History Of America Research Articles

National, Transnational, and Hypernational Historiographies: New France Meets Early American History

Abstract: Have transnational currents (Atlantic, borderlands, continentalist) in the history of colonial North America overcome the distortions long associated with a national framing of research on the early modern period? Have we left behind the tendency to read the political geography of the nineteenth century back into the history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? Taking the example of writings on New France, a colonial formation that sprawled across large parts of what was to become Canada and the United States, this article argues that national historiographic traditions continue to exert a powerful influence. Even as they pursue their subject across modern borders, Canadian, Quebec and United States historians frequently view New France through the lens of their own respective national traditions. The recent upsurge of interest in New France on the part of Early Americanists is a welcome development, but its impact is somewhat vitiated by a tendency to retain a United States-centric intellectual agenda while annexing new territories and cultures to what remains a national intellectual enterprise. The article concludes with the suggestion that New France specialists situate their work more in a wider hemispheric context, one that includes comparative perspectives on Latin America and the Caribbean.

CHANGING IDEAS ABOUT HERITAGE AND HERITAGE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN HISTORICALLY SEGREGATED COMMUNITIES

America's history of racial segregation has played a critical role in shaping both what is publicly acknowledged, remembered, and preserved with respect to heritage and what is forgotten, whispered about, or relegated to the status of other in many communities. In this paper, I discuss how the community of Sulphur Springs in Tampa, FL, in partnership with students and faculty from the University of South Florida, has begun to address issues of identity and representation in the marketing of heritage as a key cultural resource. Issues confronted by this community underscore the role that heritage research, preservation, and management plays in defining the present and creating the future. Lessons learned from a previously conducted study of the Kingsley Plantation community in Jacksonville, FL, inform this analysis.

Opinion evolution based on cellular automata rules in small world networks

In this paper, we apply cellular automata rules, which can be given by a truth table, to human memory. We design each memory as a tracking survey mode that keeps the most recent three opinions. Each cellular automata rule, as a personal mechanism, gives the final ruling in one time period based on the data stored in one's memory. The key focus of the paper is to research the evolution of people's attitudes to the same question. Based on a great deal of empirical observations from computer simulations, all the rules can be classified into 20 groups. We highlight the fact that the phenomenon shown by some rules belonging to the same group will be altered within several steps by other rules in different groups. It is truly amazing that, compared with the last hundreds of presidential voting in America, the eras of important events in America's history coincide with the simulation results obtained by our model.

Commentary: Ethics and Character in the U.S. Presidency

The essays in this special issue present and develop several important themes in the examination of ethical presidential leadership. These include the distinction(s) between public and private virtues; the ways in which America's history and democratic ethos shape the “constitutional character” required of its chief executive; the complications in the assessment of presidential leadership posed by the multidimensional character of the presidential office and by the variety of challenges that the president confronts; and the different and often divergent sources of democratic legitimacy, including responsiveness to the electorate, guidance by one's own judgment of its interests, and fidelity to one's core convictions.

Biological basis of tobacco addiction: Implications for smoking-cessation treatment

Tobacco use became common all over the world after discovery of Americas. Tobacco, a plant carries in its leaves an alkaloid called nicotine, which is responsible not only for several pathophysiological changes in the body but also develops tolerance to its own action with repeated use. Studies suggest that the alpha-4 beta-2 nicotine acetylcholine receptor subtype is the main receptor that mediates nicotine dependence. Nicotine acts on these receptors to facilitate neurotransmitter release (dopamine and others), producing pleasure and mood modulation. Repeated exposure to nicotine develops neuroadaptation of the receptors, resulting in tolerance to many of the effects of nicotine. Withdrawal symptoms appear on stoppage of tobacco use, which are characterized by irritability, anxiety, increased eating, dysphoria, and hedonic dysregulation, among others. Smoking is also reinforced by conditioning. Pharmacotherapies for smoking cessation should reduce withdrawal symptoms and block the reinforcing effects of nicotine obtained from smoking without causing excessive adverse effects.

National, Transnational, and Hypernational Historiographies: New France Meets Early American History

Abstract:

Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods and the Rise of European Living Standards after 1492

Did living standards stagnate before the Industrial Revolution? Traditional real-wage indices typically show broadly constant living standards before 1800. In this paper, we show that living standards rose substantially, but surreptitiously because of the growing availability of new goods. Colonial luxuries such as tea, coffee, and sugar transformed European diets after the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. These goods became household items in many countries by the end of the 18th century. We use the Greenwood-Kopecky (2009) method to calculate welfare gains based on data about price changes and the rate of adoption of new colonial goods. Our results suggest that by 1850, the average Englishman would have been willing to forego 15% or more of his income in order to maintain access to sugar and tea alone. These findings are robust to a wide range of alternative assumptions, data series, and valuation methods.

