Associate Professor Of History Research Articles

Education, Technology and Industrial Peformance in Europe, 1850–1939 ed. by Robert Fox and Anna Guagnini

technology and culture Book Reviews 403 be manipulated like any other tool—cannot be ignored without im­ periling our interpretations. Lissa Roberts Dr. Roberts is associate professor of history at San Diego State University. She has written a number of articles on the language and instruments of 18th-century chemis­ try and is currently completing a book entitled The Instrumental Space: A History of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry. Education, Technology and Industrial Peformance in Europe, 1850—1939. Edited by Robert Fox and Anna Guagnini. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xiii + 302; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $59.95. The question posed by this volume is important: Why, if technical education was a driving factor in European industrialization, did na­ tions making similar efforts in such training have widely variable rates of development? This issue was discussed by the authors at two workshops in London (1985) and Paris (1987), and the conclusions appear here under four headings. The first section analyzes technical education and its results in England, France, and Germany. The sec­ ond explains how Belgium, Sweden, Spain, and Italy sought to com­ pete with “the giants.” The third examines the underutilization of technical knowledge even in successful France and England. And the fourth compares European with U.S. experience in education-forindustrialization . The authors and editors are historians and social scientists from all the nations studied. The burden of the argument, as stated by Robert Fox and Anna Guagnini in the introduction, is that comparative technological histo­ ries can show how variations in development result from “the complex interweaving of multiple circumstances” instead of “a single root-cause” such as inadequate technical education or restricted in­ vestment (p. 2). Both industrialization and education were “products of the same multi-faceted social and economic background” favoring or inhibiting change in each nation, making “easy generalizations” impossible, even the generalization that “decentralization” (laissezfaire , etc.) was always favorable and centralized bureaucratic planning unfavorable (p. 5). This similarities-with-differences approach really has opened new avenues for investigation by these specialists. Identified similarities in­ clude campaigns for technical training in all the nations studied, along with an antiutilitarianbias and resistanceby educational establishments devoted mainly to high literary culture. Moreover, all governments still leaned toward military and civil engineering long after the need for more industrial (which is to say, mechanical and electrical) engineer­ ing was obvious. Hence the differing degrees to which scientific- 404 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE technological elites, especially in the newer fields, could face down liter­ ary and governmental elites determined progress in technical training. In some nations (notably, Spain and Italy and, later, England), literary culture maintained greater influence, while in others (Germany and France) strong military and administrative traditions skewed the edu­ cational enterprise. Differences in industrialization patterns clearly emerged in no small part from these variations in technical education. Even more striking observations are presented when the authors consider the contexts (or, perhaps better, the constraints) affecting the use of technically trained personnel for industrialization. Some­ times problems arose because of accommodations to general culture, as in the case of the overintellectualized German Technische Hochschulen turning out scientists rather than usable production talent for industry. Sometimes the problems came from economic or political circumstances, as when the first French electrical engineers emerged in a period of economic depression and approaching war. But most often problems occurred because of unresponsive governmental and cultural elites, as class fears or, more often, indifference and disdain stood in the way ofindustrial progress. The classic case ofthis last form ofconstraint might well be Spain, where Catalan and Basque entrepre­ neurs took the initiative, only to have their progress exacerbate rela­ tions with Madrid traditionalists and retard overall advance. In con­ trast, a similar situation in France, where Grenoble leapt ahead of a dilatory Paris government, apparently spurred progress. And there was often outright encouragement ofregional experimentation among the decentralized English, Italians, Americans, and Belgians. The rapid acceleration ofindustry in such disparate systems as the German and the American, along with the above examples, would seem proof positive of this book’s thesis that there can be no easy explanations. Education, Technology and IndustrialPerformance in Europe contributes significantly to the increasingly frequent...

Virtue and Violence: Female Ultraists and the Politics of Non-Resistance

Virtue and Violence: Female Ultraists and the Politics of Non-Resistance Lori D. Ginzberg* Given what we know—or assume—about women and peace, a paper about female ultraists and the radical, no-government pacifism known as non-resistance seems almost too obvious. Ofcourse there was an association between antebellum women and peace. For weren't women far less prone than men to violence and all too often its victims? Didn't antebellum Protestants base their critique ofnorthern society in part on the assumption that female sensibilities were on a higher moral plane than men's? And hadn't Emerson written in 1838 that war was a juvenile state in men's development? (Emerson, "War," 156). Given the now-familiar antebellum ideology offemale moral superiority and ofan aggressive female activism on behalfofthose virtues, as well as the often remarked distaste ofwomen for warmaking, not to mention the role ofQuaker women as leaders in all forms of female activism, what could be more logical than to associate Christian women with efforts forpeace? This association seems even more self-evident when one observes that the New England Non-Resistance Society, like the Garrisonian movement generally, opened virtually all levels of organizational life to women. For women, apacifism that fits closely withpresumed feminine characteristics has at times justified activism on behalf ofnational and international change. The particular ideology about gender that gained prominence among the antebellum northern middle classes practically assured women's loyalty to peace. To the white, middle-class Protestants who dominated antebellum reform, peace itself suggested a feminization of power, a capitulation to or celebration of "female" standards for society. Women, after all, did not prove their "womanliness" through violence: quite the contrary. According to William Ladd, the leader ofthe American Peace Society, "Many a man has not the moral courage to plead for Peace, for fear he shall be accused of effeminacy and cowardice. Woman has no such fear" (Philanthropos, 4). Like many other abolitionists, Stephen Foster's pacifism was worn thinby events ofthe 1850s, butthe terms ofhis capitulation are most interesting, asheproclaimed, "I thinkJohnBrownhas shown himself a man, in comparison with the Non-Resistants!"(Ziegler, *Lori D. Ginzberg, Associate Professor ofHistory and Women's Studies at Penn State University, is author of Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Yale UP, 1990). She would like to thank J. William Frost and Lawrence J. Friedman for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. 18Quaker History 141). The nineteenth-century male might squirm at the command to "turn the other cheek," but women, activists insisted, were virtually formed to exercise Christian restraint. (A warning may be in order here that this was not always easy; the Quaker Sarah Grimké, whom her sister Angelina considered "certainly more fixed in her views [about non-resistance] than I am," nonetheless confessed, "This doctrine ofnon-resistance is the greatest test of our faith." [Angelina Grimké to Theodore Weld, Jan. 21, 1838, Barnes II: 520, Sarah Grimké to Gerrit Smith, Apr. 9, 1837, Barnes, 1: 377]) Peace was as much a female responsibility as were other forms of moral activism; indeed, Ladd noted that it was more appropriately a woman's topic "for the cause of Peace may be advocated in any company, without danger of offending the most sensitive delicacy" (Philanthropos, 32). Compelling Questions But there are other, more complicated and, I believe, more compelling questions concerning the relationship between non-resistance and its women adherents than questions ofgender identity and stereotypes. However small and isolated a group nonresistants were, even among abolitionists , they offer lessons for the intellectual history of women, gender identity, and the state. Women were not merely "foot soldiers" to the cause; the ideology ofnonresistance appealed to women who were grappling in a particular way to define their relationship to the state. For nonresistants did not simply reject violent means; they opposed, in fundamental ways and at a particularly intriguing historical moment (and for not much more than a moment, lifelong pacifists like Lucretia Mott aside), any allegiance to earthly governments which, they claimed, "are sustained by violence" (Oberlin, NR, Sept. 9, 1840, 65). As Quakers had long demonstrated, pacifism...

