University History Departments Research Articles

Reclaiming Ground: Japan’s Great Convergence

Japan scholars relegated to the shadows, haunting the debate like hungry ghosts with no ground to stand on. Not only intellectually but also institutionally, The Great Divergence unintentionally helped obscure Japan from view because it appeared in 2001 just as the juggernaut of Chinese economic dominance rose above the horizon. University administrators, history departments, and global historians writing, as most do, from that perspective of Europe seemed to have found an ‘Asia’ sufficient to their wants, and many desired no other. Even though Japan remained the second and then the third largest economy in the world during the first decade of the twenty-first century, its historical and theoretical importance ebbed. In considering the rise of modern prosperity, it no longer seemed essential to think about Japan. At times Japan even appeared to be written out of world history and global consciousness. In these embattled circumstances, when Ian J. Miller organized a panel exploring Japan’s Great Convergence for the March 2013 Association of Asian Studies meeting, the room was packed. The papers given that day showcased the work of the three contributors to this forum. Inquiring into Japan’s development over three centuries and in three different ways, Federico Marcon, Ian J. Miller, and Robert Stolz in conversation with Brett Walker and myself laid the grounds for a new history of Japan’s convergence as opposed to China’s divergence. The idea was not entirely novel. For instance, Patrick K. O’Brien, analyzing Pomeranz’s achievement in 2010, briefly acknowledges ‘the convergence of Japan’ as opposed to China, India, and Southeast Asia. 4 Brett Walker had written of ijin naru shuren (the great convergence) 1 See, for instance, Manning, ‘AHR Forum’, and O’Brien, ‘Metanarratives in Global Histories of

Repositioning History for the Future ‐ Recent Academic Debates in China

AbstractChanges in the politics and society in post‐Deng China are reflected in the research priorities of mainland Chinese university history departments, while questions of political legitimation in China and contact with colleagues abroad in the United States and Europe continue to generate new research topics. This article intends to show how several factors contribute to the shaping of historical research in China today. Ongoing developments in China will be demonstrated through two examples, namely the field of world history and the discussion surrounding New Qing history in China.

Learning outcomes assessment and History: TEQSA, the After Standards Project and the QA/QI challenge in Australia

Higher education in Australia is currently in a state of flux, with the Federal Government’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency commencing operations in January 2012. The ‘After Standards Project’ has been working with Australian university history departments and the Australian Historical Association, educating and empowering the discipline to act as a united community and assert ownership of a standards process. This article provides a stocktake of the achievements and challenges the After Standards Project has faced in coming to terms with the new environment and resultant new demands around compliance and accountability. It discusses the After Standards Project’s work in terms of both quality assurance and quality improvement, with reference to the establishment of a set of discipline standards and the trial of an accreditation scheme.

“Visit My Community”

A friend in a university history department recently told me he agrees with some of his colleagues that history as a profession has become irrelevant to our society. In the context of Pennsylvania’s environmental history I am forced to agree. How else to explain the regression of environmental policies dealing with the exploitation of natural resources in this Commonwealth over the past two decades, or the persistently low air and water quality in western Pennsylvania due to the manufacture of coke and the production of electricity at coal-fired plants? From the loosening of restrictions on longwall mining in the 1990s through the regulatory shenanigans surrounding development of the Marcellus shale today, the fact that Pennsylvania has been through this sort of thing before seems to have escaped everyone. There is no evidence that history has informed—let alone influenced—policies now in place or under consideration, whether due to willful ignorance by our government or a failure by historians to enter the debate.

Repositioning the Dutch in the Atlantic, 1680–1800

After some decades of historical debate about the early modern Atlantic, it has become a truism that the Atlantic may better be understood as a world of connections rather than as a collection of isolated national sub-empires. Likewise, it is commonly accepted that the study of this interconnected Atlantic world should be interdisciplinary, going beyond traditional economic and political history to include the study of the circulation of people and cultures. This view was espoused and expanded upon in the issue of Itinerario on the nature of Atlantic history published thirteen years ago—the same issue in which Pieter Emmer and Wim Klooster famously asserted that there was no Dutch Atlantic empire. Since this controversial article appeared, there has been a resurgence of interest among scholars about the role of the Dutch in the Atlantic. With Atlantic history continuing to occupy a prominent place in Anglo-American university history departments, it seems high time to appraise the output of this resurgence of interest with an historiographical essay reviewing the major works and trends in the study of the Dutch in the Atlantic.

