Political History Commons^™

Taking Dominion To End Dominion: The Mennonite Influence On The End Of Russian Serfdom, H. Michael Shultz Jr.

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Serfdom in Russia was abolished in 1861, only 76 years after the first Mennonites were invited into Russia by Catherine II. By examining the lifestyle of the Mennonites who settled in the agriculturally productive “New Russia” (modern-day Ukraine), as well as the impact that the Mennonites had on the Imperial family, peasantry, and government, it is evident that the Mennonites played a recognizable role in bringing about the abolition of serfdom across the empire.

Political Economy Of The Middle East: Historiography And The Making Of An Episteme, Jordan Rothschild

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The Great Divergence accelerated a process of Western European states dominating the majority of the world’s geography and people economically and geopolitically. Given the stakes of this shift and its ramifications for all of the history that followed, and the significant way that the divide continues to shape our world, this phenomenon is subject to considerable debate within the historiography. This paper uses the Great Divergence as a departure point to analyze the different schools of political economic history, from the flawed sociologies of the early 20th century theorists to the World Systems Theorists and beyond. A key aspect of …

Republican Party Doctrine And The West Virginia Coal Mine Wars, Thomas Kidd

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The West Virginia Coal Mine Wars of 1912-1913 and 1920-1921 are most strongly associated with the use of government and military force against organized labor. A deeper examination of the contemporary newspapers in the state, associated with the Republican Party reveals the attitudes of the party toward labor. Looking at how these editors reacted to the key events of the mine wars reveals that the Republican Party of the time supported two principles: free enterprise and rule of law. This study shows how the importance of these key principles caused the editors loyal to the party to shift the blame …

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.

An Alternate Route: How Ronald Reagan Defied Expectations With His Approach To The Crosswinds Of The Patco Strike, Brock Bellinger

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

One challenge which reveals an executive’s leadership ability involves making the decision to fire an employee. President Ronald Reagan did not enjoy firing employees, due in part to his own father struggling to maintain employment. When the 1981 PATCO strike occurred, several obstacles arose which tested Reagan’s ability to act. The Professional Air Traffic Controller’s Organization (PATCO) had publicly supported Reagan during his 1980 presidential campaign when other unions did not. Additionally, Reagan was sympathetic to unions, even serving as President of the Screen Actor’s Guild. These potential obstacles proved challenging from a political and personal perspective. However, when the …

Full Issue

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Captured At The Cape: The Enslaved Africans Aboard Bom Caminho, Gracie L. Edler

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Solidarity Divided: The Miike Strike Of 1960 And Fractures Within Japan's Labor Movement During The Cold War, John L. M. Dinh

University Honors Theses

One of the most famous episodes of labor seeking concessions from management in postwar Japan was the Miike strike of 1960 in Ōmuta, Fukuoka Prefecture. The goal of the striking coal miners was to pressure management of the Mitsui Mining Company to rescind over a thousand notices that would force those affected into "voluntary retirement," most targeted union members who were hostile to management. However, there was a lack of unity among the strikers where the miners split between the "first union" and the "second union." The first union was hostile to management and opposed such rationalization measures entirely. The …

The Cost Of Urbanization: A Look Into The Transformation Of Mao Era Reforms, Tieren A. Dokes

Master's Projects and Capstones

Mao Zedong has played an influential role in Chinese society, whether for better or for worse. His policies have caused ripples throughout contemporary Chinese society, but nothing stronger than his desire for urbanization and economic land reform. Utilizing Mao’s drive for urbanization and economic reform as essential historical context, this paper connects how the contemporary governmental push for urbanization has been unyielding, and, in some ways, counterproductive as decade-old Mao-era institutions reverberate in an echo chamber with cracks that allow darker forces to seep in. Real estate and urban development companies and local governments are given monetary incentive to redevelop …

Her World Changed: Anna Louise Strong And The 1916 Everett Massacre, Charlotte Nabors

