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Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Davis, The Rogue Republic: How Would-Be Patriots Waged the Shortest Revolution in American History. by Miles Smith; Hatch, Osceola and the Great Seminole War: A Struggle for Justice and Freedom. by Patricia Riles Wickman; Marotti, The Cana Sanctuary: History, Diplomacy, and Black Catholic Marriage in Antebellum St. Augustine, Florida. by Larry Eugene Rivers; Gallagher, The Union War. by Brian Craig Miller; Weinfeld, The Jackson County War: Reconstruction and Resistance in Post-Civil War Florida. by Will Guzman; Frantz, The Door of Hope: Republican Presidents and the First Southern Strategy, 1877-1933. by R. Matthew Poteat; Bowen, The Roots of Modern Conservatism: Dewey, …

Looking For Angola: An Archaeological And Ethnohistorical Search For A Nineteenth Century Florida Maroon Community And Its Caribbean Connections, Rosalyn Howard

Florida Historical Quarterly

The "Looking for Angola" project (LFA) commenced on December 12, 2004 when shovels broke ground on the south side of the Manatee River at the point where it meets the Braden River. Based upon historical research, this area is believed to be the former location of Angola. Historian John Lee Williams referred to it as "Negro Point,"1 but in a land claim document filed by two Cuban fishermen it was labeled "Angola."2 The groundbreaking marked the realization of Project Director Vickie Oldham's wish to relate the story of early African American settlers in the Tampa Bay-Sarasota area of Florida. While …

Shipwrecked In The Atlantic World: Reevaluating Jonathan Dickinson's Interactions With Native Peoples Along Florida's Southeastern Coast, Jason Daniels

Florida Historical Quarterly

As the sun rose upon the mangled and beleaguered Reformation on October 23, 1696, Jonathan Dickinson, an Anglo-Jamaican planter in the process of relocating his mercantile affairs to Philadelphia, found himself shipwrecked hundreds of miles from the nearest European colony and stranded amongst Native Americans.2 For modern scholars, Dickinson's account of his two-month odyssey from present-day Jupiter Island to Spanish St. Augustine has proved to be an indispensable ethnographical tract for examining Native Americans living south of the Spanish mission provinces during the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Nevertheless, this complicated and inscrutable text, like much of the Florida peninsula, remains …

Entangled Borderlands: Europeans And Timucuans In Sixteenth-Century Florida, Jonathan Decoster

Florida Historical Quarterly

In February 1566, grisly news reached the Norman port cities of Dieppe and Le Havre. The French Huguenot colonists, who had left those ports for Florida less than two years previously, had been cruelly slaughtered by Spaniards. An open letter to France's king, purportedly written by the widows and orphans of the victims, was quickly published in an attempt to prod the crown into action. "The blood of your poor subjects, thus treacherously spilt, cries out before God for vengeance," it exclaimed.1 When the crown seemed deaf to the public outcry, a private citizen, Dominique de Gourgues, felt driven to …

Alachua Settlers And The Second Seminole War, C. S. Monaco

Florida Historical Quarterly

The role of Florida's interior settlements and relatively modest settler population has never been assigned much historical significance vis-a-vis the Second Seminole War (1835-1842). With few exceptions, the historiography has focused on the military aspects of this protracted conflict, with certain key battles, military commanders, Native American leaders, and the destruction of the east coast sugar plantations garnering the most interest.2 The ramifications of President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act (1830) which celebrated the prospect of placing "a civilized population on large tracts of country now occupied by a few savage hunters"3 are well-known, along with the treaties of Moultrie …

Disentangling The Nazis And The Vikings, Arden Goldberg

Student Research Symposium

In the development of nationalism, and specifically white ethnonationalism, the Norse have played an unfortunate role, and one that deserves a closer interrogation. In the larger scheme of white nationalism, those who seek to directly appropriate Norse symbology and a reconstruction of their own ideal of Norse culture are a relative minority, but they remain a minority which taints the study of Norse history. In this talk, I will examine how Norse symbology and identity has come to be appropriated by white nationalists, compare the racist perceptions of the Norse with knowable historical realities, explain the usefulness of Norse symbology …

Maybe The Real Prize Was The Connections They Built Along The Way: A Legal Analysis Of The Role Of Privateering In The Creation Of The Trans-Imperial Greater Caribbean, Daniel Hall

