American History Research Articles

Europe and the End of Shogunate: Japan «Opening»

“Bakumatsu” is the period from 1853 to 1868, which can be translated as “The End of the Bakufu” or “The End of the Tokugawa Shogunate”. Japan, under pressure from the United States and European countries, was forced to open the country for trade and contacts, well realising that it could not resist foreigners due to its technological and military inferiority. The “opening” of the country took place under the confusion of the authorities and with the resistance of not only a large part of the authorities, but also the people, who readily rallied under easy understandable slogan of “honor emperor and expel barbarians” (sonno-joi). This led to military clashes between Japanese and foreigners and to acts of terrorism not only against “barbarians” but also against local supporters of the opening of the country. The result of the “opening” of the country was also the elimination of the traditional for Japan formal dual power, under which the power by law belonged to the Emperors in Kyoto, but the country was ruled by the military rulers ‒ Shogunate of the Tokugawa dynasty in Edo. In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate was abolished and power passed to the 122nd Meiji Emperor. The capital was moved to Edo and named Tokyo (Eastern Capital). Although the USA was given primacy in “opening” Japan, the major role in its political and economic transformation was played by European countries. President Millard Filmore, who initiated Matthew Perry's expeditions to Japan, was not re-elected, and the new president Franklin Pierce (1804‒1874), was mainly preoccupied with the conflict between the American South and North, and did not pay much attention to the issue of relations with Japan. In 1861, the American Civil War broke out and European countries – Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and Russia – began to play a major role in Japan's foreign policy.

Climate-based modelling and forecasting of dengue in three endemic departments of Peru.

Amid profound climate change, incidence of dengue continues to rise and expand in distribution across the world. Here, we analysed dengue in three coastal departments of Peru which have recently experienced public health emergencies during the worst dengue crises in Latin American history. We developed a climate-based spatiotemporal modelling framework to model monthly incidence of new dengue cases in Piura, Tumbes, and Lambayeque over 140 months from 2010 to 2021. The framework enabled accurate description of in-sample and out-of-sample dengue incidence trends across the departments, as well as the characterisation of the timing, structure, and intensity of climatic relationships with human dengue incidence. In terms of dengue incidence rate (DIR) risk factors, we inferred non-linear and delayed effects of greater monthly mean maximum temperatures, extreme precipitation, sustained drought conditions, and extremes of a Peruvian-specific indicator of the El Niño Southern Oscillation. Building on our model-based understanding of climatic influences, we performed climate-model-based forecasting of dengue incidence across 2018 to 2021 with a forecast horizon of one month. Our framework enabled representative, reliable forecasts of future dengue outbreaks, including correct classification of 100% of all future outbreaks with DIR ≥ 50 (or 150) per 100,000, whilst retaining relatively low probability of 0.12 (0.05) for false alarms. Therefore, our model framework and analysis may be used by public health authorities to i) understand climatic drivers of dengue incidence, and ii) alongside our forecasts, to mitigate impacts of dengue outbreaks and potential public health emergencies by informing early warning systems and deployment of vector control resources.

The Unturned Pages of American Civil War and Afghan History with the References of Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” and Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns”.

Historical Revisionism in Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” and Khaled Hosseini’s “A Thousand Splendid Suns”.

Oxymorphone and Oxycodone Pharmacy Purchases in US Counties: Prelude to the Largest Rural Human Immunodeficiency Virus Outbreak in US History.