History Theses

The 1970s saw a resurgence in the scholarship on Anna Louise Strong’s life, especially in feminist circles. In general, historians pre-1970 doubted the authenticity of Strong’s political radicalism and criticized the inconsistency in her participation. Neis’ scholarship represents the largely uncritical second-wave feminist interest in Strong’s life following her death in 1970. The scholarship on Strong’s life falls into three categories: the old guard, the feminist renaissance, and twenty-first-century perspectives. Since 2000, a more nuanced interpretation of Strong’s life incorporated elements of the old guard and feminist discussions. Anna Louise Strong’s introduction to activism began in her childhood as the …

Coal, Land, And Ideology: Inventions Of Appalachia In The Mind Of The American Ruling Class, Zachary Harris

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Appalachia, itself a difficult to resolutely define region, has undergone the economic forces of colonialism and industrializing capitalism which allow for an excellent case study to apply Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony. No American region’s national conception is likely to have been as varied and often misrepresented as that of Appalachia. From the Revolutionary American State’s invention of early white settlers as the virtuous yeoman of the Republic to the modern perception of Appalachia as backwards, conservative, and drug-addled, shifting national economic conditions resulted in a constant invention of Appalachia in congruence. Whenever the people residing in Appalachia, whether Black, …

Ramming Capitalism: Protest And Dissent At The University Of Rhode Island, 1961-72, Kevin Hart

Senior Honors Projects

The University of Rhode Island, like many other universities, is a fertile ground for the reproduction of human capital. It houses strong engineering, computer science, and pharmaceutical programs, all highly profitable fields. Though protest and resistance are not the norms on the URI campus today, this was not always the case. Wherever capital is reproduced, so is class struggle.

The 1960s saw a new wave of dissent and protest spread throughout the globe. One of the largest movements during this period was the student movement. University students became the vanguard of a “new left.” One that dissented from the old …

Halfway: The Legacy Of Civilian Conservation Corps Company #704, Maxibillion Thompson

Student Academic Conference

Civilian Conservation Corps Company #704 began operations in 1933 approximately 10 miles southeast of Ely, MN, based at the site known as Halfway Camp F-1. This presentation explores some of the legacy they left in the region in the form of ecological projects and recreational structures, as well as the few remaining signs of their former camp on the shores of Birch Lake.

Dr. Cortez F. Enloe, Jr. Collection, Tara O'Donnell, Robyn Conroy

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection is comprised of newspaper volumes, illustrated magazines, lantern slides, and 2 pamphlets donated by Dr. Cynthia H. Enloe. The materials were collected by the donor’s father Dr. Cortez F. Enloe, Jr. in 1930s Germany.

The 4 newspaper volumes (February 1936- June 1936) belong to 4 publishers in Frankfurt, Munich, and Heidelberg: Volksgemeinschaft Heidelberger Beobachter, General Anzeiger der Stadt Frankfurt, Das Illustrierte Blatt, and Munchner Illustrierte Presse. The 10 magazine volumes (June 1936-May 1937) belong to 3 publishers in Munich and Berlin: Munchner Illustrierte Presse, Das Illustrierte Blatt, and Illustrierter Beobachter. These periodicals reveal the increasing influence of Nazi …

The Logic Of "Social Enterprise": The Big Issue Organization And New Labour Policy At The Millennial Juncture, Suman Gupta

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This paper explores the emergence of and policies and practices underpinning ‘social enterprise’ in Britain: that is, the concept that businesses could provide social services and benefits while returning profits to those who have invested in them. This paper argues that, in Britain, the concept was massaged into existence and adopted as a business and policy model at a particular historical juncture, in the later 1990s and early 2000s. The process involved a careful interweaving of linguistic maneuvers with financial calculations both at the level of specific businesses and at that of political regimes. This process is traced here with …

Building Home In Diaspora: New York’S Jewish Left And The History Of The Bronx Housing Cooperatives, Micah Benjamin Wilson

