History Commons^™

Statistics And Sufficiency: Toward An Intellectual History Of Russia's Rural Crisis, David W. Darrow

History Faculty Publications

The article examines the impact of the ‘rise of statistical thinking’ and statistical measurement on elite perceptions of the condition of the Russian Empire's post-emancipation peasant economy. Using archival and published sources, it argues that the increased use of statistical measurement did much to concretize in numerical (‘objective’) terms the idea of rural crisis. In particular, the combination of traditional paternalistic concerns about the sufficiency of peasant resources and the use of cadastre measurement yielded an image of the peasant household economy in which the value (the income-producing capabilities) of post-emancipation peasant allotments nearly always fell short of subsistence requirements …

(Review) L’An Mil Et La Paix De Dieu, La France Chrétienne Et Féodale 980-1060, Frederick S. Paxton

History Faculty Publications

Reviews the book 'L'an mil et la paix de Dieu: La France chretienne et feodale 980-1060,' by Dominique Barthelemy.

Force And Colonial Development In Eastern Uganda, Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

This article explores why and how administrators and missionaries in Eastern Uganda came to associate progress and development with the need to whip, coerce, and imprison women, developing new institutions for the violent control of wives that went far beyond more common patterns of informal patriarchal control. New Native Courts took over from husbands in arranging for troublesome wives to be whipped. New mission associations of church, teachers’ and evangelists’ groups, and church men’s groups worked to establish Christian patriarchal control over wives who rejected husbands and Christ. Both officials and missionaries understood clearly that the government and missions needed …

Technological Revolutions I Have Known, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Historians are trained to see things in the context of change, but even a historian might find it hard to gain a sense of perspective on the technological changes sweeping over us these days. The machinery itself is evolving with astonishing speed, and the larger culture seems obsessed with the evolution. Articles on the latest high-tech stock miracle fill the business pages while advertisements for automobiles and sport leagues bear their World Wide Web addresses like badges of honor.

Landscape Of Ghosts, River Of Dreams; A History Of Big Bend National Park, Michael Welsh

History Faculty Publications

National parks join the system for a variety of reasons: great natural beauty, the need to preserve wilderness in the face of development, historic resources that the nation needs to remember, and the like. For Texas’s first unit of the NPS system, Big Bend National Park, all of the above features applied. In addition, the distinctive ecology of a mountain, desert, and riverine landscape compelled NPS officials and local sponsors alike in the 1930s and 1940s to plead with private donors and elected representatives to make Big Bend in 1944 the 28th unit of the NPS organization (at the time …

Spain's Enterprise Of Evil, Charlotte M. Gradie

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Charlotte Gradie.

Rabasa, José . Writing violence on the northern frontier: the historiography of sixteenth century New Mexico and Florida and the legacy of conquest. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. ISBN 978-0-8223-2567-3.

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 …

Why Were The Railroads The "Contested Terrain" Of Race Relations In The Postwar South?, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Most of the debates about race relations focused on the railroads of the New South. Travel was a different story, for members of both races had no choice but to use the same railroads. As the number of railroads proliferated in the 1880s, as the number of stations quickly mounted, as dozens of counties got on a line for the first time, as previously isolated areas found themselves connected to towns and cities with different kinds of black people and different kinds of race relations, segregation became a matter of statewide attention.

Slavery, Economics And Constitutional Ideals, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

As we think about endings, however, it is also useful to think about beginnings. That is what President Abraham Lincoln did in his Second Inaugural Address, delivered just five weeks before the surrender at Appomattox and his own assassination soon thereafter. All knew, he said reflecting sadly and thoughtfully on how the Civil War came about, that slavery was, "somehow," the cause. In fact, "somehow," however, lay puzzles, contradictions, and questions. The connections between slavery and the Civil War have concerned Americans ever since the events at Appomattox.

