Early Twentieth Century Research Articles

Adaptability, diversification, and energy shocks: A firm level productivity analysis

Energy economists have long argued that energy systems need to be adaptable in the face of shocks. In the early twentieth century, Denmark embodied the opposite, with its industry almost entirely dependent on imports of coal from the UK. Towards the end of the First World War, however, and well into the 1920s, coal imports became expensive and more difficult to obtain. Local diversification was possible, however, through peat. We exploit detailed microlevel data from butter factories, covering the period 1900–28. Employing an event study approach, we find significant productivity advantages for firms closer to available peat fields in the wake of the coal shortage, and that these gains persisted even when peat was no longer used. Our results thus suggest that public policy might aim to support adaptability for firms less able to transition to more sustainable energy if that is the price of longer-term efficiency and survival.

The Images of Ottoman Turkey in the Selected Malay Periodicals in the Early Twentieth Century

This paper analyses the Malay reformist writers’ interest and admiration of the Ottoman in several Malay newspapers. Such coverages were specially provided by al-Imam, Lengkongan Bulan, and Neracha. These newspapers were published in two major Malayan port cities, Penang and Singapore in the early 20th century and edited by some prominent Malay reformist writers. This study investigates why the Malay reformists paid considerable attention and coverage to the Ottoman. These Malay reformists were branded as Kaum Muda (Young Faction) who favoured reforms and renewal in society in comparison to Kaum Tua (Old Faction) who favoured a conservative approach. Using historical-content-textual analyses, this study demonstrates that frequent coverages of the Ottoman is derived from the Malay reformists’ interest in the progress and advancement of the Ottoman as well as the latter’s interest in the Pan-Islamism project championed by the Ottoman Sultan, Sultan Abdul Hamid I.

The Melting-Pot and Its Legacies

Abstract This article examines Israel Zangwill's 1908 play The Melting-Pot as a document in American immigration history, and the role of its most contested tropes – interfaith marriage and the melting-pot itself – in his efforts to rescue suffering Jews of Europe. Through close readings of the play and with reference to other works by Zangwill in the early twentieth century, the article looks at the play as a pragmatic work in a time of international upheaval and American nativism. A discussion of the play's reception by critics and audiences indicates that what was most controversial at the time of its production was not necessarily what Zangwill was most desirous to convey. But a look at its varied meanings over time reveals the persistence of the melting-pot metaphor in discussions of immigration, identity, ethnicity and nationhood, especially in the American imaginary.

The Booksellers' School and the Rise of American Independent Bookselling

Abstract: This article analyzes the concerns and activities of the B.W. Huebsch-led Booksellers' School in New York City (1912–1918) to argue how certain fundamentals of bookselling met with a strong emphasis on a national (American) literature, partly through a series of lectures run by Van Wyck Brooks. The School sought to educate sellers in national canons of literature and help them sell the fledgling American one. In bringing together the profession of bookselling and literariness, the Booksellers' School offered a blueprint for a new form of bookselling—one which embraced an idea of literariness as a commercial tactic. By addressing the ideas on bookselling and American literature Huebsch and Brooks forwarded at the School, I show the potential influence it had on the bookselling landscape in the early twentieth century.

Street Children in European Cities during the Late Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Centuries: Looking into the Pages of the Late Imperial Austrian Press

Street Children in European Cities during the Late Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Centuries: Looking into the Pages of the Late Imperial Austrian Press

Settler Homesteading, Hawaiian Homesteading, and the Failed Mission of Americanization in Early Territorial Hawai'i

Abstract: In the early twentieth century, the US federal government created homesteading programs to "Americanize" Hawai'i by encouraging the mass settlement of white families "of good character" to Hawai'i, but to little avail. This essay analyzes a 1912 hearing about the failure of white homesteading in the Territory of Hawai'i, focusing on discourses of race and land use by settler and 'Ōiwi testifiers. Federal leaders and Territory proponents of homesteading mapped the familiar racial formations of vanishing Natives, alien Asians, and white pioneers onto Kānaka 'Ōiwi, Asian plantation workers, and white American homesteaders to further their cause. 'Ōiwi political leaders Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole and Charles Kahiliaulani Notley intervened; although they approached the question of "Americanization" differently from one another, both manipulated and rejected elements of that racial framework according to a shared goal: to get their people back on the land.

