The Inner Life of Empires: An Eighteenth-Century History

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The birth of the modern world as told through the remarkable story of one eighteenth-century family

They were abolitionists, speculators, slave owners, government officials, and occasional politicians. They were observers of the anxieties and dramas of empire. And they were from one family. The Inner Life of Empires tells the intimate history of the Johnstones--four sisters and seven brothers who lived in Scotland and around the globe in the fast-changing eighteenth century. Piecing together their voyages, marriages, debts, and lawsuits, and examining their ideas, sentiments, and values, renowned historian Emma Rothschild illuminates a tumultuous period that created the modern economy, the British Empire, and the philosophical Enlightenment.

One of the sisters joined a rebel army, was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and escaped in disguise in 1746. Her younger brother was a close friend of Adam Smith and David Hume. Another brother was fluent in Persian and Bengali, and married to a celebrated poet. He was the owner of a slave known only as "Bell or Belinda," who journeyed from Calcutta to Virginia, was accused in Scotland of infanticide, and was the last person judged to be a slave by a court in the British isles. In Grenada, India, Jamaica, and Florida, the Johnstones embodied the connections between European, American, and Asian empires. Their family history offers insights into a time when distinctions between the public and private, home and overseas, and slavery and servitude were in constant flux.

Based on multiple archives, documents, and letters, The Inner Life of Empires looks at one family's complex story to describe the origins of the modern political, economic, and intellectual world.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction: Ideas and Sentiments (p. 1)
• Chapter 1 Setting Out (p. 11)
• The Four Sisters and Seven Brothers (p. 15)
• Difficult Circumstances (p. 23)
• Tragic News from the Indias (p. 29)
• The Frontiers of Empire in the West (p. 34)
• Small Congratulatory Elephants (p. 45)
• Chapter 2 Coming Home (p. 59)
• The Finances of the Family (p. 60)
• The Politics of the East and West Indies (p. 68)
• The Arts and Sciences of Enlightenment (p. 76)
• The Ruins of the Indies (p. 80)
• Intran Bell alias Belinda (p. 87)
• Joseph Knight (p. 91)
• Chapter 3 Ending and Loss (p. 97)
• The Detritus of Empire (p. 99)
• The James Johnstones (p. 105)
• Indian Yellow Satin (p. 109)
• The Treasurer (p. 112)
• Distant Destinies (p. 116)
• Chapter 4 Economic Lives (p. 121)
• Possible Empires (p. 125)
• What Is the State? (p. 131)
• What Was, and What Was Not Law (p. 137)
• A Society of Persons (p. 141)
• A Moderate Empire (p. 146)
• Economic Theories (p. 148)
• Chapter 5 Experiences of Empire (p. 154)
• Slavery in the British Empire (p. 154)
• "This Age of Information" (p. 170)
• Family Histories (p. 185)
• Connections of Things (p. 197)
• Intimate Lives (p. 202)
• Chapter 6 What Is Enlightenment? (p. 210)
• The Sect of Philosophers (p. 211)
• The Milieux of Enlightenment: Books and Booksellers (p. 220)
• Legal Information (p. 224)
• Clerks and Clerics (p. 231)
• The Milieux of Political Thought (p. 239)
• The Atmosphere of Society (p. 247)
• The Enlightenment of the Johnstones (p. 252)
• The Coexistence of Enlightenment and Oppression (p. 258)
• Chapter 7 Histories of Sentiments (p. 263)
• The Eye of the Mind (p. 263)
• The History of the Human Mind (p. 266)
• Family Secrets (p. 270)
• The Discontinuity of Size and Scenes (p. 277)
• The Incompleteness of Information (p. 279)
• Chapter 8 Other People (p. 284)
• The Johnstones and the Mind (p. 285)
• Intran Bell alias Belinda (p. 291)
• Other People (p. 299)
• Acknowledgments (p. 303)
• Appendix (p. 307)
• Abbreviations (p. 309)
• Notes (p. 311)
• Maps (p. 463)
• Index (p. 469)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In this exhaustively researched and superbly written microhistory, Rothschild (director, Joint Ctr. for History & Economics and Jeremy & Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard Univ.; Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet, and the Enlightenment) skillfully explores the 18th-century lives of the 11 Scottish Johnstone siblings, whose diverse experiences within the British Empire, ranging from Florida to Bengal, also placed them at the forefront of a dynamic empire of "ideas and moral sentiments." In an imperial network that turned information into a commodity eagerly sought by those wishing to keep abreast of rapidly changing economic, political, and intellectual trends, the Johnstone siblings recorded the sentiments they observed in others as they moved within an elite circle of intellectual luminaries of the Scottish Enlightenment including Adam Smith, David Hume, Adam Ferguson, and William Cullen. Concluding with copious notes, Rothschild's cerebral history is never more poignant than in her discussions of the "ills of empire," which included the fate of slaves such as Bell or Belinda and James Knight. VERDICT Scholarly in tone, Rothschild's account will appeal to fans of Enlightenment studies, Scottish or otherwise, microhistories, and prosopographies such as Carlo Ginzburg's influential The Cheese and the Worms. [See "Editors' Spring Picks," LJ 2/15/11.-Ed.]-Brian Odom, Pelham P.L., AL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

This original and remarkable book will be tough going for some readers, but they should persevere. It's the story of the Johnstones, 11 Scottish siblings whose lives spanned the entire 18th-century British Empire-from Britain to Africa and the Americas. By extraordinary perseverance, Rothschild (a Harvard historian) has excavated the tiniest tidbits about them from a vast array of repositories and collections, and used these shards of evidence to broaden and deepen our understanding of the Enlightenment, commerce, empires, revolutions, nation states, sentiments, family relations, and slavery. Her tale often holds the mysteries of a fictional account, especially about a key slave whose life after shipment to the American colonies is lost in the mists of time. It's also about the rising and falling fortunes of a family and its members-people who seem to have interacted with everyone of importance in the British 18th century. But it remains a story of ordinary people, not kings, political figures, or diplomats. While this is a scholarly work and the very model of the contemporary historian's craft, it's also deeply illuminating, humane, at times moving, and altogether captivating. 6 maps. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

CHOICE Review

Rothschild (history, Harvard Univ.) presents a fascinating combination of micro- and macro-history that sheds light on 18th-century empires throughout the world. She does so by relying upon primary source documents of one family, the Johnstones, a relatively nonprosperous family of the Scottish country gentry. Despite their lack of renown, the siblings of the family were involved in an astounding array of the important events of their times, including the slave trade, Jacobite politics, and the East India Company. Rothschild uses the personal writings of the family, as well as the events in which they found themselves caught up, to illustrate the development and changes occurring in the empires of the 18th century, including trade, war, politics, slavery, and the Enlightenment. While some readers may find certain parts of the book difficult to wade through because of the detailed and serial recitation of facts and events about the Johnstones' lives, the approach provides a window on both personal and worldwide history that would be impossible otherwise. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections. M. E. Morrell University of Connecticut