The largest rural outbreak of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the US was centered in Scott County, Indiana, and linked to injection practices involving the opioid Opana ER (oxymorphone extended release [ER] reformulated). We examined supply trends using pharmacy transactions of Opana ER in Scott and all US counties from January 2007 to December 2019. We calculated the monthly morphine milligram equivalents (MME) of Opana ER (and its competitor OxyContin) in pharmacies using the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS) database from the Washington Post. We modeled the MME rate per capita in Scott County and five geographic comparators in seven distinct time periods including the market introduction of abuse deterrent formulations of both drugs and the HIV outbreak period (circa 2014). After Opana ER introduction, transaction rates surged in Scott County, where annual OxyContin MMEs were already seven-fold higher than Indiana overall (CY2009: 46.8 vs. 6.8 MME/pop., respectively). Immediately after OxyContin's reformulation, the Opana ER growth rate in Scott County surpassed all geographic comparators modeled (~27 times faster than the US, 1.28 vs. 0.047 MME/pop/month, respectively). By 2012, prior to the outbreak, MMEs from Opana ER almost perfectly replaced the diminishing OxyContin supply. When Opana ER with INTAC was subsequently introduced, pharmacy transactions declined precipitously by nearly 50%, persisting through the HIV outbreak period and market withdrawal. Opana ER rapidly supplanted OxyContin in a vulnerable population that was at heightened risk for HIV who subsequently faced an immediate supply shock after its reformulation. Pharmacy transactions are critical for suspicious order monitoring and pharmacovigilance by US and international agencies especially during deleterious supply shocks in legal and illicit drug markets.

Emancipation through Modern Poetics: History, Politics, and Aesthetics in Muriel Rukeyser’s The Book of the Dead

The Book of the Dead by Muriel Rukeyser represents a collection of poetry riddled with a history of “relative neglect and obscurity.”1 For this reason, discourses surrounding the docupoetic collection often grapple with the ambition required when approaching a complex work addressing temporal tragedy. To contribute to this discourse, the literary research in this paper traverses an intersection with three primary angles: the political, the aesthetic, and the emancipatory. The analysis centers on The Book of the Dead and the modernist poetry that the author of the collection utilizes when portraying a uniquely chilling perspective of one of the most catastrophic industrial disasters in United States history. Understanding the poetry from Rukeyser, however, faces several obstacles given the rejection of literary convention within each stanza. This paper therefore provides necessary historical, sociological, and aesthetic background to contextualize the important discussions on literature and culture that are underscored within The Book of the Dead. Ultimately, the research contends that Rukeyser’s work not only calls for emancipation for the dead, but also the freeing of readers from literary convention in order to confront a tragedy much of society would rather leave behind in history.

Racial health disparities in the United States

Abstract Disparities between Black and White Americans in health care coverage and health outcomes are pervasive in the United States. In this paper, we describe the evolution of the market-based approach to health insurance and health care delivery in the United States and its implications for racial disparities. First, we discuss the history of the United States’ predominantly private health insurance system. Second, we illustrate the persistence and pervasiveness of disparities through three present-day epidemics: maternal mortality, opioid use, and Covid-19. Through the epidemic case studies, we highlight the systemic roots of racial inequality in health care. Finally, we conclude with a brief discussion of potential policy approaches for reducing disparities in the health care system.

Moving beyond ‘fragment of stories’ and ‘segregated narratives’: descendants’ perspectives at Arlington House, a former plantation

ABSTRACT Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial (Confederate general in the American Civil War), is a former plantation site located in Washington, DC, USA. The National Park Service (NPS) has managed this site since 1933. Arlington House is a cultural and historical heritage site that has a layered and complex history. Onsite interpretation at Arlington House (e.g. information placards, ranger interactions) has shifted recently from interpreting solely the story of Lee to also relating the lives of the formerly enslaved peoples. We conducted focus groups to understand how descendants of the enslaved Africans have received this shift. Though fuller interpretation has been added, many descendants felt it lacks detail in comparison with Lee’s exhibits. Specifically, we synthesized insights from the descendants about the lack of a cohesive, comprehensive narrative; the need to challenge the enslaver’s narrative; and specific areas for the NPS to reconsider their efforts. This relates to larger conversations about cultural heritage plantation sites and the evolution of interpretation at such sites. By incorporating insights from those with direct ties to heritage plantations, managers could ensure a more representative and complete place narrative that incorporates the values of descendants to increase visitor relevance.

