Abstract: The nineteenth Fairfax County Resolve proposed that if the upcoming American provincial Congress of 1774 approved a non-exportation plan, then "no Judgment should be rendered by the Courts in the said Colonies, for any Debt." This scheme to suspend legal processes for debt collection ultimately was not endorsed by the Virginia Convention of 1774, but earlier rumors of widespread court closures across Virginia helped stampede the Council of Virginia into urging the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, to order fresh elections. Those elections in turn fueled local political mobilization ahead of the August 1 Virginia Convention, and the fresh vote enhanced the convention's credibility as a representative body. Previous historians have erroneously characterized Virginia courts as shutting down in the summer of 1774, ahead of the Virginia Convention. However, by consulting every surviving manuscript court minute book and order book, it is possible to discern a much different historical reality. During the summer of 1774, Virginia's local courts responded creatively to repeated changes in the political situation, signaling in a variety of ways to nervous Virginia merchants that if merchants would support Revolutionary non-importation and non-exportation policies, then courts across the colony would find ways to sustain credit contracts by enforcing debts.
Abstract: The article examines South Carolina's support for a ban on the slave trade in the Continental Association. The slave trade and slavery were vital parts of the South Carolina economy. South Carolina imported more slaves than all other North American colonies combined. Yet South Carolina Patriots and slave-importing merchants supported a ban. They did this because the ban on the slave trade halted the arrival of enslaved persons while facilitating debt collection (especially in rice) for past slave purchases. It was getting paid, not trafficking in humans, that slave traders considered the most important part of their business. This was South Carolina's third temporary ban on the slave trade in a decade. By allowing debt paydowns, these bans avoided potential financial bubbles and functioned as macroeconomic regulation. South Carolina's exports to England in 1775 (occurring after the Association was announced) were its most valuable of the entire colonial era. These shipments paid down debt and build up capital in England, continuing even after the war began. Carolina merchants correctly presumed South Carolina-English commercial ties (in capital, agricultural products, and human captives) would resume at war's close. In this reading, Carolinians supported the Association out of economic self-interest because it allowed them to maintain greater commercial ties with England than we have often assumed.
Abstract: The Fairfax Resolves, invoking "the Laws of Nature and Nations," are often portrayed as among the first statements of the colonists' natural rights. The idea that civil law should be founded on natural law, however, dated back to Cicero and had long been invoked by colonial writers. Yet the Resolves played a pioneering role in mediating a dispute about how natural law underwrote the colonists' civil rights. The first clause argued that if Virginia was a "conquered Country" then its "present Inhabitants are the Descendants not of the Conquered, but of the Conquerors" and thus inherited rights to property and self-government earned exclusively by their conquering "Ancestors." During the revolutionary years, though, some writers, such as Virginian Richard Bland, further argued that the original "Adventurers" had created new and independent states rather than colonies (a "free state" theory of colonization), while others argued that the first colonists had settled under the authority of the crown (a "charter theory" of colonization). Free-state theory, with its claim for no original crown authority in American territory, had the advantage of making American independence easier to approve under the laws of nature and nations. But it remained controversial, and the Fairfax Resolves pioneered an ambiguous language about the origins of colonies that appeared later in the account of "the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here" in the Declaration of Independence. The Resolves' conquest theory also had profound implications for Native Americans and westward expansion by shaping an American empire after the Revolution.
Abstract: Parliament's passage of the Coercive Acts in 1774 sparked a firestorm of opposition in Massachusetts, where Patriot committees, crowds, and conventions of the people worked in concert to block the Acts' enforcement and effectively overthrow the colony's royal government. Town by town and county by county, Patriots closed the courts and publicly humiliated provincial officials in the summer of 1774. In their effort to close the courts and purge provincial officers from their communities, Patriots worked not only to dismantle an imperial system of politics, but also to consolidate community control over the law. This article examines the court closings within this local context, viewing them not simply as moments of imperial fracture or revolutionary mobilization, but also as a testing ground for Patriots' understanding of the relationship between political community and the law, and ultimately, the meaning of the sovereignty of the people.
Abstract: In the months following the Boston Tea Party of 1773, British leaders closed Boston Harbor until such a time as patriots reimbursed the East India Company for its losses via the Boston Port Act. The Act served as a catalyst, unifying colonists throughout North America against Great Britain. As Bostonians found it increasingly difficult to feed their own, assemblies—such as those held at Fairfax, VA, in 1774—resolved to send food and financial aid to the beleaguered city. This charity disproportionately came from the hands of enslaved labor, employed on southern plantations and raised by slaveholders. Such aid not only materially aided Boston, allowing townsmen to continue protesting British legislation, but also forced British leaders' hands in North America, leading some to insist that harsher implementation of the Act, remained the only feasible option to break their revolutionary sentiments. Enslaved labor both created the conditions through which intercolonial union solidified, as well as the means for resisting British imperial policy on the eve of independence.