"Instruments of Seduction": A Tale of Two Women

Journal Article “Instruments of Seduction”: A Tale of Two Women Get access Sandra F. VanBurkleo Sandra F. VanBurkleo Sandra F. VanBurkleo, Associate Professor of History at Wayne State University in Detroit, is completing a book, “Belonging to the World”: Women's Rights and American Constitutional Culture. She teaches and writes in the field of American legal and constitutional history. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar OAH Magazine of History, Volume 9, Issue 2, Winter 1995, Pages 8–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/9.2.8 Published: 01 January 1995

Boarding Schools, Women Teachers, and Domesticity: Reforming Girls' Secondary Education in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century

Rebecca Rogers is associate professor of history at the University of Iowa, currently on leave as a maitre de conference at the University of Strasbourg in France. She has published Les Demoiselles de la Legion d'honneur: Les Maisons d'&Iucation de la Legion d'honneur au XIXe si~ee (Paris, 1992) and is working on articles about girls' education in the nineteenth century. Research for this article was sponsored in part by an Old Gold summer fellowship from the University of Iowa and a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Travel Fellowship. The University of Iowa granted me a developmental leave in which to write. Special thanks go to the following people for their comments and suggestions: Ken Cmiel, Mary Louise Roberts, the anonymous readers for the journal, and the participants in the French Cultural Studies Conference at the University of South Dakota. My research assistants, Andy Seehusen, Mark Stemen, and Sara Kimble provided invaluable services, as did Franois Debarre in the archives of the Seine.

Actives and Contemplatives: The Female Religious of the Low Countries before and after Trent

ACTIVES AND CONTEMPLATIVES: THE FEMALE RELIGIOUS OF THE LOW COUNTRIES BEFORE AND AFTER TRENT BY Craig Harune* The study of religious women in early modern Catholicism is now indisputably a growth-industry.1 It is a good time, therefore, to con- *Mr. Harline is an associate professor of history in Brigham Young University. He wishes to express his gratitude to Jodi Bilinkoff, Walter Simons, and Paula Kelly for their comments and bibliographical suggestions, as well as to the several institutions that have supported the research from which this article grew, especially the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the University of Idaho Research Council, and the College ofFamily, Home, and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University. Abbreviations: AAM = Archive of the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels NAGN = Nieuw Algemene Geschiedenes der Nederlanden¦This article is based on secondary materials (especially works in English) for conditions outside the Low Countries, and on both archival and secondary materials for conditions within. For a more general review of the literature on female religious, see the opening bibliographical note to my Burdens ofSisterMargaret (New York, 1994). A sample of useful works for the particular subject of contemplatives and actives includes , for the medieval period, Clifford H. Lawrence, Medieval Monasticism (New York, 1984); Lina Eckenstein, Women under Monasticism (New York, 1963); Eileen Power, Medieval English Nunneries, c 1275 to 1535 (Cambridge, 1922); John R. H . Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order. . . to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968); William A. Hinnebusch, O.P., The History of the Dominican Order. . . to 1500 (New York, 1966); Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians: Ideals and Reality (Kent, Ohio, 1977); Lillian T. Shank and John A. Nichols (cas.). MedievalReligious Women. Vol. II: Peaceweavers (Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1987); Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women inMedievalFrance(Chicago, 1991 ); and, for an excellent introduction to the medieval actives in the Low Countries, Vols. Ill and IV of the new Algemene Geschiedenes der Nederlanden (Haarlem, 1979). For the early modern period see Outram Evennett's assessment of religious in The Spirit of the Counter-Reformation (Notre Dame, Indiana, 1968); such overviews as Joyce Irwin's "Society and the Sexes," in Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research, ed. Steven Ozment (St. Louis, 1982); Kathryn Norberg's "The Counter-Reformation and Women, Religious and Lay," in Catholicism in Early Modern History: A Guide to Research, ed. John O'Malley (St. Louis, 1988); F. Ellen Weaver's "Women and Religion 541 542ACTIVES AND CONTEMPLATIVES front a lingering problem in the generally healthy enterprise: the relative development and importance of active and contemplative orders. Three themes stand out in my reading of the historical literature on this subject: ( 1 ) that the first significant and lasting emergence of an "active" spirituality or apostolate among women religious occurred during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, (2) that this type of spirituality was characteristic of early modern religious sensibilities, and (3) that the decrees and agents ofthe Council ofTrent successfully militated—at least for many decades—against the involvement of women in an active apostolate and insisted that they submit to longapproved contemplative forms. My intent is not altogether to refute these themes, but to suggest possibilities for refinement and further research, especially through illustration of conditions in the Catholic Low Countries—an area where none of the themes is very useful at all. in Early Modern France," Catholic Historical Review, LXVII 0anuary, 1981), 50—59; and such synthetic contributions as Owen Hufton and Frank Tallett, "Communities of Women, the Religious Life, and Public Service in Eighteenth-Century France," in Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500 to the Present, eds. Marilyn J. Boxer et al (Oxford, 1987); Merry Wiesner, "Nuns, Wives and Mothers: Women and the Reformation in Germany," in Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe, ed. Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington, Indiana, 1989); Sherrin Marshall, "Protestant , Catholic, andJewish Women in the Early Modern Netherlands," in the same volume; William Monter, "Protestant Wives, Catholic Saints, and the Devil's Handmaid: Women in the Age of Reformations," in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, 2d edition, edd. Renate Bridenthal et al. (Boston, 1987). Helpful specialized works were Robert Lemoine, Le Droit des Religieux, du Concile de Trente aux...

