History Of America Research Articles

Zhèng Hé's Indirect Impact on Europe: On Revolutionary Focal Groups of Production Revolutions

According to the model on production revolutions, elaborated by Leonid and Anton Grinin, the Covid-19 pandemic and the fourteenth century's Black Death have similar impacts on economic trajectories in terms of production principles. Andrea Komlosy added the spatial dimension to the model, which allows the identification of the ‘focal groups’ of revolutionists and their seedling nurseries of a new production principle in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century Europe. Ming Admiral Zhèng Hé's voyages across the Indian Ocean (1405–1433) had an indirect impact on the European economy: Trading on the re-established ‘Maritime Silk Road’ required silver for payment, whose eventual shortage caused a credit crunch in Europe, jeopardizing the phase transition to the mercantile-industrial production principle. Renaissance Humanists promoted a revolutionary epistemology in the fifteenth century. Christopher Columbus's discovery of America, a by-product of efforts to reconnect Europe to the Maritime Silk Road in response to the credit crunch was portrayed as a revolutionary achievement. The author's participation at a focal group of the Cybernetic Revolution before Covid-19 motivated his tracing the Renaissance Revolution.

Russian-Spanish Relations During the Development of North American Territories in the Second Half of the 18th century

The article is about the relations between Russia and Spain in the second half of the 18th century. The article identifies the factors that influenced the nature of the emerging interaction between the powers: it shows the ambivalence of Russian-Spanish relations, on the one hand, due to the growing fears of the Spanish authorities provoked by Russia’s advance towards California, and, on the other, to the development of mutually beneficial trade relations. We draw attention to aspects related to Russia’s discovery of the Aleutian archipelago and Alaska and the activity of Russian merchants. The reaction of the Spanish court to messages of Spanish diplomats in Russia about Russian discoveries in America is shown. The analysis of the texts of diplomatic reports (1761−1792) has shown that the Spanish ambassadors were skeptical about the success of Russian expeditions to the American continent but changed their mind in the second half of 1760s. The article also examines the trade and economic aspect in the relations between the powers, showing the intention of Spain and Russia to establish direct trade. At the same time, we note that the nature of such interaction was influenced by the general political situation, which was determined by the leading powers of that time. The article has been written using historical and philological methods and approaches and aims to show the various aspects and stages of Russian-Spanish relations during the period of colonization of the Northwest of America. The results of the study can be used in practical activities of diplomatic services within the framework of international dialogue.

Seeds, Dams, and Khipus: Latin America's Eclectic Recent History of Technology.

Scholarship on Latin America's history of technology has expanded significantly in recent years. By reviewing articles in English- and Spanish-language journals from 2012 to the first half of 2023, we illustrate the emerging themes, geographies, and methodologies in this literature. The four main themes we identify are industrialization, institutions and policies, infrastructure, and moving beyond technological adaptation. We also highlight two emerging themes: Indigenous technologies and the circulation of knowledge. We conclude that the scholarship has generally moved in three directions: the study of technologies associated with traditional economic activities in the region (e.g., monocrop agriculture), national industrialization and modernization processes, and cases that demonstrate alternative ways of knowing the world and how communities use these types of knowledge. We suggest that deepening the connections between these three lines of research could be fruitful for future work.

Giordano Bruno e la civiltà europea

According to Fulvio Papi, Giordano Bruno defends European culture by countering the “myth of the noble savage”, fuelled, in the modern age, by the discovery of America and supported, among other things, in Montaigne’s reflections on cannibals. However, Bruno’s is a “moderate Eurocentrism” which not only condemns the violence of the conquistadores, but is also based on a primitive idea of progress: all beings, in fact, are equal from an ontological point of view, since they are born through spontaneous generation, but only human beings, even the savages of the New World, can and must, thanks to manual industriousness, move from nature to civilization, of which European one is the model, however improvable. It is therefore in metaphysics and in the relationship between matter and form that, for Papi, the reasons for Bruno’s conception of European civilization must be sought.

