History Commons^™

The Tide Is Setting Strongly Against Us, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Lincoln's bid for reelection in 1864 faced serious challenges from a popular opponent and a nation weary of war. For a good part of 1864 -- the year he faced reelection -- Abraham Lincoln had little faith that he would win or even be renominated.

‘Broken Brotherhood: The Rise And Fall Of The National Afro-American Council,’ By Benjamin R. Justesen, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

The dominance of Booker T. Washington and the loyalty of most African Americans to the Republican Party are often mistaken as markers of black political unanimity at the turn of the twentieth century. Even worse, they are assumed to stand for the whole of African American political life. Benjamin R. Justesen’s story of the struggles to establish and sustain the National Afro-American Council should serve as an important reminder of the tensions, diversity, and energy within black politics in this period. The reminder is so important, and so potential productive, that one wishes that Broken Brotherhood: The Rise and Fall …

Turning Toward Place, Space, And Time, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

A critical geography and a new historicism have reoriented many humanists and social science disciplines. Like the spatial turn, the temporal turn now grounds the analysis of everything from literature to sociology in new kinds of contexts. The exciting challenge before us now is integrating those new perspectives, taking advantage of what they have to teach us.

'Not Yet Ready': Australian University Libraries And Carnegie Corporation Philanthropy, 1935-1945, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

In recent years the Carnegie Corporation's influence on Australian library development has been fruitfully examined from many angles, among them its role in promoting free-library movements in the various states. One piece of the story, however, remains mostly in the shadows: the Corporation's initiatives pointing towards modernizing and professionalizing Australian university libraries. Although the Corporation's philanthropic enterprise at the university level yielded mixed results at best, it was not inconsequential. It provided a blueprint for future university-library development in Australia. In one instance, at the University of Melbourne, it inspired a vice-chancellor to articulate a vision of a library future …

Ethno-Nationalism, Islam And The State In The Caucasus: Post-Soviet Disorder (Review), Sean Pollock

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book Ethno-Nationalism, Islam and the State in the Caucasus: Post-Soviet Disorder (edited by Moshe Gammer).

Literary Societies Of Republican China, Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Denton, Kirk A. and Michel Hockx, eds. Literary Societies of Republican China. Lanham: Lexington Books, Rowman & Littlefield, 2008.

Review Of Convent Times: A Social History In The Foundations Of Modern Spain, By A. Atienza, Elizabeth Lehfeldt

History Faculty Publications

Review of Convent Times: A Social History in the Foundations of Modern Spain, by A. Atienza

Sculpted Landscapes: Art & Place In Cleveland's Cultural Gardens, 1916-2006, Mark T. Tebeau

History Faculty Publications

Perhaps the world's first peace garden, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens embody the history of twentieth-century America and reveal the complex interrelations between art and place. This essay uses the Cleveland Cultural Gardens as a lens through which to explore how art and place have intersected over time. It explores how communities have negotiated questions of national, ethnic, and American identity and embedded those identities into the vernacular landscape. It considers how the particulars of place were embedded into a public garden and asks whether it is possible for public art to transcend its place both in terms of geography and …

Empire, Horses And Trade: An Examination Of Sixteenth Century Portuguese Efforts To Control Trade In Arab And Persian Horses Across The Arabian Sea, Chandra R. De Silva

History Faculty Publications

[First paragraph] Portuguese dominance over the trade in horses across the Arabian Sea from West Asia to the western littoral of India lasted approximately from the Portuguese capture of Goa in 1510 to their loss of Ormuz to the Persians in 1622. As will be evident from the subsequent discussion, Portuguese control was incomplete and its significance varied from area to area and also from time to time. Nevertheless, a study of their attempts to control this trade is useful for three major reasons.

What Lincoln Was Up Against: The Context Of Leadership, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Abraham Lincoln faced desperate challenges from the moment he took office until the day he was killed. While Union armies in the field struggled for four years against dismayingly effective Confederate forces, Lincoln fought to keep the North from breaking apart. The task proved unrelenting.

Domesticating The Diaspora: Memory And The Life Of Sister Katie, Caroline Waldron Merithew

History Faculty Publications

Three shrines in Illinois honor heroes of the working class: one for the legendary Mother Jones; one for the Virden martyrs, who died for coal mining unionism, and whose memory is kept alive by labor organizers around the world; and one for Catherine (Katie) Bianco DeRorre. Katie's monument, unlike the others, draws few visitors today. But when it was dedicated in 1961, men and women — on the floor of the U.S. Congress, in the neighborhood where Katie grew up, at American universities, in union halls, on the streets of New York City, and in Milan — took notice and …

Not All Autobiography Is Scholarship: Thinking, As A Catholic, About History, Una M. Cadegan

History Faculty Publications

My premise in this essay is that the historian of religion who is a believer has a distinctive need for conscious reflection on this autobiographical connection. Without conscious reflection, it is too easy fall into cheerleading on the one hand or score-settling on the other. is even easier, perhaps, to lapse into self-indulgence-hence the caveat of my title, which is aimed primarily at myself. Thinking about the roots of my work as an historian has made me more consciously attentive to doing the work of the historian, as historian, well. Thinking about where that work has taken me not only …

Independence, Revolution, And Celebration In Mexico: 1810, 1910, And 2010, Brian Stauffer, Salvador Salinas

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Inszenierte Weltgeltung Einer Prima Inter Pares? Die Berliner Universität Und Ihr Jubiläum 1910“ [Staged World Respect For A Prima Inter Pares? Berlin University And Its Jubilee In 1910], Charles E. Mcclelland

History Faculty Publications

"Before the twin catastrophes of the Third Reich and World War II, Berlin was the intellectual epicenter of the world and the Humboldt [University] the university in Berlin.” But there were already signs at the celebration of its centenary in 1910 that its place at the pinnacle of world research universities had reached its apogee.

