History Commons^™

Merino Wool In America: Migration, Economic Desire And Patriotism, Una R. Winn

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts and The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Limits Of Financial Equity: The Federal Reserve, The Depression Of 1921, And The End Of Wilsonian Progressivism, Terril Hebert

LSU Master's Theses

The Limits of Financial Equity: The Federal Reserve, the Depression of 1921, and the End of Wilsonian Progressivism is an examination of monetary policy and centralized macroeconomic planning in the American economy during the inflationary spiral of the 1910s that culminated in the Depression of 1921. Put forward for consideration is the successful populist campaign for agricultural credit equity by the burgeoning Federal Reserve System; set against a backdrop of intentional inflation, world and domestic citizens competed against as the price and supply chain distortions perpetuated by the policing of American commerce by the Food Administration, A. Mitchell Palmer’s Department …

American Horse Power During The Great War, Hanna K. Lipsey

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation charts the significant, if understudied, history of American horses during the era of World War I, from roughly 1914 to 1919. Its chapters trace how the US Army acquired, used, cared for, and ultimately demobilized horses over the course of that conflict. Beginning with their acquisition, via either an Army Horse Breeding Program or a complicated buying process, horses faced a complex introduction into military service. Life for these animals did not get any easier once they reached the European front. Although the US military was beginning to replace horses with motor trucks and tractors, horses remained central …

The Syndemic Landscape: A New Paradigm For Montana Suicide Prevention Grounded In Agricultural Renewal, Emory Chandler Padgett

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Montana has had one of the highest suicide rates in the nation for half a century, and since 2000, it has risen almost 50%. Despite suicide’s alarming persistence in the state, there has been minimal academic study of suicide or mental health specifically in Montana, so this thesis attempts to answer a few questions: Why does Montana have such a high suicide rate? Is there something culturally, historically, or socially unique about Montana that contributes to suicide? Are current prevention efforts helpful, harmful, or lacking? Could a consideration of culture and land benefit an understanding of suicide in Montana? What …

Sweetened Blood, Sweat And Tears, Nathan Celestine

All Theses, Dissertations, and Capstone Projects

Of the transatlantic diffusion of culture, there is no better example than what developed out of Caribbean enslavement. The loss of African identity among slaves with a common, methodically destroyed ancestry, along with the diversity inherent to the different groups of Africans and Europeans and their respective cultural elements and identities resulted in a complex homogeny of culture, race, nationality, and socioeconomic status that has continued its development since the introduction of slaves to West Indian soil. It was this same soil that would cause the demand for slave labor to explode throughout European-controlled Caribbean islands, from the addition of …

'The Once Peaceful Little Town:' Edmondson, Arkansas, And The Decline Of African American Landownership, Samuel Morris Ownbey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the systematic dispossession of African American property by white planters in the Arkansas Delta. It argues white planters, backed by a legal system favorable to their interests, expropriated the black land in the once flourishing community of Edmondson, Arkansas. Founded in 1902 by African American business and political leaders, the Edmondson Home and Improvement Company purchased farmland and town lots and began to sell or rent the land to African Americans coming to the area. Located in Crittenden County, Edmondson represented black defiance in the face of Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. The town consisted of …

From Fields To Factories: The Industrialization Of The United States’ Cattle Industry, Joseph Petersen

History | Senior Theses

This paper will look at the changes of the United States of America's cattle and beef industry from the 19th into the 21st century. It will also show how the industry has evolved into its current state and predict the changes to come. This paper will be evaluating how technology and equipment have changed the traditional farming and ranch lifestyles. While also breaking down the economies from pre-industrial times into modern day. This paper will also explore the effect that technology, equipment, ranching styles, labor and financial changes had on the cattle and beef industry. Finally, this paper will prove …

Georgic Rhetoric, Virtue And The Commercialization Of Agriculture In Pennsylvania From 1785 To 1870, Naomi Ulmer

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This research examines how farmers in Pennsylvania between 1785 and 1870 were persuaded by georgic agrarianism to take social, economic and even moral risks to abandon a semi-subsistence mode of production in favor of commercial production. The georgic rhetoric is derived from Virgil’s poem “The Georgics.” It discusses agriculture and man’s labor in nature. Virgil discusses the relationship between man, nature and his ability, or inability, to control nature to ensure his own survival. Beginning in the late 18^th century, supporters of improved agriculture, mostly wealthy and upper-class gentlemen, tried to persuade common yeomen farmers to produce for the …

Little Farm Hands: Rural Child Labor, Family, And Memory In The U.S. Southwest, 1890-1940, Jairo E. Marshall

History ETDs

Child labor was a traditional subsistence and agricultural practice throughout the rural Southwest. Between 1890 and 1940 a series of changes occurred within agriculture, ranching, and rural land/labor patterns in New Mexico and Texas. However, child labor remained a useful economic strategy for families well into this period, because it remained grounded in environmental challenges, cultural practices, agrarian ideologies, and children’s social and physical development. Agribusinesses took advantage of this labor pool, while schools and communities continued to allow children to labor, believing it to be either necessary or beneficial.

