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Narrett, David E.

June 20, 2017 by admin

WORK TITLE: Adventurism and Empire
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 5/25/1951
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:

RESEARCHER NOTES:

LC control no.:    n  87909897 

Personal name heading:
                   Narrett, David E., 1951- 

Found in:          Essays on liberty and federalism, 1988: CIP t.p. (David E.
                      Narrett) data sheet (b. 5-25-51)
                   His Inheritance and family life in Colonial N.Y.C., 1992:
                      CIP t.p. (David E. Narrett) data sh. (David Evan
                      Narrett)

================================================================================


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PERSONAL

Born May 25, 1951.

EDUCATION:

Columbia University, B.A., 1973; Cornell University, M.A., 1976, Ph.D., 1981.

ADDRESS

Office - University of Texas at Arlington, 701 S. Nedderman Dr., Arlington, TX 76019.

CAREER

Historian, educator, writer. University of Texas at Arlington, professor of history, 1984–.

MEMBER:

Texas State Historical Association, Society for the History of the Early American Republic, Organization of American History, Institute of Early American History and Culture, American Historical Association.

AWARDS:

Ben Lane Award, Vermont Historical Society, 1999; Bolton-Kinnaird Prize of the Western History Association, 2003; Bill and Rita Clements Research Fellowship, Southern Methodist University, 2008; Historic Research Award, National Society, Daughters of Colonial Wars, 2012; Fellowship at the Filson Historical Society, 2014; College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Award for Research Travel, 2016.

WRITINGS

Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1992
Adventurism and Empire: the Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2015
EDITOR
(With Joyce S. Goldberg) Essays on Liberty and Federalism: The Shaping of the U.S. Constitution, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1988
(With Elisabeth A. Cawthon) Essays on English Law and the American Experience, Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1994
(With Richard Francaviglia) Essays on the Changing Images of the Southwest, Texas A&M University Press (Texas A&M University Press, TX), 1994

Contributor of numerous articles to journals and of chapters to scholarly books.

SIDELIGHTS

American historian and author David E. Narrett is a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he has taught since 1984. A specialist in the American colonial, revolutionary, and early national eras, he has published on subjects from colonial life in New York City to North American frontier history. Narrett is the author of two books, Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City and Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1763-1803, the latter published in 2015. Narrett has also edited several volumes on aspects of American history.

Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City

Narrett’s first publication, the 1992 study, Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City, is the first examination of the inheritance practices in that city from the days of the early Dutch settlement in the 1620s to the beginning of the American Revolution. Narrett employed original sources, including over two thousand wills to show how wealth and power were distributed within the family following a death. The author points out that Dutch customs and law affecting inheritance played an important part in creating customs in New York City, in particular the manner in which women had a degree of power. Dutch law, for example, provided for community property in marriage and for the drafting of wills by spouses and the equal distribution of property among the children. Narrett also looks at English, Jewish, and French Huguenot traditions in this respect and examines differences in primogeniture, kinship ties, and the transferal of slaves, among other topics. Narrett goes on to show how, over time, the Dutch more and more adopted the English custom of males appropriating their spouses property as their own and also bequeathing property to a single son with widows being downgraded.

Reviewing Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, John J. Waters noted: “By mid [eighteenth] century, what was seemingly a multiethnic society as well as a multiracial one … may also be viewed as one dominated and shaped by an English-Dutch commercial, slave holding, male dominated, and Anglo-cultured oligarchy. This new, individualistic elite had acquired some of its wealth at the expense of all of its women, some of its brothers, and most of its blacks. If it bequeathed this model to future generations of New Yorkers as Narrett maintains …, then we must also give it credit for providing our nineteenth-century democratic reformers with specific targets for social change.” Waters further termed this a “carefully researched social science monograph.” Similarly, Journal of Social History contributor Ed Hatton observed: “This book provides a wealth of insight into the gendered patterns of inheritance in one of the American colonies, and is an important contribution to the history of the family in early America.”

Adventurism and Empire

With Adventurism and Empire, Narrett looks at the clash of empires in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast region over the course of four decades: from the end of the Seven Years War in 1762 to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In those crucial decades, Narrett argues, the United States became a successor empire to Britain via its rivalry with Spain in the Louisiana-Florida borderlands. Narrett looks at this clash through the various perspectives of Native American, Spanish, French, British, and U.S. interests and entities. The events in this region and in these four decades were determinant in American goals of Manifest Destiny, the author contends. In an interview with Andrew Dyrli Hermeling on the Way of Improvement website, Narrett noted that he wrote this book partly out of his “fascination with colonial adventurism as a phenomenon involving commerce, settlement schemes, and military freebooting across national boundaries.” He also noted a need for a “detailed and systematic study tracing the transition from British-Spanish rivalry to U.S.-Spanish competition in Louisiana and ‘the Floridas’ during the late eighteenth century.”

Reviewing Adventurism and Empire in the Journal of Southern History, Richmond Brown termed it an “impressive book,” further commenting: “[It] is gracefully written and judiciously argued. Analysis is embedded in the narrative with insightful comments peppering the text throughout, rather than standing alone. … On the whole the author does an excellent job providing historical context to the many episodes he relates.” Choice critic J.P. Sanson also had praise, noting: “The author used extensive archival collections and published primary and secondary sources to produce this well-done study.” Journal of Military History writer Andrew K. Frank also provided a high assessment of the work, observing, “In this compelling narrative, David Narrett explores how imperial rivalries and repeated transfers of power played out for the inhabitants of the region.” American Historical Review contributor Sylvia L. Hilton similarly felt that Adventurism and Empire is “well researched, clearly argued, crisply written, and, in addition, entertaining.” Hilton added: “[T]his is a useful book that will interest most scholars of North American borderlands and the interplay of centers and peripheries, interethnic and international relations in the Atlantic world, the revolutionary era, and the intriguing stories of individual adventurers. It by no means exhausts its subject, so it is likely to be a stimulus to further research.”

Journal of American History reviewer Andy Doolen likewise called this a “thoughtful and meticulous book,” further noting: “This book will become required reading for scholars of eighteenth-century North American history.” In a similar vein, Journal of the Early Republic contributor James L. Hill commented: “With Adventurism and Empire, Narrett has presented a comprehensive view of politics and diplomacy in the late-eighteenth-century lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf South, filling a void in American historiography while also preserving the intricacies of what was a chaotic and contested region. His account not only situates Louisiana and Florida within the paradigms of borderland history but also shows how the colonial era and the era of imperial rivalry continued into the nineteenth century west of the Appalachians.” And H-Net Reviews website writer Sarah K. M. Rodriguez concluded: “Narrett demonstrates a masterful understanding of the complicated and unpredictable course of events that contributed to the United States’ ultimate acquisition of this region. His obviously painstaking research, drawn from Spanish, French, British, and US archives, effectively demonstrates the contingency and unpredictability of these events and certainly makes the case that Manifest Destiny was hardly destined at all.”

BIOCRIT

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 2016, Sylvia L. Hilton, review of Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762–
1803, p. 230.
Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 1, no. 24, 1995, Jon Swainger, review of Essays on English Law and the American Experience, p. 196.
Choice, September, 2015. J.P. Sanson, review of Adventurism and Empire, p. 142.
Journal of American History, March, 2016, Andy Doolen, review of Adventurism and Empire, p. 1179.
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, summer, 1995, John J. Waters, review of Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City, p. 127.
Journal of Military History, January, 2016, Andrew K. Frank, review of Adventurism and Empire, p. 230.
Journal of Social History, fall, 1994, Ed Hatton, review of Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City, p. 184;
Journal of Southern History, November, 2016, Richmond Brown, review of Adventurism and Empire, p. 909.
Journal of the Early Republic, fall, 2016, James L. Hill, review of Adventurism and Empire, p. 564.

ONLINE

H-Net Reviews, https://networks.h-net.org/ (August 8. 2017), Sarah K. M. Rodriguez, review of Adventurism and Empire.
UT Arlington Website, https://mentis.uta.edu/ (June 20, 2017), “David Narrett.”
Way of Improvement, https://thewayofimprovement.com/ (December 11, 2014), Andrew Dyrli Hermeling, “The Author’s Corner with David Narrett.”*

Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1992
Adventurism and Empire: the Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803 University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2015
Essays on Liberty and Federalism: The Shaping of the U.S. Constitution Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1988
Essays on English Law and the American Experience Texas A&M University Press (College Station, TX), 1994
Essays on the Changing Images of the Southwest Texas A&M University Press (Texas A&M University Press, TX), 1994

1. Essays on liberty and federalism : the shaping of the U.S. Constitution LCCN 88002105 Type of material Book Main title Essays on liberty and federalism : the shaping of the U.S. Constitution / by John M. Murrin ... [et al.] ; introduction by Peter S. Onuf ; edited by David E. Narrett and Joyce S. Goldberg. Edition 1st ed. Published/Created College Station : Published for the University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A&M University Press, c1988. Description xiii, 134 p. ; 24 cm. ISBN 089096341X (alk. paper) : CALL NUMBER JC599.U5 E87 1988 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER JC599.U5 E87 1988 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. Inheritance and family life in Colonial New York City LCCN 92007680 Type of material Book Personal name Narrett, David E., 1951- Main title Inheritance and family life in Colonial New York City / David E. Narrett. Published/Created Ithaca : Cornell University Press ; Cooperstown, N.Y. : New York State Historical Association, 1992. Description xiv, 248 p. ; 25 cm. ISBN 0801425174 (alk. paper) CALL NUMBER KFN5200 .N37 1992 Copy 1 Request in Law Library Reading Room (Madison, LM242) CALL NUMBER KFN5200 .N37 1992 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Law Library Reading Room (Madison, LM242) - STORED OFFSITE 3. Essays on English law and the American experience LCCN 93034549 Type of material Book Main title Essays on English law and the American experience / by William R. Jones ... [et al.] ; introduction by Richard Hamm ; edited by Elisabeth A. Cawthon and David E. Narrett. Edition 1st ed. Published/Created College Station : Published for the University of Texas atArlington by Texas A&M University Press, c1994. Description xiv, 135 p. ; 24 cm. ISBN 0890965811 (alk. paper) CALL NUMBER KF394.A2 E87 1994 Copy 1 Request in Law Library Reading Room (Madison, LM242) CALL NUMBER KF394.A2 E87 1994 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Law Library Reading Room (Madison, LM242) - STORED OFFSITE 4. Essays on the changing images of the Southwest LCCN 94018599 Type of material Book Main title Essays on the changing images of the Southwest / edited by Richard Francaviglia and David Narrett ; introduction by David J. Weber ; by Richard Francaviglia ... [et al.]. Edition 1st ed. Published/Created College Station : Published for the University of Texas at Arlington by Texas A&M University Press, c1994. Description x, 153 p. : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN 0890966206 Links Table of contents http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/fy0601/94018599.html Contributor biographical information http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1003/94018599-b.html Publisher description http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy1502/94018599-d.html CALL NUMBER F787 .E87 1994 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER F787 .E87 1994 FT MEADE Copy 2 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 5. Adventurism and empire : the struggle for mastery in the Louisiana-Florida borderlands, 1762-1803 LCCN 2014039230 Type of material Book Personal name Narrett, David E., 1951- Main title Adventurism and empire : the struggle for mastery in the Louisiana-Florida borderlands, 1762-1803 / David Narrett. Published/Produced Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Description xii, 375 pages ; 25 cm ISBN 9781469618333 (cloth : alk. paper) Links Book review (H-Net) http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=44151 Shelf Location FLM2015 109602 CALL NUMBER F301 .N37 2014 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) Shelf Location FLM2015 223199 CALL NUMBER F301 .N37 2014 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2)

