Reflections on AHA 2019

I took Amtrak train to Chicago for AHA 2019. It was my first time taking Amtrak, and also my first time taking train from Saint Louis. I took this photo when the train was crossing Mississippi River.  

This year's annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) was held at Chicago. I took Amtrak for the first time since I came to U.S. It took a little bit longer than driving and, of course, flying. However, it is much cheaper than flying and much easier than driving. I even finished reading a book, What is Intellectual History, which I have meant to read for years. I have three major purposes to attend this meeting. First, this year's theme was loyalty. As a historian researching New York Loyalists, the conversations surrounding loyalty would benefit my thinking of this subject as I am writing my dissertation. Second, I was interested in the panels about intellectual history. I used to identify myself as an intellectual historian for many years until I met my current advisor. His methodology emphasizes the interaction between the apperceptions within the specific cultural context and the political ideas. He identified himself more with cultural history than intellectual history, if we really need to label his works. However, lately I have been rethinking this self-identity. I prefer not to put labels on my own works and also my advisor's works. We can be both cultural historians and intellectual historians. After reading What is Intellectual History, I am even more certain that it is meaningless to held an exclusive historian identity. It really doesn't matter! My third purpose was to get to know more historians, which I think I have accomplished in this meeting, even though I feel I could have done better. This post will be about my reflections of my first purpose: something I took away from the panels on Loyalism.

AHA president, Professor Mary Beth Norton, organized two panels on Loyalism. One talked about the state of the field of Loyalism study, and the other contained three papers demonstrating the new directions of research. Professor Norton is famous for her research on woman history from colonial America to early American republic. Her work includes Liberty's Daughters, Founding Mothers and Fathers, In the Devil's Snare, and Separated by Sex. Many people today forget that her first book was The British-Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England, 1774-1789. In her presidential speech this year, she also talked about two Loyalist pamphlets to illustrate her points. Even though she turned to study the women in history after her first book, the subject of Loyalism has still been on her mind.

In the panel on the state of the field, Professor Virginia DeJohn Anderson, the author of The Martyr and the Traitor: Nathan Hale, Moses Dunbar, and the American Revolution, talked about her book and mentioned some points that I feel very interested. Through telling and comparing the stories of these two figures, she intended to delve into the motives of Loyalists and make her readers rethinking the definition of treason. Professor Rebecca Brannon talked about her work, From Revolution to Reunion: The Reintegration of the South Carolina Loyalists, which provided answers to another very interesting question: what happened to those who stayed? There are many works on what happened to those who leave the new nation. For example, Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles and many other papers presented at this AHA meeting. On the other hand, Professor Brannon's work asked, "How about those who stay?" How did they reintegrate to the new nation? I took some time before the AHA meeting to read The Martyr and the Traitor and From Revolution to Reunion, those two books really help me to think more about my own dissertation and how my research can fit into this new trend.

In her talk, Professor Brannon mentioned that Jonathan Haidt in his research on The Righteous Minds listed several moral values, and loyalty was one of them. I use Haidt's theory about how moral intuition goes before moral judgments, and therefore focus on how "deep history" or taken-for-granted cultural presuppositions and contemporary contingency co-shaped Loyalist political ideology. However, I never actually treat loyalty itself as a value in my writing. Sometimes while we try to explain why certain people choose to be loyal to certain cause, we forget that in many cases loyalty itself is a value that direct people's behavior. Many people remain loyal to something or someone not because of any rationalized argument, but just because it sounds right to do so. It doesn't mean that we should not ask the question about the reasons behind loyalty. For me, it just means that we have to recognize that in some cases, loyalty could be the reason itself.

In the panel on the new directions of Loyalist research, there were three excellent papers dealing with women, Black Loyalists, and Loyalist honor respectively. I think these three papers did represent new trends in Loyalist study. The wind of gender study also blows to Loyalism. As historians are increasingly looking at the roles that women played in our past, it also makes sense to look at the female Loyalists. Black Loyalist is also a significant issue within which we can see the factors of loyalism, race, and empire intertwined. Historians could research on their challenging lives in the new places, or their free but not equal social status. The potential in this topic is tremendous. The paper on the Loyalist concept of honor is interesting. Lately, Craig Bruce Smith's American Honor talked about the role that honor played in shaping the American Revolution. From a very different perspective, Timothy Compeau's paper talked about how the idea of honor shaped Loyalists' experiences. It also showed that Loyalism is not only valuable in social and political history. It can also be very valuable in intellectual history.   

Professor Norton asked the panelists what we could get from studying Loyalism. Their answers were all really good. For me, if we think that it is important to study the history of the African Americans, who constitute about 12-14% of U.S. population, then it is also important to study the history of Loyalists, who constituted at least about 25% of the population at that time. Of course, there are huge differences between African American history and Loyalist history. In the former, we can see the unfortunate history of racial oppression that can, to some extent, still be related to current social situation of the U.S. We can also find how this group of oppressed people stood up and contributed to this society. In the later, however, we will not find such social significance. Instead, we will find a very different story of the founding period of this nation. Also, Loyalism is not just an American topic, but also an Atlantic topic and even a global topic. Therefore, there are still lots can be done on Loyalism. Even looking at Loyalism locally within the boundary of the United States can be inspiring. Its political arguments show that people could learn the same political ideas, and even hold similar political values, but use those ideas in different ways. This could be a great lesson to learn as we are going through our current political mess. As I study the political ideology of Loyalists, I found it could help us to look beyond the dichotomy between liberals and conservatives, as many people and our media tend to label people and to provoke antagonism today. Many Loyalists, such a William Smith Jr., could not be simply categorized as typical conservatives. And some Patriots, especially after the Revolution, could not be categorized as liberals. Instead of categorizing people into stereotypes, we should endeavor to understand how people in crisis actually thought and did in facing their dilemma.