Honors Theses

While study of the eighteenth-century Caribbean has traditionally focused on the stark separation between the European empires of the region, this thesis seeks to reveal privateering’s role as an important force in creating what has come to be referred to as the trans-imperial or trans-national Caribbean. This will be based in an analysis of the legal structure of British privateering as a means of both drawing attention to the practice’s intrinsically legalistic nature as well as highlighting the fact that this regional creation was a result of colonists working within imperial guidelines as much as it was an act of …

“A Nation Of Orders”: Authoritarian Rhetoric And The Missouri Council Of Defense In World War I, Zane Bell

Student Scholarship

In wartime, demographic groups with a greater resemblance or relation to the populations of adversarial powers often bear the brunt of social pressure on the homefront. To a degree, even the oft-hated proponents of peace -- who sometimes do coincide and overlap with the aforementioned sort of demographics -- seem to receive comparably less vitriol from the rest of the public. Indeed, wartime powers frequently persecute portions of their population for the sake of uncovering a “fifth column” -- an idea made popular by a fascist general in the Spanish Civil War who claimed that the march of his four …

A Cross-Cultural Trek Of Nomadism Through Metaphoric Criticism, Gabrielle Wilkosz

All Theses

How has the worldwide phenomenon of nomadism—present day, recent past, and ancient past—been characterized through metaphor by writers, orators, and auteurs? Using metaphoric criticism, I show how the rhetoric of twenty-first-century "van-lifers" builds on a long global history of displacement that ranges from Central Asia to Malaysia to the Grand Canyon. This project’s three case studies span two decades each, comprising the Kitan people of Central Asia (1207-1227); Bukat people of Borneo in Malaysia (1930-1950), and contemporary "van-lifers" of the US (2001-21). This MA thesis parses a newfound connection between the language of nomadism and Burkean “truth”; the language of …

History Strikes Back! The Portrayal Of Greek And Roman History In Hollywood Films And How It Furthers The Discussion Of History, Ethan P. Frost

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In an article published in 2009, Robert Rosenstone expressed disappointment in two films he played a role in developing the Reds (1981) and the The Good Fight (1984). He expressed regret the films did not reach his expectations as a historian. As a result, he wondered whether there was a point in historians being involved in the making of historical films.

This thesis focused on six historical films set in ancient Greece and Rome. The six films are Alexander the Great (1956), The 300 Spartans (1962), and 300 (2006) for Greek history; and The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), The …

War And Reconstruction From An East Texas Perspective: Nacogdoches County From 1861-1876, William Wade Carter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Initially founded in 1826 as a municipality of Mexico and organized as a county in 1837—and sharing its name with the oldest town in Texas—Nacogdoches County flourishes with a rich history and has been a factor in nearly every major event in early Texas history. The Civil War is no exception. Men from the county contributed to the war effort but also felt the war’s sting at home. Citizens did what they could to survive. The county continued under the yoke of Reconstruction after the war before booming again in the 1880s thanks largely to the town the county shares …

Of Life And History, Vol. 3 (May 2022)

Of Life and History

No abstract provided.

A Quest For Dignity: Colored Women’S Anti-Slavery Resistance In The Eighteenth Century British Jamaica And The Reconceptualization Of Human Rights, Yuwei (Ada) Liu

Of Life and History

The public conception of the Human Rights struggle was a European originated post-WWII campaign, advocated by the white organization through the top-down executing system on the non-European country. Nonetheless, by historicized Human Rights struggle, I found that the concept of rights and the ways to reclaiming them evolved under the effects of time, culture, gender, class, and race. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, enslaved and fugitive black women of Jamaica continually asserted their humanities in the face of institutional exploitation through the day to day resistance, black communal and family solidarity, and organized revolts. This argument builds upon …

Indians In The Archives: A History Of Native Americans, Pakachoag Hill And Holy Cross, 1674-1973, Jack Hynick

Of Life and History

Native people are conspicuously absent from the official and popular history of the College of the Holy Cross. Extant records from the Holy Cross archives, the American Antiquarian Society, and digitized reports from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are filled with references to Native people at Holy Cross and the surrounding Worcester area. By addressing the history of the land, the experiences of Native people on Pakachoag Hill, the roles played by Holy Cross community members in settler colonialism, and the use of Native imagery, this paper hopes to correct a blinding omission in the story of the College.

The Contradiction Of The Welfare Dictatorship: The Stasi’S Role In Preserving And Undermining East German Human Rights, Mallory Wooldridge

Honors College Theses

Constructed four years after WWII in a kind of pendulum swing response to the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was an experiment in socialism. Under the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (The Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED) no East German was to go hungry, unemployment would be eradicated, housing guaranteed, women treated as equals, and human rights interwoven into the fabric of this socialist society. However, SED socialism in practice did not conform to this original vision and would eventually represent the disillusionment with the socialist project as a whole.

