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This thesis explores how Black refugees experienced refuge with the British military during the American Revolutionary War, 1775-1783. It examines how refugees from slavery created and were denied sanctuary with the British forces. This thesis employs a chronological structure, while also elucidating important aspects of Black refugees' experiences, such as flight, siege, occupation, movement with the British army, and evacuation. This study focuses on Black refugees' experiences in the Revolutionary South, extending from Virginia to Georgia, before moving to New York City in the final chapter. This thesis makes several arguments. It contends that Black refugees' ability to gain sanctuary with the British military was circumscribed by factors including mobility, geography, enslavers' allegiances, and the gendered contours of British offers of sanctuary. This thesis shows that the Revolutionary War changed the dynamic of Black refugees' flight. Throughout the conflict, Black refugees, through their mobility, engaged in distinctive processes of refuge seeking and refuge making. At the war's conclusion, this thesis reveals that whether Black refugees had forged refuge through service with the British military or by fleeing to British-occupied territory became critical in determining whether British officials would recognise them as refugees. In the war's final years, two distinct conceptions of refuge emerged: one based on military service and the other based on mobility. This thesis makes a significant intervention in our understanding of slavery and emancipation in the American Revolution. Seeing enslaved people fleeing bondage as refugees helps to foreground the perspectives of Black freedom and sanctuary seekers. It demonstrates that refuge from slavery, as fleeting, precarious, and uncertain as it often was, better characterises the ambiguous relationship between Black refugees and the British forces than the binary of slavery and freedom. The term "refugee," this thesis shows, encapsulates the liminal status of enslaved people who sought sanctuary with the British military. In doing so, it historicises the degrees of unfreedom that Black refugees navigated to carve out sanctuary for themselves.

This thesis provides the first examination of Continental Army morale. It investigates the morale of enlisted, ordinary soldiers during the American Revolutionary War, from 1775 to 1783. This thesis does not attempt to measure morale. Instead, it analyses the factors that sustained and inhibited morale and addresses why soldiers chose to continue fighting despite their extreme hardships. This thesis argues that morale is socially and culturally constructed and that common soldiers exhibited significant agency. Army leadership created a foundation for morale by educating soldiers on the conflict and their position in it. However, soldiers modified these explanations and turned them into more tangible concepts, which sustained their service. While previous scholarship focuses on perceptions of soldiers, ideologies of the Revolution, and combat demographics, this thesis focuses on the overlooked but deeply significant service of those entrenched in the conflict. Analysing the determinants of morale allows for a bottom-up approach to uncover what soldiers thought about their lived experiences. Narratives of Continental Army soldiers have shaped the direction and outline of this thesis. I utilised more than 250 soldiers' diaries to examine the factors that influenced morale. The almost daily entries left by these soldiers, reflected the monotony and hardships of war, and illuminated the diversity of troop experiences. These sources revealed two categories of factors that affected morale: foundational and sustaining. These two aspects of morale functioned in dialogue with one another. Foundational factors were institutional, reliant on the structures of the Continental Army and military leadership, whereas soldiers determined sustaining factors of morale. Foundational factors were physical - basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and supplies - and psychological - how officers defined the conflict, the principles behind it, and soldiers' position within the war. In contrast, soldiers exhibited their understanding of the conflict in their relationships with one another and civilian populations. These relationships acted as sustaining factors. Military leadership may have defined and reinforced foundational aspects of morale, but soldiers transformed them. Following an analysis of foundational and sustaining morale, this thesis examines soldiers' expressions of dissatisfaction. By examining patterns in mutiny and desertion, this thesis demonstrates that soldiers exhibited significant agency and created complex systems of protest. These protests underscore the importance of their relationships as well as their dedication to military service. This thesis situates the Continental Army within broader eighteenth-century developments. Enlightenment ideas about humanity, specifically about the individual, and education, significantly impacted military theory and paved the way for considerations of morale within a military context. As an army created for the Revolutionary War, the Continental Army was able to implement the newest military theories in its structures and training. This thesis argues that, as such, the Continental Army was the first army to consider morale instrumental to military success. Prioritising morale benefitted the revolutionary character of the war. To succeed, officers needed to convince soldiers that they were an important part of the new nation; soldiers would become citizens worthy of the utmost status and honour due to their participation in the conflict. This thesis demonstrates that from the outset of the Revolutionary War, officers acknowledged the humanity of ordinary soldiers and understood that the toils of war impacted individuals emotionally, not just physically.