Abstract: This article reexamines North Carolina's revolutionary trajectory by locating the colony's break with Britain not in imperial taxation alone but in a profound constitutional rupture precipitated by the Foreign Attachment Controversy. The conflict between the Assembly and Governor Josiah Martin over the status of attachment laws exposed the fragility of the empire's customary system of negotiated authority rooted in principles of consent, customary law, and the shared sovereignty that the North Carolina Assembly believed defined the imperial constitution. Amid this crisis, Thomas Burke emerged as a central figure articulating a whig political vocabulary that linked resistance to the defense of local autonomy. His work in the provincial congress demonstrated a coherent vision of popular sovereignty and the need to bind governmental power through explicit constitutional barriers. Burke's experience in North Carolina informed his later intervention in the debates over the Articles of Confederation, where he sought to preserve state authority within the emerging federal structure.
Abstract: During the Imperial Crisis, the slaveholding planter gentry of coastal Virginia considered themselves loyal, peaceable subjects committed to Britain's constitutional system and Virginia's socio-economic status quo. Tidewater gentlemen feared the new imperial policy as a danger to their rights as British subjects and their interests as the colony's ruling class. They did not, however, consider armed resistance justified until non-violent options had been exhausted. Fearing both anarchy from below and tyranny from above, the gentry organized resistance to the new imperial policy in such a way as to preserve social order in Virginia and prevent civil war within the British Empire. This article examines the legislative resolutions which provided an operational framework for the gentry's strategy of "ordered resistance" as it evolved from 1765 to 1775. The article focuses on four sets of resolutions, namely the Virginia Resolves of 1765 and Leedstown Resolutions of 1766 (against the Stamp Act), the Williamsburg Resolutions of 1769 (against the Townshend Acts), and the Fairfax Resolves of 1774 (against the Coercive Acts). The tactics proposed by these resolutions included non-compliance with unconstitutional acts, ostracism and intimidation directed against enforcers and collaborators, and non-importation of British goods, implemented by an innovative network of political associations. Developed by such statesmen as Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, George Mason, and George Washington, gentry strategy secured short-term successes and gave rise to a new popular politics. By March 1775, though, it had proven insufficient to deter the British state, leaving military mobilization the only remaining alternative to submission.
Abstract: In the century prior to beginning of the American Revolution, merchants based in colonial North America largely followed logical and economically viable trade routes that were not always in line with British policies that regulated colonial trade and commerce. Following the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, British-based merchants began to pressure the British government, with dozens of petitions, to place more controls and limits on what they perceived as the encroaching competition from American merchants, complaining of losing profits thanks to both legal and illegal trade passing through American ships and merchants. In response to British efforts to enforce restrictions on American trade, the Fairfax Resolves provides evidence of a growing self-confidence in the American economy and its importance to the British Empire. This article examines the growing rivalry between American and British merchants for preeminence within the Atlantic basin and, using the Fairfax Resolves and other similar documents, explores how American resistance against mercantilism transitioned from nonchalant avoidance of trade rules and restrictions into an existential war for independence.
Abstract: This essay situates the anniversary of the Fairfax Resolves within a broader history of fashion, politics, and masculine identity in the early American republic. It argues that George Washington's carefully constructed image—particularly his buff and blue military uniform—played a consequential role in shaping how Americans expressed citizenship and political affiliation. By choosing colors associated with the opposition British political party for the Fairfax County Independent Company, Washington signaled ideological resistance to British rule. When he wore the same uniform while serving as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, he crafted a distinctly American military aesthetic. As civilians adopted buff and blue in their own attire, their dress became a symbolic practice that unified men across social and national boundaries. The widespread civilian adoption of buff and blue as a form of "sartorial citational practice" served as a subtle yet powerful political gesture, a means of aligning oneself with both the emerging republic and the modern age. Washington's later preference for black suits as a symbol of his station as US President further entrenched plain dress as a marker of American virtue, equality, and civic masculinity. Drawing connections between Washington and later figures such as the British dandy Beau Brummell, the essay shows how fashion was used as a powerful vehicle for distinguishing American identity.