The Engineered Factory

The Engineered Factory LINDY BIGGS The story of the rational, engineered factory as conceived by indus­ trial engineers is a new chapter in the history of mass production. We know about the 19th-century changes in technology, about the revolutionary conception of interchangeable parts and increasing di­ vision of labor, but we know little about how 20th-century industrial engineers organized the increasingly complex components of mass production as they redesigned the factory.1 Much of the history of modern production technology involves the factory in some way—the machines, the workers, the managers—but the factory building—its design, layout, and construction—has re­ ceived far less attention than the manufacturing process or its prod­ uct.2 The factory building can be viewed in at least two ways: as an artifact of industrial change and as a dynamic element in the produc­ tion process. In this article I examine the latter, the way factory design became increasingly important to production in the early 20th cen­ tury. As engineers began to consider the factory building as a major component of the production process, the building became part of production technology, considered by some engineers to be “the mas­ ter machine.” Behind the changing attitudes about the factory at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century lay the new and rapidly growing profession of industrial engineering. Through their strong Dr. Biggs is associate professor of history at Auburn University. 'See Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1977), and David Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production (Baltimore, 1984), for development of interchangeable parts and mass production. 2Notable exceptions are John Coolidge, Mill and Mansion (New York, 1942), on the development of Lowell, Massachusetts; Reyner Banham, Concrete Atlantis (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), on American industrial architecture and its relationship to modern archi­ tecture; William Pearson, American Buildings and Their Architects (New York, 1986). See also Jennifer Tann, The Development ofthe Factory (London, 1970), on the early English factory. Daniel Nelson gives minor treatment to factory buildings in his Managers and Workers (Madison, Wis., 1975); and Alfred Chandler acknowledges the significance of factory planning and design in The Visible Hand (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), but does not elaborate the point.© 1995 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/95/3602-0013SO1.00 S174 The Engineered Factory S175 belief in systemization and rationalization, industrial engineers tried to solve complex problems in production and industrial organization that plagued turn-of-the-century manufacturers. The engineers changed almost everything about the factory—the design of the buildings, the layout of machinery, the organization of work, and the system of management. * * * At the end of the 19th century, American industry was outgrowing its factories and management practices. The late 19th century saw factories grow from small-scale operations, often owned and man­ aged by one family, to large-scale complex manufacturing enterprises owned by corporations and run by specially hired managers. New management theories, introduced by F. W. Taylor and others, ad­ dressed the changes that came with the new scale and complexity of industry. The new management techniques sought, among other things, to reduce costs by tightening the chain of command in facto­ ries and intensifying the work process. Daniel Nelson writes that engi­ neers who took over managerial positions turned to rational manage­ ment as they realized its importance to successful business.3 The industrial organization, as well as the management and marketing techniques perfected during this period, became and remained the foundation of modern manufacturing and business administration. These changes in production scale and management altered social and labor relations as well. The corporate owners knew little or noth­ ing about the factory, its workers, and its operations; they cared pri­ marily about dividends. Similarly, the industrial managers hired by the corporation could not know the workers, or their work, the way that the owner-manager of the small factory had. As the new condi­ tions transformed industry, the professional manager had to find solutions to old problems as well as new ones that grew along with factory size and production volume; problems barely noticeable in the old...

Taking A Stand: Lesser-Known Leaders that Helped Launch the Civil Rights Movement

Taking A Stand: Lesser-Known Leaders that Helped Launch the Civil Rights Movement Mitch Yamasaki Mitch Yamasaki Mitch Yamasaki is an associate professor of history at Chaminade University of Honolulu and Chair of the OAH's Committee on Teaching. He is the author of Hawaii's Trade with the People's Republic of China (1982). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar OAH Magazine of History, Volume 9, Issue 2, Winter 1995, Pages 50–56, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/9.2.50 Published: 01 January 1995

Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present ed. by John A. Lynn

172 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE long-wave theory to benefit from Hugill’s penetrating insights and solid understanding of technology in its geographic and human context. J. F. Guilmartin Dr. Guilmartin is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University. Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfarefrom the Middle Ages to the Present. Edited by John A. Lynn. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993. Pp. xii+326; tables, notes, bibliography, index. $44.50. This fine anthology is a venture in “the new military history.” This genre eschews operational histories of battles and campaigns led by great captains. Instead it favors more critical and analytical works that treat war and the military as social institutions. The causes, courses, and consequences of war are explored not on the battlefield but in realms such as logistics, one of the most fruitful and stimulating branches of the genre. Donald W. Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonia Army (1978) and Geoffrey Parker, The Army ofFlanders and the Spanish Road, 1567-1659: The Logistics ofSpanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Country Wars (1972) are exemplars. The great synthesis is Martin van Creveld’s Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (1977). It is around van Creveld’s study that editorJohn Lynn has built his introduc­ tion to the current volume. He recognizes the originality and impact of Supplying War but points out as well its many flaws. Lynn’s introduction faults van Creveld for two crimes of omission and one of commission. Supplying War, says Lynn, neglects naval warfare and the experience of the United States. These deficiencies are made up in the present volume by excellent articles: Timothy Runyan’s on naval logistics in the Hundred Years’ War, John F. Guilmartin’s on Spanish naval warfare in the 16th century, Jon Tetsuro Sumida’s on Britain in World War I,John Shy on the American Revolution, and Robert V. Bruce on research and development during the American Civil War. Students of military history will recognize these as major scholars in the field writing out of their previous research, a generalization that fits almost all the contributions to this volume. Errors of commission in Supplying War, according to Lynn, misrepre­ sent army logistics in Europe between the wars of religion and the 20th century. Lynn actually suggests that van Creveld selected his evidence to suit his thesis and that his statistics occasionally look “more like a shell game” (p. 23) than counting beans. Lynn supports his criticisms effec­ tively, both in his introduction to the volume and in his own contribu­ tion on the wars of Louis XIV. Other authors in the collection write without reference to van Creveld. Walter Kaegi reveals that the Byzantines were less efficient in logistics than one might expect, while Bernard Bachrach suggests that medieval Europeans before the Crusades were more efficient. The latter TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 173 point continues Bachrach’s long-standing argument that “military technology in early medieval Europe is consistently underestimated by modern scholars” (p. 62). On 20th-century topics, in which the impor­ tance of logistics has long been recognized, Daniel Beaver writes on the development of the 21^-ton truck in the United States before World War II, and Joel D. Meyerson explores the logistical build-up in Vietnam. At their best, these articles demonstrate the power of logistics as a category of analysis. Operational history may have its place; strategy, tactics, and great captains may explain some battles and wars. But armies and navies have always been tethered to supply. Sometimes the tether is decisive. Lynn, for example, explains why Louis XIV and his contemporaries fought for land they knew they would have to abandon later; an army of 60,000 men required 67.5 tons of bread a day and 400 tons of dried fodder for the horses. Most of this had to be prepositioned in magazines or foraged from the land. Commanders had to fight starvation before they could fight the enemy. Similarly, Shy offers a novel interpretation of the American Revolu­ tion: the logistical failure of the Americans in the Revolutionary War was caused not by government incompetence so much as by an inadequate transportation...

The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889-1920

The White Earth Tragedy, Melissa Meyer combines historical methods with approaches from sociology, anthropology, and economics to produce a thought-provoking account of the evolution and development of a single reservation community...Rather than focusing solely on Indian/white relations, as historians have often done in the past, Meyer highlights the relations between conservative Anishinaabe bands and ...'mediators' [of mixed descent]. In doing so, she reveals the diversity within the White Earth Anishinaabe community...Meyer's meticulously researched case study is one of the most significant contributions to the field of Indian history in recent years. - Western Historical Quarterly. An enduring contribution to Anishinaabe historiography as well as a significant work for the comparative study of indigenous dispossession throughout North America.- Ethnohistory. A rich history of the Anishinaabeg...This is not a history of Indian policy, but rather the story of an ethnic community in all its complexities, contradictions, and subtleties. - Choice. This compelling interdisciplinary history of an Anishinaabe community at the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota offers a subtle and sophisticated look at changing social, economic, and political relations among the Anishinaabeg and reveals how cultural forces outside of the reservation profoundly affected their lives. Melissa L. Meyer is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Regional Cities or a Region of New Cities?

Urban historians are finally starting to give western cities their due. Several recent volumes about the urban West have focused on the unique and not so unique characteristics of cities in that region. Mansel G. Blackford's The Lost Dream: Business and City Planning on the Pacific Coast, 1890-1920 (1993) has ably demonstrated that western civic leaders used planning at the turn-ofthe-century primarily as a tool for urban boosterism. The failure to implement the plans had to do with divisiveness within the leadership of western citiesa characteristic of cities in the East as well. Roger Lotchin's important Fortress California 1910-1961: From Welfare to Warfare (1992) has provided a convincing argument that California's rapid growth in the twentieth century was closely tied to a well-thought-out strategy to promote martial metropolises. These volumes join the slim but expanding list of scholarship by urban historians, as well as by historians of the West such as Gerald Nash, to provide a much clearer picture of urban development in that region than we had before.' The book reviewed here represents a further maturing of the historiography of the urban West. John Findlay, an associate professor of history at the University of Washington, has added a new wrinkle to the historical literature of the twentieth-century urban West by focusing on cityscapes. He argues that new western cities not only have a distinctive urban form, but they have been more successful in accommodating their residents than is often acknowledged. Drawing on the work of cultural geographers, and a variety of other urbanists and journalists, he suggests that new ways of organizing space in western cities have influenced urban development throughout the nation. Unlike some historians who explain changing urban form by a type of transportation determinism, Findlay approaches the western city not merely as the creation of new technologies, but as being shaped by the aspirations of its western residents. Magic Lands also typifies another recent trend in urban history by claiming that western cities represented a unique urban variation. Findlay joins the list

