American Catholicism and Empire: A Review Essay
The rise of Catholicism in the United States has been examined for the most part in relation to the expansion of the US empire. Early studies focus especially on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Only recently have the first arduous steps been taken in understanding the complex transformation of Protestantism and Catholicism in the US from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth century.
Spaces of Empire: Two Early Modern Views from both sides of the Atlantic
In order to understand the relationship between empire and space in American history, it is necessary to address the historiographical tendencies and myths of the past four hundred years.[i] Retrospective historiographical myths of the nascent United States, as it sought to establish its own history in the shadow of the mother country, England, need to be distinguished from ideas and practices of empire prior to US independence. The importance of this break between early and late modernity in the history of US nation building and nascent imperial aspirations becomes clear once the historical and theological details are taken into consideration. Two histories of empire from both sides of the early eighteenth-century Atlantic reveal diverging aspirations and conceptions of space and empire at work in the mother country and in early modern New England. It is now widely recognized that early modernity is significant for understanding the later imperial aspirations of […]