Political History Commons^™

The Aftermath Of The Black Death In England: Edward Iii's Economic Policies To Repress The Peasantry, Leah Diciesare

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

The Black Death caused a mass mortality in England, drastically affecting society. However, it was the aftermath of the plague that had the greatest impacts. The loss of life removed pressure on the economy due to population density, which gave the peasants opportunities to improve their lives. But that was a short-lived phenomenon; the peasantry ultimately remained repressed, as they had been prior to the plague. Edward III meddled in the English economy in the wake of the Black Death by introducing price and wage regulations. These efforts were to maintain the status quo in English society so that the …

Economies Of Security: Foucault And The Genealogy Of Neoliberal Reason, Marshall Scheider

Gettysburg Social Sciences Review

Michel Foucault is well-known for his theorizations of institutional power, normativity, and biopolitics. Less well-known is the fact that Foucault developed his analysis of biopolitics in and through his historical investigation of neoliberalism. Today, while critique of neoliberalism has become a commonplace of humanities discourse, and popular resistance to neoliberalization rocks the southern hemisphere, it remains unclear that the historical specificity of neoliberalism is well-understood. In particular, the relation between classical liberalism and neoliberal governance remains murky in popular debate. As Foucault powerfully illustrates, this relation is far from clear-cut, and neoliberalism is not reducible to a simple extension of …

“The Speechmaking Of A Girl-Orator”: Reason, Gender, And Authority In Dorothy Hunter’S Free Trade Oratory, Erinn Elizabeth Campbell

Honors Projects

Dorothy M. Hunter (1881-1977) rose to prominence during the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a markedly “girlish” yet widely respected free trade orator. While men on the Edwardian public political platform typically built a reputation for oratorical prowess through theatrical displays of “heroic” masculinity, Hunter established her authority as a speaker through two very different (and apparently contradictory) strategies. Her performance of “charming” middle-class femininity helped demonstrate her right to speak on free trade as a “women’s question,” extending women’s traditional authority over matters of domestic consumption to include questions of political economy. Trusting in the power of education …

Systemic Constraints On Potus Foreign Policy, Dan Hodges

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to identify the environment that presidents operate within to develop international relationship goals. The environment itself forms a system which exerts a great influence, is largely responsible for, and expresses the foreign policies that presidents choose. Five elements define this system: the geopolitical situation, the actions of the prior administration, Congress, the election cycle, and the American domestic situation (GPACED). This work demarcates the elements of GPACED, and their potential impacts on polices, and demonstrates its influence through five historical case studies spanning six presidential administrations. The National Security Act of 1947, and its …

Full Issue: Volume 1, Issue 1, Editorial Board

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The first issue of the Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal.

The Portrayal Of The Woman’S Suffrage Movement In High School History Textbooks, Michelle A. Devries

Masters Theses

The narrative of the woman’s suffrage movement in high school history textbooks varies from textbook to textbook and over time. Textbooks include different information, people, events, and interpretations of events. They employ different word choices and pictures. By using comparative analyzation of numerous popular high school textbooks, the pressure exerted by external economic, social, and political forces on the historical narrative can be seen. Studying the historical narrative in this way trains students to be discerning learners of history and equips them not only to recognize the bias in any historical narrative, but also to be able to analyze how …

“The Amazing Iroquois”: Haudenosaunee History In Myth And Memory, 1776–1955, John C. Winters

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is a history and memory study of Iroquois exceptionalism. This is an idea that shaped our understanding of the Iroquois as the “most studied” Indian nation and that they, as the debunked Iroquois Influence Thesis claimed, influenced the structure and scope of the U.S. Constitution. My study examines the lives of four related (by blood and by claim) Seneca leaders: Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse, and Arthur C. Parker. These four stand out because each was one of the most famous Native Americans of their generation who worked within and against American colonial society and …

An Analysis Of Women And Terrorism: Perpetrators, Victims, Both?, Elizabeth Lauren Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will analyze women’s participation in terrorism under groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It will research the use of violence within terrorist organizations, perpetrated by female participants. What leads women to join groups like the Islamic State? There will be an analysis of the factors that attract women to joining terrorist organizations, in addition to the practices of recruitment that aid in their radicalization. There is a misconception that women who join the Islamic State lack education, which is seen as the sole reasoning for their radicalization or involvement. In reality, several reasons exist leading to their …

Shock And Awe, Sectarianism, And Violence In Iraq Post-2003, Sarim Al-Rawi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The violence systematically deployed upon the prosperous nation of Iraq in 2003 was directly influenced by the Shock and Awe doctrine set forth by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade in their 1996 book Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. The experimental methods of warfare and violence outlined in the text describe methods for the systematic destruction of every major aspect of a nation and society, militarily, economically, and socially. In the wake of the US Invasion of Iraq, we saw the direct implementation of these methods by the occupation forces, setting off a brutal cycle of violence that …

