John Marshall,McCulloch v. Maryland,and the Concept of Constitutional Sovereignty

Scholars have long debated John Marshall's intent in his famous opinion in the case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). Despite long-standing disagreement concerning the character of Marshall's nationalism and federalism, interpretations of the opinion typically rely on an incomplete picture of the case. This analysis revisits McCulloch to illustrate his support for national and state sovereignty as defined in the Constitution. It then moves beyond the opinion itself to examine Marshall's defense of McCulloch in a series of newspaper essays he authored in the aftermath of the case. Situated alongside the McCulloch opinion, these essays show that Marshall was as much concerned with defending the sovereignty of the Constitution as he was with adjudicating political authority between national and state governments.     

Using historically informed archaeology: Seventeenth and eighteenth century Hueda/European interaction on the coast of Bénin

The period of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and European colonies is relatively well documented compared with the historic records of many regions of precolonial Africa. However, this documentation necessarily presents a perspective distilled through European eyes. This paper suggests a methodology influenced byAnnales history for critically analyzing documentary sources in conjunction with a critical interpretation of archaeological remains. Archaeological evidence from recent excavations at the site of Savi, capital of the Hueda kingdom, is contrasted with documentary evidence, facilitating an interpretation of motivations guiding Hueda interaction with European traders and structuring their spatial relationship.