The Reception of Turner's Newman: A Reply to Simon Skinner

In his article on the critical reception of the late Frank Turner's John Henry Newman: the challenge to Evangelical religion, Simon Skinner contends that Turner's study is ‘empirically exhaustive, contextually assured and critically rigorous’, and he cites with approval Andrew Wilson's judgement that it ‘revolutionizes Newman studies’.1 But this historical masterpiece, he thinks, has been unjustly howled down by a benighted posse of Roman Catholic reviewers, ‘almost none of [whom] are … tenured in a university history department’. Turner's Catholic reviewers, ‘which is to say nearly all reviewers’, are therefore ‘amateurs’, who ‘literally could not comprehend’ what Turner was up to.2 But history is not an arcane discipline, and Skinner's complaint about the ‘lack of disciplinary equipment’ of these hostile reviewers seems hardly to the point in relation to a book offered by a major publisher to a general readership. The ordinary rules of historical evidence are intelligible to anybody, and a de haut en bas restriction of the right to an opinion on Turner's book to the gild of professional historians runs the risk of seeming both arbitrary and condescending.

“Packaged” Information: How are new Means of Delivering Information Affecting Students’ Information-Seeking Behavior?

This article explores two methods of “packaging” information for students: custom textbooks and web-based discovery services. It examines the implementation of each of these initiatives at the University of Reading, using the institution as a case study to explore the implications on students’ information-seeking behavior. This is combined with a review of the relevant literature surrounding each service. Custom textbooks were used by the University's History department to support one of its first-year undergraduate modules, with the aim of providing a source of essential reading. The University Library released its web-based discovery service to students in October 2011. Various effects on information-seeking behavior are observed, including the potential decline of critical thinking in order to evaluate sources and the danger of sidelining search skills in favor of easy information solutions. The article concludes that librarians have an important role to play in helping students to understand the complexity of information searching. Whilst custom textbooks and discovery services are in some ways beneficial to students, they still require guidance from expert library staff to help them navigate these resources as independent learners. Finally, topics for further research are presented.

Book Reviews

Richard Steckel of Ohio State University reviews “Economic Evolution and Revolution in Historical Time” by Paul W. Rhode, Joshua L. Rosenbloom and David F. Weiman. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins: Sixteen papers, originally presented at a conference sponsored by Stanford University's Institute for Economic Policy Research in September 2008, address evolutionary economic change, regional development, and revolutions in labor markets. Papers discuss the Stanford tradition in economic history; natural resources and economic outcomes; the institutionalization of science in Europe, 1650–1850; the fundamental impact of the slave trade on African economies; the U.S. Indian policy in light of Australian policy toward Aboriginal peoples; financial market and industry structure--a comparison of the banking and textile industries in Boston and Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century; railroads and the rise of the factory--evidence for the United States, 1850–70; productivity growth and the regional dynamics of Antebellum Southern development; banking on the periphery--the cotton South, systemic seasonality, and the limits of national banking reform; rural credit and mobility in India; labor-market regimes in U.S. economic history; the political economy of progress--lessons from the causes and consequences of the New Deal; teachers and tipping points--historical origins of the teacher quality crisis; inequality and institutions in twentieth-century America; the unexpected long-run impact of the minimum wage--an educational cascade; and America's first culinary revolution. Rhode is Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan. Rosenbloom is Professor of Economics and Associate Vice Provost for Research and Graduate Studies at the University of Kansas. Weiman is Alena Wels Hirschorn '58 Professor of Economics at Barnard College and an affiliated member of Columbia University's History Department. Index.

