History Commons^™

Preface, Bruce W. Hall

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

As the official journal of the Beta Iota Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the honors society for students of history, The Thetean is committed to encouraging good historical writing at BYU. We recognize the great importance of quality historical writing and have sought to recognize those students whose outstanding work has earned them a recognition greater than just a grade.

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

The Centennial Of The Treaty Of Lausanne: Turkey, Switzerland, The Great Powers And A Soviet Diplomat’S Assassination, Thomas Quinn Marabello

Swiss American Historical Society Review

The year 2023 marks the centennial of the Treaty of Lausanne. This treaty that many readers may not have heard of created the Republic of Turkey. More than that, it was a conference held in Switzerland where the Great Powers created new borders and made decisions about refugees, access to what are known as the “Turkish Straits” and led to British and French control of Palestine, Syria, and Iraq. The new mandate system showed that colonialism was still the mindset of most Europeans, along with a fear of Russia, which had become the Soviet Union. The conference and treaty that …

Full Issue

Swiss American Historical Society Review

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The African Education Of Violaine Idelette Junod, Keith Snedegar

Swiss American Historical Society Review

May 11 of this year would have been the one-hundredth birthday of Violaine Idelette Junod, a remarkable if not well-known member of a celebrated Swiss missionary family. Born and raised in Africa, Violaine was nonetheless imbued with a thoroughly European worldview. To truly confront the realities of modern Africa, Junod would have to experience, through a long career as a social activist and educator, the harsh legacies of colonialism, poverty, and civil unrest across the continent of her birth. This she did with great tenacity and, finally, deep personal insight. The following is a sketch of an African education that …

A Swiss Calendar Maker In Colonial America: The Life And Work Of Johannes Tobler (1696-1765) Between Appenzell Ausserrhoden And South Carolina, David Aragai

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Johannes Tobler was a self-taught mathematician and astronomer. He published the first “Appenzeller Kalender” in 1721, an astronomical almanac in the style of the then popular genre. This almanac was the first periodical of Appenzell Ausserrhoden and is still issued today. After Tobler became a magistrate in the council of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, he found himself on the losing side of an internal conflict, called the Landhandel. As a result, he emigrated with his family and nearly two hundred citizens of Switzerland to South Carolina in 1736/37. After several years in which he built a new livelihood and became Justice of …

Front Matter

Swiss American Historical Society Review

No abstract provided.

Unique Collections And Digital Humanities Initiatives: From Concept To Creation–Exploration And Practice At The University Of Pittsburgh Library System, Edward Galloway, Haihui Zhang

Journal of East Asian Libraries

This report provides a overview of the Digital Humanity projects undertaken by the East Asian Library within the University of Pittsburgh Library System over the past decade. The review encompasses the genesis and original objectives behind initiating these projects, the challenges and difficulties encountered, the procedural aspects of implementation, and the insights gained.

Civilizational Security: Why The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine Shows That ‘National Security’ Is Not Enough To Understand Geopolitics, Greg (Grzegorz) Lewicki

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper argues that the idea of “national security” is sometimes overwritten by “civilizational security” in security-related considerations. Civilizational security, as understood in this paper, refers to a country's security stemming from its belonging to a cultural zone or a civilization. The author clarifies the terms “a civilization,” “civilizational identity,” and “civilizational security.” Citing the examples of Poland, Ukraine, and Russia when considering the parameter of civilizational security allows us to better analyze and predict some processes, including geopolitical dilemmas and civilizational trends. It is argued that prior to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia misunderstood its own civilizational security …

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

Claude-Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon, a father of modern sociology, observed that the history of the world alternated between two poles: organic periods (in which the social and political institutions are in harmony with the state of civilization), followed by critical periods, which are transitional and marked by conflict and destructive criticism.

Rector's Welcome, Robert Kosowski Phd

Comparative Civilizations Review

With immense pleasure, we welcome the beginning of cooperation of the War Studies University with the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations (ISCSC). As an Organizing Partner of the 2023 ISCSC annual conference entitled "Civilizational Security", we will facilitate solutions to make the conference impactful, memorable and internationally fruitful.

