Papers by John Donoghue
The English Historical Review, Sep 27, 2017
Left History, Sep 1, 2008
Building the Atlantic Empires: Unfree Labor and Imperial States in the Political Economy of Capitalism, ca. 1500-1914, 2016
The American Historical Review, 2010
In 1637, the antinomian wine cooper Thomas Venner migrated to New England, where he served in the... more In 1637, the antinomian wine cooper Thomas Venner migrated to New England, where he served in the Bay Colony militia. Inspired by the prospect of thoroughgoing reformation in revolutionary England, he returned to London in 1651 and entered the radical republican underground. By 1654, he had joined the millenarian Fifth Monarchist movement, which opposed the Protectorate regime of Oliver Cromwell as another form of kingly government. In January 1661, Venner led his London Fifth Monarchist cell in a four-day rebellion to overthrow the newly restored king, Charles II. In the course of the fighting, Venner's forces attacked the Comptor Prison in Wood Street and attempted to free the prisoners to rescue them from potential transportation to the colonies to work as "bond slaves." In tracts written before the rising, the rebels condemned the trade "in the slaves and souls of men" and prophesied the doom of those who engaged in this traffic. Shortly after their capture on the fourth day of battle, Venner and ten of his followers were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Prints such as this quickly followed, depicting Venner as a traitorous fanatic. He would not be the last abolitionist to be vilified in such terms. Engraving by unknown artist, 1861.
The American Historical Review, 2007
Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740, 2015
This dissertation links the radical politics of the English Revolution to the history of puritan ... more This dissertation links the radical politics of the English Revolution to the history of puritan New England. It argues that antinomians, by rejecting traditional concepts of social authority, created divisive political factions within the godly party while it waged war against King Charles I. At the same time in New England, antinomians organized a political movement that called for a democratic commonwealth to limit the power of ministers and magistrates in religious and civil affairs. When this program collapsed in Massachusetts, hundreds of colonists returned to an Old England engulfed by civil war. Joining English antinomians, they became lay preachers in London, New Model Army soldiers, and influential supporters of the republican Levellers.
La Révolution française
IHMC-Institut d'histoire moderne et contemporaine (UMR 8066)
La Révolution française, 2016
This article compares and contrasts the conceptualization and transnational circulation of abolit... more This article compares and contrasts the conceptualization and transnational circulation of abolitionist ideas in the mid-seventeenth century English Revolution and the late-eighteenth-century “Age of Atlantic Revolutions.” Our method stresses both continuity and change across time and Atlantic space in the multiple efforts republicans made to eradicate human bondage. In both the mid-seventeenth century and the late eighteenth century, major political revolutions informed the ideas and actions of those who opposed slavery. As revolutionary fervor spread in the late eighteenth century, conservatives reacted with repressive attempts to contain the radicalism that was spilling over into the closely guarded domain of economic enslavement.
Three themes in the discursive history of freedom and slavery during the English Revolution are e... more Three themes in the discursive history of freedom and slavery during the English Revolution are explored here: the liberty of conscience, the liberty of the body, and the liberty of commerce. In the contests waged to define these liberties, contending factions of revolutionaries refashioned their opponents' concepts of freedom as forms of bondage. Although explored in discrete fashion by historians, these discourses of religious, bodily, and commercial liberty hardly operated independently from one another. Indeed, they became increasingly entangled as the Revolution reached its imperial turn (ca. 1649-1655), accompanied as it was by the rise of the slave trade in the West Indies and debates over the nature of "free trade" that circulated between England and the colonies. Ultimately, to recover the entangled nature of these languages of liberty and their importance in the Revolution's history of ideas, we must move beyond England itself and into the wider Atlantic world to grasp the material contexts that conditioned the Revolution's discursive history.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears... more Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.
Book Reviews by John Donoghue
John Donoghue's review of Pirate Nests in the English Historical Review
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Papers by John Donoghue
Book Reviews by John Donoghue