Families and children continued to have agency to determine the …

Overcoming Disruptions Of Human Adjustment Processes To Ecological Shifts In Revolutionary Burkina Faso 1983-1987: The Inter-Relationship Between Externally Imposed Migration, Coordination Of Ngo Activities, And The Process Of Ecological Renewal Through Land Reform, Robert William Penner

Theses and Dissertations

This paper will explore the Burkinabé revolution and the governmental structure which formed out if it, as an ideological entity with some governing capabilities but not simply a political body as it did not possess the capacities at any time to fully govern the country in terms of the implementation of intended social and economic programs. However, these programs were extremely widespread encompassed swaths of rural society in ways that it had not since the Mossi Empire became centralized and rose to regional prominence in the 18th century. The ideological identity of the revolution in Burkina Faso was not a …

The Farmers’ Federation: Regional Racial Mythologies As Agricultural Capital, Jama Mcmurtery Grove

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1927, the Farmers’ Federation agricultural cooperative in Western North Carolina launched an organization to solicit funds from wealthy donors. The money raised through philanthropic campaigns enabled the cooperative to fund large-scale agricultural projects, which helped members navigate the dramatic agricultural transformations of the early twentieth century. Although the cooperative advocated a progressive program of business-minded, scientific farming, its leadership modified programs to reflect farmer members’ limited resources and the realities of mountain production. As a result, the co-op provided a crucial bridge between white farmers and new methods of agricultural production that reached deep into peoples’ familial and productive …

Peppermint Kings: A Rural American History, Dan Allosso

Doctoral Dissertations

Explores rural history through the experiences of three families that dominated the American peppermint oil business from its beginning in the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. The rural entrepreneurs who became Peppermint Kings acted in ways that challenge traditional historical depictions of rural people. The freethinking Ranney clan built a family business that extended from Massachusetts to western New York and Michigan during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Hotchkiss brothers entered the international market and ventured into finance and banking at a time when the United States government was reducing opportunities for regional bankers. …

Bluegrass Capital: An Environmental History Of Central Kentucky To 1860, Andrew P. Patrick

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation traces the long-term evolution of the Inner Bluegrass region of central Kentucky with a focus on the period between the first Euro-American incursions into the area and the Civil War era. Utilizing an agroecological perspective that analyzes cultivated landscapes for their ecological features, it explores the ever-shifting mix of cultural and natural influences that shaped the local environment. Most prominently, it reveals the extent to which intertwined strands of capitalism and slavery mingled with biology to produce the celebrated Bluegrass agricultural system.

It begins with an appraisal of the landscape before white men like Daniel Boone arrived, emphasizing …

From Access To Excess: Agribusiness, Federal Water Programs, And The Historical Roots Of The California Water Crisis, Tracy Marie Neblina

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to show the link between water use, land consolidation, agribusinesses, and the water crisis that California began to experience in 2011. In order to better understand the relationship between the growth of agribusiness in the state and the evolution of water policy, this paper explores the historical context of land policy, the growth of farming in the San Joaquin Valley, and the development of federally funded water projects in the Central Valley. Years of expanding farmland and use of surface and underground water with limited regulation played an important role in exacerbating California’s water …

Run Of The Mine: Miners, Farmers, And The Non-Union Spirit Of The Gilded Age, 1886-1896, Dana M. Caldemeyer

Theses and Dissertations--History

“Run of the Mine” examines why workers refused to join unions in the late nineteenth century. Through a focus on the men and women involved in the southern Midwest coal industry who quit or did not join unions, this dissertation analyzes the economic, geographic, and racial factors that contributed to workers’ attitudes toward national unions like the United Mine Workers of America (UMW). It argues that the fluidity between rural industries that allowed residents to work in multiple occupations throughout the year dramatically shaped worker expectations for their unions. This occupational fluidity that allowed miners to farm and farmers to …

The Society For Establishing Useful Manufactures: Class And Political Economy In The Early Republic, Daniel Pace

