League Movement Research Articles

Pittsburgh and The Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism

Pittsburgh and The Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism

Social Movement Ruptures and Legacies: Unpacking the Early Sedimentation of the Anti-European Super League Movement in English Football

Building on Della Porta’s work on social movement events, critical junctures, and legacies, this article studies the discursive practices, emotions and networks of the instant 48-hour mobilizations of the anti-European Super League (ESL) movement in English football in April 2021. In doing so, we show how this case reveals a new generation of conflict between the different supporter demographic and corporate constituencies that characterize elite football in England, and their politicized temporal structures. Showing how social movement ‘legacy’ operates as a multifaceted concept of power and time, we argue that the ‘puzzling out’ of a new post-ESL regulatory regime in football reveals the tensions between what are considered legitimate, and illegitimate, practices, which characterize the moral economy of the contemporary English football crowd.

Joe William Trotter Jr. Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism.

Journal Article Joe William Trotter Jr. Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism. Get access Joe William Trotter Jr. Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2020. Pp. 260. Paper $28.00. Jessica D. Klanderud Jessica D. Klanderud Berea College, US Email: klanderudj@berea.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 128, Issue 2, June 2023, Pages 1012–1013, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad160 Published: 22 June 2023

White Internationalism and the League of Nations Movement in Interwar Australia

AbstractPopular support for the League of Nations spread around the world in the interwar period but it did not spread evenly. Instead, it was concentrated in white-majority countries: both in Europe and beyond in the form of settler societies around the world. This article explores the relationship between the League movement and white supremacy in one such community: Australia. Citizens in that country combined their allegiance to the League with their beliefs in white supremacy: about the need to restrict immigration through the ‘White Australia’ policy; about the rationale of them ruling over non-white peoples in the territories they held under League ‘mandate’; and about their treatment of Indigenous Australians. In short, they were ‘white internationalists’. Australia’s white internationalists were relatively few. But they reveal a global history of popular white internationalism. Interwar Australians might have been some of the most blatant white internationalists but they were far from the only ones.

Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism

Pittsburgh and the Urban League Movement: A Century of Social Service and Activism

The Physiological and Perceptual Effects of Stochastic Simulated Rugby League Match Play

To examine responses to a simulated rugby league protocol designed to include more stochastic commands, and therefore require greater vigilance, than traditional team-sport simulation protocols. Eleven male university rugby players completed 2 trials (randomized and control [CON]) of a rugby league movement simulation protocol, separated by 7 to 10d. The CON trial consisted of 48 repeated ∼115-s cycles of activity. The stochastic simulation (STOCH) was matched for the number and types of activity performed every 5.45min in CON but included no repeated cycles of activity. Movement using GPS, heart rate, rating of perceived exertion, and Stroop test performance was assessed throughout. Maximum voluntary contraction peak torque, voluntary activation (in percentage), and global task load were assessed after exercise. The mean mental demand of STOCH was higher than CON (effect size [ES] = 0.56; ±0.69). Mean sprint speed was higher in STOCH (22.5 [1.4] vs 21.6 [1.6]km·h-1, ES = 0.50; ±0.55), which was accompanied by a higher rating of perceived exertion (14.3 [1.0] vs 13.0 [1.4], ES = 0.87; ±0.67) and a greater number of errors in the Stroop test (10.3 [2.5] vs 9.3 [1.4] errors; ES = 0.65; ±0.83). Maximum voluntary contraction peak torque (CON = -48.4 [31.6]N·m and STOCH = -39.6 [36.6]N·m) and voluntary activation (CON = -8.3% [4.8%] and STOCH = -6.0% [4.1%]) was similarly reduced in both trials. Providing more stochastic commands, which requires greater vigilance, might alter performance and associated physiological, perceptual, and cognitive responses to team-sport simulations.