Horror and Loss in Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor and Jordan Peele's Get Out

Abstract: Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963) and Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017) were both created during dreadful points in America's history. But Fuller hopes his film will be seen as science fiction as opposed to real life as he states in his autobiography of 2002. Peele attests wisely that Fuller's hope will never be fulfilled. Both works, though filmed in different times, show a troublesome world. They both depict a fragile America. Both protagonists had a sharper eye or were better witnesses to their worlds. A sharper vision is to be valued. Johnny of Shock Corridor is a journalist delving into the dangers of a mental institution. Chris, a photo fan, in the end comes to his close vision that he does not belong in the world of the film Get Out . The fear of loss exists in both Fuller and Peele. This article explores how these two films reveal the fragility of America.

And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham

Reviewed by: And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham Jon Diefenthaler And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. By Jon Meacham. New York: Random House, 2022. 676 pp. Do we need another book on Abraham Lincoln? Among the multitude of others, what makes And There Was Light stand out is Jon Meacham's remarkable effort to let America's sixteenth President provide an illuminating perspective on a nation that is currently as deeply divided and struggling to survive as a democracy as it was before and during the Civil War. As helpful as this book may be for any American citizen to read, I am motivated to review it for this church-related journal because I believe the historical insights this noted author provides are potentially useful to Lutheran clergy and other ecclesiastical leaders seeking to navigate these same troubled waters and to address the socio-political divisions that continue to wash into their congregations and church bodies. Aptly subtitled "Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle," Meacham's book covers most of the bases one would expect to find in a comprehensive biography, including Lincoln's family of origin, his hardscrabble upbringing, his first love Ann Rutledge, his turbulent marriage to Mary Todd and the loss of two of their progeny, his elections to office, as well as his anguished presidency and subsequent assassination. But in most every chapter on Lincoln's life, Meacham chooses to give us a measure of insight into the role religion played as the Illinois rail splitter sought to deal with the towering and divisive problem of slavery. At work in Lincoln's mind, in Meacham's estimation, were history, reason, and faith. For him, the Constitution, which viewed slaves as the property of their owners, took a back seat in America's history to the Declaration of Independence, which unequivocally stated that "all men are created equal." In contrast to historians who have stated that Lincoln's opposition to slavery evolved, Meacham provides ample evidence to substantiate the president's later [End Page 188] conscience-grounded claim that it was always in his nature to believe that "if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." As Meacham sees it, what evolved was Lincoln's continuous search for a reasonable political solution to the problem. While African colonization of slaves piqued his interest, this proposal quickly proved to be less than feasible. Recognizing that various legislative compromises would only extend the Southern slave empire, he felt compelled to oppose them. The political necessity of gaining the support of Whites in order to outlaw slavery prompted his willingness to concede that Blacks were an inferior breed. The "popular sovereignty" solution advocated by Stephen Douglas in his campaigns for office only seemed to fan the flames of self-interest and secession. What Meacham in fact demonstrates is that as Lincoln's reliance on reason waned and as "war came," his faith in God took on a much greater role. According to Meacham, Lincoln's "creed was of his own making—and it was always evolving with enormous consequences for the nation he led and for the nation he left behind" (xxxv). His piety included regular reading of the King James Bible and, at his most critical hours, getting on his knees to pray to God. At the same time, his reading of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason ("my own mind is my own church") made him a "doubting Thomas" among believers, and for this reason, he never became the member of a Christian congregation. Lincoln found some of the Evangelical Protestant beliefs featured by the Second Great Awakening, such as the divinity of Jesus, too difficult to embrace. Instead, he favored the brand of theology set forth by the New England Transcendentalists. Theodore Parker in particular helped him focus on Nature's God and to believe that the universe was inherently moral, and that its history arced in the direction of justice. Nevertheless, Meacham reveals elements of Lincoln's religion that coincide with those of the Christian faith. For one thing, he recognized the pervasiveness of human depravity. Persistent awareness of his own shortcomings prevented any consideration...

