European History Commons^™

Racial Impersonation On The Elizabethan Stage: The Case Of Shakespeare Playing Aaron, Imtiaz Habib

English Faculty Publications

The article focuses on the implications of playwright William Shakespeare performing racial roles himself, such as Aaron in "Titus Andronicus." Several plays are discussed, including "Titus Andronicus," "The Merchant of Venice," and "Othello." The SHAXICON database, which compiles the text of Shakespeare's plays, is the primary source of evidence to suggest Shakespeare acted in his plays. Information about race relations in Great Britain's society during Shakespeare's time is also given.

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.

Attacking The Body Politic: The Terroristin In 1970s German Media, Clare Bielby

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In a 1977 special feature on female terrorism, the German weekly newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, published a photograph of a woman with a bomb strapped to her front, masquerading as a pregnant woman. This image perfectly encapsulates the "paradoxical" quality of the female terrorist, who instead of giving life takes it. Furthermore, if, according to Tamar Mayer, women are represented in national and cultural narratives as "the nation's social and biological womb," the threatening quality of such representations for the body politic of the nation starts to become clear. As Mayer asserts "an attack on these [female] bodies becomes an …

The Interaction Of Domestic Politics And English Naval Operations During The Civil War And Interregnum, 1642-1660, Don P. Crowson

History Theses & Dissertations

The interaction of domestic politics and the English Navy during the Civil Wars and the following interregnum is analyzed. The period of interest is during the reign of Charles I (1646-1649); the Commonwealth (1649-1653), when the government functioned essentially as a republic; and the Protectorate, (1653-1660), when the executive function was performed first by Oliver Cromwell and then by his son, Richard Cromwell. A brief description of the immediate preceding years is included to establish the political climate of the time.

The major events with political implications are considered in detail. They are: (1) the struggle between Parliament and the …

The Reinvention Of Nato, Robert M. Antis

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

In 2006, NATO is operating well out of area and conducting missions beyond the collective defense limits of its founding Treaty. NATO increasingly supports humanitarian relief operations, while also engaged in Afghanistan, the Mediterranean, and African crisis spots.

These changes provide the reason to examine the thesis: only if NATO is able to effectively transform will it be able to continue in its role as the primary European security institution. This transformation of the Alliance is a process, and one that could yet come to an untimely conclusion following any crisis. How NATO has adapted so far, and the potential …

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 Sharper Image: Bringing Irish Nationalist Identity Into Focus, 1880-1923, Meghan M. Ferriter

History Theses & Dissertations

From 1880 to 1923, Irish nationalists created and sustained an independent cultural identity shaped by external and internal forces. British political cartoons reveal key external cultural perceptions of the Irish, while Irish nationalist writings endorse internal concepts of character and project political aims. Irish nationalists present an uninterrupted internal identity in pursuit of autonomy. Images published in Punch, or the London Charivari, provide external factors of identity that evolve from exaggerated threat to trivial concern while the nationalist political demands they represent escalate.

Identity is the product of complex interaction and compromise between external and internal definitions. Individuals …

Austrian Patriots And German Nationalists: Political Radicalism And Austrian Identity In Fin-De-Siècle Vienna, Scott O. Moore

History Theses & Dissertations

The political atmosphere of the last decades of the Austrian Empire is often characterized by the outbreak of radical political movements. These movements were sharply critical of the political, social, and economic developments which resulted from the state's transition into a modern, industrial society. Two of these movements, the Christian Socialist Party, led by Dr. Karl Lueger, and the Pan-German Nationalist Party, led by Georg von Schonerer, became notable for their use of anti-Semitism as a means of vocalizing these criticisms. While these two groups were contemporaries, Lueger's Christian Socialist's achieved unparalleled success, dominating Viennese politics by 1900; and Schonerer's …

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 …

On Harvey's Paris, Capital Of Modernity, Lauren Elkin

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This is an inarguably beautiful book. Slightly textured yet sleek, the cover depicts the Street of Virtues (that is, Rue des Vertus in the Third Arrondissement), a picturesque pre-Haussmannian Parisian side street, all decaying buildings, dark corners, and muddied cobblestones. Taken by Marville in linear perspective, the photograph features, almost as an afterthought, a down-at-heel horse and carriage at the vanishing point. The casual Francophile browsing in the bookstore will flip through and feel his heartbeat speed up at the sight of so many period photographs and illustrations. Harvey appears to have written a love letter to everybody's …

Johann August Weppen's Der Hessische Officer In Amerika And David Christoph Seybold's Reizenstein: The American Revolution And The German Bürgertum's Reassessment Of America, Virginia Sasser Delacey