The influence of warm-up duration on simulated rugby league interchange match performance

ABSTRACT Objective The study was conducted to understand the effects of a short (10 min) and a long (30 min) duration warm-up on subsequent readiness to exercise and movement during simulated rugby league match play. Methods: Using a randomised cross-over design, 13 male rugby players (age: 23.6 ± 4.1 y) completed 10- or 30-min warm-up immediately before 2 × 23 min rugby league movement simulation protocol. Results: Total distance, high- and low speed running and tympanic temperature (ES = 0.56 to 20.8) were all higher in the 30 min warm-up, with differences in relative distance and heart rate unclear (ES = -0.36 to 0.06). Differences in participants’ readiness to exercise after the warm-ups were unclear (ES = 0.25). Differences between trials for movement characteristics (ES = -0.13 to -0.32), RPE (ES = -0.13 to 0.04) and B[La] after the simulation were mostly unclear, with only trivial changes in high-speed running (ES = 0.08) and a lower heart rate (ES = -0.26) between the two playing bouts after the 30 min warm-up trial. Conclusion: Practitioners can use warm-ups between 10 or 30 minutes for rugby league interchange players without any implications for subsequent match running performance.

THE DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A RUGBY LEAGUE MATCH SIMULATION – INTERCHANGE PROTOCOL WITH COLLISION ELEMENTS

Rugby league is a collision sport that is intermittent in nature. Players require highly developed maximal aerobic power, muscular strength and power and speed and agility, to perform through an...

The effects of physical contact type on the internal and external demands during a rugby league match simulation protocol

ABSTRACTThe aim of this study was to investigate how the type of contact influences physiological, perceptual and locomotive load during a simulated rugby league match. Eleven male university rugby league players performed two trials of the rugby league movement simulation protocol for interchange forwards with a traditional soft tackle bag and a weighted tackle sled to replicate contact demands. The interchange forward-specific simulation was chosen given the contact frequency is higher for this group of players compared to whole match players. Locomotive rate, sprint speed, tackle intensity, heart rate (HR) and rating of perceived exertion were analysed during the first and second bouts that replicated two ~23 min on-field passages. Countermovement jump (CMJ) was measured before and immediately after each trial. More time was spent in heart rate zone between 91 and 100% HRpeak during the first (effect size ± 90% confidence interval: 0.44 ± 0.49) and second bouts (0.44 ± 0.43), and larger (0.6 ± 0.69) decrements in CMJ performance were observed during the sled trial (5.9, s = 4.9%) compared to the bag trial (2.6, s = 5.4%). Changing the type of contact during the match simulation subtly altered both the internal and external loads on participants. Using a standard tackle bag results in faster sprint speed to contact, but lower overall high-intensity running. Conversely, a heavier tackle object increases the internal load and results in greater lower limb neuromuscular fatigue as reflected by the decrease in CMJ performance.

Nichirenism, Utopianism, and Modernity: Rethinking Ishiwara Kanji's East Asia League Movement

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Nichirenism (Nichirenshugi ...), a current of lay Buddhist movements in early twentieth century Japan, has a reputation of being the bete noire of modern Japanese Buddhism. Its main proponent, Tanaka Chigaku ???? (1861-1931), merged a belief in the Lotus Sutra with the Japanese national polity (kokutai ??), the Japanese imperial line, and endorsed expansionism abroad. Not surprisingly, it has most often been described in terms of a nationalist distortion of religion, and as a Buddhist legitimation of the emperor system in support of the ruling class, and a form militant nationalism or Japanese fascism.1 Over the years, this characterization has come to be somewhat modified, and the phenomenon of Nichirenism has been gaining more attention from specialists in Buddhism, the sociology of religion, as well as literature, who take the religious aspects more seriously and approach Nichirenism more in the context of the modernization of Buddhism from the Meiji period.2 In this article, I will investigate the history of Ishiwara Kanji's ???? (1889-1949) East Asia League Movement (Toa renmei undo ?????? or Toa renmei kyokai ??????, hereafter abbreviated as eal), active during the AsiaPacific and immediate postwar era, and rethink how this movement should be understood as one important variant in the history of modern Nichirenism.Ishiwara, as a major architect of the Manchurian incident of 1931, for his Pan-Asianist ideology, and for his prediction of a final war between Asia (led by Japan) and the West (led by the United States), has in the traditional postwar interpretations fitted the image of the militarist or Nichirenist.3 While Ishiwara is a well-known figure whose seeming iconoclasm as a military thinker is a never-ending object of fascination, illustrated by the large number of biographies of him that have appeared over the years, his religious and philosophical ideas have remained less examined. Meanwhile, his movement, the eal, has received even less attention, and has usually been characterized in terms of Pan-Asianist support for the state, and has been taken much less seriously as a religious organization.4 One problem has been that in understanding the eal's program and world view, the focus has been largely on Ishiwara himself. In understanding the eal, Ishiwara's life and ideas are essential, since he was undoubtedly the leading figure, but scholars have not examined the various motivations of why other figures joined the eal and what impact they had on the movement. As I will show, there were many other important members of the eal, including women, farmers, and Koreans, who also played formative roles, often with their own and differing agendas. Also, amid a general tendency to treat Nichirenism as predominantly a prewar phenomenon, Ishiwara and the eal's post-1945 thought and activities received much less attention despite the movement's growth in the postwar period. And while a nationalist dimension is undeniable, in understanding the eal, the challenge is to balance this with the fact that several key aspects of its vision do not fit the characterization of nationalist ideology or a fascist legitimation of the state, and that in practice, the eal was heavily criticized by many ideologues, and suppressed by the wartime as well as the postwar Japanese state.In this article, I will focus less on Buddhist doctrinal aspects, but more on how the eal attempted to put Buddhist Nichirenist ideals into practice. Ishiwara and the eal were, I believe, much less concerned with doctrinal subtleties than the actual practical realization of Buddhism in this world, the creation of a Buddhist utopia in response to the wider crisis of modernity in the 1930s and 1940s. I will identify and analyze what I believe are some of the most salient characteristics of the eal's Buddhist program, focusing on the movement's religious engagement with questions of modernization, such as the nation-state, war, science and technology, and the role of women and minorities. …