Abstract: This article critically examines the trial record of Ashfield v. Goodricke (1709), a Chancery case that portrayed the English naturalist Eleanor Glanville (1655-1709) as a madwoman, in part, because of her study of butterflies. A close look at witness depositions reveals that her family, neighbors, and servants recognized madness in Glanville's scientific activities because such activities diverted her attention away from her gendered and economic duties as a mother, gentlewoman, and elite landowner in Somerset. The deponents did not take issue with Glanville's study of butterflies per se; instead, they rebuked Glanville for the ways in which her scientific pursuits caused her to neglect her social dependents, mainly her children and tenants in Somerset. These critiques resonated with two separate literary archetypes: the unfit mother and the scientific virtuoso , both of whom misdirected their emotional and financial resources. Taken together, the witnesses' words and printed literature conjure subversive figures of disorder whose individual pursuits wreak havoc on the traditional order of society. This deep contextual history of the trial Ashfield v. Goodricke reveals a pervasive cultural attitude towards women in science at the turn of the eighteenth century, one that focused on the larger societal consequences of a woman's pursuit of natural knowledge, rather than her possession of knowledge itself.
Abstract: The history of women in Antarctic research provides a powerful example of unjust barriers followed by a solid record of achievement once those barriers were lifted. Early exploration of the Antarctic was an all-male domain, and reluctance to allow female participation continued well into the twentieth century. As gender discrimination in many arenas became increasingly unacceptable in the second half of the century, country by country began allowing women participation in Antarctic exploration and science. Women quickly proved their worth both in the physical abilities needed in the harsh Antarctic environment and in the intellectual abilities needed for making scientific contributions. By now, women have emerged as major players in all realms of Antarctic science, from drilling ice cores and engaging in ground surveys to developing and analyzing satellite datasets and using computer models to predict and analyze future Antarctic conditions. This article presents a short summary of some of the history of the inclusion of women on Antarctic research expeditions and a sample of major advances women have made to Antarctic science in recent decades. The sample highlights contributions of six women in the following six key research areas: the Antarctic Ozone Hole, the Antarctic Ice Sheet, Antarctic sea ice, Antarctic atmosphere and ice/atmosphere interactions, Antarctic ice cores, and the Antarctic future. Horrendous instances of gender discrimination and mistreatment continue to occur, but the progress made since the mid-twentieth century has been remarkable.
Abstract: Cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses the immune system to combat cancer, is a rapidly expanding and innovating field. One of the key organizing figures in the early history of cancer immunotherapy research was Helen Coley Nauts, founder of the New York-based Cancer Research Institute. Though she has been neglected in extant historiography, Nauts was foundational to cancer immunology, and her story offers an instructive case study of the powerful role of gender in shaping and undermining scientific legitimacy in mid-20th-century biomedical research. This paper describes and contextualizes Nauts' 60-year career and asks why it is not often discussed, exploring a marginalized character in an initially marginal field on its trajectory towards centrality. Drawing extensively on archival documents in conjunction with published primary and secondary literature, I explore how Nauts' career shapes our understandings of what constitutes scientific work and expands our definitions of scientific participation. I suggest that the field of immunotherapy as it stands would not exist without Nauts' interventions. Using sociological theories of the structure of scientific fields and recent scholarship on how capital shapes science, I propose the category of "scientific sponsor" to describe Nauts' critically important role in knowledge production. I consider how Nauts' elite class status allowed her to transcend some gender boundaries without forging a path for others. Ultimately, I argue that Nauts' work provides an informative lens on the flexible and improvised work required of women in science in the mid-20th century, work which allowed the development and sustenance of cutting-edge biomedical research fields.
Abstract: The establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949 initiated a period of significant development in Chinese forensic science. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing in the post-Mao period, disciplines ranging from forensic pathology to toxicology to crime scene trace evidence and fingerprinting have seen an expansion of professional training and institution-building. One of the most striking outcomes of these developments is that unprecedented numbers of women have joined the different fields of Chinese forensic science, a late 20th-century shift in the demographics of forensic expertise that has parallels in other countries as well. This paper examines some of the social, political, and cultural factors that have transformed the roles that women play in Chinese forensic science since the founding of the PRC. It focuses on the case of Ma Jianhua, a renowned fingerprinting expert of the Beijing Public Security Bureau whose long career stretched from the 1950s into the reform era of the 1980s and 1990s. By contextualizing Ma's story with other sources of available data, this paper shows that China's communist revolution did create conditions for women to become involved in forensic science in unprecedented ways, despite the persistence of significant gender disparities among forensic personnel. It concludes by considering how Ma and other female forensic experts are portrayed in popular media, which tend to celebrate their accomplishments while also deemphasizing the role that sexism has played in Chinese forensic science in the past or present.