The Background to Jewish Studies in the Bible and in the Ancient East

Background to Jewish Studies in the Ancient East THE BACKGROUND TO JEWISH STUDIES IN THE BIBLE AND IN THE ANCIENT EAST by Cyrus H. Gordon Cyrus Gordon received his professional training (A.B., M.A., Ph.D.) at the University of Pennsylvania. He is emeritus professor at both Brandeis University and New York University, where he taught Hebrew and Near Eastern Studies. From 1931 to 1935 he was a field archaeologist on expeditions of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Jerusalem and Baghdad. He is the author of about six hundred publications including over twenty books or monographs on the Mediterranean and Near East. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Royal Asiatic Society has made him an Honorary Fellow for his contributions to the fields of Comparative Semitics, Ugaritic, and Minoan. The present paper is an e::tpanded version of the Abe and Ida Miller Lecture given at Purdue University, December 4, 1991. Foreword 1 The beginnings of this study go back to the summer of 1989 while I was preparing for a lecture tour that autumn in Japan and Korea. My Korean sponsors requested that I submit in advance a typescript of four lectures that I would deliver on topics of my choice, relating to the Hebrew Bible. Those topics constitute the first four chapters of this essay. The first two deal with the bearing of the cuneiform tablets from Ugarit and Ebla on the Hebrew Scriptures, while the last two are essays designed to help us evaluate the Old Testament as a whole. Chapters I-IV deal with 2 SHOFAR Summer 1994 Vol. 12, No.4 the Bible in the cultural context of the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean . Meanwhile, in late 1987, I became involved in the complex but important link between the Bible world and the Far East. This has broadened our geographical horizons far beyond the Near East. I have delineated this new development in Chapter V. Dr. Gordon D. Young, Associate Professor of History and Chair of the Jewish Studies Committee at Purdue University at that time, invited me to give a public lecture on the Near Eastern background of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies on 4 December 1991 and a seminar on the following day for his advanced students in ancient Near Eastern history. The public lecture, entitled "Jewish Studies, The Bible, and the Ancient Near East," was based on material selected from Chapters I-IV, while the seminar dealt with the topic in Chapter V. I. Ugarit and the Old Testament The status of any subject cannot remain the same when new and pertinent facts come to light. The abundance of new texts and monuments emerging from the soil of the Bible Lands obliges us to modify, and often abandon, long-held views, while enabling us to see things we did not see before. We shall start our survey with the most important group of finds bearing on the Hebrew Bible that have come to light in the last hundred years. Ugarit, whose modern name is Ras Shamra, was the capital of a flourishing city-state and cultural center, particularly in the Late Bronze Age from about 1400 to 1200 B.C.E. As a seaport on the Syrian coast, fairly close to Cyprus, it was well located for trade between the mainland and the Mediterranean and, via overland routes, with Anatolia, Mesopotamia, all of Canaan, and Egypt. Shortly after excavations began early in 1929, clay tablets were found in two cuneiform scripts: one was the Akkadian syllabary of Mesopotamia and the other a completely new alphabet ofthirty letters. Within a year the alphabet was deciphered, and the language proved to be a hitherto unknown branch ofWest Semitic related to Hebrew. The translation of the alphabetic Ugaritic tablets progressed quickly, thanks largely to Hebrew scholars who brought the evidence of the Old Testament to bear on the Ugaritic texts. Eventually the thirty alphabetic letters, always arranged in the same fIXed order, were found on a number of Ugaritic school texts. The sequence of the Ugaritic "ABC" is the one maintained in the Hebrew, Background to Jewish Studies in the Ancient East 3 'dew...

District Heating Comes to Town: The Social Shaping of an Energy System by Jane Summerton

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 415 footnotes); a select bibliography; and some discussion of how Russians greeted and experienced applications of electric power (cf. Wolfgang Schivelbush’s Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century [Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1988]), Coopersmith’s book does tell an important story. If there are those who still doubt that technology is not everywhere the same or that “socialism in one country” began with Lenin, not Stalin, they should read Coopersmith’s erudite and insightful account of Russia’s road to electrification. Douglas R. Weiner Dr. Weiner is associate professor of history at the University ofArizona, Tucson. District Heating Comes to Town: The Social Shaping of an Energy System. By Jane Summerton. Linkoping: University of Linkoping, Department of Technology and Social Change, 1992. Pp. 319; illustrations, notes, bibliography. SKr 220.00 (paper). The study of sociotechnical systems is one challenge that historians and sociologists of technology have successfully met. Most notably, this interdisciplinary discussion manifested itself in the now classic anthol­ ogy The Social Construction ofTechnological Systems (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987), which brought historians like Thomas P. Hughes together with sociologists like Michel Calion andJohn Law. That volume contrib­ uted to making Hughes a historian who has received considerable attention from social scientists interested in technological development. Jane Summerton is one of these social scientists. Although a sociolo­ gist, she draws heavily on Hughes’s work—both theoretically and thematically. As Hughes did in Networks of Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), she studies how determined actors build energy systems. Unlike Hughes, she focuses on the formation of a district-heating system in a small town, not on the construction of electricity systems in large cities. This focus on a seldom-studied field of technology and an obscure Scandinavian town makes Summerton’s book particularly interesting. The author brings the reader into a world where the messy and “seamless” character of technology becomes clearly visible. The instal­ lation in the 1980s of a district-heating system in Mjolby, Sweden, becomes a microcosm which reflects processes that are continuously unfolding everywhere technologies are developed or installed. To succeed, the “system builders” could not concentrate solely on solving problems relating to heat-plant design and piping; they also had to attract customers, deal with regulatory bodies, and undertake political lobbying. They had to form what Summerton calls an unofficial “multiorganization” that included representatives of the municipal council, local apartment companies and industries, and suppliers of primary energy sources. 416 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Summerton describes in great detail the administrative, legal, eco­ nomic, and political hurdles that had to be passed in order for the project to materialize. The meticulous character of her account makes it sometimes intriguing, sometimes tedious. She tells a well-documented story, but, since she has chosen a thematic rather than a chronological approach, it has not been possible to avoid repetitive passages. Among the themes or “critical issues” Summerton discusses in depth are the following: Why was such a major decision to build a district­ heating system made at all? How was a public/cooperative company organized to undertake the task? And how did this company use almost any means to gain a monopoly on the heating market in large parts of Mjolby? Summerton shows that the political decision to construct a system was made on rather loose grounds, and that it was clearly affected by the spirit of the times (in the wake of oil crises and Three Mile Island). She illustrates the tensions between profit motives and public interests that grew out of the internal structure of the company in charge of building the system, and she describes how the company was largely successful in keeping competing systems out of the district­ heating concession area. In my view the primary merit of Summerton’s case study is that it proves the usefulness of a sociological conflict perspective when analyz­ ing technological change. System building is no straightforward techni­ cal affair but includes processes of persuasion and the formation of alliances. Technological systems emerge as a result of ‘‘shared or comple­ mentary needs, interests, and concerns of a multitude of actors” (p. 258). If we want...

