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ABSTRACT
This introduction to the volume on “The Fraternal Atlantic” places the eighteenth-century emergence of freemasonry within the context of the dynamic Atlantic world. It highlights three characteristics that persisted into the twentieth century: the importance of freemasonry to sociability across borders; the tensions within freemasonry between cosmopolitan fraternalism and the turbulent political waters of the modern era, often leading to exclusive practices; and the plasticity of freemasonry that facilitated local adaptations and resiliency. A focus on freemasonry and the fraternal Atlantic offers a bridge between the early modern and modern eras, from the Age of Revolutions to movements for international cooperation after the First World War. It likewise mitigates the tendency of Atlantic scholarship to compartmentalize into various sub-Atlantics, instead seeing the Atlantic world as a zone of interaction with broader global connections.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs is associate professor of history at the University of Florida. She is author of Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), articles and chapters that argue for examining freemasonry using macro-level units of analysis, and articles and a bibliography on the Atlantic dimensions of fraternalism. She is currently researching how empires manage religious diversity, in particular the incorporation of Catholics into the British Empire of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Jan C. Jansen is a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC. His research concerns colonial history and decolonization, with a particular focus on French colonial empires since the eighteenth century. His publications include Erobern und Erinnern: Symbolpolitik, öffentlicher Raum und französischer Kolonialismus in Algerien, 1830–1950 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2013); Decolonization: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017) (co-authored with Jürgen Osterhammel); and Refugee Crises, 1945–2000: Political and Societal Responses in International Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) (co-edited with Simone Lässig).
Elizabeth Mancke is a professor of history and the Canada Research Chair in Atlantic Canada Studies at the University of New Brunswick. Her research interests address the impact of European overseas expansion on governance and political systems, from local government to international relations. Her most recent book, Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c. 1550–1850 (co-edited with H. V. Bowen and John G. Reid), is a collaborative study with sixteen scholars from North America, Europe, and Asia. At UNB, she is heading a team to build an open-source database of all the legislation of the colonies that became Canada from 1758–1867. This project reflects her interest in legislation as an under-utilized source for understanding political culture in new societies.
Notes
1. Terpstra, “Deinstitutionalizing Confraternity Studies,” 264; Clawson, “Fraternal Orders,” 689; Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 39, 74; Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire, 17–20.
2. Harland-Jacobs, “Worlds of Brothers.”
3. Beaurepaire, République universelle; Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire; Mollès, “‘Triangle atlantique’.”
4. Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry; Jacob, The Origins of Freemasonry; Bogdan and Snoek (eds.), Handbook of Freemasonry; Péter (ed.), British Freemasonry 1717–1813; Önnerfors, Freemasonry.
5. Anderson, Constitutions.
6. For Freemasonry in the North American context, see Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood.
7. Horn and Morgan, “Settlers and Slaves,” 20–24; Hancock, “Atlantic Trade,” 330–331.
8. Dubois, A Colony of Citizens, 33–38.
9. Steele, The English Atlantic.
10. The following paragraph draws largely on Jansen, “Atlantic Sociability.” See also Harland-Jacobs, “Worlds of Brothers”; Mollès, “L’histoire globale.”
11. See the critique by Canny, “Atlantic History and Global History.”
12. Coclanis, “Drang Nach Osten”; Bowen, Mancke and Reid, Britain’s Oceanic Empire; Vidal, “Histoire globale.”
13. The period after the Age of Revolutions is a much less studied period in Atlantic scholarship. For forceful arguments to include them, see Gabaccia, “Long Atlantic”; Fogleman, “Transformation.”
14. Clark, British Clubs and Societies, 471. On sociability, see also Hoffmann, Civil Society; Beaurepaire, “Sociability”; Jansen, “Atlantic Sociability.”
15. On family merchant networks, see Supple, “Nature of Enterprise,” 410; Bosher, The Canada Merchants; and Roitman, “New Christians, Jews, and Amsterdam.” On the role of freemasonry within eighteenth-century commercial and diplomatic mobility, see Beaurepaire, “Universal Republic.”
16. Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire, 83–88.
17. On the Sephardic diaspora, for example, see Jansen, “Becoming Imperial Citizens.” On other forms of diasporic sociability in the Atlantic world, see Studnicki-Gizbert, Nation Upon the Sea, 67.
18. Conrad, Global History, 79–89.
19. Hinks and Kantrowitz, All Men Free; Kantrowitz, “Intended for the Better Government”; Révauger, Black Freemasonry.
20. On communication within the Black Atlantic during this period, see Scott, Common Wind.
21. There is a prolific scholarship on the history of Latin American freemasonry. For some recent publications, see Vázquez Semadeni, Cultura política republicana; Arroyo, Writing Secrecy; Soucy, Enjeux coloniaux; and the articles in Revista de Estudios Históricos de la Masonería. Scholarship on freemasonry in Africa is still limited. Önnerfors’s essay in this volume discusses how contentious freemasonry in Liberia was internationally. See also White, “Networking.”
22. See, e.g., Saunier, “L’espace caribéen.”
23. Anderson, Constitutions, 50.
24. Clawson, “Early Modern Fraternalism”; Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire, 15–17, 61–62, 88–96, 259–262.