Landmarks of American History and Culture (NEH)

Landmarks of American History and Culture (NEH)

The comparative role of physical system processes in Hudson Strait ice stream cycling: a comprehensive model-based test of Heinrich event hypotheses

Abstract. Despite their recognized significance on global climate and extensive research efforts, the mechanism(s) driving Heinrich events remain(s) a subject of debate. Here, we use the 3D thermomechanically coupled glacial systems model (GSM) to examine the Hudson Strait ice stream surge cycling and the role of three factors previously hypothesized to play a critical role in Heinrich events: ice shelves, glacial isostatic adjustment, and sub-surface ocean temperature forcings. In contrast to all previous modeling studies examining HEs, the GSM uses a transient last glacial cycle climate forcing, global viscoelastic glacial isostatic adjustment model, and sub-glacial hydrology model. The results presented here are based on a high-variance sub-ensemble retrieved from North American history matching for the last glacial cycle. Over our comparatively wide sampling of the potential parameter space (52 ensemble parameters for climate forcing and process uncertainties), we find two modes of Hudson Strait ice streaming: classic binge–purge versus near-continuous ice streaming with occasional shutdowns and subsequent surge onset overshoot. Our model results indicate that large ice shelves covering the Labrador Sea during the last glacial cycle only occur when extreme calving restrictions are applied. The otherwise minor ice shelves provide insignificant buttressing for the Hudson Strait ice stream. While sub-surface ocean temperature forcing leads to minor differences regarding surge characteristics, glacial isostatic adjustment does have a significant impact. Given input uncertainties, the strongest controls on ice stream surge cycling are the poorly constrained deep geothermal heat flux under Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait and the basal drag law. Decreasing the geothermal heat flux within available constraints and/or using a Coulomb sliding law instead of a Weertman-type power law leads to a shift from the near-continuous streaming mode to the binge–purge mode.

Failing with Flying Colors: The Saga That Led to a Disclaimer of Opinion on the Department of Defense’s First Full-Scope Audit

ABSTRACT Using primary sources composed of U.S. federal legislation and federal agency audit reports, this paper documents and analyzes events in the nearly two-and-a-half-century-long process leading up to the disclaimer of opinion on the first full-scope audit of the Department of Defense (DOD) consolidated financial statements in 2018. It also applies theoretical lenses from political science, namely governmentality and public accountability, to characterize the development of these events and their ultimate aftermath, including results of subsequent DOD audits up to the most recently completed one (FY 2023). Thus, the paper extends into the present century the historiography of accounting and auditing over military endeavors in the U.S., which stretches back to the period just before the American Civil War, and analyzes its accounting and societal significance, thereby responding to a lacuna in the literature identified in earlier research and contributing to the discussion on accountability and good government.

The relationship between American civil–military relations and military outcomes

Civilian control of the military is an inflexible requirement of the American republic, but there is contentious debate over how that control should be exercised. Both sides of the divide tend to agree that military results matter. Civil–military relations succeed if healthy discourse results in accomplishing the mission and obtaining optimal outcomes, but fail if the military does not accomplish the political objectives. This article advances the understudied thread of military effectiveness in American civil–military relations by testing the acumen of each side's judgment in 44 use of force decisions since the Second World War. In decisions on whether to use military force, military preferences have not yielded superior outcomes to civilian preferences, but there is evidence that military shirking from armed interventions has helped avoid ill-advised wars. Further studies should investigate decisions on how to use military force.

Marissa H. Baker. Review of "The Art of Remembering: Essays on African American Art and History" by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw.

Marissa H. Baker. Review of "The Art of Remembering: Essays on African American Art and History" by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw.