(Review) Walter Ziegler, Die Entscheidung Deutscher Länder Für Oder Gegen Luther..., Marc R. Forster

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Saving Savannah: The City And The Civil War (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book, Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War by Jacqueline Jones. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Ottoman And Republican Turkish Labour History: An Introduction, Touraj Atabaki, Gavin D. Brockett

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Great Blunders?: The Great Wall Of China, The Berlin Wall, And The Proposed United States/Mexico Border Fence, Helmut Langerbein

History Faculty Publications

This article presents an analysis of the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall which reveals that both grew from unique political, historical, geographical, cultural, and economic circumstances. The purpose of this article is to provide new arguments for a debate that all too often has been waged with emotions, polemics, and misinformation. The idea for this article evolved from discussions with colleagues and students who have asked the author on his opinion on the Berlin Wall and the proposed United States/Mexico border fence. This article could be useful for a variety of teaching activities in World History and …

Estatura Y Condiciones De Vida En Tiempos De Morelos, Amilcar Challú

History Faculty Publications

¿Cuánto medía Morelos? ¿Un metro y medio? ¿Era de estatura media? Lo que implica fi nalmente preguntar: ¿cuál era la estatura media en los tiempos de Morelos? Al fi nal de esta pesquisa la respuesta a esas preguntas quedará clara. Morelos medía cerca de 1.60 cm, unos cuatro centímetros más baja que la media de los nacidos en su año (1764). Pero comparado con los nacidos en el año de su muerte (1815), la estatura de Morelos hubiera estado casi en el promedio. El caso de la estatura de Morelos es una anécdota, pero el ejercicio que nos permite estimar …

Review Of How Cities Won The West: Four Centuries Of Urban Change In Western North America, Linda English

History Faculty Publications

By invoking the intentionally provocative phrase "Won the West," Carl Abbott's tide alerts readers of two important themes outlined in his story: the centrality and, indeed, "triumph" of cities on the western landscape and the author's desire to situate cities at die heart of historical debates on the American West. Regarding the latter point, his book is as much a history of the North American West as it is a history of cities within it—a relationship inextricably linked. Abbott also traces the changes western cities experienced from their earliest frontier stage to their present-day status as centers for global innovation. …

Review Of Storm Over The Bay: The People Of Corpus Christi And Their Port. By Mary Jo O’Rear. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2009. Pp. 200. Bibliography, Index, Illustrations. Isbn 978-1603440882 . $24.95., Cesar Garcia

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lincoln's America 2.0, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

For most people at the time, far from battles or capitals, the Civil War arrived in long gray columns of text. A new system of telegraph stations, railroads, and press organizations spread words with unprecedented speed and in enormous quantity. Reports form the battlefield poured out in brief messages and long torrents, editorials commenting on every event and utterance. Even generals and presidents understood the shape and meaning of the Civil War through print.

Historic Heteroessentialism And Other Orderings In Early America, Jen Manion

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review: 'Fighting Traffic: The Dawn Of The Motor Age In The American City', John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

During the early 1960s, as the Golden Age of the automobile in America began to wane, several commentators, including Lewis Mumford, raised the critical question of whether the automobile existed for the modern city or the city for the automobile. How and when the automobile became central to urban life is deftly addressed in Peter Norton’s Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. This study is certainly one of the most important monographs focusing on the place of the automobile in American society within a historical context to appear in recent times; it interestingly supplements …

Irregulars: Guerrilla And Ranchero Warfare In South Texas And Northern Mexico During The Mexican - American War, James Mills

History Faculty Publications

The overall outcome of the Mexican - American War (1846-1848) was determined largely by regular military forces. There was, however, another war within this war waged by irregulars, guerrillas, and rancheros from Mexico, as well as by Texas Rangers and elements within the U.S. volunteers. Although these forces were important to both sides in the war effort, people most often remember them for the atrocities they committed.

Club Talk: Gossip, Masculinity And Oral Communities In Late Nineteenth-Century London, Amy Milne-Smith

History Faculty Publications

Gossip is not only a guilty pleasure; it is also an important tool of social control. Nowhere is this more evident than in the nineteenth‐century gentlemen's clubs of London. This article looks at the private lives of elite men whose gossip helped shape class and gender ideals. Archival documents, private memoirs and periodical literature provide both an insider and outsider vision of a very private world. Looking at how men gossiped points to codes of gentlemanly behaviour, the importance of homosocial life, and the place of oral culture in a modern, literate age.

Vocabularies Of Grief And Consolation In Ninth-Century Francia, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Revealing And Reveling In Late Medieval Sermons From England: Siegfried Wenzel, Preaching In The Age Of Chaucer: Selected Sermons In Translation, Chris L. Nighman

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Decent Colonialism? Pure Science And Colonial Ideology In The Netherlands East Indies, 1910–1929, Andrew Goss

History Faculty Publications

This article examines changes within the Dutch civilising mission ideology after the decline of the Ethical Policy. Support of pure science, scientific knowledge that supposedly transcended ideology and politics, allowed the colonial administration to continue to project their rule as decent and moral, even as conflict and repression dominated colonial politics in the 1920s. The argument starts with the construction of pure science after 1910, under the care of J.C. Koningsberger, out of the research traditions at the Department of Agriculture. It next examines the creation of institutions and agendas of pure science. And finally it analyses the absorption of …

An Intimate Affair: Women, Lingerie, And Sexuality, Margaret Lowe

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.