The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon (review)

Reviewed by: The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon Troy Bickham (bio) Keywords War of 1812, James Madison, Napoleon, Military history The War of 1812 in the Age of Napoleon. By Jeremy Black. (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2009. Pp. 286. Cloth, $32.95.) As the author or editor of nearly one hundred books, Jeremy Black is perhaps the most prolific historian of his generation. In this volume he [End Page 703] applies his considerable expertise in military, political, and diplomatic history to the War of 1812. Although still described as a "forgotten war," the War of 1812 has garnered increased interest from historians as it nears its bicentennial. Yet almost all of the histories are parochial in that they are rooted firmly in North American national histories. Black's approach is to place the war in the broader, global contest between Britain and Napoleonic France, and at under three hundred pages Black's narrative is clear, concise, and accessible. His introduction includes an impassioned lament for what he describes as the "hostility to the teaching of military history in many American university history departments" (4-5), and he proceeds to make his case in the chapters that follow for how armed conflict shaped national institutions and ideologies. The structure is unsurprising, yet clear. The first chapter examines the path to war, followed by chapters on the American campaigns in 1812 and 1813, a chapter on the naval war, and a chapter on the British counterattack in 1814 and 1815. The book ends with two chapters by way of conclusion—a chapter labeled "consequences" and an actual "conclusion." The former alone is worth the price of admission and invaluable to anyone teaching the subject, both as a study of how wars shape nations and as a case for the international importance of the War of 1812. Specialists hoping for an acute strategic analysis may be disappointed. Black's approach to military history here is much broader in that he gives substantial consideration to geographical, ideological, economic, and diplomatic factors. His narrative of the war and his portrayals of the commanders in the field do not make major breaks with traditional assessments— Isaac Brock is praised, George Prevost is blasted, the U.S. Army is described as incompetent for much of the war, and James Madison is not deemed up to the task of leading the United States in wartime. Specialists in North American history are not likely to find bombshells in his telling of the North American side of the story, nor will British historians be surprised about his assessments of Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. However, if the accusations of North American parochialism and British disregard when it comes to the War of 1812 are true (and I believe they are), specialists in both North American and British history will find much that is both new and interesting in Black's more global account. Black points out that American touchiness about sovereignty was well founded, as stronger European powers had a habit of dismembering vulnerable states like Poland in 1795, bullying weaker states like Spain, and thrashing uncooperative neutrals, like Britain with [End Page 704] Denmark in 1807. Worse still, Britain had genuine, if vague, designs on expanding its remaining North American possessions. Americans also had good reasons to fear the threat of a strong military, as military coups had toppled the revolutionary governments of France and Haiti and caused problems throughout Spain's American empire. Even England's own foray into a government without a king in the seventeenth century had resulted in the military-backed rule of Oliver Cromwell. Black argues that these two conflicting concerns shaped American foreign policy and drew the United States into a war it was not prepared to fight. Not until 1814 did the U.S. Army possess the organization and professionalism necessary to face British regulars, but by this time the United States was broke and Britain was on the offensive, having defeated Napoleon, and shifted considerable military resources to North America. By placing the war in a more global context, Black chips further away at American exceptionalism and lays siege to the idea that the United States was the...

Greek Fire: Nicholas Christofilos and the Astron Project in America’s Early Fusion Program

The Astron project, conducted from 1956 to1973 at Livermore National Laboratory, was the brainchild of Nicholas Christofilos, a Greek engineer with no formal physics credentials. Astron’s key innovation was the E-layer, a ring of relativistic electrons within a magnetic mirror device. Christofilos predicted that at sufficient E-layer density the net magnetic field inside the chamber would reverse, creating closed field lines necessary for improving plasma confinement. Although Astron never achieved field reversal, it left important legacies. As a cylindrical device designed to contain toroidal plasmas, it was the earliest conception of a compact torus, a class that includes the Spheromak and the FRC. The linear induction accelerator, developed to generate Astron`s E-layer, is now used in many applications. Through examination of internal lab reports and interviews with his colleagues and family, this research charts Christofilos’ career and places Astron in its historical context. This paper was originally prepared in 2004 as an undergraduate Junior Paper for the Princeton University History Department.

JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN: MENTOR AND CONFIDANTE

On the evening of 25 March 2009, I was sitting quietly in my office at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, oblivious to the world, pondering an upcoming presentation on African American women, suffrage, and partisan politics in the 19th century, when the telephone rang and interrupted my train of thought. Answering the call, I was warmed by the soft voice of a long-time friend who asked, Have you heard the news about John Hope Franklin? Somewhat perplexed, I answered, What news? The response was quick and unembellished, has passed. Those simple words engendered a torrent of emotions, ranging from sadness to a deep sense of loss. It is difficult to express how I felt at that moment. But, I hung up the phone, sat, and stared out the window onto the plaza leading to the Ronald Reagan Building and the Woodrow Wilson Center. It was at that moment that I began to reflect upon my long relationship with John Hope Franklin. Who was John Hope Franklin, and what was he to me? Speaking with friends and fellow historians since his death, I have found that Dr. Franklin's relationship with many of my peers was very different--more formal and less personal. For me, he was a scholar of the highest order and a treasured friend who over the course of over four decades became a confidante and a mentor by choice. He was a pioneering historian and a scholar of southern and African American history who wrote the definitive text on the black experience in the United States. Dr. Franklin's influence on my life and career is immeasurable. Though his overall scholarship did not focus on my primary areas of research and writing, From Slavery to Freedom had a great impact on my teaching. It was and is the single best text on the African American experience. His life and experiences, spanning over 94 years, intersected with all of the major themes in 20th-century African American history. He not only studied and chronicled history, he also made it. He was a scholar and activist who relished the idea of contributing to the eradication of legal racial segregation. Serving as an expert witness in the Lyman Johnson v. the University of Kentucky case in 1949, writing historical essays for the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education litigation, participating in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, testifying before the U.S. Senate against the confirmation of Robert Bork as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and demythologizing United States and southern history, John Hope Franklin willingly thrust himself into the center of controversy and challenged racist assumptions and practices. (1) His life was, as he so fittingly titled his autobiography, a Mirror to America. (2) In September 1965 I enrolled in the M.A. program in history at Atlanta University. Dr. Clarence A. Bacote, chair of the Atlanta University history department, first introduced me to John Hope Franklin at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) held at Atlanta University, 21-23 October 1965. This meeting marked ASNLH's 50th anniversary. (3) As the director of local arrangements for the meeting, Professor Bacote chose several graduate students, mostly females, as hosts to greet the members as they arrived for the ASNLH's annual luncheon. As a young graduate student, barely out of undergraduate school, I was excited to attend such an august event with eminent historians. As I greeted the venerable Dr. Lorenzo Green and carried his cardboard suitcase into the room, I was oblivious to the historic significance of the event or the impact that the Association and several of the scholars would have on my life and the trajectory of my academic career. (4) It was fortuitous that Dr. Bacote would choose me to sit at the head table with him; Professor John Hope Franklin, then at the University of Chicago; Dr. Samuel Z. Westerfield, former dean of the Atlanta University School of Business and the highest ranking African American in the U. …

Biography as History

I FIRST ENCOUNTERED BIOGRAPHY as a genre of history in the 1960s, when I was a Ph.D. candidate in the Columbia University history department specializing in U.S. politics during the early republic. Intrigued by Thomas Jefferson, I wrote a paper on the already large number of Jefferson biographies, which even then constituted a complex biographical tradition about him. By the early 1970s, inspired by the emerging feminist movement, I joined those historians who, similarly motivated, were creating the modern field of women's history. From the beginning of our endeavor, we stressed the importance of uncovering the life stories of women forebears to serve as role models to define ourselves and

Agony and Ecstasy at the End of the Rainbow

ABSTRACT The three books are reviewed together because of their shared concern with public history. The review starts with a consideration of the Stolten volume because it incorporates a variety of diverse perspectives, reflecting the present state of South African historiography. Following a detailed discussion, three major themes emerge: (1) whether or not South African historians are agreed on a single ‘master narrative’ (2) the relationship between History and Heritage (3) the role of university History Departments. The books by Coombes and Callinicos are both more coherent than that edited by Stolten but their very coherence, in the opinion of the reviewer, is only made possible by the omission of key areas of concern which are identified and discussed.