«Great geographical discoveries»: the meaning and historical content of the term in the light of the interaction experience of civilizations in the New World

The main question that Humankind was confronted with at the beginning of the Age of Great Discoveries can be spelled out as follows: «Just how is the world shaped?» The subsequent Great Geographical Discoveries showed the true dimension and structure of the surface of the Planet, as well as the real range of diversity of the «World of Humans». And the new knowledge of the shape of the world, in turn, gave rise to the following dilemma: can we surmise any unity of this world, all the great diversity of human cultures notwithstanding, or is such a unity nothing but an illusion? The search for an answer to this question constituted one of the axes of the spiritual life of Humankind in subsequent centuries up to the present day. The crucial point in the search for an answer to the above said question was the Discovery of America. The Meeting of two Worlds brought about the most acute crisis of consciousness on both sides. In the course of ensuing attempts at overcoming the crisis, they discovered new dimensions of their own heritage and new prospects for future life. Two alternative ways of evolution of homo sapiens, essentially different and even opposed, took shape. On the one hand, it was globalization, and on the other hand, it was increased emphasis on the heterogeneity of specific human communities at different levels, being the regional civilizations the most conspicuous ones in this respect. The collision, interweaving and mutual influence of those processes predetermined the main trends of human history over the past five centuries. In Latin America, a special frontier civilizational type has developed, as different from the classical both Western and Oriental models. It embodies more patently the principle of dialogue, which is, according to M. Bakhtin, a distinctive feature of the evolution of homo sapiens in general. This type of civilisation acquires particular importance at the present stage of evolution of the human world, which, on the threshold of the XXI century has entered its new stage, that of uncertainty and instability, the frontier stage.

Dana M. Caldemeyer. Union Renegades: Miners, Capitalism, and Organizing in the Gilded Age.

In Union Renegades, Dana M. Caldemeyer provides a novel and engaging examination of a perennial question that plagues both the American labor movement and historians of America’s working class: why do so many workers, seemingly against their own interests, oppose or refuse to join labor unions? Drawing on underutilized sources, she focuses on midwestern miners of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, particularly during the 1890s, when the newly formed United Mine Workers (UMW) struggled to secure a stable membership and base of support. Although some of Caldemeyer’s claims are paradoxical or underdeveloped, this provocative book is an important contribution that is sure to influence scholarship for many years to come. Most of the evidence presented in Union Renegades comes from a uniquely rich archive of writing by miners themselves: the letters and reports published in mine workers’ newspapers. In particular, Caldemeyer notes, the United Mine Workers’ Journal printed any and all letters submitted during its first three years of publication, which “offer a unique window into workers’ lives and are crucial to understand how and why rank and file support for workers’ organizations like the UMW ebbed and flowed in the Gilded Age” (16). What these texts show, she compellingly argues, is that few workers were simply “union” or “non-union.” Rather, they usually supported and joined specific unions when they believed that those unions were responsive to their needs and goals and abandoned those unions when this no longer appeared to be the case. In other words, miners did not automatically join “the union” in response to dire working conditions or a sense of class solidarity; they joined, left, or stayed aloof from specific labor organizations based upon their analysis of those organizations’ words and deeds. This deceptively simple observation is a reminder to scholars that union membership cannot be used as an unproblematic sign of or shorthand for class consciousness and workplace discontent. Miners who fully, even militantly, supported “unionization” in the abstract might refuse to join the UMW or end their membership in it when it appeared to abandon or ignore them. This was the case, for example, when at the last minute, the UMW called off a nationwide miners’ strike in 1891. Many of its midwestern members “abandoned the UMW not because they had grown disillusioned with organized labor but because they believed the UMW leaders had turned away from their original goals” (69).

An Early-Modern Counseling Initiative Against Tobacco Addiction: Duhan Treatises

Spreading rapidly among the peoples of Eurasia after the discovery of America, tobacco entered the Ottoman Empire at about the same time. This brought the conservative attitude of the state and society towards tobacco and tobacco consumers. In this age, when people grasped the universe in its religious integrity, tobacco users were also accused of religion for using an innovation that was not present in human life before. This article is specifically about tobacco treatises written in the Ottoman Empire. The main view that I will argue in the article is that tobacco treatises are based on shaping people's lives and guiding them. The vast majority of treatises state that tobacco is religiously forbidden and emphasize its negative aspects on health and home economics. For this reason, while the main factors in proving the ideas are thoughts on the harms of tobacco in social and individual terms, the tools used are primarily the Qur'an and hadiths. While the aim is human health, the preservation of traditions and the prevention of waste, it is the religious debates that seem to be at the forefront. However, neither these treatises nor the intervention of the states could stop the spread of tobacco. A rather subjective reasoning was made in the works, and therefore the result of convincing the other side rarely took place. Excessive expressions, on the other hand, basically have content that can lead people to this because of the insulting style they have, instead of warning them and directing them to stay away from tobacco. This article is intended to be a reading of all these debates and cultural adaptation procedure.

