Strangers Within The Realm

Shedding new light on British expansion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this collection of essays examines how the first British Empire was received and shaped by its subject peoples in Scotland, Ireland, North America, and the Caribbean. An introduction surveys British imperial historiography and provides a context for the volume as a whole. The essays focus on specific ethnic groups -- Native Americans, African-Americans, Scotch-Irish, and Dutch and Germans -- and their relations with the British, as well as on the effects of British expansion in particular regions -- Ireland, Scotland, Canada, and the West Indies. A conclusion assesses the impact of the North American colonies on British society and politics. Taken together, these essays represent a new kind of imperial history -- one that portrays imperial expansion as a dynamic process in which the oulying areas, not only the English center, played an important role in the development and character of the Empire. The collection interpets imperial history broadly, examining it from the perspective of common folk as well as elites and discussing the clash of cultures in addition to political disputes. Finally, by examining shifting and multiple frontiers and by drawing parallels between outlying provinces, these essays move us closer to a truly integrated story that links the diverse ethnic experiences of the first British Empire. The contributors are Bernard Bailyn, Philip D. Morgan, Nicholas Canny, Eric Richards, James H. Merrell, A. G. Roeber, Maldwyn A. Jones, Michael Craton, J. M. Bumsted, and Jacob M. Price.

The contributors to this collection argue that traditional views - of ethnic and cultural isolation, of German clannishness and Scots-Irish individualism - contain a kernel of truth but are far too restrictive and simplistic.

The history of Saint Susan’s monastery on the south coast of England is as remarkable as the tumultuous times in which it existed. Located at East Lulworth, it was founded in 1794 and existed for twenty-three years before political and other circumstances forced Dom Antoine Saulnier de Beauregard and his community to leave England for France in 1817. There they re-founded the old Cistercian abbey of Melleray in Brittany. Strangers in a Strange Land brings the story of Saint Susan’s monastery to light against the backdrop of a war between England and France, religious prejudice, conflicts of personality, lies, and misunderstanding. It introduces the dominant figure of the time, Dom Augustin de Lestrange, abbot of La Valsainte in Switzerland, as well as two others of major importance including the first prior of the house, Dom Jean-Baptiste Desnoyers, and the last and only abbot, Dom Antoine Saulnier de Beauregard.

This compelling book examines what theory means for both student and researcher and questions whether the confidence in educational theory is justified.

“It makes no sense. You would be strangers / if not for this.” In Strangers, Rob Taylor makes new the epiphany poem: the short lyric ending with a moment of recognition or arrival. In his hands, the form becomes not simply a revelation in words but, in Wallace Stevens' phrase, “a revelation in words by means of the words.” The epiphany here is not only the poet’s. It’s ours. A book about the songlines of memory and language and the ways in which they connect us to other human beings, to read Strangers is to become part of the lineages (literary, artistic, familial) that it braids together—to become, as Richard Outram puts it, an “unspoken / Stranger no longer.”