History Commons^™

Eis Ein Vergessenes Ladungsgut, Ingo Heidbrink

History Faculty Publications

Natural ice was an important maritime cargo throughout the 19th and 20th century with Norway being the largest European ice exporting nation in Europe. This trade was mainly operated with small to medium size wooden sailing vessels and often secured long time survival of these craft. Although it is not known if any of today's historic sailing ships operating in European waters, has ever actually transported natural ice, this trade among others contributed to the survival of the fleet. While today ice is mainly considered as an obstacle for the operation of historic watercraft, it was actually one of the …

Practices Of Intellectual Labor In The Republic Of Letters: Leibniz And Edward Bernard On Language And European Origins, Michael C. Carhart

History Faculty Publications

For a project on the origins and migrations of the European nations, Leibniz wanted to see a comparative lexicon purporting to derive the Germanic languages from Asiatic sources. Friends in nearby Gotha were known to have the book; its author had corresponded with Leibniz a few years earlier. But actually getting the book was more difficult than one might expect. In addition to the actual logistics and manners of scholarly communication in the late seventeenth century, this essay shows what scholars were trying to accomplish by establishing the prehistoric origins of the modern nations.

A Thirst For Empire: How Tea Shaped The Modern World, Jane T. Merritt

History Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) In A Thirst for Empire: How Tea Shaped the Modern World, Erika Rappaport, specialist in British consumer culture, explores the influ- ence of the quintessential English beverage on the rise of mass markets and British identity. Drawing from a variety of research tradi- tions, including recent commodity studies, the author argues that tea was both a product of and a producer of empire. The commercial success of tea created powerful corporate entities with imperial ties, such as the English East India Company and Lipton’s. But, it was the practice of drinking tea that defined and transformed “Britishness.” …

Race, Gender And The Body In British Immigration Control: Subject To Examination, Brett Bebber

History Faculty Publications

Evan Smith and Marinella Marmo’s new book, Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control: Subject to Examination, finally gives full attention to a fascinating but often forgotten moment in the history of British immigration control: the virginity tests of South Asian migrants in the 1970s.

Confrontations With Colonialism: Resistance, Revivalism And Reform Under British Rule In Sri Lanka 1796-1920, Vol 1, C. R. De Silva

History Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) In one of the most challenging and thought-provoking history books published in Sri Lanka in the last decade, P. V. J. Jayasekera has used a wide variety of sources to challenge a number of existing interpretations relating to Sri Lanka under British colonial rule in the nineteenth century. While the book is based partly on his own doctoral dissertation completed in 1970, in Jayasekera’s own words “The scope and the foci of the original study have been substantially changed” (p. ix) in view of new theoretical approaches in the study of colonial history and the debates on history …

Quotidian Intimidation And Mussolini's Special Tribunal In Istria And The Eastern Borderlands, Maura Hametz

History Faculty Publications

The article examines the Special Tribunal for the Defense of the State's use of the "no grounds to proceed" ruling to intimidate anti-fascists and extend the fascist government's power in the Adriatic borderlands. It demonstrates how the Tribunal's judges used their sentencing prerogatives to support repression in Istria and cloak persecution in the mantel of legal action in defense of the state.

Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience, Austin Jersild

History Faculty Publications

A review of the book "Internal Colonization: Russia's Imperial Experience," by Alexander Etkind is presented.

Everyday Life In Fascist Venice, 1929-40, Maura Hametz

History Faculty Publications

A review of the book "Everyday Life in Fascist Venice, 1929-40," by Kate Ferris is presented.

Uncertain States: Repatriation And Citizenship In The Northeastern Adriatic, 1918-1921, Maura E. Hametz

History Faculty Publications

From 1918 to 1921, officials of the Italian government operating in the new Adriatic territories inherited from the Habsburg monarchy struggled to meet the needs of local populations in an atmosphere of economic dislocation, political unrest, and increasing ethnic violence. This article examines the evolution of Italian policies and practices relating to border crossings, repatriation, and citizenship in the dynamic period from Armistice to official annexation. Using archival records held in Trieste and Rome, it explores officials treatment of inhabitants of the new borderlands, migrants, and refugees in the transformation of Habsburg lands of the multi-ethnic empire to Italian provinces …

The Soviet State As Imperial Scavenger: "Catch Up And Surpass" In The Transnational Socialist Bloc, 1950-1960, Austin Jersild

History Faculty Publications

THE BIGGEST PRIZE SOUGHT by the Soviet Union in its newly acquired postwar territory was the bomb itself—or initially the defense‐related industries, research specialists, and scientists in the German zone deemed useful to achieving this goal.1 The Soviets similarly made arrangements to benefit from uranium deposits in Jáchymov, Czechoslovakia, from the fall of 1945.2 The effort to develop the bomb, however, was merely the most visible expression of the Soviet state at work in what would eventually become the socialist bloc. The Soviet technical and managerial elite routinely engaged in a similar search for useful forms of industrial …

The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War In The Communist World, Austin Jersild

History Faculty Publications

A reader of both Russian and Chinese, Lorenz M. Lüthi provides fascinating depth and detail to an unstable Sino-Soviet alliance shaped by strong and ambitious personalities, nationalist sensitivities, cultural misunderstandings, and the perhaps inevitable clash between two societies at very different stages in “socialist” history.