The Truman Administration And Zionist Legitimation Strategies To Achieve Statehood, Gianna Meier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Following World War II, with the strength of Britain shattered by economic exhaustion and the rising influence of the United States in post-war international policies, the Zionist commitment to Jewish statehood intensified, driven even more urgently by the specter of the Holocaust atrocities. Meanwhile, warfare in Palestine both between the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs and between the Jews and Britain increased tension in the region to such a point that Britain decided in February 1947 to withdraw from its obligations under the Mandate for Palestine. It left to the United Nations (UN) the challenge of finding a workable resolution …

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 …

Paper House: The Revolution, The Disappeared, And The Historicity Of Lebanon, Elsa Saade

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will be an attempt to reenact events in relation to the disappeared and the Lebanese civil war, with the help of newspaper cuts, oral history, theories on historical writing, memories, and books on Lebanon. As a prospective historian, the writer will be tapping into the internal event of thought processes and meaning of the past, as advised by R. G. Collingwood in The Idea of History. (Collingwood, 1946 ) That critical inquiry will only be at the service of understanding the present from the lens of a self-reflecting inquisitor that has faced many silences in a past …

“New Orleans Never Was Tighter”: Jim Garrison’S Gendered Vice Campaign In New Orleans, 1962-1966, Rebecca L. Poole

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Most historical writing and research on Jim Garrison’s political career focus on his investigation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw. Few scholars examine the years prior to the investigation when Garrison served as District Attorney of New Orleans. In 1962, Garrison won the election for District Attorney in part for his pledge to clean up the French Quarter of its lurid reputation. Garrison’s vice crusade targeted mostly women who symbolized the city's colorful reputation. Aided by his office and the vice squad, he raided the French Quarter to arrest prostitutes, strippers, and anyone associated …

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

Blacklisted But Not Defeated: Jack Foner Returned To Academe After 30 Years And Made Colby A Leader In African-American Studies, Gerry Boyle

Colby Magazine

Colby hired Jack Foner and in a single stroke, a then nearly all-white liberal arts college in Maine became home to one of the first African-American Studies programs in the country.

Globalizing The Rio Grande: European-Born Entrepreneurs, Settlement, And Mercantile Networks In The Rio Grande Borderlands, 1749-1881, Kyle B. Carpenter

History Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the borderland region from the Nueces River to the Sierra Madres has been a crossroads of trade since the era of Spanish colonization, and that after Mexico won its independence from Spain, the region became the focus of intense commercial modernization projects initiated by both state agents and individual businessmen from all over Western Europe. These entrepreneurs wanted to transform the Rio Grande and its surroundings from a regional crossroads to a hub of the Atlantic economy. However, their efforts to create rapid change were often stymied by mismanagement, notions of ethnic and cultural superiority, and …

Forgotten: A Study Of The Long-Term Economic Ramifications Suffered By Survivors Of Violence Against Females Sustained During State-Terror Such As Genocides, Natasha Holmark Andersen

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

In an attempt to answer the question: What are the long-term economic ramifications of sexual violence against females in state terror such as genocide? This paper explores the thematic elements, conducive factors and the effects of the existence of sexual violence in state-terror genocides.

To do this, the paper first explores the elements of terrorism and apply them directly to state terror. The notion that states are immune from the blame of terrorism is acknowledged and debunked, furthering the association between terrorism and acts of state terror. Next, genocide is defined as the most atrocious act of state terror, and …

Tinderbox: Danish-Russian Relations, 1989-2019, Maddy Ghose

Master's Theses

This thesis documents and analyzes the major trends of the military, political, economic, and cultural relationships between Denmark and Russia from 1989 to 2019. I document the relationship from the Danish perspective, using primary sources, with the aim to conduct analysis of Danish politicians’ speeches and activities during this period. The outcome is a comprehensive image of the Danish-Russian bilateral relationship at the present time. This relationship has fluctuated widely during the time period under study. Shared economic development interests in the 1990s contributed to a positive relationship; controversy surrounding the war in Chechnya and an assertive Danish prime minister …

All Hail The Market: Immigration And Economics In A Post-Cold War Western Hemisphere, Jorge Ambriz

Master's Theses

The end of the Cold War lifted the United States to the role of the sole economic superpower, and an opportune moment to address hemispheric issues was presented to Washington policymakers. By the end of the 1980s, hemispheric forced migration was on the rise, with a large portion of those forced to flee from Central America. This moment coincided with the decade characterized by an increasingly connected world, where globalization in the form of economic linkages were being proposed in the Summit of the Americas, hemispheric meetings that began in the 1990s in hopes of addressing hemispheric issues. While the …

Pyeongchang V Pyongyang: The Endless Game Of Inter-Korean Sports, Jack Anderson

Master's Projects and Capstones

Since their division, North and South Korea have fluctuated between a peaceful and chaotic relationship. This project explores the role of athletics within inter-Korean relations, using a multidimensional conceptual framework. In particular, this research examines the significant role sports play within each country’s political affairs, how this phenomenon has evolved, and the impact of sports on how South Koreans view their neighbors and the idea of reunification. Through in-depth historical and quantitative analysis, we see that sports can be understood as a political tool that has matured over time. Initially emerging as a means to gauge the status of affiliation …