Comment on “The Retractable Airplane Landing Gear and the Northrop ‘Anomaly’”

Comment on “The Retractable Airplane Landing Gear and the Northrop ‘Anomaly’” Edward W. Constant (bio) Edward W. Constant Dr. Constant is associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. Footnotes 1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962, reprint, 1970). See esp. Margaret Masterman, “The Nature of a Paradigm,” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 59–90. Masterman alleges (p. 59) to have counted no less than twenty-one different meanings ascribed to “paradigm” by Kuhn alone in Structure. 2. See Barry Barnes, T. S. Kuhn and Social Science (New York, 1982), who “decided to use ‘paradigm’ to denote an accepted problem-solution in science, a particular concrete scientific achievement. This is the sense of ‘paradigm’ which in his most recent work, Kuhn conveys by the term ‘exemplar.’ Purely as a matter of terminological decision, then, to which I try to adhere throughout, paradigms are exemplars” (p. xiv). Contrast Kuhn’s own even more recent view, in which paradigms have become virtually lexical “life worlds” for the relevant communities of practitioners (“The Road since Structure”) or Howard Margolis’s interpretation of paradigms as tacit “habits of mind,” the most robust of which serve as cognitive “barriers” to “seeing” alternative theories (“Paradigms and Barriers”), both in PSA 1990: Proceedings of the 1990 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, ed. Arthur Fine, Micky Forbes, and Linda Wessels (East Lansing, Mich., 1991), 2:3–13, and 431–40, respectively. 3. See David L. Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago, 1988), esp. chap. 1, on the characteristics of natural kinds. 4. Notable exceptions likely include recent output of sectors of “the Darwin industry,” as do the following studies: Timothy Lenoir, “Models and Instruments in the Development of Electrophysiology, 1845–1912,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 17 (1986): 1–54 (the cognitive and, by implication, social roles of models and experimental techniques in electrophysiology); Andrew Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago, 1992); and Frederic L. Holmes and Kathryn M. Olesko, “Precision’s Images: Helmholtz and the Graphical Method in Physiology,” forthcoming. 5. See Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor J. Pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1987); or Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), for palatable samplers of the various “schools” within social constructionism. 6. David P. Billington and Robert Mark make a very similar general point about “learning by doing,” imitation by extension, and the cumulation of communal design wisdom in “The Cathedral and the Bridge: Structure and Symbol,” Technology and Culture 25 (1984): 37–52. Significantly, Hull makes much the same point for scientific knowledge. Copyright © 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved

Jordan

Essay| February 01 1994 Jordan: Bread, Freedom, or Both? Mary C. Wilson Mary C. Wilson Mary C. Wilson is an associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her books include The Modem Middle East: A Reader, edited with Albert Hourani and Philip S. Khoury (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), and King A bdullah, Britain and the Making of Jordan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (1994) 93 (580): 87–90. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1994.93.580.87 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mary C. Wilson; Jordan: Bread, Freedom, or Both?. Current History 1 February 1994; 93 (580): 87–90. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.1994.93.580.87 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCurrent History Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1994 by The Regents of the University of California1994 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Turin, 1564–1680: Urban Design, Military Culture, and the Creation of the Absolutist Capital by Martha D. Poliak, and: Military Architecture, Cartography and the Representation of the Early Modern European City: A Checklist of Treatises on Fortification in the Newberry Library by Martha D. Poliak

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 185 need results from DeVries’s concentrating on military technology rather than embedding the topic in a broad study of war. Indeed, because this volume focuses on technology rather than war, it forms a useful complement to Philippe Contamine’s synthesis, War in the Middle Ages (New York, 1984). Readers of this book will come away with a comprehensive and useful view of the current state of much of the scholarship in medieval military technology, and the bibliography is a tool they will return to with profit. Unfortunately, minor errors remain unpurged; those who have visited London and seen the four original turrets rising above the White Tower will balk at the remark that the edifice once sported only three (p. 222). E. Malcolm Parkinson Dr. Parkinson, an associate professor of history at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, has written on tournaments in early modern Europe. He is a past president of the board of trustees of the Higgins Armory Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, a museum of medieval and Renaissance arms, armor, and warfare. Turin, 1564—1680: Urban Design, Military Culture, and the Creation ofthe Absolutist Capital. By Martha D. Poliak. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Pp. xxii + 267; illustrations, notes, index. $49.95. Military Architecture, Cartography and the Representation of the Early Modern European City: A Checklist of Treatises on Fortification in the Newberry Library. By Martha D. Poliak. Chicago: Newberry Library, 1991. Pp. xxxvi + 119; illustrations, notes. $15.00 + $1.50 handling (paper). Martha Poliak, in the introduction to her very ambitious book, promises to “synthesize the history of military architecture and urban design” in order to answer two “larger questions: How was the city planned and built? How were its forms endowed with meaning?” (p. 3). She proposes to address issues of the rulers’ gender, the role of ideology and political theory, and the place of public rituals and poetry in the creation of a capital city. Turin is a case study of the transformation of a small garrison town in the often-contested region of Piedmont into a city celebrated for its imposing design. The royal ambitions of the House of Savoy provided the driving force that extended the streets, renewed the fortifications, and adorned the city with palaces and churches while enforcing a regularity of design unsurpassed in its day. The succeeding dukes used every contrivance available to aspiring royalty to effect this change. They brought their family’s most valued relic, the Holy Shroud, to Turin in order to make it a destination of religious pilgrimages. They dazzled the populace and court alike with public 186 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE spectacles. Most important to Poliak is their use of both civil and military architecture to inspire awe in their more powerful neighbors. With evidence garnered from a vast body of archival documents, Poliak documents the ways in which the rulers of Turin attempted to fulfill their ambitions. Of interest to the readers of Technology and Culture will be the extent to which military architects, military strategy, and what Poliak calls “military spirit” shaped the entire city. She argues that the military expression of the dynastic ambition was the overarching principle that united every aspect of Turin’s design through unprecedented “regularity, uniformity, and auster­ ity” (p. 5). Poliak more than fulfills her promise of providing a “coherent narrative history.” I am afraid, however, that many of the themes she wished to explore get buried in layers of description. It is too easy for the reader to become mired in her evidence and to lose sight of her larger goals. As I reached the end of her text I hoped to find a conclusion that might recapitulate the ways in which all the details would fit into the larger picture. Instead, the book simply comes to an abrupt and unsatisfying halt. The level of detail, without a commen­ surate level of analysis and interpretation, only exasperated my impatience with certain editorial decisions. The excessive use of excerpts from the original sources in the footnotes and the reprinting of numerous photographs resulted in a long and expensive volume. Nonetheless, Poliak has provided an excellent description of the process of building Turin. Although...