La exposición histórico-americana de Madrid de 1892 y la ¿ausencia? de México

The Fourth Centennial of the Discovery of America was celebrated in 1892. Together with the rest of the festivities, the Historical American Exposition of Madrid is considered a landmark not only for its political, cultural and scientific relevance, which, to this day, have not been studied in their entirety, but as well for the implications that resulted for Mexico. This article is meant to show, on the one side, the singularity of such festivities, and, on the other, the fact that Mexico’s participation constituted an important historical moment for Mexican scientific anthropology. This research was essentially carried out based on the numerous documentation found at the Archivo General de la Administracion, Alcala de Henares.

Shared Memory: John Hampden, New World and Old

English subjects in the old world and colonists in the new shared their history and collective political experience for more than 150 years before the Americans declared independence. In the decades preceding that declaration, the historic memory of the Stuart monarchy in England came to play a formative part in the political dialogue of the new world and the literature of the old. This paper is about the manifestation of the seventeenth-century stories and legends of John Hampden and the English civil wars within the historic memory of eighteenth-century England and the colonies. It is about events of the seventeenth century informing the eighteenth. John Hampden occupied a major place in that shared history. His life spanned the years of the reigns of James I and Charles I, what John Palfrey, a historian in America in the nineteenth century, chose to call the Stuart Dynasty. 1 Born in 1594, Hampden was just nine when James came to the English throne and he died in 1643 only six years before the execution of Charles. As well as Hampden’s peripheral interest in one-twelfth share of a patent for land in Connecticut, his name was linked to the early colonial period through two stories that were perpetuated in literature for years to come. Later, and quite separately from those colonial legends, Hampden became an icon of the revolutionary period for his stand against the unjust taxation by the Crown that culminated in his trial in the ship-money case in 1637. The story of how the public memory of Hampden was transmitted, and sometimes corrupted, is a complicated one, and the earlier legends particularly need to be set straight. They were, to use the words of Henry Cabot Lodge, myths ‘which masquerade as history’. 2 In discovering how the legends involving the colonies developed we can put to rest the recurring question of whether Hampden himself ever visited the new world. The second part of the story, that of Hampden’s place in the public memory of the eighteenth century at the time of the break with Britain, is less complicated but more compelling. Let me begin at the beginning, with ship money. John Hampden became famous in England in 1637 the moment he challenged the king’s right to collect the ship-money tax, and it was sustained over generations in the hearts and minds of the people, first by contemporary news accounts and letters, and later through the great literary histories of David Hume and Lord Macaulay. 3 In the mid-seventeenth century, when many Englishmen believed

Thinking around the Corner: The Power of Information Literacy

Question Authority is not just an old bumper sticker. Questioning authority has now become a critical element of information literacy. In today's world, students require not only academic rigor, but also the information literacy skills to recognize patterns, follow trends, and predict what effects a particular change might have on a given system. We must prepare students to become strategic, critical, divergent, and creative thinkers. Otherwise, they will succumb to irrelevancy and power down to sit in archaic classrooms, read outdated textbooks, and lose their intellectual curiosity. However, educators can create a more meaningful learning environment, one that gives students the skills they need to succeed in an information society. CONSIDER THE SOURCE The first step is to teach students to question the authority of a web site or printed text, to consider the source of that authority, and to look for bias. Answering these questions for every source will lead students to a habit of deep inquiry. Students who have come to accept Google as gospel are often intrigued by this strategy. One exercise worth building into a lesson plan is to have students compare the time that it takes to establish the credibility and authenticity of a source found on a search engine with the speed of finding relevant and precise content on a specialized database. Verifying authority, considering the source, and investigating bias are strategies that serve students whether they're seeking ideas, opinions, or facts. Reading a newspaper article online seems simple enough. What about that magazine article? Do those sources have the same parent company? Alert educators understand the significance of that question and are prepared to share in the investigation. However, educators sometimes forget that the same questions should be asked about the book on the library shelf. It is illuminating to remember that many educators once viewed print in the same way that their students now view online sources. One benefit of building information literacy skills into lesson plans is that students who are critical, strategic thinkers will find the content relevant and worthwhile. These students will answer the essential questions of curriculum for themselves: What is worthy of learning, and when and how shall we learn it? WHAT IS IMPORTANT? In the era of finite information sources, when there were only three major networks and record albums had 12 selections, we accepted that choices were made based on others' expertise. Today, our information choices increase as each nanosecond passes, and we no longer can rely on the expertise of a few gatekeepers. The information literacy skills of evaluating authority, accuracy, and credibility of sources become necessary in our personal lives when we choose a news source, a phone system, or a Medicare card. Of course, the important content in classrooms is still selected by textbook publishers and mandated by state and district standards. But the skills in evaluating content will serve students in studying and taking tests in any discipline. One of the first questions that students need to ask is: What is a fact? If we define it as a piece of information having objective reality, then is the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 a fact? …