The discovery of America and the emergence of its civilization

إن اكتشاف أمريكا فتح الباب لإيجاد قارة جديدة، وعالم جديد ، أدت لولادة حضارة جديدة ،وبحثنا الحالي يسلط الضوء على مرحلة الاكتشاف والصراع الذي حدث بين المستعمرين للسيطرة على الأراضي، ونقل مواطنيها ، وكان من أوائل هؤلاء الأسبان والإنكليز والفرنسيين والبرتغاليين والهولنديين وغيرهم مما أدى الى الصراع بينهم وخاصة بين الإنكليز والفرنسيين ، مما أدى الى توحيد المستوطنين فيما بينهم وقيامهم بثورة ضد كل المستعمرين بقيادة جورج واشنطن. وكذلك نشوء المستعمرات في أماكن متفرقة حسب السيطرة الاستعمارية ، وسرعان ما ...تحولت هذه المستعمرات الى مدن ان الهدف الأساس لهذا البحث هو الكشف عن حقبة زمنية امتدت من عام ١٤٩٢ الى ١١٦٣م في القارة الامريكية ،

Race, Politics, and Nation in Albion W. Tourgée's American Historical Novels Series: The Example of Hot Plowshares

Race, Politics, and Nation in Albion W. Tourgée's American Historical Novels Series: The Example of <i>Hot Plowshares</i>

Wonder, Refuge, Promise: Explorations and Discoveries of America in Maria Irene Fornes' Final Plays

Five hundred years after Christopher Columbus' voyage to the Indies, scholar John Brushwood delineated the three main offerings of America as presented in Spanish-American literature: wonder, promise and refuge. Maria Irene Fornes' dramatic collection, Letters from Cuba and Other Plays (2007), includes three pieces that correspond to the last stage of her long career as a playwright. The trilogy presents different versions of America at the turn of the millennium, all of which share the motif of the voyage across the Atlantic, although the three journeys vary in direction, length, and implications. The article argues that, despite the obvious differences in style, tone, and theme, these plays respond to preoccupations about the meaning of "discovery" and "exploration" facilitated or triggered by the Atlantic. The effective use of palimpsest, hybridity, and simultaneity as instruments for exploration in each of the three texts, combined with the concepts that Brushwood proposes, render a new cartography for the notion of America at the end of the twentieth century.

From Robert Keayne to Angola, Richard, and Grace: Bernard Bailyn and New England's Place in an Atlantic World

From Robert Keayne to Angola, Richard, and Grace: Bernard Bailyn and New England's Place in an Atlantic World

Investigation of Crosslink Density and Mechanical Values of Carbon and Kaolin-Silica Based Compounds for Different Vulcanization Parameters

Kauçuk malzemeler vulkanizasyonun bulunmasıyla beraber birçok alanda kullanılmaktadır. Artan talep ileberaber farklı kauçuk türlerinin yanı sıra kauçuk karışımlarında siyah ve renkli çalışmalar da yapılmaya&#x0D; başlanmıştır. Bu çalışmada etilen propilen dien monomer (EPDM) kauçuk kullanılarak oluşturulan siyah ve&#x0D; renkli reçetelerin, farklı vulkanizasyon parametrelerindeki özellikleri incelenmiştir. Siyah reçetelerde farklı&#x0D; oranlarda karbon siyahı, renkli reçetelerde farklı oranlarda silika kullanılmıştır. Her bir karışım farklı vulkanizasyon parametrelerine tabii tutulmuş, sonrasında mekanik değerleri ve çapraz bağ yoğunlukları&#x0D; (CLD) incelenmiştir. Siyah reçetelerde dolgu miktarının artması ile CLD’nin arttığı ve CLD, sertlik ve&#x0D; modüllerin maksimum değerlerin 10 dakika (dk) vulkanizasyonunda, renkli karışımların da dolgu miktarının artmasıyla CLD’nin arttığı ve CLD, sertlik ve modüllerin maksimum değerlerinin 15dk vulkanizasyonunda olduğu bulunmuştur. Çalışma sonucunda vulkanizasyon parametrelerinin ve kullanılan dolgu malzemelerin karışımların çapraz bağ yoğunluğu miktarına ve mekanik değerlere etki ettiği sonucuna varılmıştır.