way of improvement - https://thewayofimprovement.com/2014/12/11/the-authors-corner-with-david-narrett/
QUOTE:
fascination with colonial adventurism as a phenomenon involving commerce, settlement schemes, and military freebooting across national boundaries.
detailed and systematic study tracing the transition from British-Spanish rivalry to U.S.-Spanish competition in Louisiana and “the Floridas” during the late eighteenth century.
The Author’s Corner with David Narrett
December 11, 2014 / Andrew Dyrli Hermeling
David Narrett is Professor of History at University of Texas Arlington. This interview is based on his new book, Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803 (The University of North Carolina Press, December 2014).
JF: What led you to write Adventurism and Empire?

DN: I wrote Adventurism and Empire because of my fascination with colonial adventurism as a phenomenon involving commerce, settlement schemes, and military freebooting across national boundaries. I also realized that there was a need for a detailed and systematic study tracing the transition from British-Spanish rivalry to U.S.-Spanish competition in Louisiana and “the Floridas” during the late eighteenth century.

JF: In two sentences, what is the argument of Adventurism and Empire?
DN: Louisiana and Florida were borderland regions characterized by a high degree of geopolitical instability, personal adventurism, and intrigue from the denouement of the Seven Years War through the Louisiana Purchase. British-Spanish rivalry, both before and during the American Revolution, had a profound impact on subsequent U.S.-Spanish competition. Diverse nationalities vied over the control of rivers and pathways linking coastal to interior zones. Southern Indians sought trade goods through Pensacola and Mobile no less avidly than U.S. frontier folk clamored for free navigation on the Mississippi and access to the New Orleans market. Power struggles emerged in which commerce and immigration were as important determinants as war and violence.

JF: Why do we need to read Adventurism and Empire?
DN: Adventurism and Empire shows how the United States emerged as a successor empire to Great Britain through rivalry with Spain in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast. Adventurism and Empire charts events in peace and war over four critical decades–from the close of the Seven Years War through the Louisiana Purchase. The story sheds new light on individual colonial adventurers and schemers who shaped history through cross-border trade, settlement projects involving slave and free labor, and military incursions into Spanish and Indian territories.

JF: When and why did you decide to become an American historian?
DN: I decided to become an American historian through my undergraduate studies at Columbia University, and through a deeply felt personal connection to our national past. While pursuing my Ph.D. at Cornell University, I was inspired by the late Michael Kammen, one of the foremost American historians of the last half-century.

JF: What is your next project?

DN: My next project is a study of frontier republicanism and settler-Native conflict in the trans-Appalachian West during the late eighteenth century.
JF: Thanks David.
And thanks to Megan Piette for facilitating this installment of The Author’s Corner
UT Arlington - https://mentis.uta.edu/explore/profile/david-narrett
David Narrett
Name
[Narrett, David]

Professor of History

narrett@exchange.uta.edu 8172722861 601 S. Nedderman Dr Arlington, TX 76019
http://mentis.uta.edu/explore/profile/david-narrett
Last Updated: January 20, 2017

About Me
Research
Connections
Teaching
Service

Biography

Dr. David Narrett is professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he has taught since 1984. He received his B.A. at Columbia University in 1973—and his Ph.D. at Cornell in 1981. Dr. Narrett is a specialist in the American colonial, revolutionary, and early national eras. He has published on a wide variety of subjects, especially North American frontier history. His articles have appeared in The William and Mary Quarterly, the Western Historical Quarterly, the Southwestern Historical Quarterly and Vermont History. [Dr. Narrett’s first book, Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City was published by Cornell University Press in 1992.] David Narrett has most recently published Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1763-1803, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press in March 2015. Adventurism and Empire examines imperial rivalries in the Gulf Coast-Mississippi Valley–and Florida regions from the close of the Seven Years War to the Louisiana Purchase. The book offers a new perspective on how individual colonial adventurers and schemers shaped history through cross-border trade, settlement projects, and military incursions into Spanish and Indian territories.
Professional Preparation

1981 Ph.D. in History , Cornell University
1976 M.A. in History , Cornell University
1973 B.A. in History , Columbia University

Memberships

Membership
Aug 1995 to Present Texas State Historical Association
Aug 1995 to Present Society for the History of the Early American Republic
Aug 1990 to Present Organization of American History
Aug 1990 to Present Institute of Early American History and Culture
Aug 1990 to Present American Historical Association

Awards and Honors

Oct 2016 COLA (College of Liberal Arts) Dean's Award for Research Travel sponsored by College of Liberal ArtsMinor in Disability Studies
Achievements:

Award given in light of research accomplishments, especialy publication of book,

Adevnturism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803."

Published by University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
Description:

Award of $6,000 to pursue reserach at hsitroical arcives for a projected book, "From the Tennessee to the Gulf: The Cherokees in an Embattled World of Indian Peoples, Colonies, and Empires, 1730-1815."
Jun 2014 Fellowship at the Filson Historical Society sponsored by Filson Historical Society, Louisville Kentucky
Achievements:

The Filson reseraahch fellowship is awarded to historians who have a significant purpose in utilizing the society's collections in Kentucky, Ohio Valley, and early American history.
Description:

Two-week fellowship award granted by the Filson Historical Society of Louisville, Kentucky, for research in the society's collections.
Apr 2012 Historic Research Award, National Society, Daughters of Colonial Wars sponsored by National Society, Daughters of Colonial Wars
Description:

This award is given to a historian who as contributed significantly to understanding the colonial wars fought within the territories that now comprise the United States.
Apr 2008 Bill and Rita Clements Research Fellowship, Southern Methodist University sponsored by William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University
Achievements:

Award was received in 2008 for the entire 2008-09 academic year.
Description:

This fellowship provides the recipient with a year-long award for reserach and residency at the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. The award is given to scholars working on a book-llength manuscript that has potential for publication in the field of Southwest Studies.
Mar 2003 Bolton-Kinnaird Prize of the Western History Association sponsored by Western History Association
Description:

The Bolton-Kinnaird Prize of the Western History Association for the best journal article of the year published on Spanish Borderlands History. The Award recognizes the best article on any phase of Borderlands history, from the Floridas to the Californias, from the sixteenth century to the present.
Apr 1999 Ben Lane Award, Vermont Historical Society sponsored by Vermont Historical Society
Description:

The Ben Lane Award is given annually to the author of the best scholarly article published in the journal Vermont History.

Research and Expertise

Teaching/Research Fields
U.S. History:
American Colonial and Revloutionary Eras
Transatlantic History
North American Borderlands and Frontiers

Publications

Journal Article 2016

"Kentucky and the Union at the Crossroads: George Rogers Clark, James Wilkinson, and the Danville Copmmittee, 1786-1787," Ohio Valley History 16 (Spring 2016): 3-23.
{Journal Article} [Refereed/Juried]
2016

“Journeys to Louisiana and the Natchez Country,” Reviews in American History, 44 (June 2016), 226-34.
{Journal Article} [Refereed/Juried]

Book 2015

David Narrett, Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803 (Chapel Hill:University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
{Book} [Refereed/Juried]
1 Link

Book Review 2013

Eliga H. Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), in Law and History Review (May, 2013), 482-82
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
2013

Gilbert C. Din, War on the Gulf Coast: The Spanish Fight Against William Augustus Bowles (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2012), in Journal of Southern History, 79 (May, 2013), 462-63.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Essay 2013

Integrating Jewish Experiences into Early America/US Survey Courses,” Perspectives on History (The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association), 51 (May, 2013), 35-36.
{Review essay} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Journal Article 2012

David E. Narrett, "Geopolitics and Intrigue: James Wilkinson, the Spanish Borderlands, and Mexican Independence," The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, 69, no. 1 (Jan., 2012).
{Journal Article} [Refereed/Juried]

Book Review 2010
Review of Borderlines in the Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish-American Frontier, 1776-1821, by J.C.A. Stagg.Southwestern Historical Quarterly 113, no 3, January, 2010: 409-11.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
2010
Review of Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space, by Mark Rifkin.Southwestern Historical Quarterly 2, no 114, October, 2010: 204-05.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
2010

Mark Rikin, Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), in Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 114 (Oct., 2010), 204-05.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Review 2006
Narrett, David E. "Almonte's Texas: Juan N. Almonte's 1834 Inspection, Secret Report and Role in the 1836 Campaign." , by Jack Jackson and John Wheat.Journal of Southern History 71, 2006: 681-82.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Review 2004
Narrett, David E. "The Best and Worst Country in the World: Perspectives on the Early Virginia Landscape." , by Stephen Adams.Terrae Incognitae 39, 2004: 97-99.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Review 2003
Narrett, David E. "Conquest and Catastrophe: Changing Rio Grande Pueblo Settlement Patterns in the 16th and 17th Centurie." , by Elinore M. Barrett.West Texas Historical Association Annual Yearbook, 2003.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Journal Article 2002
Narrett, David E. "Jose Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara: Cuadillo of the Mexican Republic in Texas." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 105 (2002): 194-228.
{Journal Article} [Refereed/Juried]