Honors Projects

This thesis investigates three predominantly Jewish housing cooperatives that emerged in the Bronx in the late 1920s. The Amalgamated Housing Cooperative, the United Workers Cooperative Colony (the “Coops”), and the Sholem Aleichem Houses offered garment workers utopian retreats from the drudgery of Lower East Side tenements where Jewish immigrants arrived in droves between 1890-1920. With each cooperative housing a distinct faction of the Jewish Left––from socialists to communists to Yiddish nationalists––the Bronx housing cooperatives, more than experiments in communal living, were the site of a highly contested battle over competing Jewish cultural and political worldviews across the 1930s and 1940s. …

The Unknown Terror: Credit Card Debt Among The American Middle Class, Eamonn Maher

Theses

This Capstone focuses on a true crisis that affects many middle class Americans. Credit card debt has become a norm for American society and quietly has terrorized and dismantled the lives of many middle class Americans. From the rolling back of usury laws protecting predatorial interest rates, to many Americans losing jobs and income. This paper discusses the relationship between the reliance on credit cards and crippling debt for many Americans in the middle class.

The Vanishing Frontier: Economic And Social Change In Western North Carolina, 1945-1970, Elisabeth Avery Moore

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation works to integrate the growth of regional tourism into the existing historiography of economic development in Appalachia and the postwar American South. Regional leaders introduced an economic transition throughout western North Carolina that emphasized the growth of regional tourism. By centering this study on the growth of regional tourism, this research also analyzes regional boosters’ efforts to manufacture and commodify a racialized and classed folk culture within the region for tourist consumption. In the late nineteenth century, journalists and folklorists had emphasized the deviance of mountain life and simultaneously romanticized the area as a land of rugged, white …

Antonia Sentner's Fight Against Deportation: An Example Of The Federal Government's Fight Against Communism, Claire Wehking

Undergraduate Research Symposium

In the 20th century, the United States government used deportation as a tool to circumvent certain Constitutional protections in order to crack down on radicalism. This tactic was used in both the first and second “Red Scares.” In the 1940 and 1950s, a St. Louis deportation case rose to national prominence as it progressed through the federal court system. Antonia Sentner was the wife of Communist Party U.S.A. member and local labor leader, William Sentner. Her requests for naturalization were denied, even though her husband and children were born in the United States and she had lived here since she …

The Evolution Of The “We Can Do It” Poster And American Feminist Movements, Reina Aguirre

McNair Research Journal SJSU

World War II created mass destruction and economic distress but was also responsible for creating new opportunities for women. The war had torn families apart and had altered family dynamics. The high demands of the wartime economy called for a reevaluation of American women’s roles in society. In 1942, Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller was hired by the Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee to create a range of propaganda posters to encourage women to join the war effort.^[1] The most iconic was christened “Rosie the Riveter” and further popularized by Norman Rockwell. These images exemplified how the government …

The Free Arena Of Literature: Science Fiction Films’ Critiques Of Capitalism In The United States, John (Jack) Michael Bilello

History

Capitalism is an inherently flawed system. The ideologies of Karl Marx have remained relevant for their critiques of the system, yet socially, his ideas are not accepted in the capitalist United States. Capitalism, as the dominant economic system of western civilization, has become synonymous with patriotism in the U.S. This has proved incredibly harmful to criticisms of capitalism, as they are met with questions of allegiance and patriotism rather than a careful reconsideration of ideals. Through science fiction films, these ideas that are usually difficult to express become much more palatable to a capitalist society. But to fully appreciate the …

Little Steel’S Labor War In Youngstown, Ben J. St. Angelo

Madison Historical Review

During the 1930s, in response to growing labor discontent, the United States Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Championed by President Franklin Roosevelt’s as an equalizing measure in the American workplace, the NLRA received vigorous opposition from powerful leaders in multiple industries. This article examines an outbreak of violence between workers and agents of management at Republic Steel in Youngstown, Ohio during the spring and summer of 1937 when workers attempted to organize—emboldened by new rights granted to them in the NLRA. It demonstrates the life and death consequences that marred labor relations in the United States. Disputes …

Constructing The Panama Canal: A Brief History, Ian E. Phillips

The Downtown Review

Seeking to commemorate the construction of the Panama Canal, an engineering marvel widely considered a contender for the eighth wonder of the world, this article attempts to retell the story of the Canal's construction by synthesizing a narrative centered on the Canal under French and American leadership, worker segregation, and labor conditions at the Isthmus.

