Founded In    2003
Published   quarterly
Language(s)   English
     

Fields of Interest

 

History, Literature, Cultural Studies

     
ISSN   1478-8810
     
Affiliated Organization   MESEA, Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas
     
Publisher   Routledge, Taylor & Francis
     
Editorial Board

Editors:

Manuel Barcia - University of Leeds, UK

Rocío G. Davis - University of Navarra, Spain

Dorothea Fischer-Hornung - Heidelberg University, Germany

David Lambert - - University of Warwick, UK

Submission Guidelines and Editorial Policies

Please make submissionselectronically at . Articles should, in general, be under 10,000 words. Please consult the online “Instructions for authors” and follow the journals style sheet (modified Chicago Humanities style)

.

Submissions will be subjected to two double-blind reviews before acceptance.

     

Atlantic Studies: Global Currents

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Atlantic Studies: Global Currents is a multidisciplinary quarterly that publishes cutting-edge research, studying the Atlantic world as a conceptual, historical, and cultural space. It explores transnational, transhistorical, and transdisciplinary intersections, but also addresses global flows and perspectives beyond the Atlantic as a closed or self-contained space. In the larger context of global flows, the journal considers the Atlantic as part of wider networks, a space of exchange, and an expanding paradigm beyond the limits of its own geography, moving beyond national, regional, and continental divides by examining entangled histories and cultures. Published on behalf of MESEA (Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas), the journal challenges critical orthodoxies that have drawn sharp lines between the experiences and representations of the Atlantic world and its wider global context, in particular in relation to the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

 

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2008 04, Volume 5, Number 1

Editorial


History


"Maintaining the connexion": Orangeism in the British North Atlantic World, 1795-1844


I, A -- B -- , do solemnly and voluntarily swear, that I will, to the utmost of my power, support and defend Her present Majesty, Queen Victoria, and her lawful heirs and successors ... so long as she, he, or they, shall support and maintain the Protestant Religion ... that I will to the utmost of my power, defend her against all traitorous conspiracies and attempts whatever, which shall be made against Her person, crown or dignity; ... that I will steadily maintain the connexion between the Colonies of British North America and the Mother Country, and be ever ready to resist all attempts to weaken British influence, or dismember the British Empire.1 This article examines the Orange Order in the context of the British North Atlantic world during the early nineteenth century. It simultaneously conducts circum-, cis-, and trans-Atlantic analyses to argue that although Orangeism was a distinctly Atlantic institution, distinct local contexts - in this case Irish, metropolitan, and colonial - had a profound impact on the fate of the order in this period. Specifically, "local peculiarities" determined the authorities' attitude toward the Orange Order: the connection between Orangeism and politics led metropolitan authorities to discourage and ultimately ban the order, while the political activism of Orangemen actually served to strengthen the order's position in British North America. This examination concludes that the Atlantic remains a viable unit of historical analysis for the history of Orangeism in the first half of the nineteenth century but suggests that studying the brotherhood after the 1860s requires one to adopt the methodologies of world history.

The political exile of the Stiers: A Belgian family weighs the cost of American democracy (1794-1803


In 1794, the Stiers, a wealthy Belgian family, fled Antwerp to escape the invasion of their hometown by the French revolutionary army. Attracted by America's political principles and economic climate, they emigrated to the United States. Although they had considered settling there permanently, all but one were persuaded to return to Antwerp in 1803. Their story is told in extensive family correspondence that covers their years in the United States (1794-1803). This correspondence illuminates how the Stiers came to terms, each in his or her own way, with this new and completely different social, cultural, and political landscape; and why, despite the obvious attraction of democracy, all the members of the family, except the youngest daughter, chose to return to their native Antwerp.

Postscript to his brothers: Reading Alonso De Sandoval's De Instauranda Aethiopum Salute (1627) as a Jesuit spiritual text