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The Society for Establishing Useful Manufactures was one of the first corporations in American history. The company was an attempt by Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, with the help of his Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Tench Coxe, to turn Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures” into a physical reality. Although the SUM would dissolve only five years after openings its doors, there is plenty to extract from the company’s practices. Through the SUM, Alexander Hamilton and his Federalist contemporaries attempted to recreate, and unite, a weak and fledgling United States by strengthening the nation politically and economically. The Society was …

The Original Progressive Farmer: The Agricultural Legacy Of Thomas Spalding Of Sapelo, Dylan E. Mulligan

Honors College Theses

During the first half of the nineteenth century, a thriving plantation emerged on Sapelo Island, Georgia. The plantation’s owner was Thomas Spalding (1774-1851), who was one of Georgia’s foremost planters, and yet his substantial contributions to Georgia’s agricultural development have gone unnoticed by most historians. Spalding built a prosperous enterprise around staple crops such as Sea Island cotton; however, he was better known for his experiments with novel crops such as sugar cane, as well as his innovations in the areas of crop rotation and diversification and the successful implementation of tabby as a viable construction material on the Georgia …

"Waste Not, Want Not": Farmers' Reactions To The New Deal In Minnesota, Kacie Phillips

Departmental Honors Projects

By the time of the Stock Market Crash in 1929, farmers in America were already in financial trouble with the drop in demand after World War I. With poverty and malnourishment rampant, the motto of the Great Depression became “waste not, want not.” The government focused on alleviating human suffering in President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Hundred Days” of 1933 and instituted numerous legislative acts for relief, with special attention paid to farmers. As the rest of the nation fell into economic hardship, the government gave unprecedented attention to agriculture and developed relief programs to aid farmers and their families. Some historians …

Producing A Past: Cyrus Mccormick's Reaper From Heritage To History, Daniel Peter Ott

Dissertations

"Producing a Past" explores how the false "fact" of Cyrus McCormick's 1831 invention of the reaper came to be incorporated into the American historical cannon. From 1884 to 1932, the McCormick Harvester family and their various affiliated businesses created a useable past about their departed patriarch, Cyrus McCormick, and his role in producing civilization through advertising and the emerging historical profession. The McCormick narrative of the past which was peddled in advertising and supported in scholarship justified the family's elite position in American society and its monopolistic control of the harvester industry in the face of political and popular antagonism. …

Uneasy Waters: The Night Riders At Reelfoot Lake, Tennessee, 1908, Jama Mcmurtery Grove

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

On October 19, 1908, night riders at Reelfoot Lake, Tennessee kidnapped and murdered Captain Quentin Rankin, an attorney and shareholder in the West Tennessee Land Company. The murder made national news, with coverage emphasizing the night riders' demand for fishing rights. In response, Governor Malcolm Patterson called out the militia to suppress the uprising and advocated for state acquisition of the lake as a means to prevent further violence. In the accepted historical narrative, the uprising at Reelfoot Lake represents an example of rural resistance to the threat that modernization posed to traditional access rights but ignores much of the …

Agriculture, Influence, And Instability Under The Ancien Régime: 1708-1768, Adam J. Polk

Masters Theses

The French Revolution has been studied from myriad perspectives. The majority of scholarship focuses on the political and urban chaos of the times. Agricultural conditions and the influence of onerous taxation and stagnant agricultural options are given only a cursory examination in most research. This thesis aims to investigate the relationship between agronomic and environmental conditions and the eruption of violence in urban centers during the French Revolution and the years leading up to it (1708-1768). This period prior to the French Revolution serves as a template to investigate the nature of the rural-agricultural influences, with a particular focus paid …

Coveted Lands: Agriculture, Timber, Mining, And Transportation In Cherokee Country Before And After Removal, Vicki Bell Rozema

Doctoral Dissertations

Covering a period from approximately 1779 to 1850, this dissertation studies natural resources and land use in Cherokee country before and after forced Cherokee removal from east of the Mississippi. As the market economy in the South grew in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Euro-Americans perceived the Cherokee Nation as an obstacle to commercial transportation and economic expansion. Southern leaders such as John C. Calhoun and Wilson Lumpkin planned to build canals and railroads through the Cherokee Nation. Disputes over saltpeter, gold, salt, and iron mining rights and the ownership of ferries, taverns, and turnpikes caused conflict. The …

The Amish Farm In Transition: The Amish Response To Modernization In Northern Indiana, 1900-1920, Amy Grover

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the responses of Amish agrarians in northern Indiana to the mechanization and modernization of rural life in the early twentieth century. This period was marked by a shift towards agribusiness as well as the increased usage of farm machines. In addition to the increased emphasis on farm efficiency, reformers sought to modernize or update rural life. Within the context of these transformations, the Amish maintained their identity by exploring the necessity and the consequences of adapting to life in the modern world. Their responses to modernization defined not only their cultural boundaries in the modern world but …