On The Conquest of Human Nature: Ancients, Moderns—Medievals, Futures

“The modern project was originated as required by nature (natural right), i.e. it was originated by philosophers; the project was meant to satisfy in the most perfect manner the most powerful natural needs of men; nature was to be conquered for the sake of man who himself was supposed to possess a nature, an unchangeable nature; the originators of the project took it for granted that philosophy and science are identical. After some time it appeared that the conquest of nature requires the conquest of human nature and hence in the first place the questioning of the unchangeability of human nature: an unchangeable human nature might set absolute limits to progress. Accordingly, the natural needs of men could no longer direct the conquest of nature; the direction had to come from reason as distinguished from nature, from the rational Ought as distinguished from the neutral Is.” — Leo Strauss 1 “We must take a look at the foundations of the modern age. These are with particular clarity in the thought of Francis Bacon. That a new era emerged—through the discovery of America and the new technical achievements that had made this development possible—is undeniable. But what is the basis of this new era? It is the new correlation of experiment and method that enables man to arrive at an interpretation of nature in conformity with its laws and thus finally to achieve ‘the triumph of art over nature’ (victoria cursus artis super naturam). The novelty—according to Bacon’s vision—lies in a new correlation between science and praxis. This is also given a theological application: the new correlation between science and praxis would mean that the dominion over creation—given to man by God and lost through original sin—would be reestablished.” — Benedict XVI 2

Possible Evidence of Pre-Columbian Transoceanic Voyages Based on Conventional LSC and AMS 14C Dating of Associated Charcoal and a Carbonized Seed of Custard Apple (Annona squamosa L.)

An attempt was made to trace the antiquity of custard apple in India on the basis of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and liquid scintillation counting (LSC) radiocarbon dates. Recently, seed remains of custard apple (Annona squamosa L.) in association with wood charcoals were encountered from the Neolithic archaeological site of Tokwa at the confluence of the Belan and Adwa rivers, Mirzapur District, in the Vidhyan Plateau region of north-central India. The wood charcoal sample was dated at the 14C laboratory of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany (BSIP), Lucknow, by conventional LSC 14C dating. The sample dated to 1740 cal BC (BS-2054). A seed sample of custard apple was dated by AMS at the Institute of Physics 14C laboratory, Bhubaneswar, India (3MV tandem Pelletron accelerator). Interestingly, the AMS date was given as 1520 cal BC (IOPAMS-10), showing a reasonable agreement with the LSC date carried out at BSIP. On botanical grounds, the custard apple is native to South America and the West Indies and was supposed to have been introduced in India by the Portuguese in the 16th century. The present 14C dates of the samples pushes back the antiquity of custard apple on Indian soil to the 2nd millennium BC, favoring a group of specialists proposing diverse arguments for Asian-American transoceanic contacts before the discovery of America by Columbus in AD 1492.