Between Two Scholarly Cultures: Reflections on the Reorganization of the East German Historical Profession after 1990

Studies of the East German historical profession and what became of it after 1990—which are now numerous—have primarily dealt with institutes in Berlin affiliated with the Akademie der Wissenschaften or the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED). Little attention has been paid to the academic institutions where most of the German Democratic Republic's historians and history teachers received their scholarly and political training, namely the history departments of the country's universities and the teachers' colleges (pädagogische Hochschulen). In this essay, in which I draw in part upon my personal experiences, I will therefore be less concerned with the well-researched “nerve centers” of the East German research establishment than with the long-neglected “academic provinces” and the everyday realities of academic life that, however absurd they might seem in hindsight, shaped the experiences of countless students, instructors, and professors.

Shaping Public Memory

When we consider the knowledge we possess about the American past, we usually credit the development of the profession, principally in the context of the academy. However, in her engaging and richly detailed study, Julie Des Jardins has examined the production of knowledge much more broadly. The historical that has shaped our understandings of our past extends far beyond the university history department. Women academics appear here in force, but the enterprise Des Jardins excavates included a large cast engaged in an array of activities including collection and archival projects, local histories, and commemorations. Cast this way, women historians emerge as prolific and influential shapers of public memory in the United States. The numerous subcultures she identifies range from African American women concerned with uplift to DAR members worried about authentic Americans to feminists trying to create a single version of the suffrage fight. The most poignant passages relate to the politics of exclusion, but Des Jardins does not write a victimology. Instead, she has created a rich, flowing, and detailed narrative that reframes our understanding of the creation of knowledge in the United States. And that is not all. Des Jardins argues that historians need to make still another adjustment in thinking about their collective past: the multicultural and social history approaches that are commonplace today originated with women innovators not normally included in our historiographies. This is not completely new ground, and Des Jardins draws on other fine scholarship, including recent biographies of women historians. She also expresses her debt to Bonnie Smith's superb study, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice (1998). Yet Des Jardins's subject and approach are different from Smith's. The subject is twentieth-century U. S. history, whereas Smith included the United States and Europe. Smith's theoretical analysis probed how thinking and practice have been gendered. She pioneered in demonstrating how professionalization depended upon

Protocols For the Organisation of AHA Conferences

One of the aims of the AHA is to hold conferences. There are usually two conferences per Executive term, though additional specialist conferences are sometimes held. The main AHA conference is held biennially and smaller regional conferences are held in alternate years. The biennial conferences have to date been hosted by university history departments in a rough State by State sequence. In accordance with the AHA’s mission, the biennial conferences have been as inclusive as possible. Regional conferences have usually been thematic. Occasional specialist conferences tend to be topical. In recent times the AHA has also co-sponsored symposia. Proposals to convene conferences may be received at any time by the AHA Executive. The Biennial/Regional proposals should be in writing, and normally be submitted to the AHA Executive six months prior to the preceding Biennial/Regional conference. The proposal must indicate how it will further the aims of the AHA and how the specific needs and requirements of the AHA as outlined in this document will be accommodated. The AHA provides financial support to main conference Organising Committees in the form of repayable loans, currently $5,000 $8,000 max. from its Conference Fund. AHA conference organizers must budget for a profit in order to support future conferences, to help cover Secretariat conference support costs, and subject to review, other purposes of the AHA. Convenors of specialist conferences may apply to the AHA Executive at any time for support, usually in kind. Convenors of immediate past and future biennial conferences have usually been (elected) members of the AHA Executive. Convenors of Organising Committees of coming Biennial and Regional conferences are expected to provide reports on planning and any problems at AHA Executive meetings (4 p a) on a regular basis. The role of the AHA Executive is to receive the reports and on the basis of the AHA’s aims and experience, endorse/advise/refer back, as appropriate, bearing in mind constitutional obligations to the AHA membership, and local circumstances. The Organising Committee will ensure the AHA membership receives basic conference information such as time and place in the AHA Bulletin and on the AHA website approximately one year in advance; and distribute posters, leaflets and any other information to history departments and related history organizations at least six months in advance. In arranging the conference schedule, the Organising Committee will need to allocate time and space for:

A Public Forum: “Scholarly Controversy: Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination”

Since the publication of David Roediger's The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York, 1991), the study of “whiteness” has become a dominant organizing principle in US labor history as well as other fields. In the last eleven years, historians have churned out an innumerable number of articles and books using the concept of whiteness to reshape the way the field. On November 30, 2001, a couple hundred graduate students, academics, and activists packed a New York University hall to hear seven prominent scholars, who have written on both labor and race, debate the impact of whiteness studies on US labor history. The evening began with Eric Arnesen (University of Illinois at Chicago) offering his assessment. Arnesen was followed by the six other scholars who responded to him and offered their own views on whiteness studies. The editors of International Labor and Working-Class History (ILWCH) organized this public forum because of the interest generated by the symposium on the same issue that appeared in the fall 2001 issue of their journal. Along with ILWCH, the event was sponsored by the New York University History Department and the Committee on Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research. The forum was quite a success as the panelists and the audience engaged in lively and occasionally heated discussion on the relative strengths and political ramifications of whiteness studies.

Whither Nineteenth-Century American History?

12Historically Speaking April 2002 Daniel Walker Howe Whither Nineteenth-Century American History? How should 2 lst-century America view 19th-centuryAmerica? Every generation, we have come to expect, reinterprets its past in the light ofits own experience. During the past forty years we have witnessed dramatic changes in our discipline. Most notable has been the rise of the New Social History with all its ramifications , which include such varied and important developments as the use of gender as a categoryofanalysis, the redefinition ofWestern historyas die studyofa region rather dian a process, and a diorough transformation in the prevailing view of Reconstruction after the Civil War. In the excitement of die new, odier modes ofhistorical inquiry—political, diplomatic, economic, müitaryhistory—have been neglected or turned over to other disciplines . In presentingmyviews onwhere the study of19di-centuryAmerica might go next, I am talking primarily about what I believe historians should do, not trying to predict what diey will do. Actually, I feel reasonably sanguine about the prospects for 19th-century American historyin the comingyears, and die chances that my hopes for the discipline will be realized seem good. Unlike the early enthusiasts of the New Social History, I do not repudiate die previous generation's efforts or seek to jettison them. We can build upon dieir achievement and diat ofearlier generations . IfI could encapsulate myprescriptions for improving history into a single phrase, it would be: avoid arbitrarydivisions. One such unfortunate dichotomy is built into die very definition ofAmerican history, and thatis die splitbetween United States and all odierhistory . Fromjuniorhigh school on, students are taughthistoryin two separate compartments: American history and other (mainly European ) history. Mostcollege and universityhistory departments are bifurcated along diese linesin dieirpractical, everydayorganization. At die lower division level, die Americanists teach introductory courses in American history , while the odier colleagues teachWestern Civilization or World Civilization. U.S. history is seldom integrated into Western Civilization or World Civilization. Many practicing historians ofthe United States have relatively little training in other kinds ofhistory, and we tend to specialize more narrowlyman historians in other fields do. Too few of us try to keep up with work done in other areas ofhistory. Yetexperience has shown thatvery often the best work in American history has Thefinalartificial division I wish to see overcome is that between academic history andpopular history . been inspired by work done on odier countries , such as die guidance die FrenchAnnales School provided to die New Social History. American historians working in the United States compound dieirprovincial isolation by paying too little attention to die work done byhistorians ofthe United States outside die United States. For example, the wide-ranging and profound scholarship ofthe British historian William R. Brock on American history is scarcely known in the United States. Recent initiatives by the Organization of American Historians have undertaken to bridge diis divide, and I am pleased to see diat historians workingon the United States outside ofdie United States no longer feel quite so marginalized by dieir colleagues here. The organization ofthe historical profession around national identities is and should be headed for serious modification. For American historians, this means increasing attention to supranational contexts. Perhaps the most important of these at present is the Adantic World. David Brion Davis and Bernard Bailyn have taken a leading part in defining this field, but many odier historians have enriched die study ofeconomic, social, cultural, and diplomatic contacts and conflicts among the countries and continents bordering die Adantic. The Adantic slave trade, die Scottish-American Enlightenment, and die Anglo-American community ofhumanitarian reform are but three of the best known historical topics illuminated by the study of American history in an Atlantic context. Aldiough die studyofdie AdanticWorld has been carried outmore bycolonialists than by historians ofthe 19di century, in factwe have as much to learn from itas any. The 19th century was not the time ofAmerican isolation that it sometimes seems. Most economic and cultural developments ofdieVictorian age— whedierone is discussingdie industrial revolution , die relations between science and religion , the rise ofthe novel, or the women's suffrage movement—were transadantic in nature and cannot be understood in solely American terms. As globalization and migration continue to integrate the economies and cultures ofdie world...

