The Impact of the Congress of Vienna on Caribbean Politics and Society

Autores/as

  • Franklin Knight Johns Hopkins, Estados Unidos.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14482/memor.26.7575

Palabras clave:

Vienna Caribbean Politics Napoleon Europe French Revolution

Resumen

For the hundreds of international delegates gathered at Vienna two hundred years ago, the focus of attention was, understandably, (as we have heard so many times,) the reconstitution of the European political frontiers severely altered during the French Revolutionary military campaigns between 1794 and 1814. The Napoleonic changes affected far more than just geographical boundaries and nominal administrations. There was also a major change in general mentality and political discourse, reflected in the comments of the English-Jamaican planter Bryan Edwards to his colleagues in the British Parliament in 1798:

The times in which we live will constitute an awful period in the history of the world; for a spirit of subversion has gone forth, which sets at nought the wisdom of our ancestors and the lessons of experience.

Edwards was obviously bemoaning threats to his comfortable way of life, but his lament would become relevant for all societies from that time

Biografía del autor/a

  • Franklin Knight, Johns Hopkins, Estados Unidos.

    Franklin W. Knight joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1973 and in 1991 was appointed the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor of History.

    A graduate of the University College of the West Indies-London (BA (Hons.) 1964), he gained the MA (1965) and PhD (1969) degrees from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

    Knight’s research interests focus on social, political, and cultural aspects of Latin America and the Caribbean, especially after the 18th century, as well as on American slave systems in their comparative dimensions.

    Knight has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Ford Foundation, and the National Humanities Center. He has served on committees of the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Inter-American Foundation, the National Research Council, the American Historical Association, the Conference of Latin American History, The Latin American Studies Association, The American Council of learned Societies, The Historical Society, and the Association of Caribbean Historians.

    His analyses of Latin American and Caribbean problems have been aired on National Public Radio, the Voice of America, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the McNeill/Lehrer Report, C-Span, and many local programs on commercial as well as public radio and television stations across the United States. He served as academic consultant to the television series Columbus and the Age of Discovery; The Buried Mirror; Americas; Plagued: Invisible Armies; Crucible of Empire: The War of 1898, The Crucible of the Millennium; and The Louisiana Purchase.

    Professor Knight was president of The Historical Society (2004–2006), and served as president of the Latin American Studies Association between October 1998 and May 2000. He also serves on advisory committees of the National Research Council, the Handbook of Latin American Studies of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and the editorial boards of several academic journals. He has lectured across the Americas as well as in Australia, Japan, and Europe. In 2001 he was elected a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Letters of Bahia, Brazil and in 2006 a Corresponding member of the Academia Dominicana de la Historia. In 2007 the University of the West Indies, Mona Jamaica awarded Professor Knight an Honorary Doctor of Letters. He was elected Corresponding Member of the Cuban Academy of History in 2012; a  Miembro de Honor by the Asociacion de Historiadores de America Latina y del Caribe (ADHILAC) in 2011; and the Asociación de Historia Ecómica del Caribe (AHEC) in 2013. He also won the Gold Musgrave Medal for Literature from the Council of the Institute of Jamaica in 2103.

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Publicado

2015-08-19

Número

Núm. 26 (2015)

Sección

Editorial