Becca Palmer

‘In the “Little Spheres” of the Empire: Provincial Political Thought and Print Culture in the American Colonies, 1765-1775.

Becca’s research lies at the intersection of the history of political thought, Early American history, and print culture. Her dissertation examines how political ideas traditionally associated with the American Revolution were also used in colonial newspapers to respond to ongoing provincial events.  

 

Her thesis focuses on provincial political thought during the American Revolution, assessing how ideas traditionally associated with the imperial crisis, such as liberty, virtue, and corruption, were applied to events at town, county, and colony levels. She is influenced by theories that the colonies were immersed in a Whig political culture that lay dormant until its fears of conspiracy were activated by a set of British actions. Instead, however, she challenges this trajectory and maintains that Whig ideas were not exclusive to Anglo-American affairs, but were used to interpret and respond to provincial issues across cultural, economic, religious, and political spheres. Often, ideas of virtue and corruption were instrumentalised by factions battling for power, or by those excluded from the political system to make claims against the state. Each of these different groups made Whig discourses meaningful in their daily lives, but they were more likely to instrumentalise existing concepts than engage in deep conceptual innovation. In doing so, local deployment of these concepts was far less detailed and specific than in pamphlets. 

 

Becca conducts this research by supplementing existing scholarly reliance on pamphlets with a study of newspapers. These have often been overlooked, studied as a form of print culture rather than a source of political thought. Incorporating newspapers will expand the existing source-base of Revolutionary intellectual history and include them as sites of political engagement. She focuses on texts from three colonies, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, published during three moments of crisis during the Revolution: the Stamp Act Crisis (1765-6); the introduction of the Townshend Duties (1767-8); and the Coercive Acts (1773-4). By examining these three events, she sheds light on the provincial events that occurred simultaneously and captured local attention. These challenges the periodisation of the Revolution into these neat pivotal moments and recognises the underlying tensions that characterised colonial politics at this time. 

 

Ultimately, Becca’s thesis seeks to make several contributions to her field. She challenges scholarly understanding of the 1760s and 1770s as a period of ‘imperial crisis’ and instead asserts that these decades were marked by several crises across local, regional, and imperial contexts. Provincial examples of political corruption contributed to a deep sense of mistrust against authority, and made colonists across the continent wary of future despotic actions. Thus, when the British began extending their authority beyond customary boundaries, their actions were seen as yet another attack on a continent already feeling under threat in their “little spheres”. It was the local compounded by the imperial that pushed the colonists towards independence. 

PhD

Supervisor: Angus Gowland and Jon Chandler
Working title: ‘In the “Little Spheres” of the Empire: Provincial Political Thought and Print Culture in the American Colonies, 1765-1775.

Awards/Positions

  • Wolfson Scholarship in the Humanities, 2022-2025.
  • Spring 2025: Exchange Scholar at Yale University.
  • 2024-2025: Scholar in Residence at Benjamin Franklin House, London. 

Teaching Experience

  • ‘Foundations of Political Thought’, First Year Undergraduate Module, Department of Politics, Term 1, Autumn 2025.
  • ‘The History of Political Thought in the West’, First Year Undergraduate Module, Department of History, Term 2, Spring 2026.
  • ‘The Making of Modern America: The United States since 1920’, First Year Undergraduate Module, Institute of the Americas, 2023-2026.
  • ‘Writing History’, First Year Undergraduate Module, Department of History, September 2023-2024. 

Publications

Conference Papers

  • ‘Factional Politics and Polemical Debate in the wake of the Stamp Act Crisis’, BrANCH/BGEAH Annual Conference, September 2025 [accepted].
  • ‘The limits of the ‘Greek Tradition’ in the print culture of Pre-Revolutionary America’, St. Andrews Institute of Intellectual History, 20 Years of ‘The Greek Tradition in Republican Thought,’ February 2025.
  • ‘Democratic Contestation and Renovation during the American Revolution’, American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, September 2024.
  • ‘In the “Little Spheres” of the empire: The intersection between the local and the imperial in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia, 1773-4’, Stanford Graduate Conference in Political Theory, February 2024. 

Event Organisation/Participation

  • Conference Committee, London Graduate Conference in the History of Political Thought, 2024-Present.
  • Seminar Convenor, Institute of Historical Research, History of Political Thought (Early Career) Seminar, 2023-Present.

Public History Engagement

  • A-Level Lesson plans for The National Archives.
  • Mock Debate on the Incorrigible Acts to commemorate the 250th anniversary of their introduction, The National Archives, 1st June 2024.

a young woman with brown hair in a green top and grey blazer smiles at the camera

Email: rebecca.palmer.22@ucl.ac.uk

Qualifications

  • BA, History and Politics (Durham: First), 2020 
  • MA, Political Theory (Durham: Distinction), 2021