This thesis examines the Scottish experience in the California Gold Rush through the lens of the Scottish diaspora. From 1848 to 1860, at least 3,000 Scots from across Scotland and its wider diaspora funnelled into the Golden State in search of wealth and opportunity. The resulting Scottish population in California, representing over twenty countries and five continents of first-time migrants and transmigrants alike, was a coming together of the Scottish diaspora from far apart. Dubbed 'Argonauts', those who took part in the California Gold Rush were primarily sojourners, temporary migrants who intended to eventually return home. In contrast to the existing Scottish diaspora historiography, this thesis asserts the dynamic role of diaspora throughout the entirety of the migrant experience. Traditionally, the existence of a diaspora in a host society is defined on the basis of collective manifestations of a distinctive culture. Addressing the limited understanding of the more 'invisible' migrants or ethnics who appeared to assimilate to the host society, this study emphasises the active role and experience of the individual migrant in the Scottish diaspora. Intent on returning home, Scottish Argonauts integrated with the Anglo-American community and left little trace of Scottish ethnic communities and institutions during the Gold Rush. Meanwhile, in the private realm, Scottish Argonauts employed letters as transnational agents to maintain vital links with the homeland. As this study demonstrates, personal correspondence was a central mechanism of the Scottish diaspora as it sustained ethnic networks and could play a large role in negotiating migrants' identities abroad. Over the course of their stay in California, as the rush for gold diminished, some of these Scottish Argonauts decided to remain. Notably, the shift in what the individual migrant sought affected the ways in which they interacted with their homeland connections and diaspora. No longer Argonauts, Scottish Californians paid more heed to rebuilding their ethnic communities in their new homes. More broadly, this thesis offers a comparative context to other Scottish diaspora locations across the globe and throughout time, refining the understanding of locational influences on Scottish communities abroad and how we understand the Scottish diaspora as whole. This study uses a variety of sources to reconstruct the Scottish Gold Rush experience. The first chapter employs data from the 1850 Federal Census, the 1852 California State Census, and the 1860 Federal Census to identify and situate the Scottish demographic presence in California. The remaining chapters employ a range of Scottish-authored diaries, correspondence, and memoirs, as well as Scottish and Americans periodicals, to construct a narrative arc that begins in Scotland with the arrival of news of the Gold Rush and concludes a decade later in California. From the journey to California, to their arrival, and whether they eventually returned back home, remigrated elsewhere, or chose to settle in California, Scottish Argonauts' relationship with the homeland and diaspora was both affirmed and reshaped by the processes of sojourning and settlement. Through the context of the California Gold Rush, this study offers some important insights into the nature of movement across the Scottish diaspora, the diasporic actions of individual migrants, and their shifting conceptions of opportunity, home, and ethnic expression abroad.

This thesis is about Thomas Jefferson and his classical taste in architecture, ornamented gardens and the locus amoenus. Thomas Jefferson curated a classical world in Virginia, for himself and later for others. He created an oasis of classicism in both thought and architecture, and this thesis explores how and why he did it. Classicism during the eighteenth century was not unique to the American Thomas Jefferson, for classicism spread throughout Western Europe from the Renaissance on and Jefferson was a direct participant in this wider European (especially British) rush to adopt, adapt and possess the ancient Mediterranean. Although Jefferson's participation in acquiring classical taste was not unique to this American, he did do something unique with classicism: he blended it with the American landscape and thus created an American classicism relevant for an American and, especially, a Virginian. Jefferson brought Arcadia to America and Virgil to Virginia. This thesis puts forth different terms for understanding Jefferson's classical taste. First, it explores 'taste' as an eighteenth-century equivalent of 'aesthetic', though with less philosophising. It argues that taste existed as a substitute for liking, interest in, appreciation for. Jefferson's taste was inextricably linked with the Classics and his taste cannot be understood without the Classics. Next, it uses the Latin term utile dulci as Jefferson's requirement for taste, which Jefferson infused with Epicureanism. The first aspect of Jefferson explored is his Epicureanism, which he received from different avenues. This chapter explores the depth of Jefferson's classicism that fuelled his taste. The next chapter is on the villas Monticello and Poplar with their aesthetic connections to Antiquity, the Italian Renaissance and Georgian England. This chapter will illustrate that Monticello was designed as a classical home not only in architecture, but in intent as well. Finally, Jefferson the Father of the University of Virginia will be explored. This chapter argues that Jefferson created the university as a seat of classical and Epicurean learning and will highlight the university's direct connections to Antiquity. This thesis will paint a portrait of Jefferson seldom seen in his historiography-it will illuminate a side of Jefferson that was creative, imaginative and idealistic. In so doing, this thesis will illustrate the relevance of Classical Reception for American Studies and will displace Jefferson from American History and place him within Classics.

