Atlantic Georgia: Freemasonry, Religion, and the 18th-Century British Empire

Speaker Name: Dr. Jessica Harland-Jacobs
Department: Associate Professor of History
University or Organization: University of Florida

From its emergence as a British colony in the 1730s, Georgia was fully imbricated in far-reaching networks that undergirded the expanding British Empire and interconnected the societies of the Atlantic world. This talk explores the fraternal and religious networks that took root in colonial Georgia and contributed to the province’s rapid development from the 1750s. Particular attention will be paid to the Free and Accepted Masons, whose cosmopolitan fraternalism was both manifest in and tested by the diverse religious and racial landscape that Atlantic Georgia presented.

Jessica Harland-Jacobs teaches courses on modern Britain and the British Empire, Ireland, imperialism, and the Atlantic world. Her first book, Builders of Empire; Freemasonry and British Imperialism, 1717-1927, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2007. Based on this work, she has been invited to present to academic and masonic audiences across Europe, North America, and the Caribbean, including most recently at The Secular Enlightenment International Conference at UCLA and the Tercentenary Celebration of the Grand Lodge of England in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She has recently co-edited a special issue of Atlantic Studies on “The Fraternal Atlantic.” Her current project examines the incorporation of Catholic colonies into the British Empire during the long eighteenth century.

Dr. Harland-Jacobs will also meet with Dr. Alisa Luxenberg’s new, archival-based course, “Freemasonry in Georgia: Archival Research and Visual Symbols,” in the Special Collections Libraries.