The Evil Necessity

The Evil Necessity PDF Author: Denver Alexander Brunsman
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 081393351X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 615

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Book Description
A fundamental component of Britain's early success, naval impressment not only kept the Royal Navy afloat--it helped to make an empire. In total numbers, impressed seamen were second only to enslaved Africans as the largest group of forced laborers in the eighteenth century. In The Evil Necessity, Denver Brunsman describes in vivid detail the experience of impressment for Atlantic seafarers and their families. Brunsman reveals how forced service robbed approximately 250,000 mariners of their livelihoods, and, not infrequently, their lives, while also devastating Atlantic seaport communities and the loved ones who were left behind. Press gangs, consisting of a navy officer backed by sailors and occasionally local toughs, often used violence or the threat of violence to supply the skilled manpower necessary to establish and maintain British naval supremacy. Moreover, impressments helped to unite Britain and its Atlantic coastal territories in a common system of maritime defense unmatched by any other European empire. Drawing on ships' logs, merchants' papers, personal letters and diaries, as well as engravings, political texts, and sea ballads, Brunsman shows how ultimately the controversy over impressment contributed to the American Revolution and served as a leading cause of the War of 1812. Early American HistoriesWinner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an Outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies

The Evil Necessity

The Evil Necessity PDF Author: Denver Alexander Brunsman
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 081393351X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 615

Get Book Here

Book Description
A fundamental component of Britain's early success, naval impressment not only kept the Royal Navy afloat--it helped to make an empire. In total numbers, impressed seamen were second only to enslaved Africans as the largest group of forced laborers in the eighteenth century. In The Evil Necessity, Denver Brunsman describes in vivid detail the experience of impressment for Atlantic seafarers and their families. Brunsman reveals how forced service robbed approximately 250,000 mariners of their livelihoods, and, not infrequently, their lives, while also devastating Atlantic seaport communities and the loved ones who were left behind. Press gangs, consisting of a navy officer backed by sailors and occasionally local toughs, often used violence or the threat of violence to supply the skilled manpower necessary to establish and maintain British naval supremacy. Moreover, impressments helped to unite Britain and its Atlantic coastal territories in a common system of maritime defense unmatched by any other European empire. Drawing on ships' logs, merchants' papers, personal letters and diaries, as well as engravings, political texts, and sea ballads, Brunsman shows how ultimately the controversy over impressment contributed to the American Revolution and served as a leading cause of the War of 1812. Early American HistoriesWinner of the Walker Cowen Memorial Prize for an Outstanding Work of Scholarship in Eighteenth-Century Studies

The Evils of Necessity

The Evils of Necessity PDF Author: Eric Robert Papenfuse
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
ISBN: 9780871698711
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Robert Goodloe Harper (1765-1825), a prominent attorney congressman from South Carolina & Maryland, was one of the most influential Federalists of the early national period. Harper is traditionally remembered as an extreme example of unthinking, reactionary conservatism in an era of intense partisanship & bitter sectional conflict. In this lively, revisionist account, Eric Robert Papenfuse reinterprets Harper's political philosophy in light of his personal struggle with the moral dilemma of slavery. Papenfuse uses newly discovered documents to show how Harper rose to power among back country South Carolinians as both an advocate of innate racial equality & a proponent of the gradual end to slavery's westward expansion. Though deeply troubled by slavery's irremediable moral & political evils, Harper accepted the system as a temporary necessity, & turned his efforts to achieving social progress through the education of lower-class white Americans & the "emancipation" of European peasants from Napoleonic tyranny. The establishment of the American Colonization Society in 1816 renewed Harper's commitment to resolving the problem of slavery by educating blacks & transporting them to an environment free from white racial prejudice, where they might one day become a "great nation." By conveniently reproducing & indexing four of Harper's most important speeches & letters, Papenfuse invites readers to examine for themselves a fundamental paradox of the age: how an abiding conviction that all races were inherently equal could allow for such forced rationalizations, painful self-deceptions, & maddening compromises.