Dissertations of Note

Dissertations of Note Rachel Fordyce (bio) Apgar, Richard B. "Taming Travel and Disciplining Reason: Enlightenment and Pedagogy in the Work of Joachim Heinrich Campe." Ph.D. diss. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008. 243 pp. DAI 69:1378A. Apgar points out that Campe was "the eighteenth century's most prolific and successful children's author (1746–1818)" and "explores the relationship between the explosion in published travel accounts and the birth of children's literature in Germany during the final three decades of the Eighteenth Century." He gives particular importance to Campe's three most popular works: Robinson der Jüngere; Die Entdeckung von Amerika. Ein angenehmes und nützliches Lesebuch für Kinder und junge Leute; and Sammlung interessanter und zweckmäßig abgefaßter Reisebeschreibungen für die Jugend [Robinson the Younger; The Discovery of America: A Pleasant and Useful Reader for Children and Young People; and A Collection of Interesting and Practically Formulated Travelogues for the Young]. He also stresses the significance of Enlightenment ideology and "exotic imagery" in Campe's travel stories. Bae, Catherine Yoonah. "All the Girl's a Stage: Representations of Femininity and Adolescence, Japanese Girls' Magazines, 1930s–1960s." Ph.D. diss. Stanford University, 2008. 248 pp. DAI: 69:1942A. Bae looks at "the development of cultural representation of the shojo, or the adolescent girl, as seen in shojo zasshi, or Japanese girls' magazines." As young females became more literate following the Second World War, culture changed, and a mass market for literature for adolescent girls developed in Japan. Regardless, "modern models of feminine propriety" correspond to "sheltered tutelage"—"a blend of various institutional norms that defined women's relationship to society, [including] Victorian domesticity and medical delineations of hygiene, virginity, and reproduction. . . ." Beissel Heath, Michelle Patricia. "Domestic Play: Order, Control, and British Identity, 1860–1920." Ph.D. diss. The George Washington University, 2008. 254 pp. DAI 69:617A. Beissel Heath "explores the Victorian discourse of play and playfulness, showing that play not only reflects Victorian beliefs, values, attitudes, and responses, but it also helped to shape and direct them." Ultimately, she demonstrates how "sports and games are used to explore the possibility of social or individual freedom, and used as social equalizers between races, classes, genders, and ages, but are at the same time considered with much anxiety [and] are the sites of cultural tension and discomfort about those very freedoms and equalities." Bell, Braden Gregory. "Exploring the Drama-Lives of Adolescent Boys." Ph.D. diss. New York University, 2007. 266 pp. DAI 68:4921A.1 Bell's findings highlight the values of involvement in "creative activities, freedom of choice, the assumption of responsibility, working on collaborative enterprises, and the development of a sense of competency," things that boys often miss by not involving themselves in sympathetic or empathetic experiences. Berrey, Sara Elizabeth Clare. "Generations in Print: Revisions in American Literature, 1850–1900." Ph.D. diss. University of Minnesota, 2008. 218 pp. DAI 69:1777A. Among other things, Berrey looks at "the revision of [Fanny] Fern's adult articles into children's sketches." She also studies the work of Luis P. Senarens, [End Page 300] known as "Noname" and purported to be the American Jules Verne, his sensational literature for children, and "the boys and girls who read, and wrote back to cheap, serialized fiction." Blettner, Jan. "Don't Read This: A Kleinian Analysis of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events." Psy.D. diss. The Wright Institute, 2007. 92 pp. DAI 69:1935B. "Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events has been wildly popular among child readers. This is particularly interesting given the author's dire and woeful tone. This investigation [describes] the books using a Kleinian lens, chosen because of the books' themes of anxiety, mourning, whole-object relatedness, regret, morality, and creativity. Furthermore, using Bettelheim as a basis, this investigation [suggests] ways in which the books may contribute to the psychological development of children." In conclusion, Blettner discusses the limitations of his study. Bouslough, Gail. "Appropriating Wonderland: Nostalgia and Modernity in the Children's Fantasy of Lewis Carroll's Alice Books and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Ph.D. diss. The Claremont Graduate...

Sweet Diversity: Colonial Goods and the Rise of European Living Standards 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 rose substantially, but surreptitiously, because of an influx of new goods as a result of overseas trade. Colonial luxuries such as tea, coffee, and sugar transformed European diets after the discovery of America and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. These goods became household items in many countries by the end of the 18th century. We use three different methods to calculate welfare gains based on price data and the rate of adoption of these new colonial goods. Our results suggest that by 1800, the average Englishman would have been willing to forego 10% or more of his income in order to maintain access to sugar and tea alone. These findings are robust to a wide range of alternative assumptions, data series, and valuation methods.

Discourses of Danger

Government, media, and medical accounts of Emma Goldman converged to create her public presence in the U.S. as a “dangerous individual.” The prevailing discourses constituted Goldman as violent, utilizing her alleged menace to distract attention from far more egregious violence against labor by state and corporate forces. Goldman responded by denying, confronting, and redirecting the alarmed gaze toward greater risks left underarticulated in hegemonic accounts. Goldman's bold confrontations with authorities constituted a kind of anarchist parrhesia, fearless speech, a relentless truth-telling practice that risked her own security in pursuit of her “beautiful ideal.” The labor of remembering America's history of class violence hones our attention to the complex discursive processes by which some historical facts come to count in prevailing narratives, while others fade into obscurity.