Music Reviews

Abstract: Reviewed in this column are Songs in Flight: a Song Cycle for Soprano, Countertenor, Baritone, and Piano , the collaborative effort of composer Shawn Okpebholo and contemporary poet Tsitsi Ella Jaji; Tom Cipullo’s Black Dog Song Cycle in Seven Movements, for Baritone Voice and Piano , on the topic of depression, and Libby Larsen’s North Shore Songs: Four Poems of Louis Jenkins . Finally, Dante in Musica: 10 Compositions for Voice and Pianoforte on texts by Dante Alighieri is a fascinating compilation of songs and arias by Italian composers from the early Romantic through the early twentieth century.

Reform, Rails, and Rice: Political Railroads and Local Development in Thailand

How do external threats to state sovereignty benefit local development? In this paper, we look at Thailand’s railroad projects in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as an example of a state’s strategic response to colonial encroachment. By transporting government officials and establishing a permanent administrative presence, the railways served to ensure Thailand’s sovereignty over peripheral regions and bring them under direct governance. These regions, long considered economically unviable and disconnected from Bangkok, gained rail access due to their strategic importance and, in turn, witnessed urbanization and increased agricultural production.

Divisive Affect, Loyalty, and National Cohesion: Du Bois contra Wagner

Abstract The question of divisive affect and national cohesion has been placed at the center of debates in the United States over curricula dealing with race, but the problem is not a new one. Several European thinkers of the late-nineteenth through early-twentieth century theorized affect in the context of social cohesion, including Richard Wagner, Ernest Renan, and Georg Simmel. W. E. B. Du Bois, the author argues, lays bare the power dynamics of these intersecting views in his short story, “The Coming of John” in The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois recognizes and critiques a specific strategy that he finds most clearly crystallized in Wagner, who advocates building and transmitting national allegiance by suppressing historical knowledge, fostering affective attachment to the nation, and excluding dissenters. Philologist Ernest Renan and sociologist Georg Simmel elaborate on the temporal dimensions of these mechanisms. In conversation with these theories, Du Bois illustrates in “The Coming of John” a stickiness of time—reiteration rather than reconciliation—arising from the reciprocally reinforcing functions of loyalty and ignorance of the past. While Du Bois here also employs methods for re-engaging historical time, the difficulty of moving beyond past social structures reemerges in his later works.

A Critical Voice on the Hajj by a Sumatran Pilgrim from the Early Twentieth Century

This paper examines a late 19th-century brochure entitled ‘Perdjalanan ke-‘Tanah-Tjoetji’ (A Pilgrimage to the ‘Holy Land’) written by Dja Edar Moeda, a Dutch-educated native teacher and a pioneer journalist and vernacular press entrepreneur in Sumatra. The text offers a critical perspective on the Hajj, differing from the majority of this corpus, which tends to show religious enthusiasm and saintly connotations. This paper demonstrates that the ‘deviant’ voice on the Hajj in the Brochure reflects the author’s concerns. As a native intellectual and religious modernist with a Western-secular education, he worries about the fate of his fellow native pilgrims, who are often victimised by rampant fraudulent practices in the organisation of the Hajj due to their illiteracy, map illiteracy, innocence, naivety and tendency to be submissive in their religious practice. In this respect, the Brochure indirectly criticises the Dutch East Indies colonial authority’s deficiencies in organising the pilgrimage and protecting the pilgrims as its colonial subjects.

