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Capitalism, Colonial Expansion, And Forced Child Indenture In The British Atlantic, 1618-1776, Angela Austin

History Dissertations

This dissertation examines colonial child servants from the British Isles between the years 1618-1776, illustrating how economic demands, colonial ambitions, and capitalistic drives combined with ethnic and class prejudices to perpetuate the indenture of children irrespective of individual or parental consent. An examination of legislative actions, legal enforcement, and governmental complicity reveals both direct and indirect government involvement in perpetuating involuntary child labor across the British Isles. In fact, the volume of this human trafficking required some level of awareness and support from legislators and officials at both the local and national levels. In some cases, officials removed children from …

La Prensa Y El Gran Pueblo Mexicano: A Study Of Spanish-Language Newspapers In South Texas, 1850-1930, Paul Sebastian Ruiz-Requena

History Dissertations

This study focuses on Spanish-language newspapers published by Mexicans in South Texas from 1850 to 1930. These newspapers played a vital role in mobilizing Mexican communities for collective action against anti-Mexican violence, racism, and the segregation of their children in schools. This study also examines the influence of these newspapers on the formation of Mexican American identity. These newspapers connected large groups of people through cultural narratives and contributed to defining concepts like "patria" and "raza", exhibiting many of the qualities Benedict Anderson attributed to print capitalism's role in the act of imagining oneself as part of a community. The …

Geographies Of Resistance: Interpreting Blank Spaces And Locating Marronage On Imperial Maps Of Colonial Jamaica, Patrick J. Nichols

History Dissertations

European imperialism in the Americas was predicated on violent regimes of indigenous genocide, transatlantic enslavement, and environmental exploitation. Conquest of pre-contact indigenous societies in the New World intended to secure possession of valuable reserves of natural resources, like the gold and silver mines of colonial Mexico and Peru. European empires commissioned maps of these territories to generate and shape knowledge. Maps are the product of specific social and political frameworks and are informed by the priorities and preoccupations of empires. What they represent or omit reveals much about the colonial regimes that were imposed on the landscapes of the Americas. …

Adventurers And Autocrats: The Role Of Authority In The Making Of The English West Indies, 1595-1655, John Clinton Harris

History Dissertations

After Walter Ralegh made his famous journey to the Orinoco in 1595, English adventurers began the haphazard process of colonizing the West Indies. Initially they tried to follow Ralegh’s efforts in Guiana, but their every effort failed because they lacked access to significant investment capital and did not enjoy the full backing of the crown. After several calamities, Englishmen interested in American colonization turned their efforts towards the Caribbean in 1623. Under the rule of Lord Proprietor James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and his brutal governors English adventurers enjoyed more success. The key difference in Carlisle’s Caribbean and Ralegh’s Guiana …

Working For Peanuts: Labor, Geography, And Class Composition In The American Circus Industry, 1872-1938, William James Hansard

History Dissertations

This dissertation focuses on class composition in the traveling circus in the Gilded Age (1870s-1900s), the Progressive Era (1890s-1910s), and the New Era (1920s-1930s). American circuses became industrial operations beginning in the 1870s under the leadership of P.T. Barnum and his business partners, and within a few years, they had become the most important form of entertainment in the United States. By the turn of the twentieth century, the major industrial circuses employed around 1,200 people each and traveled the country in what amounted to a mobile factory town. However, up to this point, collective action by circus workers was …

Pearl Chase And Thomas More Storke: Two Community Builders In Twentieth Century Santa Barbara, California, Jacqueline M. Zeledon

History Dissertations

Pearl Chase (1888-1979) and Thomas More Storke (1876-1971) are the main protagonists in this dissertation which analyzes Santa Barbara, California, and its twentieth- century development. These two individuals dedicated their lives to improving, maintaining, and preserving their unique city, as they supported—and often led—many architectural, civic, educational, environmental, and infrastructural projects. Chase and Storke were selected to headline this dissertation because they were excellent examples of community builders whose prolific endeavors resulted in many achievements. Some of these accomplishments have become Santa Barbara icons for which the city is known, such as its picturesque architectural style and a University of …