Popular Press Article 2002
Narrett, D. E. "Secrets of September 11." Letter Dec. 2002.
{Popular Press Article} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Review 2001
"The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics." .American Journal of Legal History 45, 2001: 225-26.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
2001
Narrett, David E. "Frontier Swashbuckler: The Life and Legend of John Smith T." , by Dick Steward.Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 2001: 485-86.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Review 2000
Narrett, David E. "Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana in 1814-15. By Arsene LaCarriere Latour." , by Gene A. Smith.Southwestern Historical Quarterly 104, 2000: 310-11.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Review 1999
Narrett, David E. "In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820." , by David Waldstreicher.Vermont History, 1999: 122-23.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
1999
Narrett, David E. "Courts and Commerce: Gender, Law, and the Market Economy in Colonial New York." , by Deborah A. Rosen.William and Mary Quarterly 55, 1999: 448-50.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Journal Article 1998
Narrett, David E. Vermont History 66 (1998): 69-101.
{Journal Article} [Refereed/Juried]

Book Review 1997
Narrett, David E. "Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys." , by Robert E. Shalhope.Journal of American History 84, 1997: 638-39.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
1997
Narrett, David E. "Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775." , by Aaron Spencer Fogelman.Journal of American Ethnic History 16, 1997: 145.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Journal Article 1997
Narrett, David E. "A Choice of Destiny: Immigration Policy, Slavery, and the Annexation of Texas." Southwestern Historical Quarterly 100 (1997): 270-302.
{Journal Article} [Refereed/Juried]

Book Review 1996
Narrett, David E. "William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early American Republic." , by Alan Taylor.William and Mary Quarterly 53, 1996: 639-41.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book 1994
Francaviglia, Richard V. and David E. Narrett, eds. Essays on Changing Images of the Southwest. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, 1994.
{Book} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
1994
Cawthon, Elisabeth A. and David E. Narrett, eds. Essays on English Law and the American Experience. 1994.
{Book} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Review 1994
Narrett, David E. "To Sow One More Acre: Childbearing and Farm Productivity in the Antebellum North." , by Lee A. Craig.Pennsylvania History 61, 1994: 243-45.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
1994
Narrett, David E. "The Republican Synthesis Revisited: Essays in Honor of George Athan Billias." , by Milton M. Klein, Richard D. Brown, and John B. Hench.New York History 75, 1994: 327-29.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]
1994
Narrett, D. E. "George Clinton." Review of Yeoman Politican of the New Republic.New York History 75, April, 1994: 213-15.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Encyclopedia Entry 1993
"The Legal Profession in New Netherland." Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies, 428-30. Scribner's, 1993.
{Encyclopedia Entry} [Refereed/Juried]

Book 1992
Narrett, David E. Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City. Cornell University Press, 1992.
{Book} [Refereed/Juried]

Book Review 1990
Narrett, David E. "The Constitution and the States: The Role of the Original Thirteen in the Framing and Adoption of the Federal Constitution,." , by Patrick T. Conley and John P. Kaminski.New York History 71, 1990: 334-36.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Chapter 1989
Narrett, David E. "Men's Wills and Women's Property Rights in Colonial New York." Women in the Age of the American Revolution, edited by Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, 91-133. University Press of Virginia, 1989.
{Book Chapter} [Refereed/Juried]

Book Review 1989
Narrett, David E. "The Politics of Progress: The Origins and Development of the Commercial Republic, 1600-1835." , by Hiram Caton.Business History Review 63, 1989: 662-64.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Book Chapter 1988
Narrett, David E. "Dutch Customs of Inheritance, Women, and the Law in Colonial New York City, 1664-1775." Authority and Resistance in Early New York, edited by William Pencak and Conrad Edick Wright, 48-87. 1988.
{Book Chapter} [Refereed/Juried]

Book Review 1988
Narrett, David E. "Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity." , by Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter II.Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 112, 1988: 153-54.
{Book Review} [Non-refereed/non-juried]

Journal Article 1988
Narrett, D. E. "A Zeal for Liberty: The Antifederalist Case Against the Constitution in New York." New York History 49 (1988): 284-317.
{Journal Article} [Refereed/Juried]

Presentations

January 2010
David Narrett
"Geopolitics and Intrigue: James Wilkinson, New Spain, and Mexican Independence," Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of the Early Republic, Rochester, NY
1 Event
January 2010
David Narrett
"The West Florida Revolution: A Continental Perspective," Friends of Oakley Plantation, St. Francisville, Louisiana
1 Event
January 2008
David Narrett
2008 “Luring French Creoles to the English Mississippi: British Intrigue and Louisiana, 1764-1779,” Southern Conference on British Studies, New Orleans
1 Event
January 2007
David Narrett
2007 “Geographer of Intrigue: James Wilkinson and the Texas Borderlands,” Texas State Historical Association Annual Meeting, San Antonio
1 Event
January 2007
David Narrett
2007 “Liberation and Conquest: John Hamilton Robinson and Anglo-American Adventurism toward Mexico,” SHEAR (Society for the History of the Early American Republic), Worcester, Mass.
1 Event
January 2006
David Narrett
2006 Session Chair: “Anglo-Hispanic Interactions, Memory, and the U.S. Past,” Organization of American Historians, Annual Meeting, Washington D.C.
1 Event
January 2005
David Narrett
2005 “William Shaler: Special Agent and Imperial Visionary on the Louisiana-Texas Frontier,” Louisiana Historical Association, Lafayette
1 Event
January 2004
David Narrett
2004 ”Authority and Rebellion in the Natchez District, 1781-1797,” Gulf South Historical and Humanities Conference, Mobile
1 Event
January 2003
"Corridor to Wealth and Liberty: Anglo-American Perceptions of Texas in the Aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase"
2003 Society for the History of Discoveries, New Orleans
1 Event
January 2003
"Filibusters and Rebels in the Louisiana-Texas Borderlands"

2003 Symposium on the Louisiana Purchase, Rural Life Museum, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
1 Event
January 2003
David Narrett
2003 "Sectionalism, Nationalism, and Filibustering Before the Civil War: A Roundtable on Recent Work," Southern Historical Association, Houston
1 Event
January 2002
"Samuel Kemper: Filibuster and Courier of Revolution in the Louisiana-Texas Boderlands"
2002 Gulf South Historical Association, Galveston
1 Event
January 2000
"The First Constitution of Texas, 1813: A Mexican Revolutionary Document"
2000 Conference Sponsored by Texas Christian University and the National Archives, Fort Worth
1 Event
January 1999
"For the Republican Cause: Anglo-American and Mexican Ambitions During the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition in Texas, 1812-1813"
1999 Institute of Early American History and Culture Conference, Austin
1 Event
January 1999
"First Lone Star Rising: The West Florida Rebellion of 1810 and the Texas Revolution"
1999 Texas State Historical Association Annual Meeting, Dallas
1 Event
January 1996
"A Tale of Two Republics"
1996 Keynote Address before the 100th Annual Meeting of the Texas State Historical Association, Austin
1 Event
January 1995
"A Choice of Destiny for Texas: Immigration, Slavery, and Social Progress as Issues in the Debate Over U.S. Annexation"
1995 The Challenge of Statehood: A Sesquicentennial Symposium on Texas Annexation, The University of Texas at Arlington
1 Event
Past

"Dynamic Counterpoise: Liberty and Authority in Michael Kammen's Exploration of the Early American Past”

Talk honoring the late Michael Kammen, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian, at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Atlanta
Past

"Dynamic Counterpoise: Liberty and Authority in Michael Kammen's Exploration of the Early American Past”

Talk in Panel Discussion honoring the late Michael Kammen, Pulitzer-Prize winning historian, at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians (Atlanta)

Projects

2016
May 2016 to Present From the Tennessee to the Gulf: Settlers and Southern Indian Nations in War and Peace, 1770-1815

This book project breaks new ground by bringing diverse and conflicting Native and settler societies into a common historical and geographic framework—based on an original interpretation of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century documents. Although historians in recent decades have greatly enriched our understanding of American Indian peoples, few scholars have given attention to the pressures of political alliance-building, alongside factional discord, existing on both sides of the Native-settler divide. My goal is to trace the ways that white settlers as well as Indian peoples, especially the Cherokees and the Creeks, struggled to maintain internal unity and tp forge interregional alliances during a period of intense conflict over land and trade reaching from the Trans-Appalachian region to the Gulf Coast. My book will offer a dramatic and thematically rich narrative of frontier diplomacy and warfare that will attract readership among the general educated public and college history students, and not only scholars.
Role: Principal Investigator PI: David Narrett

Support & Funding
This data is entered manually by the author of the profile and may duplicate data in the Sponsored Projects section.

Service to the University

Elected
Aug 2014 to May 2015 Tenure and Promotion Committee, College of Liberal Arts

Department representative to committee
Aug 2011 to Jan 2012 Tenure and Promotion Committee, College of Liberal Arts

Department representative

Other Service Activities

Academic and Other Service: University of Texas at Arlington
Aug 2015 Chair, Tenure and Promotion Committee, Department of History

Chair of Tenure and Promotion Committee (Department of History)