Abstract: This paper explores the careers of three women scientists whose contributions to the emerging field of Information Science in the mid-20th century are underknown. In oral history interviews co-created with eminent historians of Information Science at the end of the 20th century, Claire Schultz (1924—2015), Madeleine Berry Henderson (1922—2011), and Nathalie Dusoulier (1927—2010) manifest as key figures shaping the field. The interviews are part of an oral history project preserved at Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry, Science History Institute, Philadelphia, PA. Themes in the careers of these proto-information scientists detail developments in scientific information systems before computational storage became feasible in the 1970s. Raising the visibility of women scientists through research based on oral histories leverages the long-term value of oral history projects to complement archival records and mainstream narratives. In the larger context of intellectual history, fuller accounts of women scientists augur fuller public perception of women's agency in science and society. I write from my perspective as a woman in Information Science who studies human information behavior, and this paper advocates for stronger alliances among women scientists, Information Science historians, and professionals in the information fields. Such alliances at legacy memory institutions bridge oral history collections, libraries, and archives for two equally urgent reasons: to improve access to the scientific work of women that is preserved but often hidden in legacy collections, and to proactively curate scientific research by women scientists at present and for the future.
Abstract: During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States, women forged important but almost always circumscribed pathways within scientific communities. This paper examines the personal and professional histories of two women associated with the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University. Elizabeth Hodges Clark (1855-1932) started at the museum in 1873 as a middle-class specimen sorter and over three decades gained the skills required to become a secretary for the museum director Alexander Agassiz until his death. Edith Nason Buckingham (1877-1954) arrived at the MCZ in 1898 as an elite Radcliffe College undergraduate pursuing zoology. Buckingham returned to Radcliffe to become the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in Zoology in 1910 and later pivoted to owning a successful poultry farm. Neither woman married but they both had long-term relationships at the center of their lives, suggesting the importance of intimacy and independence in their careers.
Abstract: Women in early modern Italy were active participants in scientific inquiry and made vital contributions to the shaping of scientific culture. Yet their names are largely unfamiliar today–a problem that reverberates in the continued underrepresentation of women in STEM–partly because their contributions did not always come in the guise of published works. But the discourse of early modern natural philosophy took many other forms, unfolding in salons, academies, and private conversations, as well as on paper. A central challenge for studying the participation of women in early modern science is the emphasis traditionally placed by scholars on authorship, whether print or manuscript, when women did not always write or seek publication, and when scientific and philosophical debate often occurred in an oral context. Moreover, the project of natural philosophy, which encompassed a multifaceted set of concerns, often went hand in hand with that of literature, making it difficult to impose modern disciplinary distinctions. I argue that by considering the evidence presented in a broader variety of sources and contexts, we can begin to piece together a more coherent picture of early modern women's natural philosophical activities and opinions and restore their central role in scientific culture.
Abstract: Dead men can't write. But they can publish. Both E. E. Barnard (1857–1932) and J. A. Parkhurst (1861–1925) produced posthumous works, including capstone publications that contributed to their respective legacies as astronomers. But their specters can take only partial credit for these achievements. For these publications only appeared thanks to the work of two women: Mary Ross Calvert (1884–1974) and Dr. Alice H. Farnsworth (1893–1960). Yet while the involvement of these women was acknowledged in print at the time, the portrayal of their contributions as ancillary nevertheless obfuscated the scope and breadth of their work. For as this paper reveals, both Calvert and Farnsworth were far more than simply editors or compilers who shepherded publications to press after the deaths of their male authors. Moreover, by examining the tension between their visibility in print and the invisibility of their work, this article uses these case studies of Calvert and Farnsworth to illuminate how and why conventions of scientific publishing–as well as gendered conceptions of scientific labor–impacted the kinds of credit that women received. In so doing, I also aim to stimulate new inquires that consider how this 'credit puzzle' influences our histories of women in science.
Abstract: In 2011, President Obama told Silicon Valley, “We’re emphasizing teaching girls math, . . . making science cool.” Such high-visibility calls to bring more young women into STEM validated a dramatic revolution in the gendered intellectual and social worlds of science and technology. Postwar American culture had equated academic rigor with masculinity, ridiculing suggestions of women handling the toughest physics, or engineering. Sputnik-era “manpower” alarms often boxed women into lab-assistant support-roles. But by the twenty-first-century, multi-million-dollar initiatives to encourage more young women to pursue STEM had proliferated. Colleges, K-12 educators, corporations, and non-profits created “Girls Who Code” programs, science camps, and hundreds of other outreach projects. Enthusiasts developed entire new genres of toys, children’s books, websites, and television shows, geared to cultivating girls’ science enthusiasm. This article traces the history of how the Obama, Trump, and Biden presidencies approached issues of young women and STEM education, which had come to command national attention.