Here, There, And In-Between: On The Civilizing Process And Civilizational Analysis, Michael Palencia-Roth

Comparative Civilizations Review

This essay presents a cautionary tale about certain problems with systematization and abstraction in comparative civilizational studies. It advocates instead for the analysis of single works, limited events, or particular figures, within larger issues pertaining to what is understood as a “civilization” or “culture”. It prioritizes certain aspects of the civilizing process: the here, or the civilizing and interpretive gaze; the there, or the Other that is the object of that gaze; and the in-between. It further suggests that insights and methods from Mikhail Bakhtin, Hans-Georg Gadamer and others from the humanities, social sciences, and philosophy can …

The Applicability Of Lessons From American Society For The European Union: Tolerance, Demographic Change, And Social Structure, Joseph Drew

Comparative Civilizations Review

While Americans have long tended to see our society and civilization as exceptional, in fact the civilization is primarily based on European precedent. We see ourselves, in the words of one of our most significant poets, Emma Lazarus, as the new colossus, “Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp cries she... I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” We claim to be an exception; that means that we are unique, different, what many, alluding to the New Testament as viewed by the Pilgrim founding fathers, have called “a shining city upon a hill.”2 And as “a beacon of hope.”

The Economic Regions Of Chinese Civilization: A Gis-Based Analysis Of Grain Markets In China, 1736-1842, Karl Ryavec, Mark Henderson, Rocco Bowman

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Book Review: Philip Ball. The Water Kingdom: A Secret History Of China, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

Over centuries scores of sinologists have sought to define the essence of China. Philip Ball addresses and goes well beyond the materialist paradigm of Karl Wittfogel’s hydraulic thesis, which described the role of water management in China as stimulating state development. In his theory, government emerged as the central institution to manage transportation, flood control and irrigation. Ball also sees water management as critical in Chinese civilization and injects his description with spiritual and moral content, drawing on poetry, art, biography and extensive reference to historical events. His book is an exploration of the role of water in China’s culture, …

Global Security In The Third Millennium Of The Common Era, Michael Andregg

Comparative Civilizations Review

The primary purpose of this short essay is to catalyze discussion among security professionals about how perspectives on ‘global security’ and ‘wise civilizations’ might affect military affairs during a time of great, interdisciplinary stresses that impact everyone on earth today.

Global civilization faces two main existential threats this century. The first is a quick death from general thermonuclear war or release of other Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) like exotic, genetically engineered biological weapons. The second is a slow death from incremental destruction of the living system that supports all civilizations, wise or unwise, by mechanisms like deforestation, desertification, climate …

Book Review: Steven Sabol. The Touch Of Civilization: Comparing American And Russian Internal Colonization, Robert Bedeski

Comparative Civilizations Review

America and Russia are derivative civilizations from the same Greco-Roman source, with very different results. After the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Russia proclaimed itself to be the Third Rome as it lifted the Tatar yoke. Although the U.S. did not become a country for another three centuries, the colonial experience and culture remained closer to England’s – a nation proudly conscious of its lineage.

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Table Of Contents

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Is Civilization A Good Thing?, David Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

How do we feel about “Civilization”? What emotions does the idea of “civilization” evoke from us? Why are these emotions attached to that idea? In more technical terms, what are the “connotations” of “civilization”? Laudatory or derogatory? And why do we feel the way we feel about it? What makes us welcome civilization, fear it, praise it or shun it?

The Possibility Of A Global Civilization, Robert Elliott Allinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

This article inquires into the question of what is civilization. It considers that a sine qua non of a civilization is a non-violent culture. It investigates the concept of violence and extends the concept to cover examples of citizens who live in conditions of poverty, ill health, lack of food, lack of education, lack of adequate housing, and inadequate living conditions. The argument in the article is that a civilization that allows such conditions to exist perpetrates violence upon its citizens and therefore does not deserve the appellation, ‘civilization.’ Those citizens who do not protest against such violence are not …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

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The Theoretical Status Of The Concept Of Civilization, Roger W. Wescott

Comparative Civilizations Review

This paper may be regarded as an effort to answer some questions concerning the conceptualization of civilization.