Academic Year 2015-2016
Uncategorized
Dec Departmental Service
Chair, Tenure and Promotion Committee (2010-2011); Tenure and Promotion (1999-2000, 2001-2002, 2003-04)
Graduate Advisor (1995-97)
Chair, Graduate Studies Committee (2000-03)
Chair, Library Committee (1992-94, 1999-2006)
Post-Tenure Review (Chair, 2005-06), 1999-2000, 2001-02, 2003-04)
Executive Committee (1989-97, 1999-2000)
Transatlantic Ph.D. Program Committee (1997-current)
Graduate Studies (1990-current)
Chair, Search Committee, Texas and Boderlands History (1992-93)
Dec University Service
College of Liberal Arts, Tenure and Promotion Committee (2011-2012) University Library Committee (2001-2003)
Year One at UTA/First Year Experience Committee (1999-2000)
Graduate Humanities Committee (1992-99)
Dec Professional Service
1996-2003 Referee: William and Mary Quarterly (three articles), Journal of American History (one article), Southwestern Historical Quarterly (two article), Reviewer of Four NEH grants
1992-1995 Referee of two book manuscripts, Cornell University Press
2000-2001 Texas State Historical Association, Member of Program Committee for 2001 Annual Meeting
1996-2000 Organization of American Historians, Steering Committee of Membership Commitee (Texas Representative, five-year term)
1999 Panelist, Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians (Toronto, Canada), "Curriculum Vitae Workshop: What Do Institutions Want from Graduate Students?"
Dec Ph. D.; M.A. Graduates-Supervised 1991-2005
UTA Ph.D. Graduates—Supervised Jeffrey Dillard, 2011; Benjamin Mark Allen, 2008; Charles Brazell, 2007 UTA M.A. Graduates ��" Supervised 1991-2010 Mary Evelyn Pierce, Spring 2010 Jessica Ferguson, spring 2010 Kelly Kirkpatraick, spring 2010 Johnny Thompson, 2007 (chair) David Langston, Spring 2005 (chair) Melissa Canaday, spring 2004 Al Grotz, Spring 2004 Thomas Vanderburg, Summer 2003 Gayle Tennison, Fall 2003 Sandra Freeman, Fall 2003 Helen McLure, Spring 2002 Angela Cain, Spring 2002 Todd Holzaepfel, Summer 2001 (chair) David Johnson Spring 2001 (chair) Alison Efford (Supervisor, Honors College Thesis, 2001) Eric Park, Fall 2000 (chair) Scott Langston, Spring 2000 (chair) Lance List, Spring 1999 (chair) Heather Danamraj, Spring 1999 (chair) Norma Richey, Summer 1998 (chair) Mark Miner, Spring 1998 Ann Martens, Spring 1998 (chair) Angela Camara, Fall 1997 Martha Daniels, Fall 1997 (chair) June Dalrymple, Spring 1997 (chair) Gregory Scott, Dec. 1996 (chair) Amy Hart, May 1996 (chair) M.A. Graduates--supervised (continued) Terrie Hurt, Dec. 1995 (chair) Thomas Spring, Aug. 1995 Nolen Hodges, Aug. 1995 (chair) Alexandra Perkins, May 1995 Jack Burke, May 1995 (chair) Korin Schulz, Aug. 1994 (chair) Carole Slowey, Dec. 1993 (chair) Joseph Myers, May 1993 (chair) Cynthia Clark, Dec. 1992 (chair) David Kyle Wilson, Dec. 1991 (chair) Douglas Jones, Jan. 1991
Dec Community Service
2010 Speaker, "Debating the Constitution, 1787," Fort Worth Rotary Club 2001 Speaker, Daughters of the American Revolution program, Texas State Fair
2001 Reference, Article on the Star-Spangled Banner, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
1997 Speaker, "Huguenot Colonists of New Paltz," Huguenot Historical Society of Texas
1995 Speaker, "The Green Mountain Boys," Sones of the American Revolution, Dallas
Dec Delete Edit

QUOTE:
impressive book
is gracefully written and judiciously argued. Analysis is embedded in the narrative with insightful comments peppering the text throughout, rather than standing alone.
On the whole the author does an excellent job providing historical context to the many episodes he relates.
Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803
Richmond Brown
82.4 (Nov. 2016): p909.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803. By David Narrett. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Pp. xiv, 375. $45.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-1833-3.)

In this impressive book, David Narrett tackles the notoriously complex struggle that took place in the southeastern borderlands from the Seven Years' War to the Louisiana Purchase. The task requires extraordinary narrative dexterity, as the overlapping contests involved the French, Spanish, and British empires; the emerging United States (and its cantankerous western dominions); disputatious officials; diverse subjects and citizens of said powers; and a variety of indigenous groups who actually controlled much of the region for much of the period--the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Upper and Lower Creeks, and many smaller nations. The research demands are also daunting, requiring work in European and American archives and broad reading in a substantial secondary literature in areas not always brought into conversation with one another. Narrett admirably succeeds in these endeavors and makes a valuable contribution to an exciting and growing field of study.

The diplomacy and politics of the era are confusing enough. In 1762 France secretly conveyed Louisiana (which encompassed much of the present-day U.S. Midwest) to Spain, who ceded East and West Florida to the British the following year. Two decades later, by the end of the American Revolution, Spain had recovered the Floridas (while keeping Louisiana) but now confronted the United States, sharing a poorly defined and highly contentious border with restless neighbors of frontier folk and wary indigenous peoples who retained legitimate claims to the interior. Navigational rights to the Mississippi River were especially nettlesome. The French Revolution and ensuing European wars further complicated the picture, with the 1795 treaty between the United States and Spain setting the boundary at the thirty-first parallel and thus leaving many indigenous peoples to their fates at the hands of the United States. The retrocession of Louisiana to the French in 1800 (and French misadventures in Saint Domingue) paved the way for the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. At the end of the period a tottering Spanish empire stood alone in the Floridas against the expansionist United States. One perhaps unfair question is why the author does not carry the narrative forward until 1821 or so, when Florida fell into U.S. hands.

Shifting politics and impermanent boundaries offered an inviting field for all manner of intrigues and adventurers. "Colonial adventurism," the author explains, "came to the fore when individuals acting in a private capacity attempted to exploit uncertain borderland conditions to their own emolument and power" (p. 3). James Wilkinson and William Augustus Bowles are perhaps just the most famous (or infamous) of the many colorful characters who paraded across the southeastern borderlands with grandiose dreams and improbable schemes in these years, and Narrett carefully addresses even the most minor plans and conspiracies.

The book is gracefully written and judiciously argued. Analysis is embedded in the narrative with insightful comments peppering the text throughout, rather than standing alone. The book is light on theory (or is at least subtle in incorporating it). On the whole the author does an excellent job providing historical context to the many episodes he relates. The book would benefit, however, from maps indicating the many places named and the constantly shifting borders.

RICHMOND BROWN

University of Florida

Brown, Richmond

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Brown, Richmond. "Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803." Journal of Southern History, vol. 82, no. 4, 2016, p. 909+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470867670&it=r&asid=9eb3297ef615b5839bc63fde4f803090. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A470867670

QUOTE:
The author used extensive archival collections and published primary and secondary sources to produce this well-done study.
Narrett, David. Adventurism and empire: the struggle for mastery in the Louisiana-Florida borderlands, 1762-1803
J.P. Sanson
53.1 (Sept. 2015): p142.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2015 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Narrett, David. Adventurism and empire: the struggle for mastery in the Louisiana-Florida borderlands, 1762-1803. North Carolina/ William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University, 2015. 375p bibl index afp ISBN 9781469618333 cloth, $45.00; ISBN 9781469618340 ebook, $44.99

53-0448

F301

2014-39230 CIP

The West Florida colony experienced a turbulent history because it occupied a section of North America that all three European empires on the continent as well as the US believed was valuable. France and Spain first argued for control, with Spain having right of discovery and France advancing an expansive interpretation of Sieur de La Salle's claim of the Louisiana colony. France won that fight by establishing a colony at Biloxi on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. However, France settled the area barely ahead of a British expedition that turned away from settlement only because its commander believed an audacious bluff by prominent French commander Jean Baptiste Lemoyne. The West Florida Rebellion gave the US an opportunity to claim the Republic of West Florida that succeeded the colony. Narrett (Univ. of Texas, Arlington) focuses on the colony's history during the 40 years between the end of the Seven Years War and the Louisiana Purchase; examines the complex intrigue conducted by American, British, French, and Spanish opportunists in the area; and explores how international politics helped form the area. The author used extensive archival collections and published primary and secondary sources to produce this well-done study. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries.--J. P. Sanson, Louisiana State University at Alexandria

Sanson, J.P.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Sanson, J.P. "Narrett, David. Adventurism and empire: the struggle for mastery in the Louisiana-Florida borderlands, 1762-1803." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Sept. 2015, p. 142+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA428875049&it=r&asid=dcefb48e5a2f589c363b98f7133c8258. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A428875049

QUOTE:
carefully researched social science monograph
By midcentury, what was seemingly a multiethnic society as well as a multiracial one (11 percent of all wills transferred ownership of black slaves [186]) may also be viewed as one dominated and shaped by an English-Dutch commercial, slave holding, male dominated, and Anglo-cultured oligarchy. This new, individualistic elite had acquired some of its wealth at the expense of all of its women, some of its brothers, and most of its blacks. If it bequeathed this model to future generations of New Yorkers as Narrett maintains (214), then we must also give it credit for providing our nineteenth-century democratic reformers with specific targets for social change.
Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City
John J. Waters
26.1 (Summer 1995): p127.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1995 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/
This carefully researched social science monograph is based upon a statistical analysis of 2,400 wills and allied probate documents, as well as census and tax records. It starts with the Dutch in the 1620s, brilliantly details their survival tactics after the British conquest in 1664, continues with the Anglo-Dutch collaborating generation of the 1720s, introduces the English, the Huguenots, and the Afro-Americans, details the mid-century English hegemony, and concludes at the outbreak of the American Revolution. In his notes, Narrett compares his findings with those about New England, the Quakers, and the South, and his text adds a new and rich component to our understanding of Colonial America.

We now know that the Dutch had beliefs about family, gender roles, and property that placed them at odds with their English conquerors. Were they to have retained "New Amsterdam" in the seventeenth century, their settlers most likely would have continued such traditional Netherlandish customs as common property in marriage, mutual wills, the retention of estates by surviving spouses, and a widow's real right to half the communal assets. This format produced rich, literate widows who were trained to manage farm or firm and who expected to supervise their dependent children until their twenty-fifth year. Female and male heirs expected to inherit equal shares, for fathers believed "that the Daughter must go halves, for so was the manner amongst them, they standing more upon Nature than Names; that as the root communicates itself to all its branches, so should the Parent to all his off-spring which are the Olive branches round about his Table" (144).

These practices stand in marked contrast to English traditions in which marriage made a woman a "feme covert" (her property rights were assumed by her husband) and the first-born son the primary heir to real property. Both Dutch and English practices differ from those in New England, which entitled the first son to a "double portion" of the patrimony, other sons to a "single" portion, and in many cases gave a "half" portion to daughters.

After the 1664 English Conquest the Dutch knew that their familial customs were under challenge. Yet until the 1720s - in the face of the 1691 law code - they engaged in a brilliant, legal guerrilla war in which they used the new English testamentary practices combined with family connivances to retain their Dutch property and inheritance practices. This strategy was more successful in the rural hinderland of sleepy hollows than in the town houses of the Knickerbockers.

As the tax lists and census documents show, in the first decades of the eighteenth century, the Dutch still constituted a majority of the city's farmers, leather workers, and artisans, but at that time New York also included British dock workers, sailors, shipbuilders, innkeepers, customs officers, lawyers, and merchants. Simply put, these conquerors did the counting in English. They coopted the Huguenots and other free immigrants into English churches and grammar schools and by the first quarter of the eighteenth century had won over the Dutch gentry's sons. When young Johannes De Peyster traveled through New England in 1703, his mother recorded that he refused to speak "a single Dutch word" and thought of himself as "entirely English and a Bostonian" (24).