This project seeks to understand human rights in the …

20,000 Feet Between: The Experiential Disparities Of Precision Bombing In Austrian Bomb Victims And American Bombardiers, 1945, Emily E. Hanish

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

From November 1944 until May 1945, the 57^th Bomb Wing executed the “Battle of the Brenner” to incapacitate the German war machine. As a result of five campaign missions from March – April 1945, the USAAF not only decimated the village of Matrei am Brenner and Trautson Castle, but also killed dozens of civilians. Recent archaeological excavations at Medieval Trautson Castle prompted serious questions about the USAAF’s bombardment strategies and ethics, especially regarding precision bombing. By analyzing these bombing missions, this thesis will delineate the “Battle of the Brenner” within the evolution of the USAAF’s bombardment doctrine in order …

The Unity Of Normanitas: Norman Identity In Twelfth-Century Scotland And Southern Italy, Zachariah J. Chamberlin

All Theses

Scholars have rigorously debated the extent to which the Normans remained a definitively identifiable group as they branched out from Normandy in endeavors of conquest and expansion. In the twentieth century, historians such as Charles Homer Haskins and David Douglas maintained the unity of Norman identity throughout the British Isles, southern Italy, and the crusader states. Other scholars like R. H. C. Davis argued that the Normans were merely extraordinary cultural assimilators and decried the notion of Norman unity, or Normanitas, as a myth propagated by chroniclers and historians dating back to the tenth century. Drawing upon recent scholarship, …

A Lesson In Mourning: The Evolution Of The English Anti-Elegy, K. Matthew Bennett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the evolution of the anti-elegy originating with Thomas Hardy’s elegiac sequence in memory of his wife Emma; Poems of 1912-1913. Using French post-structuralist Georges Bataille’s The Accursed Share as a theoretical lens, Hardy’s anti-elegies are analyzed and rhetorically connected to English war poet Siegfried Sassoon’s anti-elegies. Hardy’s anti-sentimentality, fatalistic outlook on death, and rejection of the Christian afterlife seeps into the language of Sassoon’s war poems which serve as a protest to the dehumanizing effects of late capitalism witnessed during the First World War. Hardy and Sassoon’s anti-elegies, with their hyper-focus on the elegized body, are …

The Consent Of The Governed: Constitutionalism Of The Levellers And Its Influence On Anglo-American Political Discourse, Nathan B. Gilson

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

More fully understanding the Levellers suggests a new framework for understanding Anglo-American constitutionalism and jurisprudence. There was a logical progression in their constitutional thought, by which the exigent developments of the 1640s conflict continually pushed the Levellers to articulate new constitutional propositions. It eventually led them to a fully developed contractual theory for the origins of society based on the continuing consent of the People, including the rights to revolution and resistance, within a natural rights framework. The Levellers argued for limitations on the sovereignty of the government by the People, as opposed to the position of the Monarchists, Independents, …

International Connection, Domestic Radicalization: The Connection Between East Asia And Black Radicals, Randy O. Felder

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Utilizing newspapers, journals and pamphlets, this thesis examines the ways that the Black Power movement, primarily in the 1960’s connected with East Asian countries.

Differentiating between the Black Power and the Civil Rights groups, this thesis will show why and how the Black Power movement needed international allies such as China and Vietnam.

Showing that the connection between the East Asia and Black Power groups was due to racism, imperialism, and Maoism, I argue that Black Power individuals/groups were influenced by East Asia and saw these countries as a blueprint for revolution in America. This thesis also analyzes the significance …

Pioneer Inventors, Sea Devils, And Infernal Machines: Submarine Development In The United States From The American Revolution Through The American Civil War, Thomas Motes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

This thesis is a study of the history of early American submarine development, from the American Revolution through the American Civil War, with a brief discussion of what happened afterwards. Early American-made submarines are often not studied in detail with the exception of the most famous vessels like the H. L. Hunley and the Turtle. Few people realize just how many submarine projects were worked on in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and many do not know anything about these submarines at all. This paper will cover the history of submarine development, the men behind them, what contemporaries thought of …

Florida History In Publications, 2011, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

No abstract provided.

