You are here
Search results
(1 - 2 of 2)
- Title
- John Askin's many beneficial binds : family, trade, and empire in the Great Lakes
- Creator
- Carroll, Justin M.
- Date
- 2011
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
This dissertation argues that John Askin, a prominent British merchant, provides a vista from which to view the fluidity of the Atlantic fur trade and the constraints of the British Empire in the late-eighteenth-century North American Great Lakes. Through the critical exploration of Askin's life, family, and trade, this work examines the complex contestation and negotiation that confronted individuals as they went about their lives, businesses and day-to-day interests. Consideration of the...
Show moreThis dissertation argues that John Askin, a prominent British merchant, provides a vista from which to view the fluidity of the Atlantic fur trade and the constraints of the British Empire in the late-eighteenth-century North American Great Lakes. Through the critical exploration of Askin's life, family, and trade, this work examines the complex contestation and negotiation that confronted individuals as they went about their lives, businesses and day-to-day interests. Consideration of the family that Askin nurtured, the imperial and economic relationships that he maintained, and the public image he crafted shows that Askin maintained constant involvement with the complicated economic and social processes of the multi-ethnic communities in which he lived. Likewise, the network of kinship and colleagues that Askin developed allowed him to mute disruptive imperial demands and quell the economic uncertainty that occasionally defined the Great Lakes. Askin nurtured relationships with important British imperial officials like Major Arent Schuyler de Peyster and maintained several multi-ethnic families that connected him to new regions of the fur trade. This dissertation argues that Askin leveraged these relationships into a prosperous trade and established him as one of the region's dominant merchants, but his economic initiatives competed with British imperial designs, eventually making him a target of zealous British officials during the crisis of the American Revolution.
Show less
- Title
- Your obedient servant : government clerks, officeseeking, and the politics of patronage in antebellum Washington City
- Creator
- Bowen, Heath J.
- Date
- 2011
- Collection
- Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Description
-
This dissertation examines the social, political, and gendered components of public office and government employment during the antebellum era. Historians have invoked Andrew Jackson's system of spoils to demonstrate the rise of political democratization and the emergence of a federal bureaucracy. But few studies have attempted to examine at any length the public servants and citizens who were implicated into political parties and connected to government institutions through patronage. My...
Show moreThis dissertation examines the social, political, and gendered components of public office and government employment during the antebellum era. Historians have invoked Andrew Jackson's system of spoils to demonstrate the rise of political democratization and the emergence of a federal bureaucracy. But few studies have attempted to examine at any length the public servants and citizens who were implicated into political parties and connected to government institutions through patronage. My research on public servants shows that officeseeking was a highly complex and contested phenomenon that was intimately connected to nineteenth-century political and moral economy. Its connection to the rise of partisan politics and its lure of men from more independent and manly professions worked to create a popular perception of government employment as a social evil. What is more, public office was regularly sought through elite Washington political networks accessible only to applicants with a relative close proximity to political power. My dissertation argues that these developments created a common ambivalence toward public life and a cultural hurdle to the development of a professional ideal within the federal government. How government clerks understood this dynamic and how they made sense of their place within the unique political and social environment of the nation's capital, is of central importance to this study. Officeseeking emerged as a gendered middle-class experience, and clerking in the federal government offered an alternative livelihood to the diverse antebellum labor market. Many government officeseekers experienced decreased opportunities for independent employment and hoped to protect their family's financial future with a clerk's salary. In their efforts to claim a respectable professionality, Washington clerks articulated an understanding of the relationship between the federal government and its employees that challenged popular patronage rationality, setting the tone for future debates regarding civil service reform in the years following the Civil War.
Show less