Evil Necessity

Evil Necessity PDF Author: Harold D. Tallant
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813184452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
In Kentucky, the slavery debate raged for thirty years before the Civil War began. While whites in the lower South argued that slavery was good for master and slave, many white Kentuckians maintained that because of racial prejudice, public safety, and property rights, slavery was necessary but undeniably evil. Harold D. Tallant shows how this view bespoke a real ambivalence about the desirability of continuing slavery in Kentucky and permitted an active abolitionist movement in the state to exist alongside contented slaveholders. Though many Kentuckians were increasingly willing to defend slavery against northern opposition, they did not always see this defense as their first political priority. Tallant explores the way in which the disparity between Kentuckians' ideals and their actions helped make Kentucky a quintessential border state.

The Nature of Necessity

The Nature of Necessity PDF Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191037176
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
This is a reissue of a book which is an exploration and defence of the notion of modality 'de re', the idea that objects have both essential and accidental properties. It is one of the first full-length studies of the modalities to emerge from the debate to which Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Ruth Marcus and others have contributed. The argument is developed by means of the notion of possible worlds, and ranges over key problems including the nature of essence, trans-world identity, negative existential propositions, and the existence of unactual objects in other possible worlds. In the final chapters Professor Plantinga applies his logical theories to the clarification of two problems in the philosophy of religion - the Problem of Evil and the Ontological Argument.

The Empire of Necessity

The Empire of Necessity PDF Author: Greg Grandin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805094539
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Documents an early nineteenth-century event that inspired Herman Melville's "Beneto Cereno," tracing the cultural, economic, and religious clash that occurred aboard a distressed Spanish ship of West African pirates.

A Necessary Evil

A Necessary Evil PDF Author: Garry Wills
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439128790
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
In A Necessary Evil, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills shows that distrust of government is embedded deep in the American psyche. From the revolt of the colonies against king and parliament to present-day tax revolts, militia movements, and debates about term limits, Wills shows that American antigovernment sentiment is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of our history. By debunking some of our fondest myths about the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and the taming of the frontier, Wills shows us how our tendency to hold our elected government in disdain is misguided.

Wickedness

Wickedness PDF Author: Dr Mary Midgley
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040278922
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
To look into the darkness of the human soul is a frightening venture. Here Mary Midgley does so, with her customary brilliance and clarity. Midgley's analysis proves that the capacity for real wickedness is an inevitable part of human nature. This is not however a blanket acceptance of evil. Out of this dark journey she returns with an offering to us: an understanding of human nature that enhances our very humanity.

Villains by Necessity

Villains by Necessity PDF Author: Eve Forward
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781729317785
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
The war is over, the good guys have triumphed, and, everything is Happily Ever After.... and boring as hell. An assassin, a thief, a sorceress, a dark knight and a druid set forth to ruin everything, in this tongue-in-cheek twist on the traditional fantasy tale.

Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery

Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery PDF Author: Quobna Ottobah Cugoano
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101177101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
A freed slave's daring assertion of the evils of slavery Born in present-day Ghana, Quobna Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped at the age of thirteen and sold into slavery by his fellow Africans in 1770; he worked in the brutal plantation chain gangs of the West Indies before being freed in England. His Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery is the most direct criticism of slavery by a writer of African descent. Cugoano refutes pro-slavery arguments of the day, including slavery's supposed divine sanction; the belief that Africans gladly sold their own families into slavery; that Africans were especially suited to its rigors; and that West Indian slaves led better lives than European serfs. Exploiting his dual identity as both an African and a British citizen, Cugoano daringly asserted that all those under slavery's yoke had a moral obligation to rebel, while at the same time he appealed to white England's better self. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw PDF Author: Michael Murray
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199237271
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Those who believe in God often puzzle over how God could permit evil and suffering in the world. Nature Red in Tooth and Claw focuses specifically on non-human animal suffering, and whether or not it raises problems for belief in the existence of a perfectly good creator.