Social protest in late nineteenth-century Irish towns — the House League movement

Despite the volume of research into the land question and its role in the evolution of nationalist politics in later nineteenth-century Ireland, the related dimension of urban protest has been neglected. This paper addresses one particular aspect of this latter phenomenon, the House League movement which was first established in Longford town in 1885 as a conscious attempt. in an urban context, to emulate the Land League's protest against evictions and rack-renting. The paper examines the curious spatial evolution of the movement. Despite the ubiquity of town tenant grievances throughout Ireland. House Leagues developed only in cattle grazing regions with relatively well developed markel town networks, nationalist in political complexion and badly affected by the economic downturn of the mid-1880s. In seeking an explanation for this distribution, the social composition, motivations and tactics of House Leagues are also discussed. It is concluded that, although only a short-term and regionally confined movement. House Leagues reflected the growing consciousness among town tenants in late nineteenth-century Ireland that their interests had been neglected in the fusion of the land question with nationalist politics.

The Quest for Solidarity and Tamed Nationalism: Envisioning Sustainable Peace in the Balkans

In the Balkans case it is far too often argued that peace and stability can only be achieved by escaping from the Balkans to Europe, that is, by adopting European norms of “tamed nationalism.” This article searches for the indigenous roots of the Balkan peace. The idea of a Balkan federation or union represents an often‐ignored model presented from time to time since the early 19th century. The interwar period represents the most interesting effort to create something genuine among the Balkan states. Between 1930 and 1933 four large Balkan conferences and several smaller Balkan meetings were organized with discussions on how to achieve a sustainable peace in the Balkans. Taming extreme nationalism by emphasizing a common Balkan heritage, rewriting history, and increasing communication was the idea of the Balkan League movement in the 1930s. This experience offers a valuable model for seeking a sustainable peace in southeastern Europe today.

THE GRADUATES` NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN SUDAN, 1918-1944

This article discusses the Graduates' National Movement in Sudan between 1918-1944. The first part of the article examines the emergence of the Graduates' club in 1918, its various cultural activities as well as the impact of these cultural activities on the emergence of the philosophical thoughts of the Graduates which were exhibited in their lectures at the club and in their articles published in national journals. This is followed by an analysis of the White flag league movement and its impact on the Graduates' National Movement. The third part examines the rise of the graduates' literary societies and their amalgamation in these societies to instigate the concepts of patriotism and nationalism among the members of the educated elite in that phase. The fourth part considers the impact of the 1936 agreement on the Graduates' movement and their rally to form a stronger organization of their own to threaten the colonial powers in their country. The final section draws some conclusion from this study.

