As migrants arrived in the United States after the 1783 Treaty of Paris, the new nation balanced the economic potential of migration against domestic and international turmoil. Debates over regulation centered around potential disloyalty in the trans-Appalachian west, the environment of interstate competition, and foreign commercial interference. From these debates developed the first national migration policy codified when Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1790.

In 1745, a group of New England volunteers who called themselves Patriots launched an expedition against the French fortress of Louisbourg, in present-day Nova Scotia. Who were these “Patriots”? What did they want with Louisbourg? And what can this incident tell us about British imperial politics in the mid-eighteenth century? This expedition reveals that the British Empire was dividing on sharp partisan lines in the 1740s, laying the groundwork for the revolutionary decades to come.

In the years before the Civil War, Boston was at the forefront of numerous American radical and reform movements. At the same time, the city was also a site of contestation over which reforms should take priority. Although these tensions could at times grow heated, this talk examines the ways that the relationship between the abolitionist and the early labor (or “social reform”) movements in Boston was marked by conversation and cooperation as much as competition, revealing an overlap of personnel and ideas that in many ways grew stronger as the country headed towards an irrepressible conflict over slavery.”

John Adams consumed a lot of Chinese tea. He especially appreciated the medical benefits associated with the hot beverage. In a 1757 diary entry, he wrote that "nothing but large potions of tea" could extinguish his heartburn. How did Adams know that Chinese tea cured heartburn? Why did he believe that nothing else was as effective? This talk examines the ways medical ideas transferred across the world during the eighteenth century.

REGISTER HERE This talk tells the story of the long political fight over the legal rights of accused fugitive slaves in the United States. That conflict—fought as often in Congress as before l...

REGISTER HERE This talk tells the story of the long political fight over the legal rights of accused fugitive slaves in the United States. That conflict—fought as often in Congress as before l...