The rich Dutch anglophones became anglophiles and appropriated their spouses' possessions as their own. Moreover, among the elite "a growing number of fathers during the 1700s came to favor the eldest son as an heir to real estate," thus preserving their Manhattan residence and business for a "single heir" (208). This new fraternal inequality meant a large capital base and, with it, a higher possibility of elite status for the favored male. Widows were downgraded. Prior to 1695 three quarters of their husbands had made them sole executors, whereas after 1751 the figure was "only 24 percent" (107).

Even as English parochial norms reshaped Dutch families, those norms themselves came under attack from the new rational secularism of the Enlightenment. Testamentary references to the Deity declined, as did charitable bequests (except within the small Jewish community). The "appointment of executors was shaped by neighborhood and business ties even more than by kinship" (183), and being of Dutch or of English stock was no longer a factor in mercantilistic circles.

By midcentury, what was seemingly a multiethnic society as well as a multiracial one (11 percent of all wills transferred ownership of black slaves [186]) may also be viewed as one dominated and shaped by an English-Dutch commercial, slave holding, male dominated, and Anglo-cultured oligarchy. This new, individualistic elite had acquired some of its wealth at the expense of all of its women, some of its brothers, and most of its blacks. If it bequeathed this model to future generations of New Yorkers as Narrett maintains (214), then we must also give it credit for providing our nineteenth-century democratic reformers with specific targets for social change.

John J. Waters University of Rochester

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Waters, John J. "Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 26, no. 1, 1995, p. 127+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA17379518&it=r&asid=6dd29e290c7836077c0d93cb599d7466. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A17379518

QUOTE:
this book provides a wealth of insight into the gendered patterns of inheritance in one of the American colonies, and is an important contribution to the history of the family in early America.
Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City
Ed Hatton
28.1 (Fall 1994): p184.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1994 Oxford University Press
https://academic.oup.com/journals
The study of inheritance has become an important avenue into the inner workings of family life in early America. Probate records, especially wills, have been analyzed for information used to reconstruct the structure and size of the family, and to investigate the bonds between husbands and wives, parents and children, and testators and their relatives and neighbors. Studies of inheritance in New England and in the Chesapeake colonies have shown that the distribution of property at death was a complex process guided by a combination of cultural traditions, economic circumstances, and legal realities, and that i varied in significant ways from community to community. David D. Narrett's stud of inheritance in New York City before the Revolutionary War contributes to thi literature. It is doubly valuable because it concentrates on an understudied region, the middle colonies, and because it is the first study of inheritance i any major colonial city.

Narrett's analysis draws on a quantitative examination of all extant New Amsterdam testaments before the English conquest in the mid-17th century, and all testaments prepared by Manhattan residents through 1775. Some of these will come from rural districts of the city, but the largest number were prepared by urban residents, and are the major source for the book. In addition to the New York City wills, testaments from two rural regions were also consulted for comparative purposes, the first a group of predominantly Puritan towns located on Long Island, and the second a group of primarily Dutch and Huguenot communities located north of Manhattan on the Hudson river. Narrett also makes an extensive use of other primary sources (in both English and Dutch), includin vital records, tax lists, administration papers related to intestacy, estate inventories, deeds, court records, and family papers.

Although not conveyed in the title, Narrett focuses on the testamentary practices of the colony's Dutch inhabitants, charting the ways in which their inheritance customs were transformed under the English legal system. Dutch and English inheritance laws differed dramatically on three important matters: marital property, primogeniture, and the parameters under which heirs were selected. Unlike English common law, which favored children over widows and son over daughters, Netherlandish custom recognized that ownership of the family estate was shared by both spouses, and favored the rights of the widow over those of her children. Dutch custom also followed a tradition of equity in bequeathing property to male and female heirs. Finally, Dutch testamentary practices called for forms of social intervention--such as the appointment of male guardians for children who had lost either parent--not found in English common law.

After the establishment of a new court system based on English legal procedures in 1691, Dutch law no longer had any formal standing in New York. But the English authorities allowed the Dutch colonists a great deal of freedom to maintain their own inheritance traditions while learning to adapt English practices to their own purposes. As a result, during the first fifty years of English rule Dutch men (and some women) gradually embraced English legal forms while uniformly bequeathing property following Netherlandish practices. For example, the Dutch abandoned the use of the mutual will (which was written jointly by both spouses) by the 1690s, but Dutch men continued to use their legal prerogatives under the common law to ensure their widow's authority over the family estate and postpone their children's inheritance until her death.

The perpetuation of Dutch custom under English law into the early 18th century had a significant impact on the status of New York City's Dutch women, especially widows. In the other colonies, with some variation, widows usually received their "thirds" as mandated by common law, but the death of her husband almost always meant that her status in the family declined from that of the helpmate of the head of the family to an elderly female dependent, a "relict." Dutch custom, in recognizing her equal power over the family's common property, ensured a measure of authority for Dutch women not found in the other colonies. Daughters also fared better under Dutch practices than English because of the custom of equity regarding inheritance.

In following their own cultural customs even while adopting English legal forms the New York Dutch resisted adopting English conceptions of family property for several decades. But by the 1730s Dutch husbands tended to exercise their testamentary power in favor of their children and at the expense of their widows. Wealthy Dutch merchants, like merchants who were members of the city's other nationalities, were most likely to limit their wives' portions, signifyin that their concerns and actions had less to do with their ethnicity than with their economic position within the colony. Increasingly, the inheritance practices of 18th-century New Yorkers followed those of the gentry and professional classes in the other colonies, where a new style of family life wa emerging, one which was oriented toward fulfilling the individual needs of children. But this new, "child-centered" family came at the cost of the inheritance rights of the widow. Ultimately, the decline of the widow's power resulted from the deterioration of Dutch customs of community property under English common law and the concomitant growth of the commercially-oriented and individualistic society in the American colonies in the 18th century.

In the decades before the Revolutionary War, New York City testators resembled those from other colonies in how they increasingly narrowed their family responsibilities. In the 1600s, the distribution of bequests as well as the appointment of executors and guardians in the wills of Dutch New Yorkers reflected the strength of the kinship ties and ethnic loyalties. By the mid-1700s economic and occupational ties played a more significant role in thes determinations. Over time ethnic divisions had become less salient. As Narrett notes, "[w]hile New York remained a pluralistic society, its people came to share a common culture that fostered male control of property within marriage, individual advancement by the young, and the economic self-sufficiency of famil households." (214)

All in all, Narrett is perhaps too reticent in his speculations about the large social and cultural meaning of the shift from marriage-centered to child-centered forms of testamentary practice in Dutch New York. This criticism notwithstanding, this book provides a wealth of insight into the gendered patterns of inheritance in one of the American colonies, and is an important contribution to the history of the family in early America.

Ed Hatton Temple University

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hatton, Ed. "Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City." Journal of Social History, vol. 28, no. 1, 1994, p. 184+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA16107023&it=r&asid=dc3b95577367515154dc957d7d4614de. Accessed 10 July 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A16107023

QUOTE:
In this compelling narrative, David Narrett explores how imperial rivalries
and repeated transfers of power played out for the inhabitants of the region.
Frank, Andrew K. Journal of Military History. Jan2016, Vol. 80 Issue 1, p230-231. 2p.
Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands,
1762–1803. By David Narrett. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2015. ISBN 978-1-4696-1833-3. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography.
Index. Pp. xii, 375. $45.00.
From the end of the Seven Years War to the Louisiana Purchase, France, Spain,
Great Britain, and the United States competed to control the Mississippi-Gulf
region. The United States would ultimately obtain mastery over the area, but the path
to victory was slow and uneven. Ownership of the lands changed hands frequently,
and European territorial claims did not indicate control over what occurred on the
ground. In this compelling narrative, David Narrett explores how imperial rivalries
and repeated transfers of power played out for the inhabitants of the region.
As the title implies, colonial adventurers played a significant role. These private
individuals took advantage of the feeble imperial powers in the region to pursue
personal riches and power. Narrett shows how these schemers used subterfuge and
various forms of intrigue to pursue their aims as he demonstrates the general futility
of formal negotiations and diplomatic discourse. Colonial officials could entice foreign
nationals to defend their territory, but this too resulted in widespread instability.
These adventurers created new governments and opposed others, all the while adding
to and taking advantage of the rampant confusion over who exercised territorial
control and who was allied or at war with whom. Conflict in the region, according
to Narrett, emerged from these competing and often private agendas. As a result,
private adventurers rather than public government agents largely shaped the development
of the Louisiana-Florida borderlands. Even colonial officials and sanctioned
settlers acted in ways that betrayed their national mandates in favor of their personal
self-interest. Adventurism, in short, characterizes most of the actors in the book.
Military and diplomatic historians will be especially interested in how Narrett
exploits the distinction between imperialism—the “exercise of power over vast
physical space”—and colonialism—“the transplanting of individuals and groups
to regions outside their national homeland” (p. 1). Although these concepts reinforced
one another throughout much of early America, this was not the case in the
Mississippi River–Gulf region. There, imperial powers tried to control the region
by influencing homegrown inhabitants rather than transplanting loyal settlers.
MILITARY HISTORY  231
Book Reviews
This situation created a tremendous amount of space for the region’s inhabitants,
whether Native American or newcomers.
Native Americans (primarily Choctaws and Creeks) play a significant role in
the volume. Narrett traces the well-known exploits of William Augustus Bowles
and lesser-known machinations of equally fascinating adventurers. He also explores
how the personal politics of the borderlands necessarily shaped Indian policy and
diplomacy. Although Narrett overstates the role of mestizo elites in tribal leadership,
his treatment of Creeks and Choctaws is nuanced and accounts for the distinction
between the localism that shaped Native diplomacy and the tribal nations
imagined by European policy makers. This too added to the region’s fluidity.
With Adventurism and Empire, Narrett joins Kathleen DuVal, Claudio Saunt,
and other scholars who reframe the revolutionary narrative away from the east.
Like these scholars, he provides a compelling narrative that deserves the attention
of historians of the early American South and of borderlands more generally.
Andrew K. Frank Florida State University