American Gibraltar: Key West During World War Ii, Abraham H. Gibson

Florida Historical Quarterly

As visitors and locals alike will attest, there is no other place in America quite like Key West. Separated from the Florida peninsula by more than a hundred miles, the island city lies closer to Havana than Miami. The archipelago to which it belongs not only boasts the only tropical climate in the lower forty-eight, but also features flora and fauna found nowhere else on Earth. Even the ground underfoot is unique. A mere hundred thousand years ago, Key West was not only underwater, but alive. Its entire surface teemed with millions of tiny coral which slowly built the island's …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Gallay, ed., Indian Slavery in Colonial America. by Heidi Scott Giusto; Belko, ed., America's Hundred Years' War: U.S. Expansion to the Gulf Coast and the Fate of the Seminole, 1763-1858. by Brent R. Weisman; Kolb III and Weir, eds., Captured at Kings Mountain: The Journal of Uzal Johnson, A Loyalist Surgeon. by Jim Piecuch; Kenny, Contentious Liberties: American Abolitionists in Post-Emancipation Jamaica, 1834-1866. by Susan J. Fernandez; Waters and Edmonds, A Small but Spartan Band: The Florida Brigade in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. by Daniel James Flook; Sharpless, Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960. …

Some Thoughts On Spanish East And West Florida, James G. Cusick

Florida Historical Quarterly

As Andrew McMichael points out in Atlantic Loyalties, the eastern Spanish borderlands of Louisiana and the Floridas suffered constant upheaval in the 40 years between 1778 and 1818. During those years, some fourteen different episodes of conspiracy, revolt, or invasion shook colonial society, beginning with the raids of James Willing in 1778 and carrying on through the First Seminole War of 1817-1818 (see Table 1).1 Although several of these upheavals stemmed from general warfare in the region, many were instigated by fairly small groups of men who played upon the discontent of fellow settlers or who drew on a base …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Hall Jr., Zamumo's Gifts: Indian-European Exchange in the Colonial Southeast. by Linford D. Fisher; Gragg, The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class. by Jennifer Lockard Connerley; White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic. by John Davies; Morrisey, Pirate Hunter, A Novel. by Edward C. Woodward. Marrs, Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society. by Richard Jensen; Bernath, Confederate Minds: The Struggle for Intellectual Independence in the Civil War South. by Martin P. Johnson; Brinkley, The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America. by Janie Gould; …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early America. by Tiya Miles; Schafer, Thunder on the River: The Civil War in Northeast Florida. by Judith F. Gentry; Huibregtse, American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919-1935. by Thomas A. Castillo; Pacheco, Tales from the 5th St. Gym: Ali, the Dundees, and Miami's Golden Age of Boxing. by Andrew Smith; Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890 - 1940. by Darius J. Young; Winsboro, Old South, New South, or Down South?: Florida and the Modern Civil Rights Movement. by Christopher B. …

William Augustus Bowles On The Gulf Coast, 1787-1803: Unraveling A Labyrinthine Conumdrum, Gilbert C. Din

Florida Historical Quarterly

Colorful William Augustus Bowles has presented problems to historians for as long as they have written about him. He purposely promoted confusion about himself to inflate his personality and achievements, and historians unacquainted with his devious machinations made them worse by repeating them. One egregious error mixed him up with Billy Bowlegs (Holata Micco), a nineteenth-century Seminole chief, and he sometimes was called Billy Bowles, a moniker absent in the multitude of contemporary documents written by and about him.1 The most common mistake describes him as the director general of the Creeks. Though Bowles gained military sway over a group …

Moctezuma And The Emergence Of Sixteenth-Century New Spain’S Historical Dialogue., Charlie Tabor

Honors Theses

In August 1521, Hernan Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan, declared it conquered, and announced the creation of the new colonial territory New Spain. Over the course of the subsequent sixteenth century Spain would rapidly expand its influence across the American continents.

Spanish colonialism in the Americas is historically distinct for a rapid process of globalization which linked previously isolated European and indigenous societies. Analysis of chronicles documenting the Conquest of Mexico written in the later half of the 1500’s reveal that colonialism corresponded to new ways of thinking informed by, but also distinct from, Aztec and Spanish world views. …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Finlay, Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security. by Anne B. Effland; Alderson, Jr., This Bright Era of Happy Revolutions: French Consul Michel-Ange-Bernard Mangourit and International Republicanism in Charleston, 1792-1794, by Rafe Blaufarb; O'Connor and Monroe, Florida's American Heritage River: Images from the St. Johns Region. by R. Bruce Stephenson; Davis, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century. by Gregory Bush; Griffin, ed., The Odyssey of an African Slave. By Sitiki. by Michael Guasco; Brana-Shute and Sparks, eds., Paths to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World. by Timothy R. Buckner; Curnutt and …