This thesis examines massacres that were committed during the American Revolutionary War, seeking to recontextualise their importance within the broader frame of the study of violence while building a narrative that holds that the American Revolution, though broadly conceived in ideological terms, was both driven and decided by acts of extreme violence on the battlefield - in short, that wartime massacres shaped military outcomes to a degree that has been hitherto underappreciated. Late twentieth and early twenty-first century studies have sought to highlight the central role that violence played during the revolutionary war, helping to bring an end to the sanitised nineteenth century view of a revolution driven by principle rather than force (see Gelb, Hoock, Breen et all). Despite this there has been no complete study of the many massacres committed by both sides during the war, or an attempt to identify the broader role they played in the conflict's outcome. Massacres frequently emphasised both the superior combat proficiencies of Crown Forces and the superior propaganda capabilities of the Patriots. Unable to respond militarily to small-scale British successes especially in the years 1777 and 1778, the Patriots instead created a highly successful atrocity narrative - nascent and growing since the Boston Massacre of 1770 - that offset the damage done on the battlefield. Massacres came to define entire theatres of the war, such as the western frontier or the south from 1780 onwards. Modern efforts such as Holger Hoock's Scars of Independence (2018) have used occasional accounts of massacre to reinforce various points about revolutionary violence, but have failed to offer a comprehensive analysis of massacres throughout the conflict or assessed how these events had a decisive impact on the war. This thesis will seek to rectify that. Beginning with the Boston shootings of 1770 and closing with an assessment of the effect that massacres had on the Treaty of Paris, this thesis uses massacres as the central narrative focus for a reassessment of the course of the entire conflict, ultimately showing that many of them were pivotal events and not mere by-products of the wider conflict or footnotes in later histories of the revolution.

This project examines the Covenanters' political thought and considers its transmission in Scotland and throughout the American Colonies with a focus particularly on the backcountry of North Carolina. By seeing the development of beliefs and political cultures, this study revises our understanding of the political implications of Scottish Covenantalism in colonial America. Through the social network and correspondence of clergymen, Covenantalism became a driving force in religious orthodoxy among theologians and pastors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and interjected itself throughout diverse Atlantic political cultures. This thesis examines how 'radical' Presbyterians of the southern colonies used their pulpits not only for conversions, but also as lecterns for the articulation of political ideas. This project brings together the intellectual and the ecclesiastical for a more inclusive understanding of the political thought and strategies within several colonies that later supported and became active participants in the American Revolution. This thesis illustrates the link between Scottish covenanting tradition and the American Revolution, thus further demonstrating that the religious stories of the Revolution were not just a New England story, nor were the ideological origins of the Revolution just 'English'. The political theology of the Covenanters demonstrates that their behaviour and methods for participating in the political discourse of the American Revolution and the period preceding it were in fact intentional and deliberate. The evidence shows that the Covenanters did not separate their theology from their politics but used their theology to promote their politics. A secondary outcome expands our understanding of the intellectual history of the American Revolution to properly include more of the thirteen colonies and not limit the so-called enlightenment narrative to New England as others have contended. This thesis thus contributes to knowledge by further illuminating the religious dimensions of political thought and action in the Atlantic world by shifting focus from the religious sinews of revolutionary thought and action in the northern colonies during the American Revolution to the lower southern colonies.

Throughout 2013 the governments of the Austrian Republic and United States of America celebrated the 175th anniversary of diplomatic relations between them. This date marks the accreditation of ambassadors in 1838 but obscures the sixty-year prehistory, begun when the first American envoy reached Vienna in 1778. The Habsburg Monarchy became the last European Great Power to recognise the United States, but the reasons behind this also have eighteenth-century origins. The United States and the successor states to the Habsburg Monarchy, therefore, share a much longer, more complex and deeply entangled history stretching back to the American Revolution. This dissertation focuses on how and why attempts to formalise relations failed between these two states in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period, something which, until now, has received little historical attention. This dissertation uncovers a neglected but illuminating story of US-Habsburg relations between 1763- 1789. In doing so it demonstrates the evolving nature of early modern diplomacy and the wider international struggle of the American founding. In both regards, this dissertation argues the economic motivation of economic agents and the role of personalities were the new and instrumental factors. What follows is a new history of the broader, much deeper impact of the American Revolution and the transatlantic entanglements of the Habsburg Monarchy. A history of a relationship which looks beyond 'desk diplomacy' and towards a more holistic interpretation of the attempted relations between unlikely states. To this end, this dissertation relies upon a broad base of archival material from personal papers to quantative data from both sides of the Atlantic.