Swainger, Jon. Canadian Review of American Studies. 1995, Vol. 25 Issue 1, p196. 5p.
Subjects: ESSAYS on English Law & the American Experience
Elisabeth A. Cawthon and David E. Narrett, eds. Essays on English Law and the American Experience--The Waiter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures. Arlington: The University of Texas, 1994. Pp. xiv + 135 and notes.
Joyce Lee Malcolm. To Keep and Bear Arms--The Origins of an Anglo-American Right. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994. Pp. xii + 177 with notes and index.
The comparative approach offers a great deal for the study of Anglo-American legal history. Given the English origins of American law and society, it might even be argued that a comparative methodology is a "natural" for studies focused on the evolution and development of law and legal systems in North America and Great Britain. However, while the benefits of such a method seem apparent, there are relatively few studies which actively employ a comparative approach. Further, when authors do adopt a comparative method, more often than not they are encouraged to look to English institutions for sources, clues, and explanations as to later North American variants. Rarely are the comparisons found running in the opposite direction. These two books, Elisabeth Cawthon and David Narrett's edited collection of essays produced by the Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lectures, and Joyce Lee Malcolm's study of the right to bear arms, fall within that tradition of locating the English origins of American rights and obligations. While both works demonstrate the significant contribution that comparative study can offer, they are also marked by the inherent difficulties of undertaking such an approach.
According to editors Cawthon and Narrett, their collection of essays is devoted to "the doctrinal heritage of English law and its considerable modifications by Americans who both cherished the Anglo-American legal heritage and were determined to alter it to suit particular political, social, and economic circumstances" (xi). Further, the editors assert that the contributors "make a case not only for the influence of English law and legal thought in American history, but for the vitality of comparative legal history as a discipline" (xi). As a statement of general principle, there is little to quibble with in such a description although one wonders if, indeed, such a statement stills needs to be made to justify a collection of essays. The inter-connections between English and American legal thought is hardly news and, if anything, these essays serve less to make a case than reinforce a view which is already well established. Second, while comparative history is very useful method in emphasizing both shared history as well as national or regional distinctions, an argument could be made that only three and, possibly four, of the articles in this slim collection are actually comparative; the remainder merely allude briefly to conditions in either England or the United States. While the editors are correct is asserting the vitality that can be gained through a comparative approach, the collection does not demonstrate a wide-ranging use of that method.
The strongest contributions are those articles which actively incorporated a comparative approach. The strength of these articles rests in the realization that the evolution of law is, by nature, a contested process of exchange, consideration, and adaptation. This is not meant to imply that the remainder were necessarily bad or poorly conceived, only that given the collection's claim for demonstrating the vitality of the comparative approach, the other articles were not convincing efforts at comparison. An example of a truly comparative piece is Craig Evan Klafter's article "The Americanization of Blackstone's Commentaries," in which he details St George Tucker, who recognized that many of the assumptions shaping the Commentaries did not correspond to the ideal or reality of post-Revolutionary America. Yet despite the discontinuity, Tucker and his contemporaries realized that the legal world of most Americans was still one shaped by English legal notions. Therefore, by using the familiar Commentaries as a starting point, Tucker hoped to wean Americans off dependence on English legal substance and practice.
Elsewhere in the volume, one finds Elizabeth Cawthon's comparative contribution "Rough Work and Tough Logic: The English Roots of Texas Workers' Compensation Law." Cawthon examines how notions born out of Britain's industrial revolution were imported into Texan regulations governing worker's compensation and how, in the process, assigning value to industrial production became the measure in calculating the cost of worker injury. The result, in both Britain and Texas, was to place workers' welfare a distant second to the overall productive well-being of an enterprise. Finally, Yasuhide Kawashima's "Fence Laws on the Great Plains, 1865-1900" is to be counted as possibly the best contribution to the volume. The strength of the piece is rounded in part, in its ability to trace evolving notions of responsibility over "fencing out" as opposed to "fencing in," and how these ideas immigrated from Britain to the American mid-west. Not only did the change in fence law mirror the American settlement process, but a herd law shaped by the vast availability of land and technical innovations, such as barbed wire, provided the impetus to alter fencing responsibilities in America. Somewhat controversially, Kawashima concludes that these changes were, in of themselves, also an indication of the closing of the frontier on the great American plains.
The argument could be made that Thomas P. Slaughter's article, "The Politics of Treason in the 1790s", belongs in this group of strong comparative articles, but it more accurately employs the English context only as a jumping off point, rather than a true focus of comparison. However, while not rigorously comparative, Slaughter's contribution is a well-constructed discussion of how political considerations shaped the legal meaning of treason in the aftermath of the American revolution. The combined force of Klafter's examination of the substantive meaning of Blackstone in America, and Slaughter's discussion of treason, is certainly the best "one-two punch" of the volume.
The volume is rounded off with an introduction provided by Richard Hamm, an article on sanctuary by William Jones, and a concluding contribution by Calvin Woodard on whether America is a common law country. Although Hamm's is a valiant effort to tie this diverse collection together, it is a little too contrived. Simply stated, attempting to draw a connection between some of these articles is not possible. Perhaps an introduction touching on broader themes of continuity, discontinuity, methodology, and theoretical approaches to legal history may well have been more successful. William Jones' article on sanctuary, while an interesting discussion of ancient principles, is comparative only in the sense of arguing that modern references to sanctuary are historical and defined by modern political discourse. Although Jones' work may be well-founded, it does not demonstrate a genuine attempt at a comparative method. Finally, Calvin Woodard's examination of whether America is a common law country is problematic for largely definitional issues. If one views the common law as only that which existed in Britain, it is clear that America was not a common law country. However, if a broader view embracing the position that the common law was a set of rules shaped and defined historically by circumstance, then America was indeed a common law country. Woodard concludes that Americans have been rejecting the common law for two centuries while, in the process, retaining aspects of the tradition. It would seem that such a conclusion puts to rest the question of whether America is a common law country. That flexibility allowed American society to retain the essence of a number of common law perspectives, without assuming the entire structure. Given this turn of events, I remain unsure as to why such a question needs to be asked.
Joyce Lee Malcolm's volume, To Keep and Bear Arms--The Origins of an Anglo-American Right, has a number of notable advantages over Cawthon and Narrett's collection. The development of a singular thematic issue in a chronologically and politically unified structure allows for a considerably sharper image to emerge. Admittedly, such a comparison may be unfair to Cawthon and Narrett, but the success of Malcolm is that she does successfully place her discussion into a broader context, something which Hamm's introduction to the collection of essays did not accomplish. Malcolm opens her discussion with a number of basic assertions regarding the American right to bear arms. Perhaps most important is the notion that what was construed as an onerous peace-keeping duty in England was transformed into a right by the political turmoil of the seventeenth century. Therefore, by the time that Americans of the revolutionary era began framing immutable rights and the necessary amendment to those rights, bearing arms had assumed political meaning well beyond the original police function.
The focus of Malcolm's discussion is the seventeenth century and how limiting access to weaponry was a consistent plank in Stuart's attempts to bolster the monarchy. Throughout these years ran the constant tension between the English abhorrence of standing armies, Stuart attempts to maintain royal "guards", and the practice of disarming anyone, including protestants, who opposed Stuart policy. Therefore, as pressure to disarm the public grew, so too did the conviction that personal armament was necessary to prevent political tyranny. It was through this process that the duty to be armed for matters of community policing was transformed eventually into an "ancient" right enshrined in the 1689 English Bill of Rights.
Malcolm's basic thesis is that the right to bear arms, as specified in the English Bill of Rights was, in 1689, a recent innovation produced by very specific political events. While American scholars might point to the shared circumstances of the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution, a fundamental distinction was the widely-held view in America that, unlike English parliamentary government, a republic had no need of a bill of rights. Indeed, as Paul Finkelman has convincingly argued, James Madison, who has been described as the father of the Bill of Rights, was a very reluctant parent (Paul Finkelman, "James Madison and the Bill of Rights: A Reluctant Paternity," in The Supreme Court Review, (1990), pp. 301-47). Thus it might be safe to take Malcolm's argument forward to its logical conclusion. The reference to the ancient right to bear arms was largely a contemporary construction produced by the political and religious turmoil of seventeenth-century England. Therefore, in drawing on that construction, the framers of the American Bill of Rights, such as Madison, who was clearly motivated by political expediency, were true to the tradition which produced the English Bill of Rights. That tradition was, however, one of context rather than substance, and thus subsequent generations of jurists and legal scholars ought to be mindful of this basic historical fact.
If there are weakness with Malcolm's study the most apparent is one of presentation. There are occasions throughout the book where the reader is overwhelmed with detail whose importance is not readily apparent. For such a slim volume, it is rather dense. Further, Malcolm's conclusion, which encourages contemporary American scholars to educate themselves as to the real origins of the right to bear arms, falls short of making the necessary point that the right was born of very specific historical circumstances which no longer exist. Yet while both of these books have their flaws, there are nevertheless valuable insights to be gained within their respective covers. There is little question that, in tracing out these English roots and subsequent American variants, the authors have provided a service to Anglo-American history and legal history.
~~~~~~~~
By Jon Swainger

QUOTE:
well researched,
clearly argued, crisply written, and, in addition, entertaining.
this is a useful book that will interest most
scholars of North American borderlands and the interplay
of centers and peripheries, interethnic and international
relations in the Atlantic world, the revolutionary
era, and the intriguing stories of individual adventurers.
It by no means exhausts its subject, so it is likely to be a
stimulus to further research.
American Historical Review
HILTON, SYLVIA L. American Historical Review. Feb2016, Vol. 121 Issue 1, p230-231. 2p.

DAVID NARRETT. Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle
for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762–
1803. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
published in association with The William P. Clements
Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University,
2015. Pp. xii, 375. $45.00.
This new book by David Narrett is well researched,
clearly argued, crisply written, and, in addition, entertaining.
Narrett’s story focuses on the interplay between
individual historical actors and larger economic and political
structures. He details the individual hopes,
dreams, failures, and successes of a large cast of selfserving
adventurers, but at the same time he ensures
that readers understand the contextual complexities of
place and time, by deftly blending his protagonists’ stories
within the economic and political structures of the
