I am a Doctoral Candidate in Modern Britain and the British Empire at the University of Florida. I focus on British imperial culture and governance across the Atlantic world in the long nineteenth century, especially at the empire’s frontiers. My dissertation, Ancient Obligations: British Imperial Culture and Politics in Belize and the Caribbean Basin, 1763-1862, traces questions of sovereignty, subjecthood, and negotiated imperialism in the British Empire from the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War in 1763 to the middle of the nineteenth century.
In my research, I ask how the British Empire grappled with concepts of accommodation, resistance, and diversity management at frontiers of the empire with diverse populations and legal systems. With a trans-Atlantic and trans-national approach, Ancient Obligations traces questions of sovereignty, subjecthood, and negotiated imperialism during the transition from the First to Second British Empire. Specifically, I concentrate on the British settlements in what is now Belize and La Mosquitia (or the Miskito Coast), where British sovereignty was highly disputed by the Spanish Empire and post-independence Mexico and Central American states. I argue that the diverse population of these settlements shrewdly made use of complex legal borderlands to demand their rights and privileges as British subjects.