Social hygiene in Germany in the early twentieth century: Science subject and methodology

Introduction. At the beginning of the 20th century, the theory of social hygiene was widely recognized worldwide. This science’s birthplace is Germany, and its founder is Alfred Grotjahn. In 1904, he presented a scientific concept of social hygiene, including a new hygienic science, field of study, subject, methodology, and scientific methods. Purpose. This study examines the scientific approaches to social hygiene in German academic literature from the early 1900s to the late 1920s. Materials and methods. This study gathered the necessary data by comprehensively reviewing key German manuals and periodic annual compilations. Results. A. Grotjahn viewed social hygiene as a science combining descriptive and normative approaches. By social hygiene, he meant the study of conditions affecting the social hygiene culture of individuals about place, time, and social environment, as well as their offspring. The descriptive component of the science aims to analyze these conditions, while the normative side investigates measures to improve hygienic culture among individuals and their offspring. He proposed to apply the probability theory as a scientific methodology and utilized the scientific methods of statistics, economics, history, sociology, and politics. Until the 1920s, German social hygienists followed Grotjahn’s theory in their manuals. In the mid-1920s, Ferdinand Huppe introduced the concept of constitutional hygiene theory in a multi-volume handbook of social hygiene. It was based on the methods of biology and the principles of racial hygiene. Conclusion. Grotjahn’s scientific concept of social hygiene underwent significant changes and evolution in the early twentieth century. These transformations, which were influenced by introducing new theories and applying different scientific methods, are crucial to understanding the development of social hygiene as a discipline.

The polder systems legacies in the early twentieth century affect the contemporary landscape in the Jianghan Plain of Hubei, China

The long-term interaction between the environment and humans has significantly shaped contemporary landscapes worldwide. As a heritage landscape, the polder is essential for understanding the impact of the past human activities on contemporary landscape on low-lying area of land. In this case study, we reconstructed the regional spatial distribution of the polders in the early twentieth century and examined their coherence over the past century using historical maps and other materials in the Jianghan Plain. The results revealed several key findings: (1) In the early twentieth century, there were 1571 polders covering an area of 11,826.1 km2 with a perimeter of 17,035.9 km. (2) These polders exhibited a J-shaped distribution, with few large-scale polders despite their substantial areas. (3) The shape of these polders reflected an ability to balance human needs and the natural environment. (4) Considerable regional differences in these polders were attributed to centuries-old interactions between humans and the environment. (5) The remnants of these early twentieth century polders have had a lasting influence on the contemporary landscape, particularly in rural areas. This case study underscores how taking into account a broader historical perspective can enhance our understanding of present-day landscapes and, more importantly, the role that past human actions have played in shaping them.

“In Cairo also I worried my archaeological friends”: J. Norman Lockyer and Archaeoastronomy

It has long been acknowledged that J. Norman Lockyer played a central role in the foundation of archaeoastronomy as a field in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His interest in “orientation” flourished on a visit to Egypt, where he became convinced that rigorous scientific methods could be used to prove archaeological theories concerning ancient religions.However, despite the promising prospect of a public intellectual entering the sparse discourse around archaeoastronomy, little happened to promote the discipline after the Egyptian expedition. Whilst Lockyer is often framed as a lonely figure working at the dawn of the field, newly digitised lantern slides from the Norman Lockyer Observatory archives reveal his extensive interactions with a dedicated network of British archaeoastronomical researchers. Lockyer’s work, along with that of his new community, came at a very unfortunate time. This paper seeks to explain why he was shunned by prominent archaeologists, and why the discourse around archaeoastronomy up until his time smothered Lockyer’s attempts to legitimize orientation.

Hierarchs of the Chernihiv Diocese in the Nineteenth - Early Twentieth Centuries: A Social Portrait

Hierarchs of the Chernihiv Diocese in the Nineteenth - Early Twentieth Centuries: A Social Portrait

Traditional religious views of Muslims and Kadimism in the early twentieth century

Traditional religious views of Muslims and Kadimism in the early twentieth century

Beyond Chinatown: Chinese diaspora, the transition of power, and the planning of the City of Medan in Dutch East Indies

