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The problematic relationship between racism and slavery has occupied the attention of several recent generations of scholars. Too often, however, the works produced have been limited by a reliance on familiar "American" sources, an inflexible temporal scope, and an overly restricted terrain. This dissertation seeks to break out of the confines of this generally teleological and parochial tradition in order to explicate the larger social and cultural context in which Anglo-American racial slavery was forged. In particular, it is argued that racism and slavery were not necessarily linked together in the English imagination before the settlement of Jamestown and that their relationship to each other cannot be understood in either a causative or linear fashion. "Race" and "slavery" are terms that possess specific historical connotations which must be understood in an early modern context in order to grasp the full import of their application and conflation in colonial British American society.;The opening section of this work addresses the multiple meanings and forms of human bondage in early modern England. Particular attention is paid to the legitimacy of slavery in Tudor England, as well as its attendant symbolic value and social meanings. Next, the problem of identity is considered, with a particular emphasis on the efforts of elite Englishmen to reinvent "Englishness" through mythic national histories and climate theory. Then, the issue of English "attitudes" about Africans is addressed. Prevailing ideas about African peoples were neither uniform nor consistent; there were, in fact, multiple stereotypes concerning the role of Africans in the Atlantic world. Finally, the dissertation shifts focus to the Anglo-American world, where the significance of the first three sections is tested. Here, traditional English conceptions of bondage, as well as Iberian and Spanish American conceptions of proper social relations in multiracial societies, were initially employed in the new settlements. These models proved to be confusing, even threatening, when blended in Anglo-American settlements and they were ultimately subverted by the growing importance of race-based plantation slavery. Questions of status and identity among the English were equally as important as prejudicial assumptions about Africans or Indians in shaping the corpus of ideas that supported the Africans or Indians in shaping the corpus of ideas that supported the development Anglo-American slavery.

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The Seven Years' War on the Virginia and Pennsylvania frontier was a devastating struggle. About two thousand colonists died, almost as many were captured, and tens of thousands fled for safety in the east. The British and their colonists proved unable to mount an effective military defence: colonial forces proved unfit for warfare in the frontier environment and military efforts resulted only in intense discord between civil and military authorities. as a result of the destruction of the raids both Virginia and Pennsylvania were unable to contribute to the war effort in the northern theater, on the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain, and Acadia.;The French and their Indian allies achieved this success with few resources. The French were unable to commit over a few hundred men to the Ohio Valley, while the Indians experienced an acute shortage of arms and supplies caused by the disruption of their traditional trading network. to achieve their success the French and their Indian allies did not raid randomly, but with an intentional strategy and with specific targets.;The Indians who fought on both sides, fought, not as European pawns, but with their own specific war-aims: the Susquehanna Delawares sought independence from Iroquois overlordship; the Cherokees joined the Virginians in an attempt to break the South Carolinian control of their trade; the Ohio Indians struggled to keep European settlements out of the Ohio Valley.;Eventual success for the British in the theater was achieved not by the superiority of their forces in the theater--in each regular battle British troops were routed, at Fort Necessity, Braddock's Field, and Major Grant's defeat outside Fort Duquesne in 1758--but through attrition caused by British superiority in other theaters. In particular British naval superiority deprived the French, and in turn their Indian allies, of needed supplies.

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The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the interconnections of the public and personal lives of six women printers of the colonial South: Mary Wilkinson Crouch, Mary Katherine Goddard, Anne Catharine Green, Clementina Rind, Elizabeth Timothy, and Ann Timothy. Earlier studies of colonial printing history have focused on the New England and mid-Atlantic colonies. This work fills a regional gap by studying printers in revolutionary Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina.;As printers, these six individuals provided a unique window on the cosmopolitan nature of their southern societies through the newspapers they published. as female artisans in a male-dominated profession, they used their newspapers to reflect a gendered appeal to other women through discussion of female education, political consciousness, boycott participation, and courtship and marriage.;Five of the subjects were widows of printers who assumed business responsibilities upon their husbands' deaths; the sixth subject was the feme sole sister and daughter of a printer. Widowhood created more demands on these women as well as opened doors to greater autonomy. All six women became increasingly assertive in their community and familial roles. Both the private domestic sphere and the public commercial sphere are needed to assess their historical significance.

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This study examines the roles of white loyalists, Indians and African-Americans in the British effort to regain control of South Carolina and Georgia during the American Revolution, 1775--1782.;British officials believed that support from these three groups would make the conquest of the Deep South colonies a relatively easy task. But when the British launched a major effort to regain first Georgia and then South Carolina, the attempt ultimately ended in failure. Most historians have explained this outcome by arguing that British planning was faulty in its conception, and that officials overestimated both the numbers of southern loyalists and the effectiveness of Indian support.;A detailed account of the contributions loyalists, Indians and slaves made to British operations in the South demonstrates the scope and effectiveness of this support, and concludes that neither a lack of assistance from these three groups nor poorly conceived plans were responsible for British failure to regain control of Georgia and South Carolina. Rather, British leaders failed to coordinate effectively the efforts of their supporters in the Deep South, largely because they did not recognize that the peoples on whom they counted for aid had disparate interests and a history of mutual animosity that needed to be overcome to achieve their full cooperation. Furthermore, the British never provided their supporters with adequate protection from regular troops, which allowed the American rebels to undertake a brutal campaign of suppression against all who favored the royal cause. Although loyalists, Indians, and slaves strove valiantly to aid the British in the face of such persecution, the violence eventually took its toll and enabled the rebels to overcome their opponents.