The Sky’s the Limit? Technology and the American West

Review Essay THE SKY’S THE LIMIT? TECHNOLOGY AND THE AMERICAN WEST HAL· K. ROTHMAN Although the American West lends itself to many frequently overused metaphors, it has taken the historical community a long time to plug into the obvious. Finally, for the first time in a generation, one of the most representative and symbolic features of the West, the sky, has made it into the title of not one, but two new works that seek to reevaluate the relationships among human beings, their technologies, and the physical environment in the West. It would be hard to find two more different books. One, Donald Worster’s Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West, is a graceful collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking essays from an acknowledged leader of not only environmental history but of what has been termed the New Western History.1 The other, Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past, edited by William Cronon, another of the leading scholars in environmental history but not generally identified with the New Western History; George Miles, curator of the Western Americana Collection at Yale University’s Bienecke Library; and Jay Gitlin, a lecturer at Yale, is a festschrift in honor of Howard R. Lamar, one of the most distinguished of western historians, acting president and formerly Sterling Professor of His­ tory at Yale University.2 It highlights Lamar’s former students as well as a number of his many friends and admirers in the held. Dr. Rothman is associate professor of history at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he edits Environmental History Review. He is the author of On Rims and Ridges: The Los Alamos Area since 1880 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1992), Preserving Different Pasts: The American National Monuments (Champaign, Ill., 1989), and numerous articles about the environment of the American West. 'Donald Worster, Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. ix + 291; notes, index. $27.50. •William Cronon, George Miles, and Jay Gitlin, eds., Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past (New York: Norton, 1992), pp. xiii + 354; illustrations, notes, index. $35.00.© 1994 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/94/3501-0006$01.00 168 The Sky’s the Limit? Technology and the American West 169 The two works represent a taking of the pulse in what has become one of the hottest and most controversial fields in the historical discipline. In few areas has the tension between older and newer ways of doing history become more pronounced as practitioners grapple for not only the minds of their peers and students but for the attention of the popular press as well. Worster’s work is aimed at this public context as much as at a scholarly audience. Derived from a series of invited lectures, newspaper articles, and other pieces he has written in recent years, this collection sparkles with the passion and insight for which Worster is famous.3 An engaging and opinionated writer with the rhythm of a Bible-toting preacher, he leads his audience through a scathing critique of the application of American cultural values to the fragile environments of the West. Under an Open Sky is necessarily less cohesive, ranging from Cronon’s own primer of the environmental history of the West, “Kennecott Journey: The Paths Out of Town,” to D. Michael Quinn’s “Religion in the American West,” but this eclecticism is a reflection of the range of subjects for study in this complex field. Worster’s view of the relationship between technology and culture mirrors the increasing ambivalence with which science and technol­ ogy are treated both in scholarship and popular writing. His perspec­ tive has much in common with authors such as Michael Crichton, who describes a series of events that result from the réanimation of dinosaurs cloned from traces of their DNA in his novel Jurassic Park.4 This attempt leads to disaster, as the ability of humans to control these technologically invented beings is far smaller than their capacity to use technology to create them. Crichton’s point is that technology advances more quickly...

Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914–1918 by Bill Rawling

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 957 stab, and still be distracted by them. Bucholz’s working definition of technology as “the systematic application of scientific knowledge to the practical task of war planning” (p. 168) works for him, but one wonders—to cite a relevant example—how much of the Railroad Section’s knowledge was empirical rather than scientific. Specialists in German history will no doubt question some of Bucholz’s political and cultural interpretations, for example concerning the origins and importance of Moltke’s apocalyptic premonitions. But these are quibbles: this book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the key but surprisingly neglected technological dimensions of a pivotal episode in world history. John F. Guilmartin Dr. Gvilmartin is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University. Surviving Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914— 1918. By Bill Rawling. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1992. Pp. 325; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). That British commanders in the First World War were “bumbling dolts” became a commonplace of public discourse and historical writing from the 1920s. Bill Rawling takes a more charitable view, arguing that “British staff officers and commanders in the field examined each battle closely in order to derive from it what lessons they could” (pp. 67—68). Moreover, “trench inventors” altered their weapons in significant ways because “Canadian soldiers were less sheep led to the slaughter than thinking people who set their minds to the challenges of survival, and, in the process, contributed to the defeat of a well-trained and well-motivated enemy” (p. 223). The war as learning experience is Rawling’s theme, with special attention to technological innovations—including some utterly famil­ iar, like radio, tanks, and airplanes, and some since forgotten, like the “power buzzers” that were designed to send Morse code messages from advancing infantry back to battalion headquarters by propagat­ ing high-pitched sound waves through the ground. But, as Rawling points out, “The device worked only in one direction, and ground conditions had to be just right,” with the result that, “as in all prior battles, runners proved the most efficient means of getting messages to battalion headquarters” (p. 127). Most of the book consists of rather close description of the successive battles in which Canadian troops engaged, and the techni­ cal lessons drawn from their experiences. There is little new in these narratives, though Canadian readers may swell with pride at Rawl­ ing’s account of how careful preparation for the assault on Vimy Ridge paid off in 1917 when, for the first time since the Battle of the 958 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Marne in 1914, Canadian troops won a clear-cut victory for the Allied cause by advancing two-and-a-half miles in a matter of three days, thus attaining all of their objectives while suffering a casualty rate of only 16 percent. New weapons, new communications, new tactics, new intelligence methods, and meticulous preparation for the attack made the capture of Vimy Ridge possible; yet some oddly archaic touches in Rawling’s account surely demonstrate a residual rigidity in British (and Cana­ dian) military management. For, as he baldly remarks, “Cavalry did manage to engage the enemy, but suffered heavy casualties from German machine guns” (p. 125). In short, Rawling supports his central thesis convincingly enough, but the positive tone he adopts in describing Canadian technological and organizational responses to the battle experience of World War I strikes me as rather too kind to the brass hats. William H. McNeill Dr. McNeill is professor of history emeritus of the University of Chicago. To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942— 1944. By Stephen L. McFarland and Wesley P. Newton. Washing­ ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Pp. xiii + 328; illus­ trations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $35.00. According to Stephen McFarland and Wesley Newton, the history of the United States Eighth Air Force’s conquest of aerial superiority in protracted struggle against the German Luftwaffe from 1942 through 1944 is the untold story of World War II. Most observers have regarded the securing of aerial superiority as an intermediate step in...

