Exporting the racial republic: African colonization, national citizenship, and the transformation of U.S. expansion, 1776-1864

The effort to create a colony of African Americans on the west coast of Africa was one of the most celebrated and influential movements in the United States during the first half of the 19th century. While historians have often viewed African colonization through the lens of domestic anti-slavery politics, colonization grew from an imperial impulse which promised to transform the identities of black colonists and indigenous Africans by helping them to build a democratic nation from the foundation of a settler colony. By proposing that persons of African descent could eventually become self-governing subjects, the liberal framework behind colonization offered the possibility of black citizenship rights, but only within racially homogenous nation-states, which some proponents of colonization imagined might lead to a “United States of Africa.” This dissertation examines how the notion of expanding democratic ideals through the export of racial nationhood was crucial to the appeal of colonization. It reveals how colonization surfaced in several crucial debates about race, citizenship, and empire in the antebellum United States by examining discussions about African Americans’ revolutionary claims to political rights, the bounds of US territorial expansion, the removal of native populations in North America, and the racialization of national citizenship, both at home and abroad. By examining African colonization from these perspectives, this dissertation argues that the United States’ efforts to construct a liberal democracy defined by white racial identity were directly connected to the nation’s emerging identity as a defender and exporter of political liberty throughout the world.

Financial stocks and political bonds: stock market participation and political behavior in the United States and Britain

This dissertation investigates the effect of stock market participation on political behavior. Some observers claim that financial assets—stocks and mutual funds—have a causal effect on political behavior. The “investor class theory” asserts that as people invest in the stock market their partisan attachments shift rightward. The “asset effect theory” claims that financial investments increase political interest and participation. I examine these claims with longitudinal data from the United States and Great Britain covering a twenty-year period from the early 1980s through the mid-2000’s. I also examine the effect of financial asset ownership on political attitudes in the United States during the 2008 stock market crash. I find no evidence to support the argument that stock market participation has any causal effect on partisanship, participation, or political attitudes.