late-eighteenth-century Atlantic world. It was a world in
which, as imperial strategies struggled to adapt to
changing circumstances and new demands, international
rivalries and revolutionary ideas led to major wars that
spanned twenty-five of the forty years covered in the
book.
Until fairly recently, U.S. and European historiographies
paid relatively scant attention to the European colonial
possessions on the Mississippi River and North
American Gulf Coast during the revolutionary era. Fortunately,
in the past couple of decades, a new wave of
research by numerous historians has started to fill the
void. These historians have stressed the fascinating historical
peculiarities of those borderlands, with their multiethnic,
multicultural demographics; the fluidity of their
societies; the coexistence of slave and free labor; and
the unique opportunities they offered for the development
of diverse economic interests. In this book, Narrett
focuses on the ways in which individuals negotiated their
own interests, social identities, and political loyalties
amid the uncertainties created by imperial policies, colonial
agents, frontier disputes, Indian negotiations, and
international war. By this means, he not only puts individual
stories in historical context, but he manages to
underscore significant aspects of the role played by
these North American borderlands in the history of the
U.S. and the Atlantic world.
Narrett first explains that, following the Seven Years’
War, the peace settlement pertaining to North America
contained intricate wording that made interpreting it
problematic. He goes on to describe the challenges
faced by both the British and Spanish empires as they
set about incorporating their new frontier colonies in
the Floridas and the Mississippi basin. This groundwork
is key to fully understanding the American War of Independence,
since Narrett puts special emphasis on the
fact that the war actually included multiple conflicts in
which the belligerents had very different motivations,
aims, and degrees of success. The birth of a new sovereign
state in North America not only changed the geopolitical
realities of the Atlantic world, but it also gave
new directions to issues of collective and personal interests
and identities that already formed a complicated
mesh of divided loyalties and changing allegiances in the
borderland areas.
In the second part of Narrett’s book, the old colonial
Anglo-Spanish rivalry gives way to growing tensions between
Spain and the U.S. Arguing that intrigue, subterfuge,
and all manner of conspiracies constantly
pervaded personal and political rivalries in the southern
borderlands, the author examines the process of national
consolidation of the U.S. with special reference to
the new nation’s early history of sectional tensions and
territorial expansion. Trans-Appalachian separatism was
a distinct threat to the Union in the period before the
Louisiana Purchase, as were efforts by Native American
groups to defend their lands and sovereignty by negotiating
trade agreements, friendship pacts, and alliances
with their “Spanish-French” and American neighbors.
In such a muddled and uncertain world, Narrett points
out that the idea of an inevitable and linear U.S. territorial
expansion is difficult to discern.
The adventurers who dominate this part of the story
were clearly caught up in the pursuit of their own individual
interests, but Narrett posits that their opportunistic,
self-serving activities contributed to shape public
purpose and policies in the U.S. Looming large in this
second half of Narrett’s book is, of course, James Wilkinson,
variously portrayed by other authors as the “finished
scoundrel” (Royal O. Shreve [1933]), “tarnished
warrior” (James R. Jacobs [1938]), “admirable trumpeter”
(Thomas R. Hay and M. R. Werner [1941]), “rascal”
(John T. Posey [2000]), and “artist in treason”
(Andro Linklater [2010]). Unfortunately, other equally
opportunistic, if less notorious, schemers seeking economic
gain and sociopolitical power, mainly through
land speculation and trade, in the borderlands are not
so prominently placed in the story. For example, a
230 Reviews of Books
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW FEBRUARY 2016
number of would-be promoters of colonization projects
in the Spanish Floridas and Louisiana, such as William
Butler, Charles Wheelan, William Fitzgerald, Thomas
Holmes, David Carroll Franks, Augustin de Macarty,
Baron von Steuben, James Kennedy, or Peter Paulus do
not even merit a mention in the analytical index. Finally,
Narrett’s work is based on an impressive array of multilingual
sources and a solid bibliography, and should be
duly praised for that, although it is a pity that contributions
by Spanish and French authors are rarely cited.
In sum, this is a useful book that will interest most
scholars of North American borderlands and the interplay
of centers and peripheries, interethnic and international
relations in the Atlantic world, the revolutionary
era, and the intriguing stories of individual adventurers.
It by no means exhausts its subject, so it is likely to be a
stimulus to further research.
SYLVIA L. HILTON
Complutense University of Madr

QUOTE:
thoughtful and meticulous book
This book will become required reading
for scholars of eighteenth-century North
American history.
Journal of American History
Doolen, Andy. Journal of American History. Mar2016, Vol. 102 Issue 4, p1179-1180. 2p. DOI: 10.1093/jahist/jav777.
Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for
Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands,
1762–1803. By David Narrett. (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2015 xiv,
375 pp. $45.00.)
This thoughtful and meticulous book chronicles
four decades of imperial competition and
development in the Mississippi Gulf region
from near the end of the Seven Years War in
1762 to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. David
Narrett divides his book into two sections:
“Struggles for Empire in Peace and War,
1762–1787” and “New Empires, New Republics,
1787–1803.” In the first section, Narrett
examines the impact of British, Spanish,
and French imperial rivalries on commercial
and territorial expansion into the southwestern
borderlands, and concludes by showing
how a tenuous alliance with Spain helped a
fledgling United States extend its power and
influence into the region. In the second section,
he traces the progression of the collaborative,
if often-competitive alliance between
Spain and the United States. The projection
of imperial policies from faraway metropolises
often conflicted with the ideas and desires of
frontier power brokers, whose many schemes,
conspiracies, and ruses repeatedly advanced
competing agendas.
The furtive interplay between imperial
states and private adventurers is a major part
of this borderlands history. In the conclusion,
Narrett writes that
intrigues proliferated in frontier regions
where diverse interests contended for power,
but where no single nation or imperial
power predominated. As a result, individuals
and groups commonly grasped for advantage
by masking motives, angling for
allies across ethnic or territorial borders,
and exaggerating their strength or concealing
vulnerability. The Louisiana-Florida
borderlands of the late eighteenth century
epitomized these tendencies because of
successive imperial crises intersecting with
changing local and regional circumstances.
(p. 257)
Building upon his previous cogent studies of
the southwestern borderlands, Narrett supports
the axiom that an unstable border was
the result of distant and/or vulnerable states,
which lacked sufficient military or economic
clout in the remote region to maintain law
and order. However, his analysis of the statenonstate
interplay also uncovers a more complex
phenomenon, even if he does not always
acknowledge it. Hiding behind the guise of
neutrality, imperial officials worked secretly to
encourage and support the schemes of adventurers
and filibustering militias. Through such
1180 The Journal of American History March 2016
powerful and duplicitous methods remote
states strengthened their hegemony in distant
lands while avoiding being drawn into a larger
and potentially catastrophic war.
A transnational perspective, as porous and
elastic as the borderlands, ultimately proves to
be one of the book’s greatest strengths. It reorients
our understanding of the American Revolution
by emphasizing the significant contributions
of frontier and multinational elites, such as
James Wilkinson, Bernardo de Gálvez, William
Augustus Bowles, Esteban Miró, Manuel Luis
Gayoso de Lemos, and enterprising Kentucky
merchants and Natchez slaveholders. Emboldened
by their Spanish allies, Anglo-Americans
pursued territorial conquest on the southwestern
periphery as energetically and ruthlessly as
they did the holy grail of political liberty on
the Atlantic Seaboard. Their cross-border cooperation
and competition defined the essence
of American-style liberty being imagined and
debated in the East. Liberty would be seized in
space, in the expansion of free trade and in the
conquest of territory, which Anglo Americans
understood as their sacrosanct republican prerogative
in the years leading up to the Louisiana
Purchase. This book will become required reading
for scholars of eighteenth-century North
American history.
Andy Doolen
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky

QUOTE:
With Adventurism and Empire, Narrett has presented a comprehensive
view of politics and diplomacy in the late-eighteenth-century lower
Mississippi Valley and Gulf South, filling a void in American historiography
while also preserving the intricacies of what was a chaotic and contested
region. His account not only situates Louisiana and Florida within
the paradigms of borderland history but also shows how the colonial era
and the era of imperial rivalry continued into the nineteenth century west
of the Appalachians.

Journal of the Early Republic
Hill, James L. Journal of the Early Republic. Fall2016, Vol. 36 Issue 3, p564-567. 4p.
Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana–Florida
Borderlands, 1762–1803. By David Narrett. (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Pp. 392. Cloth, $45.00.)
Reviewed by James L. Hill
In this ambitious volume, David Narrett presents a comprehensive history
of political intrigue throughout the Gulf South and lower Mississippi
Valley during the late eighteenth century. Adventurism and
Empire’s chronological narrative spans the territorial transfers of the
Treaty of Paris of 1763 to the Louisiana Purchase. Along the way, Narrett
crafts a narrative that weaves together several notable episodes, such
as the intrigues of James Wilkinson and the Yazoo land scandal, which
have lurked in the background of early American and early republic
history, but have seldom have taken center stage.
Narrett’s work centers on his contention that “personal adventurism”
(3) pervaded borderlands environments. He argues that the “geopolitical
instability” (3) that characterized regions such as the lower Mississippi
Valley created unique opportunities for individual schemers to turn
imperial rivalry to their advantage. Borderlands figures maneuvered
between iterations of what Narrett calls “imperial selfhood” (137), fashioning
themselves as loyal subjects of the Spanish and British empires,
or loyal citizens of the United States, in pursuit of self-interested goals.
However, his setting the pursuit of individual agendas, and particularly
contraband trade, in opposition to imperial interests overlooks recent
scholarship that acknowledges the vital role which self-interest played in
making empires function.
The author also makes an effort to distinguish imperialism from colonialism,
and to demonstrate how that distinction applies to his region of
study. Narrett defines imperialism as practiced by Spain in Louisiana
and Florida as a search for “political-military-economic dominance” of
the landscape and its peoples, while constructing multiethnic colonies
.................18913$ $CH6 08-17-16 12:00:52 PS PAGE 564
REVIEWS • 565
that drew upon diverse peoples to advance state agendas. Defining colonialism
as “the transplanting of individuals and groups” from their
homelands, he notes that Spain “was only minimally a colonizing nation
in the region” (1). Non-Spaniards, primarily French and Anglo Americans,
made up the bulk of European colonists in the region, and Spanish
officials worked to secure them as partners in empire.
Narrett’s theoretical contribution is a welcome one, as the historiography
of the lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast in this period is
largely devoid of theory. However, the author could have strengthened
its impact by exploring the distinction between imperialism and colonialism
further. If Spain’s imperial mindset enabled much of the intrigue
and negotiation that took place, then what of British and U.S. attitudes?
Narrett’s work implies, though never explicitly states, that the latter two
nations were more colonial than imperial. The author could emphasize
more clearly throughout the book how integral this combination of settler
colonial polities and an imperial-minded Spanish regime was to the creation
of intrigue. From there, he could even attempt to theorize about
other areas where primarily imperial and colonial regimes met. If the
lower Mississippi Valley could serve as a model for such cases, then
suddenly the political intrigues of this region would take on a broader
theoretical value and could inform borderlands scholarship as a whole.
Most notably, the chronology and tone of Adventurism and Empire