This dissertation traces the development of Charles A. Beard’s social, political, legal and historical thought. It covers his early education in Indiana, his cosmopolitan postgraduate studies at the University of Oxford, Cornell University and Columbia University, and professional work as political scientist and as expert on municipal government. By following thematically and chronologically the relationship between Beard’s historical writings and his early life as teacher of politics and government, this dissertation offers both a reinterpretation of the meaning of Beard’s interpretation of the origins of the U.S. Constitution and a glimpse of the shifting intellectual trends in political thinking that emerged during the Progressive era. Contrary to the idea that Beard was a moral absolutist interested in denouncing the interference of economic interests in government, this thesis argues that Beard developed a pluralistic, functionalistic, and anti-majoritarian conception of politics that was at odds with many Progressive thinkers. Most previous research on Beard has lacked archival research and has ignored Beard’s teachings on politics at Columbia University, thus projecting into Beard’s thought concepts and values he did not adopt. In this study Beard appears as an early advocate of a new pluralistic ethics and utilitarian morality that allowed him to picture the framers of the Constitution as modern pragmatic politicians interested in creating a strong government by the art of integrating the major economic interests of the society in the process of law-making. This dissertation also reveals a broader intellectual world informing Beard’s scholarly work and highlights his readings in modern sociology at DePauw and German sociological jurisprudence as two key factors in understanding Beard’s conception of law and politics. As such, it offers a much more complicated image of Beard’s thought and his intellectual world.

The nature of governorship just before, during, and just after the American Revolution is a subject that has been noticeably neglected in the historiography of the Revolution. While biographies of individual governors have been written, there remains a need for a clear ideological and constitutional debate about the actual executive functions, the nature of the appointment system in place, and the constitutional role of governors across the colonial and state periods. This dissertation examines the evolution of governorship in Virginia from 1758 to 1781. It attempts to identify, define and compare two different systems of governorship in Virginia. It examines the nature of executive authority and constitutional role of the different governors in this period. It seeks, first, to identify and define a gubernatorial system in colonial Virginia. By analysing a governor’s methods of appointment, the governor’s constitutional status, his relationship with the legislature and the people at large, this dissertation will identify a ‘British’ system of governorship. Second, the dissertation will attempt to identify a separate republican system of governorship in Virginia that was established in 1776. It will analyse the Virginia Constitution and explain the gubernatorial position in this political framework. It will also examine the first five years of Virginia’s independence from Britain and focus on the nature of gubernatorial authority in practice. By identifying two distinct models of governorship, this dissertation will be able to compare them in order to ascertain to what extent Virginians relied upon or abandoned British constitutional thinking and practice. The dissertation maintains that Virginians relied heavily upon British constitutional thinking when establishing their system of governorship in 1776. While Virginians rejected wholeheartedly a system based on monarchical influence and patronage, they were inspired by radical Country Whig thinkers who had dictated that an uncontrolled executive branch posed the greatest threat to the political system. Virginians in 1776 established a system of governorship that was inherently weak and that was controlled and dominated by the legislative branch. This dissertation, however, maintains that the system of state governorship established by the Virginian Convention in 1776 was not wholly dissimilar to the practical powers and influence at the disposal of royal governors. Both systems were inherently weak: the royal and state governors could not exert any meaningful control over the legislative branch, were not able to exert much influence over the people at large and were not granted many significant practical powers. This dissertation will also demonstrate that executive power, and the perceptions of the dangers that executive power posed, had developed markedly from 1776 to 1781. Not only will it prove that Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry enjoyed more powers than was prescribed to the governorship in 1776, but it will also show that, by 1781, a strong executive branch was required to save the state of Virginia from potential collapse.

Today, Belgium is an oft-cited example of a “fabricated state” with no real binding national identity. The events of 1787-1790 illustrate a surprisingly strong rebuttal to this belief. Between 1787 and 1790, the inhabitants of the Southern Netherlands protested the majority of reforms implemented by their sovereign Joseph II of Austria. In ten independent provinces each with their own administration and assembly of Estates, a resistance movement grew and its leaders eventually raised a patriot army over the summer of 1789. This force chased the imperial troops and administration from all the provinces except Luxembourg, allowing the conservative Estates and their supporters to convene a Congress at Brussels, which hosted a central government to the new United States of Belgium. By November 1790, however, infighting between democrats and conservatives and international pressures allowed Leopold II, crowned Emperor after his brother’s death in February, to easily reconquer the provinces. This thesis investigates the moment in which “Belgianness,” rather than provincial distinctions, became a prevailing identification for the Southern Netherlands. It tracks the transition of this national consciousness from a useful collaboration of the provinces for mutual legal support to a stronger, more emotional appeal to a Belgian identity that deserved a voice of its own. It adds a Belgian voice to the dialogue about nations before the nineteenth century, while equally complicating the entire notion of a nation. Overall, the thesis questions accepted paradigms of the nation and the state and casts Belgium and the Belgians as a strong example that defies the normal categories of nationhood. It examines how the revolutionaries—the Estates, guilds, their lawyers, the Congress, and bourgeois democratic revolutionaries—demonstrated a growing sense of “Belgianness,” in some ways overriding their traditional provincial attachments. I rely on pamphlet literature and private correspondence for the majority of my evidence, focusing on the elite’s cultivation and use of national sentiment throughout the revolution.