This thesis explores how American conservatives in the 1850s used centralization as a term and process to understand social change, sectional conflict, and political economy, but paradoxically used opposition to centralization tactically to expand economic networks, extend state capacity, and rein in the effects of Jacksonian democracy. Opposition to centralization might seem an inherently democratic language. But a diverse group of northerners sought to reclaim this language for their own purposes. Drawing from revolutionary warnings against democratic excess and contemporary fears of popular violence, they tried to redefine the people as the greatest centralizing threat. The transformation of France from democratic republic to authoritarian empire gave conservatives an opportunity to show that democracies inevitably allowed power to centralize. But centralization also had a geographic dimension, and conservatives in eastern metropolises often used the term to warn against the growing power of rival empire cities and long-distance trade. Anxieties about consolidating divided municipal governments and concentrating voting power in a majority northern electorate also found expression in critiques of centralization. Yet historians have also identified processes of centralization underway in the period, and conservatives engaged with these too. Reformers embraced stronger municipal governments, city boosters pushed to entrench their economic dominance over expanding hinterlands, and pro-compromise unionists urged the federal government to intervene in the sectional crisis. Conservatives often supported these changes, arguing centralization without further democratisation was a necessary step. When confronted with disunion, urban disorder, and economic growth, they often backed centring power both institutionally and geographically in response. Denouncing democracy and rival cities as centralizers only helped conservatives legitimise their own centralizing agenda. Exploring how conservatives used centralization therefore highlights a sometimes neglected conservative modernising agenda in the 1850s, one that used an Early Republican political language but anticipated postbellum administrative rationalisation and democratic retreat.

This study examines the evolution of offensive and defensive maritime economic warfare and the Royal Navy’s use of commercial and naval blockades and mercantile convoys during successive wars, particularly its successful use by Britain in the Anglo-American war of 1812-15. Its legality, tactical and strategic development and contemporary government policy, including impressments are studied. Comparison is made of the nature and development of the British and American economies, their vulnerability to economic warfare and the expediency of its use by Britain against the United States discussed. Legal and practical constraints upon British convoys and blockades are studied and practical solutions reviewed. Economic aspects of the causes, conduct and effects of the war are surveyed, including the impact of Britain’s commercial blockade on American commercial, fiscal, financial, economic and political infrastructures, and therefore the United States’ ability and preparedness to continue fighting. The effectiveness of the naval blockade supplementing Britain’s commercial blockade of the United States is also assessed. The long-standing problem of the relative effects of British commercial blockade, and the at times contemporaneous American legislative ‘restricting system’ is resolved by comparison of current New England commodity prices at specific times. Prices before the repeal of Madison’s second Embargo are compared with subsequent prices, and with those after the British blockades are later extended to neutral trade with New England. The effectiveness of British economic warfare on the American economy under two successive commanders is evaluated. An objective assessment of the strategy’s eventual impact on the war’s outcome and later policies is made, and of how far each belligerent’s war aims were met by the negotiated peace. The effectiveness of Britain’s use of economic warfare against the United States has long been seriously under-estimated.

The thesis uses the case study of the experience of middle-class northern white women in America during the period 1800-1860 to explore several issues of wider significance. Firstly, the research focuses upon the dynamic relationships between the culturally-constructed categories of public/formal and private/informal power and participation at both the practical and symbolic levels, suggesting ways in which they intersected on the lives of women. Secondly, consideration is given to the validity of the stereotyped view that 'domestic' women were necessarily disadvantaged and dominated relative to those who aspired to public political and economic roles. Thirdly, the relationship of religious belief to these two areas is discussed, in order to discover its relevance to the way in which women both perceived themselves and were perceived by others. In seeking to explore these issues, the research has analysed the patterns of social and cultural change in the era under question, indicating how those changes influenced the perceptions and experiences of both women and men. Their reactions in terms of discourse and activity are located as strategies of negotiation in redefining both social role and participation for the sexes. The rhetoric of 'separate spheres', which was used by men and women to order their mental and physical surroundings, is reduced to its symbolic constituents in order to illustrate that the distinction between male and female arenas was more perceptual than actual. The motivating forces behind the activities and ideas of women themselves are investigated to determine the role of religion in the construction of both female self-images and wider negotiational strategies. The context of nineteenth-century social dynamics has been revealed by detailed analysis of extensive primary sources originated by both women and men for private as well as public consumption. Feminist tools of analysis which enable the conceptualisation of 'meaningful discourse' as including female contributions have further enhanced the specific focus on how women constructed their own world-views and approaches to reality. 'Traditional' approaches and tools are shown to have seriously skewed and misrepresented the reality and variety of both discourse and female experience in the era. Great efforts have been made to allow women to speak in their own words. This has produced an insight into a richness of female social participation and discourse which would otherwise be obscured. The research indicates that women were indeed actors and negotiators during the period. Those women who advocated as primary the duties of women in the domestic and social arenas were by no means setting narrow limitations on female participation in both society and discourse. The religious impulses and eschatological frameworks derived by women (varied as they were) served to order and renegotiate reality and meaning, whilst they produced female roles and influence of great significance. Women were not passive victims of male oppression. Religion can thus be perceived as a positive force which women were able to approach both for its own sake, and for their own particular ends.