Tempest Tost

Written from an in-house perspective by the founder of the <i>Lower East Side Tenement Museum</i>, this article enumerates the many ways in which the museum manifests its mission in order to utilize history to positively impact current and future immigrant experiences in the United States. The <i>Lower East Side Tenement Museum</i> is committed to fostering such history-driven discussions both within its own expanding institution and within other North American museums via The International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience. The author highlights interactions with the history of immigration that the museum provides in its use of the past to regard the future—from the exploration of immigrant experiences in moderated talks with visitors to programs that empower modern immigrants through knowledge and self-study, allowing the Tenement Museum to maintain a gateway into America's history that may also lead to a brighter tomorrow.

Globalisation, Growth and Crises: The View from Latin America

Abstract In this paper I analyse the role of openness and globalisation in Latin America's economic development. The paper is divided into two distinct parts: I first (Sections 2 to 4) provide an analysis of 60 years of the region's economic history, that go from the launching of the Alliance for Progress by the Kennedy administration in 1961, to the formulation and implementation of the market oriented reforms of the Washington Consensus in the 1990s and 2000s. I conclude that Latin America's history has been characterised by low growth, high inflation and recurrent external crises. In Section 5 I deal formally with the costs of crises and I estimate a number of variance component models of the dynamics of growth. I find that external crises have been more costly in Latin America than in the rest of the world. I also find that the cost of external crises has been inversely related to the degree of openness.

NGOMA: Celebrate the Dream with African-American Literature

How can we celebrate the most powerful dream (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s) in America's history, which paved the way for civil rights, equality, and social justice? How can we heighten students' ...

Living Up to Ancient Civilizations

The Classical Period Of Greece And Rome lasted more than a thousand years (from about 750 BCE to about 400 AD). By contrast, the modern world, beginning with Columbus's discovery of America, has lasted just over 500 years. As a result of overpopulation, overconsumption, global warming, and

Reflections on Leadership

Last year I read Partners in Command, a book by Mark Perry. It is an account of the unique relationship between General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George Marshall, and how they played a significant role in the American victory in World War II and laid the foundations for future success in the earliest years of the Cold War. Eisenhower and Marshall are, of course, icons, legends etched in granite. Their portraits hang in my office. One of the things I found compelling in Partners in Command is how they were both influenced by another senior Army officer who is not nearly as well-known and in fact, as a reader of history, I had never heard of. His name is General Fox Conner, a tutor and mentor to both Eisenhower and Marshall. Conner and Marshall first became friends when they served together on the staff of General Black Jack Pershing during World War I. In the 1920s, Eisenhower served as staff assistant under Brigadier General Conner in the Panama Canal Zone. Three Axioms From Conner, Marshall and Eisenhower learned much about leadership and the conduct of war. Conner had three principles of war for a democracy that he imparted to Eisenhower and Marshall. They were: * fight unless you have * fight alone. * And never fight for long. All things being equal, these principles are pretty straightforward and strategically sound. We have heard variants of them in the decades since, captured perhaps most recently in the Powell Doctrine. Of course, all things are not equal, particularly considering the range and complexity of the threats facing America today, from the wars we are currently in to the conflicts we are most likely to fight. So I would like to suggest how we should think about applying Fox Conner's three axioms to the security challenges of the twenty-first century. Never fight unless you have to. That one should only go to war as a last resort has long been a principle of civilized people. We know its horrors and costs. War is, by its nature, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Winston Churchill wrote in January 1942: Let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe that any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.... Once the signal is given, the statesman is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. In a dictatorship, the government can force the population to fall in behind the war effort, at least for a time. The nature of democracy, however, limits a country's ability to wage war, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed with perhaps the exception of World War II, every conflict in America's history has been divisive and controversial here at home. Contrary to what General George Patton said in his pep talks, most real Americans do not like to fight. Consider the conflicts today. Afghanistan is widely viewed as a war of necessity--striking back at the staging ground of the perpetrators of the September 11th attack. The Iraq campaign, while justified in my view, is viewed differently by many people. In testimony in front of the Congress on the Iraq war, I observed that we were attacked at home in 2001 from Afghanistan. We are at war in Afghanistan today, in no small measure, because we mistakenly turned our backs on Afghanistan after the Soviet forces left in the late 1980s. We made a strategic mistake in the end game of that war. If we get the end game wrong in Iraq, I told the Congress, the consequences will be far worse. Truth to tell, it is a hard sell to say we must sustain the fight in Iraq right now and continue to absorb the high financial and human cost of the struggle, in order to avoid an even uglier fight or even greater danger to our country in the future. We have Afghanistan to remind us that these are not just hypothetical risks. …