For scholars who wish to understand the African/European encounter in the early modern Atlantic world, Alonso de Sandoval's unique treatise is a must-read. Described by literary scholar Margaret Olsen as an "historical and geographic compendium of Africa, apology for Jesuit action in the New World, and practical missionary manual," the work is marked by a complexity of motivations and discourses. In this article, I explore Sandoval's contribution to Jesuit spiritual writing, a dimension of that discourse that has been completely overlooked in the recent scholarship. Through a close reading of Book 4, which Sandoval views as a domestic, in-house discussion with his fellow Jesuits, I show that what some scholars have narrowly interpreted as sectarian posturing vis-à-vis rival ecclesiastical institutions is, to a large degree, an intra-Jesuit exploration of the Order's core values and priorities. As a spiritual writer, Sandoval's concern is much deeper than the mere defense of pastoral turf; he is clearly troubled by what he sees as mixed messages within his own religious community. In order to promote pastoral ministries among African slaves arriving in New World ports, he turns to the introspective question of what it means to be a Jesuit. That question takes him to the moment of the Order's spiritual inception, Ignatius Loyola's mystical vision at La Storta. In that vision, he will argue, lies the key to Jesuit self-understanding.

"In the country of my forefathers": Pauline E. Hopkins, William H. Sheppard, Lucy Gantt Sheppard, and African American Routes


This article argues that previously unrecognized connections between Hopkins's novel Of One Blood and the Sheppards's missionary careers in the Congo illuminate the transatlantic routes that have contributed to the development of African American literature and culture. Archival sources are used to intervene in current academic debates about the Black Atlantic with the contention that early twentieth century American understandings of Africa were not simply the products of a romantic imaginary but were informed by intellectual networks of writers and activists that were nurtured through Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the black press, and the church. Whereas Of One Blood, which narrates the restoration of an African American doctor to the Ethiopian throne, is usually read in the realm of fantasy, this article uses the career of William H. Sheppard to challenge common generalizations that, in the early twentieth century, modern Africa was unknown to African Americans. Sheppard's case is particularly instructive in that while initially claiming Africa as "the land of my forefathers," his transatlantic mobility facilitated the development of a political understanding of modern Africa that influenced a generation of activists and writers, Hopkins among them.

Hybridizing civil law through transatlantic migration


The usual story of the migration of legal forms and institutions from Western Europe to North America emphasizes how imperial law effaces indigenous legal systems. Although such effacement is indisputably an aspect of the interface of different legal frameworks (imperial and indigenous), it is but one part of the narrative of what happens when imperial law migrates. Missing is an account of how autochthonous legality and identity may be partly recuperated, in the context of a transformed, hybrid, (post-) colonial law. This article explores how Quebec has constructed its own legal narratives as no longer the monolithic and univocal stories of its French legal progenitor, or indeed of its English common law parent. New identities and novel normative frameworks are constructed and projected onto the legal landscape through this hybridized transatlantic law, and it is in the fissures of this hybridity that narratives of law are being (re-)written by Cree and Inuit in Quebec. Indeed the (re-)telling of the transatlantic journey of French law (re-)presents the traditional tale of monojural imperial domination as a polyjural one of legal pluralism and overlapping normativities.

Book reviews

Other Issues

June 2015, Volume 12, Number 2
March 2015, Volume 12, Number 1
, Volume 11, Number 4, Atlantic childhood and youth
2014 09, Volume 11, Number 3 Irish Global Migration
2014 06, Volume 11, Number 2
2014 03, Volume 11, Number 1
2013 12, Volume 10, Number 4
2013 09, Volume 10, Number 3
2013 06, Volume 10, Number 2
2013 03, Volume 10, Number 1 The French Atlantic Studies
2012 12, Volume 9, Number 4
2012 09, Volume 9, Number 3 Slave Trade Memorialization
2012 06, Volume 9, Number 2
2012 03, Volume 9, Number 1 The Planter Class
2011 12, Volume 8, Number 4
2011 09, Volume 8, Number 3
2011 06, Volume 8, Number 2 Abolitionist places
2011 03, Volume 8, Number 1
2010 12, Volume 7, Number 4 Atlantic Science -- New Approaches
2010 09, Volume 7, Number 3
2010 06, Volume 7, Number 2
2010 03, Volume 7, Number 1
2009 12, Volume 6, Number 3
2009 08, Volume 6, Number 2
2009 04, Volume 6, Number 1
2008 12, Volume 5, Number 3 New Orleans in the Atlantic World II
2008 08, Volume 5, Number 2 New Orleans in the Atlantic World
2007 10, Volume 4, Number 2
2007 04, Volume 4, Number 1 The French Atlantic
2006 10, Volume 3, Number 2
2006 04, Volume 3, Number 1
2005 10, Volume 2, Number 2
2005 04, Volume 2, Number 1
2004 10, Volume 1, Number 2
2004 04, Volume 1, Number 1