From the Archives: Independence Lost

I will admit it: it didn’t even occur to me until last week that the 250th anniversary of the United States was the perfect opportunity for a series of blog posts related to the American Revolution, the creation of the constitution, and like that. Or that I could have spent the last six months reading…

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From the Archives: A Word with a Past: Kidnap

In the mid-seventeenth century, the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean were suffering from a labor shortage. The colonies had originally attracted Britain’s surplus population: dreamers, fortune-hunters, religious nuts, younger sons, prisoners of war, political failures, vagrants, criminals, the homeless, and the desperate.  Some came with a small financial stake.  Many came as…

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