Rómulo Betancourt: His Historical Personality and the Genesis of Modern Democracy in Venezuela

Rómulo Betancourt: His Historical Personality and the Genesis of Modern Democracy in Venezuela

On the Character and Causes of Inequality in Latin America

On the Character and Causes of Inequality in Latin America

Sweet diversity: Colonial goods and the welfare gains from global trade after 1492

When did overseas trade start to matter for living standards? Traditional real-wage indices suggest that living standards in Europe stagnated before 1800. In this paper, we argue that welfare may have actually risen substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods. Colonial “luxuries” such as tea, coffee, and sugar became highly coveted. Together with more simple household staples such as potatoes and tomatoes, overseas goods transformed European diets after the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. They became household items in many countries by the end of the 18th century. We apply two standard methods to calculate broad orders of magnitude of the resulting welfare gains. While they cannot be assessed precisely, gains from greater variety may well have been big enough to boost European real incomes by 10% or more (depending on the assumptions used).

Maiakovskii abroad in colour and sound: My Discovery of America

ABSTRACT Vladimir Maiakovskii travelled to America to give public readings: to be seen and, more importantly, to be heard. However, the fact that Maiakovskii spoke no foreign languages complicated his travels. This is the subject of the author’s inquiry: how does a master of verbal expression cope with being rendered incomprehensible among foreigners, and how does this predicament influence the artistic representation of his experience abroad? The distinguishing feature of Maiakovskii’s travelogue, and the consequence of his temporary muteness in America, is heavy reliance on colour and non-verbal sound to describe and interpret what he sees. Maiakovskii focuses on alternative, non-verbal means of engaging with the foreign that rely on the senses, rather than language. The author traces the functions of colour, sound, and laughter in My Discovery of America: from the poster-like graphics of Maiakovskii’s representation of American cities to a more complex interpretation of their sounds, to the thought-provoking use of laughter.

Assembly of a Large Collection of Maxicircle Sequences and Their Usefulness for Leishmania Taxonomy and Strain Typing.

Parasites of medical importance, such as Leishmania and Trypanosoma, are characterized by the presence of thousands of circular DNA molecules forming a structure known as kinetoplast, within the mitochondria. The maxicircles, which are equivalent to the mitochondrial genome in other eukaryotes, have been proposed as a promising phylogenetic marker. Using whole-DNA sequencing data, it is also possible to assemble maxicircle sequences as shown here and in previous works. In this study, based on data available in public databases and using a bioinformatics workflow previously reported by our group, we assembled the complete coding region of the maxicircles for 26 prototypical strains of trypanosomatid species. Phylogenetic analysis based on this dataset resulted in a robust tree showing an accurate taxonomy of kinetoplastids, which was also able to discern between closely related Leishmania species that are usually difficult to discriminate by classical methodologies. In addition, we provide a dataset of the maxicircle sequences of 60 Leishmania infantum field isolates from America, Western Europe, North Africa, and Eastern Europe. In agreement with previous studies, our data indicate that L. infantum parasites from Brazil are highly homogeneous and closely related to European strains, which were transferred there during the discovery of America. However, this study showed the existence of different L. infantum populations/clades within the Mediterranean region. A maxicircle signature for each clade has been established. Interestingly, two L. infantum clades were found coexisting in the same region of Spain, one similar to the American strains, represented by the Spanish JPCM5 reference strain, and the other, named “non-JPC like”, may be related to an important leishmaniasis outbreak that occurred in Madrid a few years ago. In conclusion, the maxicircle sequence emerges as a robust molecular marker for phylogenetic analysis and species typing within the kinetoplastids, which also has the potential to discriminate intraspecific variability.

Venezuela's collapse: Exogenous shock or institutional design?

AbstractVenezuela was the fastest‐growing economy of the twentieth century until the 1970s, and it still has the world's largest known oil reserves. Yet in recent years, it has experienced the greatest economic collapse in South America's history, condemning 96 per cent of its people to poverty. Much of the existing literature blames foreign sanctions or a decline in oil prices, or both. We disagree, arguing the breakdown was caused by explicit institutional changes that politicised the oil industry and replaced market mechanisms with central planning. The institutional restructuring also disregarded monetary stability and basic infrastructure, including electricity supply, telecommunications, and even security.