ohio
“How the National Firearms Industry Helped Make an Early Republic Empire”
Alicia Maggard, Williams College
“Pacific Mail, Industrial Empire: Building U.S. Power in the Pacific”
Comment: Honor Sachs, University of Colorado, Boulder
1:30–3:00PM Lunch on your own
3:00–4:45PM Knowledge Production and the Tools of U.S. Empire
Chair: Alexandra Montgomery, University of Pennsylvania
Tisa Wenger, Yale University
“Making Settler Secularism: Morse’s Geographies and American Religion”
Sveinn Jóhannesson, University of Cambridge
“Scientific Knowledge and Empire in Jacksonian America”
Michael Verney, University of New Hampshire
“Selling Empire: Publishing and Presenting Naval Imperialism in the Early American Republic, 1842-1860”
Comment: Ned Blackhawk, Yale University
4:45–5:00PM Keynote Introduction
Emily Conroy–Krutz, Michigan State University
Michael Blaakman, Princeton University
5:00–6:00PM Keynote Speaker
Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Debating Empire, Race, and Nation in the Early Nineteenth Century”
6:00–7:00PM Reception
FRIDAY, MARCH 29
All sessions at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 34th and Sansom Streets, Philadelphia
9:00–9:45AM Registration & Coffee
9:45–11:30AM Race, Slavery, and Geographies of Empire
Chair: Emily Conroy–Krutz, Michigan State University
Nancy Gallman, McNeil Center and Lewis & Clark College
“Unmaking an American Republic: Settlers, African Americans, and Constitutional Law in the Spanish Florida Borderlands”
Brandon Mills, University of Colorado, Denver
“From a Settler Empire to a Global Empire: Reconsidering the African Colonization Movement”
Scott Heerman, University of Miami
“Freedom in Chains: U.S. Empire, the Illegal Slave Trade, and the Case of East Texas, 1836-1845”
Comment: Rashauna Johnson, Dartmouth College
11:30–11:45AM Break
11:45AM–1:30PM Law and the Politics of Imperial Expansion
Chair: Bethel Saler, Haverford College
Jessica Choppin Roney, Temple University
“Inalienable: The Limits of an Empire Based Upon Natural Rights”
Julia Lewandoski, University of California, Berkeley
“An Empire of Indian Titles: Private Land Claims in Early American Louisiana, 1803-1840”
Camille Suarez, University of Pennsylvania
“This Land is Not Your Land: The Land Claims Act of 1851, Unratified Treaties, and the Dispossession of Californios and Native Americans”
Comment: Sarah Rodriguez, University of Arkansas
1:30–2:30PM Lunch on your own
2:30–4:00PM Imperialism and Its Discontents
Chair: Andy Shankman, Rutgers University-Camden
Margot Minardi, Reed College
“Pax Americana? The Imperial Ambivalence of American Peace Reformers”
Nick Guyatt, University of Cambridge
“Imperialism and the American Imagination”
Amy Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University
“When No Means No: The Question of Consent in the Ideology of Manifest Destiny”
Comment: Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University
4:15–5:00PM Closing Remarks
Michael Blaakman, Princeton University
Emily Conroy-Krutz, Michigan State University
5:00–6:00PM Reception
The Program in Early American Economy and Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Department of History at Princeton University, and Iona College’s Institute of Thomas Paine Studies are pleased to co-sponsor this two-day conference bringing together scholars of imperialism in its multiple early North American forms and spaces.
Stylish Books Symposium
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
The Stylish Books: Designing Philadelphia Furniture exhibition examines the Library Company’s collection related to furniture making in Philadelphia, illustrating the influence of books and showing style changes over time. Printed designs spread new ideas. Artisans, as well as their patrons, relied on books as a way to learn about the latest fashions in interior decoration. Books, periodicals, and advertisements generated consumer desire for these goods. The symposium will further explore and expand on how printed books impacted and inspired furniture design and style. Participants will enjoy talks from expert scholars and have an opportunity to view the exhibition. We hope to encourage and stimulate thought and conversation on this topic. Join us for an exciting day of research and discovery.
Schedule:
8:15-9:00AM:
Registration and light breakfast
9-9:15AM:
Welcome
Dr. Michael Barsanti, Edwin Wolf 2nd Director, Library Company of Philadelphia
Linda August, Curator of Art & Artifacts, Library Company of Philadelphia
9:15-10:15AM:
Keynote address
The Divergent Paths of Two Masters of British 18th-Century Design, Thomas Johnson and Thomas Sheraton
Brock Jobe, Professor Emeritus of American Decorative Arts, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library
10:15-10:45AM:
Break
10:45-12PM:
Chippendale’s Director. The Rise of Print and Promotion in 18th-Century England
Femke Speelberg, Associate Curator of Historic Ornament, Design and Architecture in the Department of Drawings & Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Thomas Chippendale’s Director in America: Popularity, Parody, and Perseverance
Alyce Englund, Assistant Curator of American Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art
12-12:45
From Design Book to Design–The Philadelphia Cabinetmakers’ Companions and Guides, 1750-1800
Alexandra Kirtley, Montgomery-Garvan Curator of American Decorative Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Final Remarks
Lunch on your own
This exhibition and programming is supported in part by the Center for American Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Freeman’s; and Jay Robert Stiefel.
Dr. Sarah Knott, associate professor of history at Indiana University and former fellow, will speak on how people in the past experienced pregnancy, birth, and infant care. As a history, her soon-to-be published Mother Is a Verb explores the worlds of Cree or Ojibwe women, slaves on South Carolina rice plantations, tenant farmers in Appalachia, or tenement dwellers in New York and Liverpool. As a memoir, her book asks new questions about the smallest of human experiences—sleeplessness, joy, interruption—and about how we explore history itself.
William Penn: A Life
Book Talk & Signing: 6:00pm -7:30pm
Despite his exalted place at the top of City Hall, Penn himself remains a mystery to many Philadelphians. What led this son of famous war hero to the pacifist Quakers? How did a well-connected English Dissenter end up in America? Why, despite voicing his desire to become “an adopted American,” did he spend so little time here? And why did he try to sell the colony back to the Queen? Drawing on his new biography William Penn: A Life, author Andrew Murphy, will bring William Penn down from his pedestal and explore the significant aspects of his extraordinary life.
This program is co-sponsored by the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Arch Street Meeting House Preservation Trust.
6th Annual Lecture in Honor of John C. Van Horne
Lecture by T.J. Stiles
The Custer Conundrum: Exploring Leadership in the Contradictory Life of George Armstrong Custer
Tuesday, April 30
5:30pm Reception for Members, Shareholders, and Donors
6:30pm Lecture by T.J. Stiles
8:00pm Dinner with the Author* (limited tickets available)
About the Lecture:
Join us as Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a capable yet insecure man, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive. Stiles casts a new light on one of the best-known figures of American history, a subject of seemingly endless fascination.
About the Author:
T.J. Stiles is the author of Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History, the Spur Award for Best Western Biography, and the William H. Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography. He also wrote The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the 2009 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, winner of the 2003 Ambassador Book Award. He is currently working on a biography of Theodore Roosevelt.
If you are a Library Company Shareholder, Member, or Donor and intend on attending the reception and lecture, please RSVP for both.
*To pay by check for tickets to the Dinner with the Author, please contact Colleen Gill at cgill@librarycompany.org or 215-546-3181.
If you require any accessibility accommodations, please contact the Development Office at 215-546-3181, ext 136.