Artifacts of Glory and Pain: Evolving Cultural Narratives on Confederate Symbolism and Commemoration in a New Era of Social Justice

The American Civil War has been commemorated with a great variety of monuments, memorials, and markers. These monuments were erected for a variety of reasons, beginning with memorialization of the fallen and later to honor aging veterans, commemoration of significant anniversaries associated with the conflict, memorialization of sites of conflict, and celebration of the actions of military leaders. Sources reveal that during both the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras, many monuments were erected as part of an organized propaganda campaign to terrorize African American communities and distort the past by promoting a “Lost Cause” narrative. Through subsequent decades, to this day, complex and emotional narratives have surrounded interpretive legacies of the Civil War. Instruments of commemoration, through both physical and digital intervention approaches, can be provocative and instructive, as the country deals with a slavery legacy and the commemorated objects and spaces surrounding Confederate inheritances. Today, all of these potential factors and outcomes, with internationally relevance, are surrounded by swirls of social and political contention and controversy, including the remembering/forgetting dichotomies of cultural heritage. In this article, drawing from the testimony of scholars and artists, I address the conceptual landscape of approaches to the presentation and evolving participatory narratives of Confederate monuments that range from absolute expungement and removal to more restrained ideas such as in situ re-contextualization, removal to museums, and preservation-in-place. I stress not so much the academic debate but how the American public is informed about and reacts to the various issues related to Confederate memorialization. My main point, where my premise stands out in the literature, is that, for the sake of posterity, and our ability to connect and engage with a tangible in situ artifact, not all Confederate statues should be taken down. Some of them, or remnants of them, should be preserved as sites of conscience and reflection, with their social and political meanings ongoing and yet to be determined in the future. The modern dilemma turns on the question: In today’s new era of social justice, are these monuments primarily symbols of oppression, or can we see them, in select cases, alternatively as sites of conscience and reflection encompassing more inclusive conversations about commemoration? What we conserve and assign as the ultimate public value of these monuments rests with how we answer this question.

The settler homeland: racial violence, frontier colonialism, and Filipino repatriation

ABSTRACT On March 1938, representatives from the Philippine Commonwealth and Filipino American community organizations organized the First Official Filipino National Convention in Seattle. A committee proposed to send their less-educated kababayan (countrymen) to the Philippines to colonize Mindanao, the archipelago's Moro (Muslim) and Lumad (non-Muslim and non-Christian Indigenous) South. For Filipino American leaders, state expansion into the archipelago's south was a project of recuperating the utility and respectability of destitute Filipino migrant men, and thus, for the growth of the provisional nation itself. By following Filipino repatriation schemes within migrant communities, and their relationship with the Philippine state's aspirations to expand into the south, I argue that Filipino diasporic nationalism - the consolidation of migrants' affiliations not with their regions and hometowns, but with a bourgeois patriotism that lays claim to the entire Philippine archipelago - constitutively imagined the ‘home country' as a settler homeland, a simultaneous place of homeward return as well as economic development and conquest. Probing the intersections between Asian American history, Southeast Asian statecraft, and settler colonial studies, I critical reconsider two fundamental questions in Asian migrant life: Where exactly is the home country—and what does it mean to ‘go back to where you came from’?

Review: Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest, by Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer

Review: <i>Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest</i>, by Ian C. Hartman and David Reamer

Retrospectives: Friedman and Schwartz, Disaggregated

What was the contribution of Anna Schwartz to the landmark book she co-authored with Milton Friedman, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960? A close examination of archival evidence suggests three primary contributions Schwartz made to the work, and to Friedman’s career more generally. The first was meeting the classic challenge of quantitative economic history: going into the field to locate and collect archival data that had been assembled for purposes unrelated to economic research, and deciding how best to use that data. Second, Schwartz had a decades-long role as technical sounding board and shaper of the statistical approach taken in the book. Schwartz’s third and arguably greatest contribution was to transform A Monetary History of the United States into a compelling narrative argument that made an impact far beyond the economics profession. Together, these findings show Schwartz to be a scholar who made significant and lasting contributions to monetary economics, economic history, and the broader field of economics.