Wretches, Rogues, And Rebels: Smugglers In English Print Culture 1660-1766, Jacob M. Jones

History Dissertations

This dissertation examines smugglers as they appeared in English print culture from their first appearance as "smuckellors" in a 1661 Royal Proclamation to 1766 when Parliament repealed the Revenue Act of 1764 amid protests over the government's crackdown on the vital molasses smuggling trade. Since the nineteenth century, historians have focused on community acceptance of smuggling, arguing that most Britons did not believe smuggling was criminal. However, this dissertation reveals a strong counter-narrative that has not been fully explored. From the nineteenth century onward, smugglers were romanticized and depicted as "honest thieves" and integral parts of coastal British communities. In …

Heaven On Earth In Medieval Europe: Material Expressions Of An Immaterial Realm, Christopher A. Tiegreen

History Dissertations

The religious mind in medieval Latin Christianity was thoroughly preoccupied with heaven, not only as an afterlife destination but as a present reality just beyond the reach of physical senses. But material expressions of heaven could, in connecting with the senses, usher the soul into an experience of heaven’s realities, and many ecclesiastics, philosophers, architects, artists, musicians, city leaders, and utopian visionaries thought heaven’s realities had significant implications for life on earth. As a result, social hierarchies, the geometry of structures, the intervals of sacred music, the iconography of artists, the organization of sacred and civic space, and the words …

Foot-Ball! Turning Colombian Boys Into Patriotic Men: How Sport And Education Developed With Early Twentieth-Century Colombian Nationalism, Brandon Todd Blakeslee

History Dissertations

In 1948 a collection of ten football (soccer) teams from across Colombia joined together to form the División Mayor (Major League) the culmination of a thirty-year-long process to form a national league. Colombian sports enthusiasts were not motivated by their love of the game, but rather saw football, and sports in general, as a means to modernize their country. Journalists and enthusiasts wrote that the practice of sport, as part of physical education programs or participating in the spectacle of a match were essential to the “modern man” and “modern women.” Colombian nationalists also embraced sport, and a national league, …

How The Car Won The Road: The Surrender Of Atlanta's City Streets, 1920-1929, Laura Drummond

History Dissertations

In 1899, Atlantans saw their city streets as multi-purpose open spaces, freely available to all persons and transit modes. By 1929, that understanding had changed. Streets became automobile conduits to rapidly and efficiently move motor vehicles around town. Other modes of transportation had disappeared or been marginalized. New government regulations tightly controlled or banished other street users and uses. Vast amounts of municipal space became the domain of automobiles, losing the democratic values which public roads formerly represented. This study will demonstrate that during the 1920s, Atlanta’s powerful elites brought about this transformation of society’s comprehension of the meaning and …

Radicals On The Move: French Migrants In The United States, 1850-1900, Staci L. Swiney

History Dissertations

The following dissertation examines the activities of French radical migrants within the United States from 1850-1900. This dissertation illustrates that studying French migration highlights the interconnectedness and continuities of radical movements in the United States throughout the nineteenth century. It emphasizes the many threads connecting the creation of mid nineteenth century socialist colonies like those in Texas, the Paris Commune, The First International, The Knights of Labor, The Socialists Labor Party, and the anarchist movement. French radical migrants worked hard to maintain ties to their own communities, but they also worked closely with Poles, Germans, Italians, Americans in an attempt …

Chymical Collections: Seventeenth Century Textual Transmutations In The Work Of Arthur Dee, Megan Piorko

History Dissertations

This dissertation is a biography of a text, Fasciculus Chemicus (1631). The seventeenth-century life of this text, from its inception to its vernacularization, sheds light on broader natural philosophical and textual issues inherent to alchemical knowledge-making. The first chapter of this case-study is a survey of all available biographical information of its author, Arthur Dee, supplemented and contextualized with original primary source discoveries. This provides a setting for the creation of Fasciculus Chemicus as well as juxtaposes political issues of authority, patronage, and medical practice of a seventeenth-century courtly physician. The second chapter addresses the hand-press production and subsequent intentional …