The Inevitable Future Of The South, Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

In some ways, the Consolidation started all the way back in the big war they had in the middle of the twentieth century, when the South was still way behind the rest of the country--behind even the ridiculously cold parts up north and the ridiculously dry parts out west. They had to build big army bases and big ships for the war, so they moved some of that to the South and paid people more than southerners had ever earned before. Cities grew real fast, and people got new cars and houses and things when the war ended, but the …

Radical Religion From Shakespeare To Milton: Figures Of Nonconformity In Early Modern England By Kristen Poole (Review), Christopher Oldstone-Moore

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England by Kristen Poole.

China's Trial By Fire [And] Chinese Collaboration With Japan, 1932-1945, Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Jordan, Donald A. China's trial by fire: the Shanghai War of 1932. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.

Barrett, David P. and Shyu, Lawrence N., eds. Chinese collaboration with Japan, 1932-1945: the limits of accommodation. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Rereading The Conquest: Book Review, Charlotte M. Gradie

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Charlotte Gradie.

Krippner-Martinez, James. Rereading the Conquest: Power, Politics and the History of Early Colonial Michoacan, Mexico, 1521-1565. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

ISBN 0-271-02129-2

Historical Perspectives On Contemporary East Asia, Thomas D. Curran Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

Book review by Thomas D. Curran.

Goldman, Merle and Andrew Gordon, eds. Historical Perspectives on Contemporary East Asia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Good Friday In Omaha, Nebraska: A Mexican Celebration, Maria S. Arbelaez

History Faculty Publications

Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Nebraska commemorate Holy Week with a popular display of religious fervor. In semblance with the old religious traditions in Mexico, the Mexicanos, old and new residents, parade through the Omaha streets following the Way of the Cross on Good Friday. Processions, rituals, and plays are not only a yearly Catholic ritual in the streets of Omaha but an essential part of Mexican American and Latino cultural identity. Palm Sunday and the Way of the Cross are but a few of the constituent elements of the growing manifestations of Latino popular culture in the state. The …

Review: 'Portraits In Steel: An Illustrated History Of Jones & Laughlin Corporation', John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

Recent developments at the time of this review (2001) call for the addition of one final chapter to Portraits in Steel: An Illustrated History of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation. Jones & Laughlin's (J&L's) successor firm, LTV Steel, is currently declaring bankruptcy. Consequently, numerous questions concerning the fate of its workers, the future of a once-vibrant industrial region, and the role of the federal government in industrial planning are subjects of intense private and public concern. This work, therefore, is most timely, as it places the controversial current event in historical context, and it does so in a most elegant …

The German Free Professions After 1945, Charles E. Mcclelland

History Faculty Publications

A survey of the degree to which liberal professions have managed to recover from the damage done by the Hitler regime and World War II.

(Review) A Negotiated Settlement, Marc R. Forster

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Nonviolent Voices: Peace Churches Make A Witness, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

It is not a propitious time to b a pacifist in the United States. Polls inchcat that over 90 percent of Americans continue to support the military campaign in Afghanistan. Indi cations of such support are verywb re, as are the warnings- like the ubiquitous and vaguely threatening "Americans Unite" bump r stickers-that this time of national crisis is not the time for dissent. Not only are there very few voices in the mainstream media expressing doubts about the wisdom of the current military operation, but a number of commentators have waxed apoplectic over any possibility that there may be …

Review: 'Evangelizing The Chosen People: Missions To The Jews In America, 1880–2000', William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

As bizarre as all this may seem to the uninitiated, Yaakov Ariel makes clear in Evangelizing the Chosen People that the aforementioned event is simply part of the latest chapter in an ongoing story within American religious history. Going where no scholar has gone before, Ariel recounts the history of Protestant missions to the Jews in the United States. Making good use of missions’ organization records and the writings of Jewish converts to Christianity, Ariel divides his narrative into three parts: evangelizing Jewish immigrants (1880–1920); evangelizing the children of Jewish immigrants (1920–1965); and evangelizing Jewish Baby Boomers (1965–2000). The last …

The Hillbilly In The Living Room: Television Representations Of Southern Mountaineers In Situation Comedies, 1952-1971, Anthony Harkins