ABSTRACT Medan is a port city in Sumatra, Dutch East Indies, developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A special case among colonial cities, it featured a large number of Chinese migrants – a third party in addition to the colonizer and the colonized – who played a key role in its urbanization process. Highlighting a trichotomous power framework formed by the Dutch colonizer, the indigenous people and the Chinese diaspora, this paper argues that the Chinese diaspora, with the arrival of commercial elites, obtained opportunities to shape the backbone of the city through skilfully transforming their economic power into political and spatial power. Chinese economic activities such as property investment and co-development not only led to unconventional Chinese quarters but shaped the zoning and axiality of the whole city. The Chinese diaspora also shaped Medan’s streetscape and architecture through individual building design, which, in turn, strengthened their economic power by the careful manipulation of architectural elements from various sources to suit different purposes. The planning history of Medan represents an alternative trajectory to colonial urbanization often led by Europeans, highlighting an ambiguous and shifting power relation among three parties in a transforming colonial society.

Interracial Unions and Racial Assortative Mating in an Age of Growing Diversity, Shifting Intimate Relationships, and Emerging Technologies

While racial assortative mating and interracial unions have been a central interest in the study of race relations and family demography since the early twentieth century, there have been marked changes in the social contexts in which these processes have taken place in recent decades. This review article examines three important shifts: (a) the rise of population diversity and its impact on traditional views of racial integration, (b) the changing institution of marriage in American life, and (c) the increasing centrality of technology. We discuss how these societal shifts have challenged traditional understandings of preferences, opportunities, and intermediaries in the mate selection process, as well as new opportunities for interracial intimacy that these changes have introduced. We conclude with a discussion on conceptual issues and promising future research directions.

The Destruction of the Voice

ABSTRACT The musical orality of the lyric voice constitutes one of the most formidable and persistent facets of the ideology of German Romanticism, one that is further bequeathed to the arts of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking the musicality of the voice and the ineffability of “absolute” music as its point of departure, this essay investigates a series of primarily German-Jewish figures—Kafka, Schoenberg, Straub-Huillet, and Celan—who stage a radical confrontation with the political aestheticization of the voice. Premonitions and reverberations of these figures’ vocal “destruction” are further traced in Adorno, Kraus, and Maimonides. At stake is not only a comparative study of the voice at the intersection of various media (music, literature, opera, film, and public performance) but also the kind of majoritarian–minoritarian dynamics (between Yiddish and German, German and Hebrew) that arise internal to a single language and its linguistic politics. German-Jewish cultural poetics ultimately develops as a response to the tensions between nation and empire emergent in the dappled political landscape of Central and Eastern Europe—and amends the dominant Romantic paradigm accordingly.

Fiction Factory, Part 2

By the beginning of the twentieth century, young writers were part of an economic system that took youth as a commercial value—up-to-the-minute youth provided a fantasy that such new modes of publication seemed to advertise—while also making use of young writers glorying in such hype. Part One of these two essays explored this new character of young people’s writing to indicate an evolving understanding of the juvenile tradition. Young writers now asserted themselves as modern hacks, celebrating their proficiency in dime formulas. In surveying the literary nationalism encoded in dime formulas, Part One also explored how dime fiction kept alive a sense of perennial youth in part through youth’s recurrent and lasting association with the American character. Young writers working in dime formulas by necessity worked within these attitudes—and the baldness of dime formulas made obvious how these so-called “American” attitudes were ideological, encoding troubling assumptions when it came to race and imperialism, part of the manifest destiny and American exceptionalism that cheap print reflected. Part Two is about the afterlife of the dime novel—both in terms of how its formulas continued to haunt American letters, but also in terms of how ongoing literary-critical recovery of texts in the archive of the fiction factory have expanded possibilities for how to regard them. It concentrates on how ideological prescriptions continued to shape expectations, and to shape young writers’ work, in the early twentieth century—after the dime novel seemed to have waned in popularity. At the same time, it foregrounds how the critical afterlife that has sifted that archive informs an understanding of how to read this ongoing work.

Trains and cameras: Photography and the creation of a railway landscape in Portugal (late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries)

Trains and cameras: Photography and the creation of a railway landscape in Portugal (late nineteenth–early twentieth centuries)