Institute for the Humanities Theses

While American, British, and French reactions to the American Revolution are well-known, those of the German people are not, despite the presence of almost 30,000 German soldiers in America fighting for the British army and hundreds of German volunteers fighting for the American patriots. The participation of German soldiers on both sides of the conflict inspired numerous works of German poetry, prose, and drama, all largely forgotten in the wake of the French Revolution and the rise of German Classicism and Romanticism. This thesis examines two works that have received brief mention in the past two centuries: Der hessische Officier …

Review Of Kann Gestern Besser Werden?, By Joern Ruesen, Rares Piloiu

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

"Those Who Can Suffer The Most": Cultural And Religious Symbols Within Irish Republican Prison Protests, Betsy L. Morgan-Cutright

History Theses & Dissertations

Hunger striking was a powerful weapon used by the Irish Republican Army throughout the twentieth century. This study will attempt to answer the question of which specific symbols were visible during the prison protests and hunger strikes in Northern Ireland from 1976 to 1981. It will also address how such symbols relate to the cult of Irish Republican martyrdom and Catholicism.

Several symbols manifested themselves during this time period. Upon examination, a pattern emerges where two overriding yet contradictory themes were used far more frequently than any other. These two themes were those of traditional Irish Republicanism and Irish Catholicism, …

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 …

The Synod Of Dordrecht 1618-1619. The Influence Of Calvinism On The Development Of Freedom In The Netherlands In The Period 1560-1630, Joseph A. Van Burik

Institute for the Humanities Theses

The Synod of Dordrecht was an important event in the history of the Dutch Republic. A serious, combined religious and political conflict between orthodox and liberal Calvinists had brought the Republic to the brink of civil war. The forceful intervention of the stadholder Prince Maurice in 1617 had cleared the political situation and it was the task of the Synod to solve the religious aspect of the conflict. The Synod was a victory for orthodox Calvinism; the Reformed Church, the state and local governments were purged from liberal elements, and new laws, limiting further the freedom for non-Reformed religions were …

Bolshevism And The Avant-Garde: Marxist Ideology And The Aesthetics Of Soviet Film, 1923-28, Garrett H. Booker

History Theses & Dissertations

When Eisenstein's Strike burst onto the cultural scene in 1925, Soviet cinema began a creative odyssey that left to posterity a brilliant collection of films that redefined the manner in which audiences viewed them. Not only was the form of these films dynamic and innovative, but their content captured the heroic actions of a new historical subject, the revolutionary proletariat. As the Soviet State assumed control over the production of films, politics imprinted its indelible mark on the content of these films, especially as Stalin tightened his grip over all aspects of artistic life. The author of this project will …

The Rhetoric And Reality Of Famine In Early Modern Europe, Karen Russell Adams

History Theses & Dissertations

Famine in early modern Europe was a reoccurring phenomenon that caused stress on individuals and their societies. In most historical accounts of famine, authors have placed emphasis on either the physical aspects of starvation, including studies of famine victims, both live and post mortem, or the disastrous effects of such crises on demographics. On occasion, a researcher has instead probed the accounts of famine left behind by its victims. This essay is an attempt to correlate famine narratives with the biological aspects of starvation.

In order to blend the physical and social aspects of famine, this researcher has investigated three …

Court, Clients And Kingship: A Study Of Royal Executive Style During The Reign Of James I, Nick Jon Ziegler

History Theses & Dissertations

The thesis explores James Stuart's distinct style of kingship as a self-proclaimed absolute monarch whose writings, speeches and public image belied his intention to rule moderately for the welfare of his subjects. The king's reign is analyzed with regard to his ideas on monarchy and government, ecclesiastical policies, problems with clientage, relations with favourites and court culture. Both in Scotland and England, James' writings reveal his static approach to governing key institutions of church and state. The Jacobean court served as the locus of state political power as well as royal patronage, thus drawing many suitors for public offices and …

The Search For Vinland: Reconciling Literature And Archaeology, Clifford W. Anderson

History Theses & Dissertations

It is now generally accepted that Columbus was not the first white European to have visited or attempted colonization of North America. It is also generally accepted that the only hard evidence available on the subject suggests that Norse settlers made the first attempt around 1000 CE. The term most often associated with the Norse settlement in question is "Vinland." However, several scholars are unwilling to associate Vinland with the location of the relevant archaeological find at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. Utilizing an analysis of the two sagas that refer to the settlement and an authentication of the cartographical evidence, …

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 …

One Mistress And No Master: Elizabeth I And Her Use Of Public Personas To Gain And Maintain Power, Michael J. Davye

History Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the evolution of the personas that Elizabeth used to gain, hold, and wield power during her reign as Queen of England. These personas were most likely conscious constructs created to deal with the problems Elizabeth faced as ruler of England. She had been bastardized by her father, Henry VIII, and, therefore, was considered by many to have no legitimate claim to the throne. But this problem was almost insignificant in contrast to the problems she faced trying to assert her authority as a female monarch. Elizabeth realized the prevailing wisdom of the …

Henri Iv As Military Commander, Terence W. Loveridge

History Theses & Dissertations

Henri IV won the throne of France as a feat of arms in a time of great social, religious, economic and military transformation. Militarily, Henri has generally been regarded as a gallant, opportunistic and lucky cavalry commander whose remarkable sense of timing and flexible personal principles enabled him to play a major role in the ending of the Wars of Religion in France. Current debate over the "Military Revolution" of the sixteenth century and the "Revolution in Military Affairs" of the twentieth has renewed interest in both the characters and the techniques of warfare in transformation.

New approaches to military …

Evolution And Devolution: The Dynamics Of Sovereignty And Security In Post-Cold War Europe, Thomas M. Lansford

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

At a time when individual defense outlays are being significantly diminished, the national governments of Western Europe are confronted with the necessity of reforming and adapting their militaries to address new security concerns and undertake new missions. This study will examine multinational military integration as one possible approach whereby national governments can limit defense spending and still maintain military capabilities to meet the contemporary security threats faced by the nation states of the continent. The first three chapters of the work will explore the broad patterns of change in the international system which have propelled states to reexamine how they …

Russian Supply Efforts In America During The First World War, Dale C. Rielage

History Theses & Dissertations

The Russian government entered the First World War unprepared for the strains that modern warfare would impose on its industrial resources. As a result, Russia turned to foreign suppliers, most significantly the United States, and made extensive purchases largely financed by British loans. These foreign supply efforts involved both the Tsarist government and representatives of the newly emerging civil elements in Russian society.

Central to the experience of Russian purchasing in the United States was the Russian Supply Commission in America. Established in October 1915 as a coordinating body, the Supply Commission was noteworthy in that it included representatives of …

Fact Or Fiction? The Use Of Eighteenth-Century Criminal Biographies In Historical Studies, Steven M. Wakefield

History Theses & Dissertations

Marxist studies concerning crime and criminality in eighteenth-century England, and especially London, have explained the problem strictly in terms of a class based struggle between the elites and the working poor. Marxists further contend that the majority of criminals hanged for capital offenses during the eighteenth-century also came Rom the working poor. Using an analysis of criminal biographies written between 1723 and 1783, this study questions the Marxist paradigm by suggesting that eighteenth-century crime and criminality were not inter-class conflicts but more intra-class struggles, and hangings reflected this.

The United States And The Netherlands: A Study Of Early Cold War Cooperation, Michael R. Hirman

History Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the policy that the United States utilized between 1945 and 1950 to enlist Dutch support for post-war European organizations and the place of this relationship within United States overall Cold War policy. The Netherlands willingness to cooperate and further United States objectives significantly contributed to the development of economic reconstruction and military security in Western Europe. In addition the United States unprecedented vision for a multilateral defense treaty came to fruition in part through Dutch support and compliance. However, the Dutch also had to make some historic changes. The United States opposed the Dutch attempt to retake …

Eisenhower And Khrushchev At The Paris Summit: Anatomy Of A Failure, Vincent Michael Kapral

History Theses & Dissertations

Although it seemed at the time that the destruction of a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Soviet territory, slightly over two weeks prior to the Four-Power May 1960 Paris Conference had ended the summit, more deeply rooted historical differences ensured the meeting's failure. While President Dwight Eisenhower sought to ensure a national policy of defense sufficiency via his New Look strategy, he faced many internal and external critics who over-stepped or underutilized their positions. These included Allen Dulles, Christian Herter, Richard Bissell and Charles De Gaulle. Nikita Khrushchev faced internal division over his desires to achieve a new peaceful coexistence as …

The Men Behind The Oath: A Profile Of The German Officer Corps In The Interwar Period, 1919-1939, Brian E. Crim

History Theses & Dissertations

The predominance of technocrats within the Reichswehr, the inability of the officer corps to reassert its elite status in the Weimar era, and the extensive interaction between the Reichswehr and a militaristic German society contributed to Hitler's successful absorption of military authority in the 1930s. The social and political upheaval resulting in part from the First World War diffused military authority and diminished the role of the officer corps in German society. The corps struggled to maintain its historic level of corporateness and consistently failed to fulfill its responsibility to the Weimar Republic. The Reichswehr's top officers worked to revitalize …