Histoire technique de la production d’aluminium: Les apports français au développement international d’une industrie ed. by Paul Morel

944 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE importance of consumer demand (and the cultural factors which shaped this demand) in determining the nature and extent of technological change. Christopher E. Guthrie Dr. Guthrie is an associate professor of history at Tarleton State University and is currently working on a book that examines the historiography of the period between 1815 and 1851 in Europe. Histoire technique de la production d’aluminium: Les apports français au développement international d’une industrie. Edited by Paul Morel. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble, 1992. Pp. 352; illustra­ tions, tables, glossary, notes, bibliography, index. F 220.00 (paper). Aluminum, although the most common of metals in nature, and now one of the most common in everyday use, has a short history, having been isolated (in minute quantities) less than 200 years ago. It proved difficult to produce chemically in any quantity, although it was so produced after 1850, first in France, then in England and the United States. Its relatively high price led its proponents to search almost wildly for profitable uses, for it exercised a powerful fascina­ tion on metallurgists and industrial chemists. Modern production dates from 1886 when, almost simultaneously, C. M. Hall in the United States and P. Hérault in France invented an electrolytic method of production (simple electrolysis having proved impractical); the two methods differed only slightly, and botfi were used in both countries until World War I. This method, essentially what is used now, involves the electrolysis of purified alumina (the oxide, in France always derived from bauxite) in molten cryolite (a naturally occurring aluminum-fluoride compound, mainly found in Greenland), using carbon anodes and a cast-iron or steel box (pot, vat, cuve) lined with carbon as both the cathode and the cell. The use of this method led to the formation of Alcoa in the United States and to numerous works in France, of which the most notable was and is that founded by Pechiney, now, after many amalgamations, known by his name. This firm has sponsored an institute for the history of aluminum, which has produced the work under review, each chapter by a different hand. After a quick review of 19th-century developments (usefully sum­ marized in the conclusion), successive chapters deal in detail with the gradual development of ever-larger assemblies of cuves, everimproved anodes and arrangements of them, ever-higher electric currents (the aim being to raise the current to well over 100,000 amperes while keeping the “density”—amperes per centimeter squared—as low as possible), improved anodes of different types, improved arrange­ ments of cuves, the treatment of the metal, and the history of electrical sources (initially all hydroelectric). TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 945 Of greatest interest to readers of Technology and Culture will be chapter 2, on the protection of the environment in and outside the factories, and chapter 6, on the history and organization of research facilities. The production of aluminum is the production of powerful pollutants in great quantity, including carbon monoxide and gases rich with fluorine. The first factories were built in the mountains to utilize hydroelectricity on site, and although the gaseous emissions devastated the countryside, it was, as so often in the 19th century, thought cheaper to pay compensation to farmers for the loss of cattle by fluoride poisoning than to control emissions. Gradually, it was seen to be cheaper to control emissions by improved recovery of the fluorine to save cryolite and to protect the workmen, initially exposed to cruel levels of gases and high temperatures, and ultimately this gave improved production. Research facilities as such were initially minimal: every works had its laboratory, at first only for quality control. Only slowly did research expand from mostly factory-floor improvements in production to the setting up of genuine, separate, research facilities. This latter move­ ment, mainly (as with Alcoa) a development of the period between the world wars, was hindered by the economic crisis of the 1930s and, in France, by the devastation of French economic life during World War II, caused by German occupation. After the war, the French economy experienced a resurgence, partly stimulated by surveys of American and German firms...

Robert Mayer and the conservation of energy

The principle of the conservation of energy was among the most important developments of nineteenth-century physics, and Robert Mayer, a physician from a small city in Germany, was one of its codiscoverers. As ship's doctor on a voyage to the Dutch East Indies in 1840, Mayer noticed that the venous blood he let from a European seaman was lighter than he expected. This observation set off a train of reflections that led him first to conclude that there must be a quantitative relationship between heat and motion and then, over several years, to believe in the indestructibility and uncreatability of force. Rejecting the commonly invoked influence of Naturphilosophie, Kenneth Caneva provides a rich historical context for the problems and issues that concerned Mayer and for the ways in which he gradually came to understand what became known as the conservation of energy.Demonstrating that the development of Mayer's thinking was fostered by a constant search for analogies, Caneva also analyzes the transformation of the life sciences in mid-century Germany and offers a major reevaluation of the status of the vital force during that period. The intellectual environment treated here embraces medicine, physiology, physics, chemistry, religion, and spiritualism.Kenneth L. Caneva is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

The Civil War and Historical Memory: A Historiographical Survey

The Civil War and Historical Memory: A Historiographical Survey Get access Stuart McConnell Stuart McConnell Stuart McConnell is associate professor of history at Pitzer College, Claremont, and author of Glorious Contentment: The Grand Army of the Republic, 1865–1900. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar OAH Magazine of History, Volume 8, Issue 1, Fall 1993, Pages 3–6, https://doi.org/10.1093/maghis/8.1.3 Published: 01 September 1993