King James And The Intellectual Influences Of The Witchcraft Phenomenon In England And Scotland, Lashonda Slaughter

History Dissertations

King James VI of Scotland took part in the prosecution of several witches between 1590 and 1592. As a result, the king composed and published a treatise on witchcraft that placed emphasis on popular European understandings of witchcraft, the Devil and Magic. This treatise subsequently had a profound influence on English and Scottish intellectual responses to witchcraft during the seventeenth century.

Waving The Red, Black, And Green: The Local And Global Vision Of The Universal Negro Improvement Association In Akron And Barberton, Ohio, Stephanie Theresa Sulik

History Dissertations

This micro study of the Akron and Barberton, Ohio, Divisions of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) adds to the understanding the geographic diversity of the Garvey Movement’s expansive reach. It begins to uncover the importance of Garveyism in the Midwest and in Ohio, specifically, where the UNIA’s presence was larger than in any other Midwestern state. Black people in Akron and Barberton who, like millions of others around the world, joined Marcus Garvey’s global, Pan-African organization and embraced Garveyism’s holistic pursuit of Black liberation. Living in Midwestern rustbelt cities at the intersection of the Great Migration and the global …

Encountering Christianity In Twentieth Century East Asia: A Case Study Of Jiang Wenhan And Takeda (Cho) Kiyoko, Linlin Victoria Lu

History Dissertations

This study explores the twentieth-century Christian indigenization movement in East Asia through a case study of Jiang Wenhan of China and Takeda Kiyoko of Japan, two leading scholars and Christian activists in their respective countries. Drawing primarily on their own writings and recorded activities, both published and unpublished, my narratives include their interactions with Christian leaders and public intellectuals in six aspects – theological, missiological, political, ethical, sinological, and ecumenical – to pinpoint what social-political actions Asian Christians took in response to the unsettling changes and the ecumenical movements of their times.

This study also highlights the historical encounters with …

"Unnatural Cruel Beasts In Women's Shapes": The Female Body In Early Modern England, Heather L. Welch, Heather Welch

History Dissertations

Seventeenth-century England witnessed a surge in the population and the movement of bodies in and out of the city of London, resulting in anxiety and distrust. This masculine social anxiety fixated on the female body as an unknowable space uncontrolled by patriarchal authority, despite efforts through legislation. Violent women in early modern England were used as public spectacle after being subjected to surveillance for their failure to perform to their gendered expectations, both revealing the male anxieties prevalent in society and allowing the maintenance of patriarchy. An examination of violent women through legislation, printed material, and court records reveals the …

The Battle Over Identity: Finnish-Americans And The Finnish Civil War, Christopher Malmberg

History Dissertations

Historical research on Finnish migration and Finnish-Americans has, until recently, been carried out by members of the Finnish-American community and as such has written out the role of Finnish-Americans in the radical labor movement, as well as their reactions to the Finnish Civil War. In some regards it could be argued that the Finnish Civil War was also fought in America, with newspapers used in battles instead of guns. Finnish-American workers’ response to the civil war, combined with Finnish-Americans’ involved in the nationalization process of Finland, illustrates the transnational nature of seemingly national events. To help create what Benedict Anderson …

Imperial Women Of Darien: Scottish Migration And Gender In The Atlantic World, 1650-1740, Gina G. Bennett

History Dissertations

In the last two years of the seventeenth century, approximately 3,000 people, mostly Scottish merchants, soldiers, sailors and their families, migrated to a small coastal region in central America for the purpose of establishing a colony in Panama. These travelers personified the financial dreams of some elite Scottish merchants when they formed a joint stock company known as The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies in 1696. The colony of New Caledonia ultimately proved unsuccessful and ended in the first years of the eighteenth century. Because of the failure of the Darien Scheme and its close associated …