A Landscape Approach To Late Prehistoric Settlement And Subsistence Patterns In The Mojave Sink, Tiffany Ann Thomas

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The environment of the Late Prehistoric period (1200 A.D. to Historic Contact) Mojave Sink was wetter than modern conditions. The settlement and subsistence patterns of the occupants of the region during this period were driven by the availability of water, subsistence resources, raw material sources, and tradition. These people utilized the regional landscape based upon the seasonal availability of these resources. Supplemental agricultural production has been proposed for the Mojave River Delta due to the more favorable environmental conditions of this period. If agriculture was being practiced it would have affected the regional land-use patterns. For this thesis I propose …

Newe Country: Environmental Degradation, Resource War, Irrigation And The Transformation Of Culture On Idaho's Snake River Plain, 1805--1927, Sterling Ross Johnson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Idaho's Shoshone and Bannock Indians have long relied upon the Snake River. The waterway provides salmon and waters the vast Camas Prairie. On the prairie grows the Camas plant, the roots of which Shoshones and Bannocks harvest as a staple of their diet. Grass also grows on the prairie and the surrounding plains, which fed huge herds of bison that Shoshones and Bannocks also relied upon for food and skins to wear and trade. As a result of integration into the globalizing economy initiated by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, indigenous peoples of the area and Euroamericans overhunted bison populations, …

Rule Britannia: Britain, Breadfruit, And The Birth Of Transoceanic Plant Transportation, Annabel Tudor

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

This paper examines the events that precipitated transoceanic plant transportation and British imperial expansion during the second half of the eighteenth century. Combined circumstances forced the British to explore transoceanic plant transportation to make colonies, especially those in the British West Indies, more self-sufficient. Hurricanes in the Caribbean destroyed ground crops vital for slaves and plantation operations, and fallout from a volcanic eruption in Iceland poisoned soil in Britain and northern Europe for years. Wars with France and America inhibited oceanic trade and trade routes. These circumstances fostered the British desire to control its own food supply and resulted in …

That Dame's Got Grit: Selling The Women's Land Army, Pamela Jo Pierce

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis analyzes the marketing of the Women's Land Army (WLA) using archival sources. I explore how farmerettes, the name given to WLA members, used their patriotic work on the farm as a means of redefining femininity and interrogating the definition of "true womanhood." "That Dame's Got Grit" discusses how the WLA was sold in World War I and World War II. The first chapter describes the press book used to market Little Comrade, a 1919 film about a fashionable farmerette. The theme of uniforms, an idea that weaves throughout the thesis, emerges strongly in this chapter. "A Seductive …

Internal Dissent: East Tennessee's Civil War, 1849-1865., Meredith Anne Grant

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

East Tennessee, though historically regarded as a Unionist monolith, was politically and ideologically divided during the Civil War. The entrance of the East Tennessee and Virginia and East Tennessee and Georgia railroads connected the economically isolated region to Virginia and the deep South. This trade network created a southern subculture within East Tennessee. These divisions had deepened and resulted by the Civil War in guerilla warfare throughout the region. East Tennessee's response to the sectional crisis and the Civil War was varied within the region itself. Analyzing railroad records, manuscript collections, census data, and period newspapers demonstrates that three subdivisions …

Coal Smoke And Valve Oil: The Steam Era In Cache Valley Agriculture, Michael W. Johnson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Over 60 years have passed since steam threshing engines went out of production, yet the legendary machines refuse to vanish from the American scene. At scores of threshing shows every summer, millions of people turn out to experience the drama and poetry that is steam power. Of themselves, the machines are fascinating, but this alone does not explain the continuing interest that perpetuates the anachronistic rituals of steam threshing. The rhythmic tuck-a-tuck of the exhaust, the drone of the separator, and the lingering aroma of coal smoke and valve oil provide a vital link to the age of our fathers …

The Mexicans' And Mexican-Americans' Contribution To The Development Of The Lower Rio Grande Valley Of Texas And Its Citrus Industry, Camilo A. Martinez Jr.

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

The little-discussed Mexican and Mexican-American contribution to the development of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas into the great citrus producing area that it is today is exposed in general terms in this thesis. Due credit has been given to the Burgos, Tamaulipas, residents who came to the Valley during and after the Mexican Revolution in search of stability and better wages. In spite of the abuses they suffered, some of them decided to stay. Their children (now Mexican-Americans), are still contributing to the citrus industry today, although not in the strenuous way their parents did.

The Valley owes …