<i>Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites: Race and Nationality in the Era of Reconstruction</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites: Race and Nationality in the Era of Reconstruction David Prior Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites: Race and Nationality in the Era of Reconstruction. By Mitchell Snay (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. xii plus 218 pp. $40.00). Mitchell Snay's important new book examines some neglected topics concerning America's post-Civil War Reconstruction. Most broadly, this concise, comparative study reminds readers that Reconstruction was profoundly shaped by transatlantic ideas concerning nationalism and by the continuing power of the discourse of republicanism. Snay accomplishes this by examining three movements during early Reconstruction—the diasporic struggle for Irish independence from Britain, the political mobilization of southern freedpeople, and the efforts by former Confederates to preserve a white supremacist order in the South. Snay argues that these movements, antagonisms notwithstanding, organized [End Page 1045] similarly, had at least the potential to develop and pursue separatist agendas, and were restrained from doing so by the discourse of republicanism and the Republican Party's hegemony in national politics. This carefully researched work will prove a provocative read for both specialists and advanced undergraduates. Snay's introduction defines his key concepts of civic, ethnic, and proto nationalism. For Snay, civic nationalism denotes devotion to a territorial state motivated by ideas of common citizenship. Ethnic nationalist movements, in contrast, form around notions of membership in exclusive groups defined by allegedly inherited cultural or racial characteristics. A proto-nation exists when a people have the potential to develop a nationalist consciousness. During Reconstruction, Snay argues, the persistence of the discourse of republicanism combined with the civic nationalism of Republican Party policies and principles to turn the energies of Fenians, freedpeople, and southern whites away from potential or actual desires for ethnic nationalist separatism and toward the ideal of citizenship. Snay's first chapter offers a detailed look at the development of the Fenian movement, the spread of Union League Clubs among southern freedpeople, and the terror of the Ku Klux Klan. Here, Snay stresses that Reconstruction was at heart a political process involving the expansion of federal power, voting rights, and the Republican Party. The Union League movement and the KKK developed as political organizations deeply involved with these contested developments. Irish Americans found themselves indirectly involved in the politics of Reconstruction as northern Democrats and Republicans fought over their votes. Snay notes the ongoing power of the discourse of republicanism, explaining how southern whites argued that concentrated power, here in the form of the Republican Party, threatened liberty. In his second chapter, Snay explores the similarities among the KKK, Union Leagues, and the Fenian movement, noting that all were semi-secret, fraternal societies that developed paramilitary capabilities. Each organization, moreover, could, with some justification, animate traditional republican concern that it sought to subvert or manipulate normal electoral processes. Because these organizations were liable to such criticism from their opponents, republicanism can be seen as another force encouraging Irish Americans, freedpeople, and southern whites to pursue their agendas along civic lines. Snay's third chapter explores the possibility that desire for and attachment to land promoted the development of class consciousness and collective identity within these three groups. He argues that concerns over land did not facilitate stronger group consciousnesses or movements for ethnic separation and autonomy. Instead, the continuing influence of republicanism led freedpeople and southern whites to aspire to individual and not collective land holding, while the mostly urban Fenians discussed land ownership primarily to dramatize British oppression. Among freedpeople, this tendency was further reinforced by their connections to the Republican Party with its free labor ideals. As a result, republicanism and Republican Party hegemony inhibited the development of class consciousness and ethnic nationalism. Chapters four and five explore the development and interplay of separatist ethnic nationalism and civic nationalism. Republican values were changing during the Civil War and early Reconstruction, with many developing a more organic [End Page 1046] understanding of the nation and greater support for state centralization. Critical too, clearly, was a deepening commitment to civic ideals. Snay then examines his three subjects and finds that, while ethnic nationalism was weakest among freedpeople and strongest among southern whites, what stands out is their...

The Film & Photo League of San Francisco

The Workers' Film & Photo League movement of the 1930s gave rise to local groups of film activists across the United States. San Francisco's Film & Photo League coalesced in 1933, documenting California labor struggles and social conditions during the Depression, as well as acting as a distribution network for censored Soviet films and American newsreels. The San Francisco Film & Photo League production Century of Progress (1934) is discussed in detail.