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

From Commune To Household: Statistics And The Social Construction Of Chaianov's Theory Of Peasant Economy, David W. Darrow

History Faculty Publications

Categorization plays an integral part in how we see and interpret the world. This is especially true when we attempt to comprehend the complexities of human society, where the heterogeneity of human activity across time and space demands that some criterion (class, gender, age, profession, etc.) be used to reduce the number of variables examined. From the mid-nineteenth century—as statistics evolved from the simple “political arithmetic” of tax collectors and army recruiters into a potential science of human behavior—categorizing the population became a contentious issue that reflected the social and political agendas of data collectors. At the same time, when …

Review Of The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure In America From Colonial Times To The Present, By M.V. Melosi, Mark T. Tebeau

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review: 'Brush With Death: A Social History Of Lead Poisoning', John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

Christian Warren's Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning is an ambitious attempt to trace the twentieth-century history of lead poisoning in America. As such, it focuses on a timely and important topic. Yet, despite Warren's claim that he offers a comprehensive social and cultural approach integrating discussions of three different yet interrelated modes of lead exposure -- occupational, pediatric, and environmental (universal) -- this work is uneven, at times superficial, and in several instances interpretively incorrect.

Managing A Merger, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

It was not the sort of place where one would expect to find the folks who produced the More-with-Less Cookbook, but the massive and hermetically sealed Opryland complex in Nashville was where 9,330 Mennonites gathered in early July for a momentous meeting. The two largest Mennonite bodies in the U.S. — the General Conference Mennonite Church (established in 1860) and the Mennonite Church (formally established in 1898, but with roots that go back much further) — voted to merge into one denomination, the Mennonite Church USA, after first finding a way to address the issue of homosexuality.

Civil War Visitor Center At Tredegar Iron Works (Exhibition Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of exhibition, Civil War Visitor Center at Tredegar Iron Works.

In Lockdown America: The Corruption Of Capital Punishment, William Vance Trollinger

History Faculty Publications

Reviews of three books:

• Randolph Loney, A Dream of the Tattered Man: Stories from Georgia’s Death Row.
• Austin Sarat, When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition.
• Mark Lewis Taylor, The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America.

Author's introduction: I finish this review in the shadow of Timothy McVeigh's execution. But while America's most notorious mass murderer is dead, and while the pundits continue to argue the merits and meaning of his execution, news about capital punishment just keeps coming. Next after McVeigh on the federal death list is Juan Raul Garza, but because …

Review Of A Wild Country Out In The Garden: The Spiritual Journals Of A Colonial Mexican Nun, Edited And Translated By K.A. Myers And A. Powell, And Persephone's Girdle: Narratives Of Rape In Seventeenth-Century Spanish Literature, By M.L. Welles, Elizabeth Lehfeldt

History Faculty Publications

Review of A Wild Country Out in the Garden: The Spiritual Journals of a Colonial Mexican Nun, edited and translated by K.A. Myers and A. Powell, and Persephone's Girdle: Narratives of Rape in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Literature, by M.L. Welles

Prodigal Sons, Trap Doors, And Painted Women: Reflections On Life Stories, Urban Legends, And Aural History, Charles Hardy

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Forgotten Origins Of The Ecumenical Movement In England: The Grindelwald Conferences, 1892-95, Christopher Oldstone-Moore

History Faculty Publications

Ruth Rouse, writing in A History of the Ecumenical Movement, made an extraordinary claim about the origins of modern ecumenism. She identified two factors in the 1890s that, in her words, "changed the course of Church history and made possible the modern ecumenical movement." One was the Student Christian Movement, established m 1895 by the American Methodist layman, John R. Mott. The other factor was the Grindelwald (Switzerland) Reunion Conferences, an assembly mostly of English church leaders organized by a Methodist minister, Henry Lunn, between 1892 and 1895. Mott's movement is very well known to modern readers. The Grindelwald Conferences, …