The Double Rhetorical Life of Father Abram Ryan

Abstract: This essay makes a case for re-examining the writerly life of the 19th-century poet and Catholic priest, Father Abram J. Ryan. The argument is prompted by recent controversies over the status of monuments to Confederate heroes and by the broader contest over the nation’s public memory of the American Civil War, Reconstruction, and their aftermath. As someone who lives and works in Mobile, Alabama, I am particularly motivated by the conjunction of Abram Ryan’s activities while he served for almost a decade after the war as a parish priest in Mobile with current debates over the monument to him erected in the city in July 1913. That monument refers to Ryan as “The Poet-Priest of the Confederacy,” an informal title that had been conferred on him in his lifetime and one with which many still honor him. Even though Ryan is a fairly minor figure in Confederate history, his double life as an ambiguous propagandist of the Lost Cause makes him a rich figure for studying the relationships between politics, poetics, and rhetoric in the United States.

Mangas Coloradas and the Challenge of Semantic Repatriation in the Poetry of Paul Muldoon

In this article, I examine Paul Muldoon’s interest in the nineteenth-century Apache leader Mangas Coloradas. The recurrence of this figure in Muldoon’s poetry reflects his well-known fascination with indigenous American history and culture but, I argue, must also be understood in relation to recent debates about cultural appropriation, derogatory place names, and the repatriation of indigenous artifacts and remains. While recognising the sensitive issues at play when Muldoon writes about – and even in the voices of – indigenous American figures, I show how his poems about Mangas Coloradas reveal a complex awareness of the processes by which indigenous names are appropriated by non-indigenous actors, emptied of their content, and turned into commodities of different kinds. These poems also exemplify the poet’s technique of combining the cinematic with what he calls the ‘imharragistic’, or the bleeding of one image into another. Through the dynamic play of images flowing together and cinematic shifts from scene to scene, Muldoon’s Mangas poems ultimately perform a crucial act of self-awareness that invites us to imagine the political and poetic possibilities of ‘semantic repatriation’.

What Can We Learn from Early Childhood Theory and Practice?

Education doctoral programs have an essential role to play in this moment of American history, as we train, teach, guide, and prepare education professionals to learn, unlearn, and lead as antiracist education activists. EdD program faculty and administrators sit in critical roles and must examine our own antiracist beliefs, while also facilitating anti-racist learning for our doctoral learners, who, in turn, must create anti-racist learning communities where they teach and lead.

IDENTITY CONFUSION IN DOROTHY WEST’S THE LIVING IS EASY

Literature is a media for conveying the authors’ ideas and feelings to the payers, or it is a mean of relief for them to bare their souls. In this context, literature involves an enormous place in human life. In this regard, African American literature has an important place in American literature and culture. It is also one of the strongest pillars of the literature produced by black writers in the United States of America. African American literature goes and continues in the course of history as oral literature from generation to generation. Since African Americans’ place changes gradually in the USA- due to racism in particular- their viewpoint of literature changes, too. African American history predates the foundation of the United States of America as an independent country, so their literature has deep roots, consisting of rich oral culture in poetry, including gospel music, blues, rap, and spirituals along with written poetry, and slave narrations. Although African Americans come from slave ancestors, they have been able to leave a deep effect on the literature of the United States when they are brought to the continent of America. African American literature is mainly based on autobiographical spiritual narratives, and before the American Civil War African Americans’ literature consists of memoirs of people who escape from slavery. So, African American literature has witnessed the problem of racial discrimination in its existential aspect. But in the progress of time, black writers go deep into verbal literature and perform their own experiences. Dorothy West, in her novel Living is Easy criticizes the blacks who mimes the whites. When we scrutinize, it is possible to penetrate that the writer wants to reflect her own experiences via narration and criticizes her own past. Writing is a kind of purgation for West since she writes about herself. In this study, we aim to point out the impulses that foster Dorothy West’s narration from a Freudian point of view.