Slavery-Era Disclosure And Atlantic Commerce, Keith R. Allen, Jelmer Vos

History Faculty Publications

Explores the connections between greater Atlantic Ocean commerce and those northern European businesses that invested in and profited from the slave trade, from the 16th century to 1888, the year that Brazil outlawed slavery - the last country in the Americas to do so. Presents the results of an in-depth case study of the predecessors of the Dutch bank ABN AMRO regarding their financial involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and its extensive commercial network in the Western Hemisphere, which was centered on the Americas.

Fascism's European Empire: Italian Occupation During The Second World War, Maura E. Hametz

History Faculty Publications

Davide Rodogno offers an illuminating appraisal of Fascist Italy’s ambitions, achievements, and failures in the occupation of Mediterranean Europe from 1940 to 1943.

Socialism In Georgian Colors: The European Road To Social Democracy 1883-1917, Austin Jersild

History Faculty Publications

The Russian Empire was composed of diverse nationalities, as was the revolutionary movement that sought to overthrow it. Georgians played a prominent role in both the evolution of the empire and the revolutionary movement. Russia offered Georgians protection from nearby Islamic states, an administrative and military alliance against the enduring mountain insurgency in the North Caucasus, and institutional and intellectual resources in their historic struggle to build a nation and overcome regional fragmentation.

Murder In The Metro: Mysterious Death Leads To Scholarly Work On Gender And Fascism In 1937 France, Annette Finley-Croswhite, Gayle K. Brunelle

History Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) On the 16th of May, 1937, at around 6 p.m., a striking 29-year-old Italian woman wearing a finely tailored green suit, white hat and gloves left a suburban Paris bal musette, or dance hall, and walked quietly toward a bus stop. Approximately 24 minutes later, she stepped off the bus and entered a metro station where she boarded a first class car bound for central Paris. Although the subway platform and the accompanying second-class cars were filled with Pentecost Sunday holiday-makers who had spent the afternoon at the Parc de Vincennes, Laetitia Nourrissat Toureaux sat alone in …

Envisioning The Italian Mediterranean Fascist Policy In Steamship Publicity, 1922-1942, Maura Elise Hametz

History Faculty Publications

Depictions of the Mediterranean Sea figured prominently in steamship lines' publicity during the years of Fascist rule in Italy. These images of the sea promoted and publicized Italian foreign policy aims and aspirations as they shifted over the years from 1922 to 1942. At the same time, the images' emphasis on Italy's maritime heritage provided a rallying point for Italian national identity. Mussolini's government used Italian associations with the Mediterranean to foster a national as opposed to regional consciousness and to project abroad a vision of a culturally-unified and powerful Italy.

The Italian people long for the Mediterranean, ... the …

The Faux Pas Of A Vert Galant: The Historiography Of Henry Iv's Military Leadership, Annette Finley-Croswhite

History Faculty Publications

Even though many modern historians agree that Henry IV was less than a brilliant military commander, a small but growing body of revisionist historians believe that his reputation deserves to be reassessed. While acknowledging his military innovations and battlefield successes, his critics see him primarily as an opportunist with a reckless streak who failed time and again to take full advantage of his victories. The revisionist school, however, believes that these interpretations are based on an inaccurate assessment of early modern warfare and its unique political, religious, and social components. Henry's modern defenders further note that his reputation has suffered …

The Dilemmas Of Enlightenment In The Eastern Borderlands: The Theater And Library In Tbilisi, Austin Jersild, Neli Melkadze

History Faculty Publications

The Russian field is quickly accumulating a wide variety of works on Russian imperialism. These works now rival the field of colonial studies on the Western empires, and include explorations of imperial ideology, the multiethnic service elite, educational policy, missionary activities, cultural borrowing and interaction among the diverse peoples of the empire, and native responses and challenges to Russian rule.¹ The new studies often venture out to the eastern borderlands of [End Page 27] the empire, such as the Volga-Urals and Turkestan, and complement and complicate a more developed historiography on the western borderlands and its peoples, such as …

Petroleum Tanker Shipping On German Inland Waterways, 1887-1994, Ingo Heidbrink

History Faculty Publications

Tanker shipping today is one of the major branches of German inland navigation. Indeed, the transport of petroleum and its derivatives together comprise nearly twenty percent of total inland shipping; more than 42,000,000 tons of liquid petroleum products were shipped in 1996 by a fleet with a total cargo capacity of more than 500,000 tons.' Tanker shipping is by far the largest kind of specialist transportation on German inland waterways. But because of its very special technical requirements, a high degree of dependence on a small group of shippers, and a number of risks peculiar to this trade, there are …

Nutrition And The Early-Medieval Diet, Kathy L. Pearson

History Faculty Publications

The food supply of the temperate lands of early-medieval western Europe, and the ways in which its peoples dealt with the central problem of feeding themselves, has been subjected to a variety of interpretations in recent years. Vern Bullough and Cameron Campbell's study of the medieval diet and female longevity concluded that early-medieval women suffered from iron deficiencies triggered jointly by poor nutrition and frequent childbearing and that these deficiencies contributed substantially to their average early age of death. Ann Hagen's overview of Anglo-Saxon patterns of food production and consumption suggested that most of the early English population routinely lived …

Urban Identity And Transitional Politics: The Transformation Of Political Allegiance Inside Amiens Before And After The City's 1594 Capitulation To Henry Iv, Annette S. Finley-Croswhite

History Faculty Publications

Examines the reasons for the rise and fall of the Catholic League in Amiens, France, between 1588 and 1594. The league was a powerful group of wealthy lawyers, merchants, and churchmen opposed to the king concerned over the loss of urban privileges, regional loyalties, and the presence of the king's clients within the city. In 1594 the city capitulated to Henry IV, marking the beginning of the league's decline.