Of the two umbrella terms for public engagement in wide use by English-speaking historians, “public history” tends to refer to efforts pitched toward the people at large, with the less common “applied history” used for conversations between scholars and policymakers.

Nothing could be more tempting than a high wage. In March 1808, a pseudonymous author in Spooner’s Vermont Journal envisioned the possibility of the American merchant marine being swarmed by foreigners who would “engage in our service for less wages than our own” throwing “native American sailors out of employ.”