The Variant Meanings of Secularism in India: Notes Toward Conceptual Clarifications

Multiculturalism has a rather strange name in India. It is known as secularism and is a multifaceted expression, meaning different things to different people. Secularism seems incongruous in a land that is home to virtually all the major religions of the world. As a doctrine ad vocating the separation of church and state, it has little meaning in In dia. If it means equal respect for all religions, as the Indian state de fines it, then the term is incorrect. How, then, did this expression become a part of the political discourse in India? Until the early part of the twentieth century, secularism remained relatively obscure as a political concept in India. It gained prominence in the 1940s, after the Muslim League demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims. The League predicated its demand on religious and cultural grounds, arguing that as followers of Islam, Muslims consti tuted a separate nation and a different culture. It expressed misgivings about the fate of Muslims in a Hindu-dominated free India. As the League's movement gained strength, with the tacit patronage of the British, the Indian National Congress (Congress, henceforth) contested its claims by pointing out the syncretic religious traditions of India. It also decried what it considered to be an illegitimate abuse of religion in politics and accused the League of indulging in the politics of commu nalism. To distinguish itself from the politics of the Muslim League, the Congress affirmed its faith in secularism. It argued that unlike the communal League, it was wedded to secularism, by which it meant two things. First, it did not believe in misusing religion for ac

Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860–1890. By Michael W. Fitzgerald. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002. xviii, 301 pp. Cloth, $67.50, isbn 0-8071-2807-4. Paper, $24.95, isbn 0-8071-2837-6.)

Michael W. Fitzgerald's meticulously researched history of the “popular politics” of Mobile, Alabama, from 1860 to 1890 ends on a surprising note of confession—or perhaps reproach. “The polemical needs of the second Reconstruction,” he writes, have “obscured certain aspects of African American political behavior in the first [Reconstruction]” (p. 266). In other words, scholars writing during and after the civil rights revolution have presented a “sanitized version of events” by uncritically celebrating black political activism during Reconstruction without recognizing the utterly “self-seeking” character of many of the politicians of this era. Motivated by a desire for federal patronage, such leaders in Mobile were responsible for “endemic factionalism,” which “threatened to turn African American politics into the vehicle of activists' personal priorities” (ibid.) and contributed to the ultimate failure of Reconstruction in the Alabama port city. The author of an earlier Reconstruction monograph, The Union League Movement in the Deep South (1989), Fitzgerald shares in the broad revisionist consensus on emancipation and black enfranchisement, and his book appropriately bears the endorsement of Lawrence N. Powell and Eric Foner. He certainly does not use his candor about “factionalism” as a stick to beat Reconstruction or southern Republicans. Instead, his research should push Reconstruction scholars to consider the actions of ordinary black voters as well as office seekers and to study Reconstruction as a process that began before 1865 and continued, in some important ways, after 1877.

Social protest in late nineteenth-century Irish towns — the House League movement

Despite the volume of research into the land question and its role in the evolution of nationalist politics in later nineteenth-century Ireland, the related dimension of urban protest has been neglected. This paper addresses one particular aspect of this latter phenomenon, the House League movement which was first established in Longford town in 1885 as a conscious attempt. in an urban context, to emulate the Land League's protest against evictions and rack-renting. The paper examines the curious spatial evolution of the movement. Despite the ubiquity of town tenant grievances throughout Ireland. House Leagues developed only in cattle grazing regions with relatively well developed markel town networks, nationalist in political complexion and badly affected by the economic downturn of the mid-1880s. In seeking an explanation for this distribution, the social composition, motivations and tactics of House Leagues are also discussed. It is concluded that, although only a short-term and regionally confined movement. House Leagues reflected the growing consciousness among town tenants in late nineteenth-century Ireland that their interests had been neglected in the fusion of the land question with nationalist politics.