America’S Greatest Statesman: Henry Clay In The American Memory, Emmet P. Golden

History Honors Program

This paper explores how the image of Henry Clay has developed in the American mind from his death in 1852 to the1980s. The memory of Henry Clay has received little attention from scholars. The few studies that exist look at the memory of Clay was used by the North and South during the Civil War. Most works on Clay have focused on Clay’s biography, his “American system,” and his part in shaping the Compromises of 1820 and 1850. A memory study gives an understanding of how Americans have reinterpreted Clay to fit their needs. Four distinct images of Henry Clay …

The Congress Of Industrial Organizations: Operation Dixie And A Legacy Of Worker Activism, Trevor G. Porter

Honors Theses

Trevor George Porter: The Congress of Industrial Organizations: Operation Dixie and a Legacy of Worker Activism (Under the Direction of Dr. Jarod Roll)

The passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 overhauled United States labor law, and it shifted the balance of power in favor of organized labor. Seizing upon this monumental moment in history, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was founded with a mandate to “organize the unorganized”. The labor federation made its primary focus the mass production workers of America, many of whom had not previously been afforded the opportunity to join a union. This …

The Road To Self-Support: Vocational Rehabilitation And The Associational State, 1917-1945, William Jared Norwood

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“The Road to Self-Support: Vocational Rehabilitation and the Associational State, 1917-1945” traces the origins and development of the Civilian Vocational Rehabilitation (CVR) program from its inception in 1920 until the conclusion of the Second World War. Rapid industrialization and the fallout of the First World War handed the nation a large amount of people with disabilities, which drew on already strained state and local welfare relief. The project examines the interwar period and finds it to be a battleground of differing governing strategies over how best to solve America’s growing level of disabled workers. The project argues that policymakers settled …

More Austerity Coming? Lessons From New York City's 1970s Fiscal Crisis, Marc Kagan

Publications and Research

Crises can be moments of opportunity, but it is not foreordained who will seize the ring. The Great Depression ultimately led to the New Deal/Great Society state and increasing equality. 1975 New York City fiscal crisis, on the other hand, laid the groundwork for decades of neoliberal austerity. Despite political vulnerabilities, bankers and their Washington allies acted boldly to protect imperiled assets and remake a city in which the working class wielded some power as a bastion of finance capital. Seemingly powerful unions abandoned the public they served, and followed a risk-averse strategy of concessions in exchange for junior-partner corporatism, …

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …

Battlefield Of Bandages: A Case Study On Sanitation Policy, Medical Reform, And Disease Prevention During The War Of Rebellion, Ashley L. Simpson

MSU Graduate Theses

The American Civil War was a devastating conflict costing over 750,000 lives and millions of dollars in the aftermath. However, the most urgent threat was not musket balls, cannons or grapeshot. Afflictions such as typhoid fever, malaria, smallpox, measles, pneumonia, and diarrhea contracted from crowded, unsanitary camp and hospital conditions were responsible for two-thirds of all Civil War casualties. In April 1861, a group of Union women met at church to organize a relief agency whose goal was to aid the thousands of Union soldiers dying from disease. Armed with enlightenment ideas about medical care and sanitation, the Women's Central …

Abolitionism In The Danubian Principalities, Olivia H. Cull

Young Historians Conference

In the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, now a section of present-day Romania, evidence of Roma slavery dates back to the 13th century C.E. A vast majority of these slaves were of Roma ethnicity (commonly known by the pejorative term Gypsy); the principalities had enslaved the Roma for such an extended period of time that the Romanian word for “slave” (rob) and for “Gypsy” (rom) became interchangeable. Yet, in the mid 1800s, Wallachian and Moldavian society slowly but surely began to transition into a period of abolitionism. Why, after five hundred years of slavery, did the Wallachian and Moldavian …