North Carolina State University
Adjunct Lecturer, Spring 2012, History
Thesis Title: 'Yankey dodle will do verry well here: New England Traders in the Caribbean, 1713 to Circa 1812
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Philip D. Morgan
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About
I am a historian of early North America and the Caribbean, with a particular focus on the interconnections of these broad regions through trade, migration, and social networks. I have a related interest in maritime history and a revived interest in 18th-century natural histories of the Caribbean and North America.
In my dissertation, "'Yankey Dodle will do verry well here': New England Traders in the Caribbean, 1713 to Circa 1812" (The Johns Hopkins University, 2011), I examine merchant networks and the roles of social and political influence in New England's West Indies trade during North America's colonial and early republican periods. My research examines the depth and longevity of traders' social and financial investments in the Antilles, challenging older studies' characterization of this regional trade as based on speculation and tramping voyages. In "'Yankey Dodle will do verry well here'" I analyze business and family networks; trans-generational connections and resources; the social and business relationships of ship captains and island agents; and the trade of Caribbean plantations owned by New Englanders through the 18th Century to the War of 1812. In doing so, I make two main arguments: that deeper levels of American merchant engagement characterized the West Indies trade than its representation as transient Yankee huckstering allows; and that there was more continuity than change in the trade through the American revolutionary era than scholars have acknowledged. The political transformations and implications of the revolutionary period were profound and quite rapid. However, alterations in the character of maritime commerce were more gradual.
My current research includes an expansion of my dissertation to include Britain's most northerly colonies, now the Canadian Maritimes, in their interaction with New England vis-à-vis the West Indies. I am also (this minute) involved in new (renewed) research on Edward Long (planter, polymath, and politician of Jamaica), and 18th-Century natural histories.