Irish peasant women in revolt: the Land League years

Between 1879 and 1882 a mass agrarian movement, led by the Irish National Land League, became a strong, all-encompassing force in Irish life for a brief but crucial period. This movement, one of the largest agrarian movements to take place in nineteenth-century Europe, has been treated as a nationalist movement, with emphasis of study placed on the role, contributions and aims of the league’s national leaders. These men, seeking their own varieties of self-government, saw the land movement as means to a political end. To them the land agitation provided a stepping-stone to national independence. It was the Irish peasantry, however, motivated primarily by economic considerations, that provided the driving force behind the movement, and at this level Irish peasant women made major contributions to the agrarian revolt. In this study the Land League movement is viewed as an agrarian protest movement; its purpose is to examine in particular the roles played by the Irish peasant women during the Land League period.These contributions have not been adequately recognised in historical literature. Recently the role of the Irish peasant has been duly acknowledged, but in these discussions a male image usually appears. When the Irish women’s role in the land movement is examined, it is done so in the context of the organisation known as the Ladies’ Land League. These studies concentrate on the activities of the upper- and middle-class urban leaders, particularly the Parnell sisters. But to dwell only on the Ladies’ Land League as the focus of women’s participation in the Land League movement is far too narrow, for it obscures the fact that hundreds of peasant women were fighting the Land War on a daily basis long before the formation of the women’s organisation. The papers of some of the local branches of the Land League provide evidence which shows that Irish rural women participated in the Land War from its beginning. Although the archival sources of the Land League period are biased towards men, enough material regarding the peasant women’s activities, admittedly limited and somewhat sparse, does exist to allow a strong argument to be put forward that peasant women performed effectively in the Land War.

The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change During Reconstruction , and: Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation, and the American Civil War (review)

284CIVIL WAR HISTORY Congressional Globe. Historians and lawyers still need to take seriously the lack of literature on what the law actually was and what citizenship meant for white Americans in a time of change. Patricia Allen Lucie Glasgow University The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics andAgricultural Change During Reconstruction. By Michael W. Fitzgerald. (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Pp. xii, 283. $25.00.) Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation , and the American Civil War. By Roger L. Ransom. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xvi, 317. $39.50 cloth; $12.95 paper.) Michael Fitzgerald's monograph provides both more and less than its title suggests. The work is concerned with two states, Alabama and Mississippi, and it is not so much a history of the Union League per se as it is an interpretation of the overall relationship between Reconstruction politics and the transition from a slave to a free labor system in the postwar South. As such this is a well researched and thoughtful work that provides a persuasive theoretical statement and a welcome emphasis upon the usually neglected connection between political and socioeconomic developments during the Reconstruction period. The theoretical focus of the work sometimes seems a bit askew, however; the author is apparently unfamiliar with James S. Allen's Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy (1937) and exaggerates the uniqueness of his own appreciation of the importance of the Union League. With the advent of radical Reconstruction in 1867, the Union League became a major organizational tool for Republicans throughout the South. As hundreds of local league chapters were established, they not only mobilized the desired Republican voters, but they also became strong and active arms of Republicanism that played an independent and often controversial role in Reconstruction conflicts of many different types. The secrecy and local autonomy of the league organizations especially lent themselves to the needs of blacks in their ever dangerous struggle to maximize the meaning of emancipation. Fitzgerald's detailed picture essentially confirms James S. Allen's judgment that during radical Reconstruction the Union Leagues "were the heart of the revolution" as "a constant struggle was waged, on the plantations, in the towns, at the polling places, at the crossroads" (Allen 91-96). Fitzgerald carefully traces the origins and rapid spread of the league among both blacks and whites, depicts in substantial detail its impact and varying roles in urban and rural settings, and analyzes its strengths and weaknesses. Particular BOOK REVIEWS285 attention is paid to the central role of the league in helping blacks secure a system of decentralized tenant farming in place of the old plantation system. Although successfully resisting co-optation and economic intimidation , the league was ultimately destroyed by the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, and its destruction was central to the collapse of Southern Republicanism and to the undermining of whatever promise the system of tenant farming held. "The League, in essence," concludes Fitzgerald, "was an overwhelmingly successful mobilization on behalf of a doomed cause." He succeeds well in establishing much of the reality of that impressive but tragic tale. Ransom's much broader study is an informed, well written, and persuasive synthesis that covers the period from 1776 to 1876 and provides an excellent introduction to major political and economic issues respecting the origins of the Civil War, the nature of that war, and the impact of emancipation and the Civil War on the United States. A brief introductory chapter provides a historiographical introduction and explains Ransom's intention of utilizing the models and findings of a selected group of recent economic and political historians to provide an interpretive narrative account. Four succeeding chapters (over half the volume) analyze the coming of the Civil War with an emphasis upon the sectional conflict over slavery, the Southern stake in that profitable system, the role of racism, and the reasons why the nation's political system was unable to resolve the crisis. A sixth chapter offers an explanation of Northern victory, Southern defeat, and the policy of emancipation. Two concluding chapters cover Reconstruction and the impact of the war on the economy of the United States. These two...