1. Whether or not concepts are essentially verbal, is the concept of civilization primarily denotative (referential) or connotative (emotive) in meaning?

2. If the concept of civilization is primarily emotive, is its emotive force predominantly laudatory or derogatory in effect?

3. When the concept of civilization is derogatory, is it decadence or outdatedness that is primarily derogated?

4. If the concept of civilization is primarily denotative, is its denotation primarily abstract (referring to culture and associated mentifacts) or primarily concrete (referring to people …

Monitoring Wise Civilization By Creating An Index, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

The Wise Civilization Index will assess how wise we are in developing and living in a sustainable civilization.

Recently, people have started to worry about the state of the climate. This has been reflected in the finding that the climate temperature should be kept to a growth of below two degrees Celsius by 2100 to save our species from a slow death (The Paris Agreement of 2015). After all, raising the human body temperature by two degrees threatens illness and even death by four degrees. The same (relatively) can be done with Earth. However, apart from the climate, the problem …

Book Review: Erich S. Gruen. Cultural Identity In The Ancient Mediterranean, John Berteaux

Comparative Civilizations Review

Erich S. Gruen’s edited collection Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean first appeared in 2011. I feel the significance of this collection is that it teases out and asks us to assess unreflective assumptions that inform not only our vision of the past, but also our grasp of present-day collective identities. Early on Gruen reports that while moderns tend to focus on difference, dissimilarity, or contrast when distinguishing cultures, in the eight sections of this text scholars identify and investigate complex connections that resulted in the cultural identities we associate with the ancient Mediterranean world. The essence of Gruen’s argument …

Book Review: Michael Farmer. An Atlas Of The Tibetan Plateau. Volume 50 In Brill’S Tibetan Studies Library Series, Constance Wilkinson

Comparative Civilizations Review

An Atlas of the Tibetan Plateau is a masterful melding of science and art created by British architect and cartographer Michael Farmer. Based on extensive contemporary data painstakingly woven from satellite imagery, the intrepid and apparently indefatigable Mr. Farmer has, over decades, produced a unique and indispensable reference work

The Mything Link: Why Sacred Storytelling Is A Key Human Survival Strategy, Ken Baskin

Comparative Civilizations Review

For several decades, societies across the globe have faced a real existential threat with challenges such as global warming. Yet no one in the elite has been able to do anything to improve conditions. We seem to be trapped in the kind of situation that Einstein described when he discussed problems that can’t be solved with the logic that created them.

Buber The Radical Egalitarian And Buber And Psychology, Kenneth Feigenbaum

Comparative Civilizations Review

My first iteration for this paper was to present Martin Buber in the context of radical politics in Germany and to focus upon his relationship to the anarchist Gustav Landauer. After a brief search, I found too few sources that were easily accessible from here in the United States, so as part of this presentation I situate Buber in the radical politics extant mostly during his time in Germany and in Berlin. I focus here on Buber’s psychology but include several intellectual side trips visiting aspects of Buber’s philosophy and his politics. I cannot separate them in discussing Buber and …

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

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Seeking Sacagawea: A Comparison Of The Accounts Of Bird Woman’S Birth, Life, And Death, Jay H. Buckley, Maren Burgess

Faculty Publications

On Saturday August 17, 1806, Captain William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition recorded: "we ... took our leave of T. Chabono, his Snake Indian wife and their Son Child who had accompanied us on our rout to the pacific Ocean in the Capacity of interpreter and interpretes." This "Snake Indian wife" Sacagawea, also known as Sacajawea or Sakakawea, had proven her worth as a significant contributor to the Expedition not only through her services as "interpretes" but also through her diplomatic skills with Natives, knowledge of the land, food gathering abilities, and the symbol of peace she represented …