offer a critique of American exceptionalism that depicts the United States
as one of a series of colonial nations rather than a unique political entity.
Narrett rejects the notion that the United States grew naturally through
the appeal of democratic ideals. Instead, he shows that the United States,
like other colonial and imperial powers, bargained and negotiated with
borderlands inhabitants in order to win their allegiance or cooperation.
Far from flocking to the American standard, even the Anglo inhabitants
of this region leveraged their support to extract material concessions
from both the United States and Spain. For these populations, imperial
competition presented “multiple possibilities of being drawn into new
republics or empires” (140) based upon the advantages each could confer.
U.S. officials also found themselves forced to compete for influence
over Native peoples and required their neutrality, if not their outright
support, to project influence into the Gulf South during the first decades
after independence. Narrett’s study documents how the United States’
.................18913$ $CH6 08-17-16 12:00:52 PS PAGE 565
566 • JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC (Fall 2016)
eventual assumption of sovereignty over Louisiana and Florida proceeded
along a contested path and only came to be after a series of
contingent developments.
Narrett’s theorizing of the entirety of the lower Mississippi Valley and
Gulf Coast region as a borderland becomes problematic when considering
Native sovereignties. Throughout the work, Narrett acknowledges
the role of Native peoples in regional geopolitics and even devotes an
entire chapter to the Creeks and their intrigues. However, Indian diplomacy
appears more frequently as a way for Spaniards, Britons, and
Americans to strengthen their position in the region rather than a means
for Creeks, Chickasaws, or Choctaws to protect their own standing.
Placing greater emphasis on Chickasaw and Choctaw intrigues would
have provided a narrative balance more reflective of their centrality in
the geopolitics of the Gulf South during this era.
Likewise, the author’s use of the term “borderland” to describe the
entirety of the lower Mississippi Valley and Gulf South runs the risk of
downplaying the extent of Native-dominated space in this region during
the late eighteenth century. Rather than simply stating that “Louisiana
and Florida were borderland regions” (3), Narrett might have identified
specific zones within this vast territory that functioned as borderlands,
in opposition to colonial outposts and Native town sites. The term
borderland is wholly appropriate in some of these areas, but refining its
geographical locus to reflect Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole territorial
sovereignties would resolve a dilemma that often plagues borderlands
studies.
With Adventurism and Empire, Narrett has presented a comprehensive
view of politics and diplomacy in the late-eighteenth-century lower
Mississippi Valley and Gulf South, filling a void in American historiography
while also preserving the intricacies of what was a chaotic and contested
region. His account not only situates Louisiana and Florida within
the paradigms of borderland history but also shows how the colonial era
and the era of imperial rivalry continued into the nineteenth century west
of the Appalachians.
James L. Hill is a recent PhD from The College of William & Mary.
He is the author of “ ‘Bring Them What They Lack’: Spanish–Creek
Exchange and Alliance Making in a Maritime Borderland, 1763–1783,”

Brown, Richmond. "Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803." Journal of Southern History, vol. 82, no. 4, 2016, p. 909+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA470867670&asid=9eb3297ef615b5839bc63fde4f803090. Accessed 10 July 2017. Sanson, J.P. "Narrett, David. Adventurism and empire: the struggle for mastery in the Louisiana-Florida borderlands, 1762-1803." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Sept. 2015, p. 142+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA428875049&asid=dcefb48e5a2f589c363b98f7133c8258. Accessed 10 July 2017. Waters, John J. "Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City." The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 26, no. 1, 1995, p. 127+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA17379518&asid=6dd29e290c7836077c0d93cb599d7466. Accessed 10 July 2017. Hatton, Ed. "Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City." Journal of Social History, vol. 28, no. 1, 1994, p. 184+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA16107023&asid=dc3b95577367515154dc957d7d4614de. Accessed 10 July 2017.

H-Net Reviews
https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/reviews/88849/rodriguez-narrett-adventurism-and-empire-struggle-mastery-louisiana
Word count: 1373
QUOTE:
Narrett demonstrates a masterful understanding of the complicated and unpredictable course of events that contributed to the United States’ ultimate acquisition of this region. His obviously painstaking research, drawn from Spanish, French, British, and US archives, effectively demonstrates the contingency and unpredictability of these events and certainly makes the case that Manifest Destiny was hardly destined at all.
Rodriguez on Narrett, 'Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803'
Author:
David Narrett
Reviewer:
Sarah K. M. Rodriguez

David Narrett. Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. 392 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4696-1833-3.

Reviewed by Sarah K. M. Rodriguez
Published on H-Diplo (October, 2015)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach

During the last half of the eighteenth century, the Atlantic world’s greatest imperial powers—Britain, France, Spain, and ultimately the United States—jostled for control of the North American Gulf Coast. Yet none of them achieved more than tenuous control of the Louisiana-Florida borderlands where an inhospitable climate and powerful Native American groups made European mastery of the region onerous if not impossible. David Narrett’s Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803 examines how a handful of colonial officers, magnates, and lone adventurers managed to turn such conditions to their advantage, and helped shape the outcome of imperial rivalry in the region. Building off of Andrew McMichael’s Atlantic Loyalties: Americans in Spanish West Florida, 1785-1810 (2008) and Kathleen Duvall’s more recent Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (2014), Narrett’s is the first book to treat both Louisiana and Florida together—a singular “borderland” that, although ruled by competing powers, was governed by a ubiquitous tendency that he terms “intrigue” (p. 7).

Unlike previous borderlands scholarship, such as Andrés Reséndez’s Changing National Identities at the Frontier: Texas and New Mexico, 1800-1850 (2007), which focuses more on fexible nationalities or fluid boundaries, Narrett’s book argues that the course of politics and nation building in the late eighteenth-century Florida-Louisiana borderlands was largely dictated by a cast of characters who took advantage of various imperial weaknesses and rivalries to further their own interests or pursue alternate diplomatic arrangements. Examples include George Johnston, an ambitious British naval captain who attempted to funnel contraband from West Florida to Spanish-controlled Louisiana, extend his colony’s border northward by absorbing Spanish colonials, and thereby legitimate “geopolitical linkages” between the Mississippi Valley and the Gulf Coast (p. 27). There is also Bernardo de Gálvez, who facilitated an American assault on Pensacola by permitting the Americans access to the Mississippi River and supplying them with vessels and cannon at New Orleans under the agreement that the Spanish would take control of Pensacola once it was captured, while simultaneously employing his “guise of impartiality” to allow British Loyalists to seek refuge in Spanish Louisiana (p. 82). And there is George Morgan, who sold Gálvez’s plan to Congress by proposing that the United States would keep Pensacola, so that he might get rich off of the proceeds of Spanish weaponry sales to the United States.

Adventurism and Empire not only illustrates the weaknesses and limitations of imperial power but also contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the contingency surrounding the United States’ rise to continental dominance. As Narrett rightly observes, “Manifest Destiny was barely in view during the 1790s when private adventurers vied for mastery in shaping colonization” (p. 3). Indeed, one of the book’s most important contributions is its explanation of how close Spain came to preventing or at least slowing US westward expansion. Instead, those two powers went from tacit allies to primary rivals once the Americans achieved independence, and in failing to follow the suggestion of Pedro Aranda to enter into an alliance with American revolutionaries, the Spanish missed an opportunity to restrain Anglo-American expansion. Instead, immediately following US independence, the Spanish were faced with an even more territorially aggressive neighbor.

Yet, as Narrett shows, the United States was no better at preserving its territorial integrity than its European rivals. Here, a new set of adventurers and schemers acted as informants to Spanish officials hoping to resist and weaken the United States by encouraging secessionist impulses in the West. Again, stopping short of aligning itself with rebels directly, Spain attempted to placate frontier “power bokers” in its efforts “to steer western districts in a pro-Spanish direction” (p. 170). This culminated in Spain’s promise that Kentucky might gain access to New Orleans if it separated from the United States. Although the arrangement never came to pass, the fact that it was discussed at all supports Narrett’s claim that “cultural biases” did not constitute “the root of international conflict” (p. 7). Anglo-Americans demonstrated a willingness to turn their backs on the United States and align themselves with a very different power if it served their economic interests.

This brings us to Narrett’s final point, that “commerce and immigration” were as determinative in shaping geopolitical power relations as “warfare and violence” (p. 3). Indeed, colonization, perhaps more than any other force, seemed the most determinative of imperial success in a region that proved, frustratingly, both inhospitable and lucrative. As much as weapons, resources, or land, these empires competed for people. The British may have sincerely wished to avoid conflict with native groups, but they also recognized that Florida’s value rested in its settlement and development. The demand for colonists compelled British officials to attempt to absorb rather than displace Spanish colonials. When Spain deported many of them to Cuba, British governors attempted to convince French Louisianans to colonize the Mississippi East Bank under British auspices, while pleading with London to allow them to populate newly acquired West Florida with French and American settlers. Meanwhile, the Spanish representative in New Orleans, Antonio de Ulloa, attempted to lure Acadian refugees to Louisiana, in his attempt to fortify the region against the British, and Gálvez helped to weaken the British hold on Pensacola by luring British colonials into Louisiana, thereby reversing “the direction of colonial migration that Pensacola magistrates had worked so hard to establish” (p. 82). After United States’ independence, the Spanish invited US immigrants to settle in Louisiana and West Florida in the hopes that they would become loyal subjects and defend the Spanish presence there. Here we see perhaps the best evidence of a borderlands society in which national identity was fluid and changing. Yet it might also suggest that borderlands residents themselves were as much the agents of geopolitical realignment as individual schemers, whose success often depended on their ability to coax the former into resettlement, immigration, or secession.

Indeed, one might wonder how much a handful of self-interested men ultimately shaped the course of imperial politics in this time and place. More often than not, their schemes failed to pan out or simply never took off. Without imperial support, Johnstone was unable to placate local Indians, and his colonization scheme failed. A similar “gamesmanship” by another British official, Montfort Browne, to take advantage of a French rebellion in New Orleans to capture that city for the British, also “prove[d] idle adventurism in the absence of imperial support” (p. 57). And the Gálvez-Morgan affair similarly fell by the wayside when Congress vetoed the proposal. Nonetheless, Adventurism and Empire is one of the most deeply researched and detailed accounts of late eighteenth-century Florida and Louisiana to date, and Narrett demonstrates a masterful understanding of the complicated and unpredictable course of events that contributed to the United States’ ultimate acquisition of this region. His obviously painstaking research, drawn from Spanish, French, British, and US archives, effectively demonstrates the contingency and unpredictability of these events and certainly makes the case that Manifest Destiny was hardly destined at all.

Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=44151

Citation: Sarah K. M. Rodriguez. Review of Narrett, David, Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762-1803. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. October, 2015.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=44151