Black Skin, White Money: The Transatlantic Propaganda Campaign To Recolonize West Africa, 1786 - 1863, Daniel Jason Degges

History Dissertations

Previous scholarship has mostly left the story of recolonization of former slaves and Free People of Color to West Africa in the dustbin of history. These studies also have artificially separated the multiple failed attempts into the story of either Sierra Leone or Liberia. This dissertation, for the first time, looks comprehensively and comparatively at the transatlantic propaganda campaign that accompanied each wave of support and resulting failures and the part it played in the success of the abolition movement. Ever marching westward from its London roots, recolonization’s boosters repeatedly tried to build on an imagined community that had little …

Unison And Harmony, Dissonance And Dissolution: German Choral Societies In An Age Of Rising Nationalism, Mass Culture, And Social Conflict, 1870-1918, Ruth L. Dewhurst, Ruth L. Dewhurst Phd

History Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of choral societies, emotions, and German national identity during the German Empire (1871-1918). Using journals, memoirs, letters, lyrics, banners, postcards, and festival programs, I argue that singing creating overlapping emotional communities in spite of palpable social, economic, and political tensions that intensified in the late nineteenth century. The choral movement that originated in the early nineteenth century was heavily influenced by the early Romantics. Theories of the nation that were wrapped up in the ancient poetry and songs of the Germanic people led to the development of the Lied—an art form that was believed …

Boston, New York, And Philadelphia In Global Maritime Trade, 1700-1775, Jeremy Land

History Dissertations

This dissertation explores the dynamics of the maritime trade of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia during 1700-1775. Through a comparative analysis of these cities’ intra-imperial and trans-imperial trade, it seeks to understand the nature and significance of British imperial presence for the region’s commercial economy. Drawing on the existing literature and utilizing primary archival records and published sources, this study contributes to the historiography of British colonial North America in two major ways. First, it examines each of the three port complexes, to which Boston, New York, and Philadelphia served as the chief ports, and then treats them as parts …

Catalan Modernism In Fin-De-Siècle Spain: Culture And Medicine, Helen M. Greeson

History Dissertations

The Spanish empire lost the last of its global colonies in 1898, prompting a variety of responses on the peninsula. Perhaps the most recognizable of these is the literary movement of the Generation of 1898, which regarded the military loss as a disaster. A different reaction came from the intellectual, artistic, and industrial elites who shaped Catalan Modernism, a cultural and political movement that challenged assumptions of Spanish disaster, crisis, or backwardness. Taking the form of a prosopography, this dissertation examines a cohort of Catalan elites who were active in cultural, economic, social, political, and intellectual life in fin-de-siècle Barcelona …

Off The Bloodied Grounds: The Civil War And The Professionalization Of American Medicine, Nicolas Georges Hoffmann

History Dissertations

This dissertation uses the Civil War as a fulcrum to talk about the professionalization of American Medicine. Tracking doctors, nurses, hospitals, surgery, and other treatments, this dissertation describes their progression and professionalization over the nineteenth century. It argues that the Union and Confederacy deal with the Civil War in different ways, with the Confederacy pushing away from standardization and the Union embracing it.

The Making Of Mañana-Land: The American Mediterranean In The Age Of Jim Crow And The United Fruit Company, Joseph R. Floyd

History Dissertations

My dissertation “The Making of Mañana-Land” describes the creation of enclaves of agribusiness, tourism and militarism across the American Mediterranean, the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, expanding into the Pacific with the Panama Canal. Building on labor histories of the banana trade, most notably by Jason Colby, as well as histories of tropical tourism, most notably Catherine Cocks, it examines workers and tourists side-by-side, describing the racialization of labor and leisure.

Imagined as a timeless mañana-land, the American Mediterranean was the crucible of a radical modernity that prefigured the future of globalized corporate capitalism. The U.S. imperial state and the …

The Opening Of The Atlantic World: England’S Transatlantic Interests During The Reign Of Henry Viii, Lydia Towns

History Dissertations

This dissertation explores the birth of the English Atlantic by looking at English activities and discussions of the Atlantic world from roughly 1481-1560. Rather than being disinterested in exploration during the reign of Henry VIII, this dissertation proves that the English were aware of what was happening in the Atlantic world through the transnational flow of information, imagined the potentials of the New World for both trade and colonization, and actively participated in the opening of transatlantic trade through transnational networks. To do this, the entirety of the Atlantic, all four continents, are considered and the English activity there analyzed. …

Determinants Of Ethnic Retention As See Through Walloon Immigrants To Wisconsin, Jacqueline Lee Tinkler

History Dissertations

This dissertation examines the unusually enduring retention of ethnic culture of the Walloon Belgian immigrants who settled in northeastern Wisconsin between 1853 and 1857, as well as the combination of circumstances which enabled this ethnic island to form and continue, well into the twenty-first century. A review of the historiography focusing on European immigrants to the United States from the post-revolutionary period to the present reveals an emphasis on urban settlement and the assumed inevitability of the weakening of ethnic identity. Less attention has been given those immigrants settling in rural areas and even less to those few rural immigrant …

Cornflakes, God, And Circumcision: John Harvey Kellogg And Transatlantic Health Reform, Austin Eli Loignon

History Dissertations

The health reform movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth century impacted American and European societies in profound ways. These reforms, while usually represented in a national context, existed within a transatlantic framework that facilitated a multitude of exchanges and transfers. John Harvey Kellogg—surgeon, health reformer, and inventor of cornflakes—developed a transatlantic network of health reformers, medical practitioners, and scientists to improve his own reforms and establish new ones. Through intercultural transfer Kellogg borrowed, modified, and implemented European health reform practices at his Battle Creek Sanitarium in the United States. These transfers facilitated developments in reform movements such as vegetarianism, …

Demons Of Discord: Violence And The Socio-Political Growth Of Colonial South Carolina And Georgia, 1690-1776, Corrie N. Hand-Stephenson

History Dissertations

Life in the colonial American south was filled with brutality and inequality. Whether it was the violence of slavery and colonial expansion or the inherent inequalities of gender relations, violence and oppression permeated nearly every facet of life. This dissertation will look critically at the development of what I am calling a culture of violence in the colonies of Georgia and South Carolina. By studying the ways in which violence effected family, social, and political interactions, my work argues that the crucible of social, racial, and political issues of these two colonies created a culture in which violence or the …

“Tie The Flags Together”: Migration, Nativism, And The Orange Order In The United States, 1840-1930, Cory D. Wells

History Dissertations

“Tie the Flags Together”: Migration, Nativism, and the Orange Order in the United States, 1840-1930 Cory Wells Throughout the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of Irish Protestants who migrated to the United States joined the Orange Order in their newly adopted country. Formed in Ulster in the 1790s, the Loyal Orange Institution existed to maintain Protestant hegemony in Ireland. It quickly spread throughout the anglophone Atlantic, especially to Britain and Canada. As the number of Irish Catholics immigrating to America steadily rose, reaching new heights during the Famine, so did the anti-immigrant rhetoric that culminated in the American nativist movement. …

Cicero's De Oratore From Antiquity To The Advent Of Print, Joanna Jury

History Dissertations

Why did the first printers in Italy choose Cicero’s de Oratorein 1465? How did itcome to epitomize Renaissance theories of education by the text’s rediscovery in 1421? Studies of Ciceronian oratory have traditionally fallen into two camps: philological scholarship focused on Cicero’s rhetorical works as they were produced during the ancient Roman Republic, and, historical studies of the reception of Cicero’s speeches among later humanists. This bifurcation of scholarship has often overlooked, however, the titular role played by Cicero’s theory of education and its articulation in his philosophical treatise on rhetoric, the de Oratore.A philosophical dialogue that …