Cousins of a Kind: The Newfoundland and Labrador Relationship with the United States

O my America! my new-found-land ...(1) island was worthy of long study, and folks too--queer folks with strong personalities.(2) On 24 June 1997, while great world peered expectantly into new millennium, province of Newfoundland and Labrador on rugged Atlantic coast was--not untypically--looking elsewhere: to its roots. The 568,000 people of Canada's newest province paused on that date to join Queen Elizabeth II in celebrating sighting of east coast of North America by justly famous Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot). Cabot was mariner of Venice sailing, just five years after Columbus, under auspices of Henry VII of England. His mission was overture to one of most fateful events in history: beginnings of European settlement in northern part of Western Hemisphere. Exuberant Newfoundlanders like to brag about fact that forty vessels lay anchored in St. John's harbor forty years before Mayflower sailed. They gleefully claim that brimming glasses were being raised in Water Street pubs eighty years before Declaration of Independence.(3) Puff journalism aside, American comparison counts for much in far east of Western world. There's history to it, context, comments W.G. Reeves of Memorial University's history department. American-Canadian relations, these currents of connection and disconnection draw us together.(4) While historians might easily demonstrate Massachusetts Bay project as ultimately more significant for world history, there has been curious resonance between Newfoundland and United States, and New England in particular. Boston was so stocked with expatriate Newfoundlanders when I was growing up (my own aunt included, who would return occasionally with Yankee dollars and broad accent) that New England was affectionately known as the Boston states. Every schoolchild knew that, in 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill had met off Newfoundland to sign Atlantic Charter. In 1948 there was short-lived but lively movement for economic union with United States, though most Americans knew about it. When Joel Garreau penned his insightful The Nine Nations of North America in 1981, he had no problems putting Maritime Canada into New England mold.(5) Finally, E. Annie Proulx's 1994 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Shipping News was set in northern Newfoundland. Proper thing, as islanders might say, for Yankee connection is long and enduring and quite revealing of that North Atlantic Triangle whose dynamics once loomed so large. Newfoundland was country before it was Canadian province and that fact informs this account. The rashness of asserting such sociocultural and spiritual connection given enormous demographic and commercial disparities between two regions--between Boston, say, and St. John's--is mitigated by geography and topography. One must not forget enormous sweep and size of Canada's tenth province, especially when Labrador is part of equation. The total area is 156,649 square miles, land mass larger than three Maritime provinces put together. This includes some 12,000 miles of coastline. The Appalachian mountain chain that is such prominent feature of Maine and Vermont broke off to form one of world's largest islands, a pocket continent, as some call it. At 43,000 square miles, Newfoundland is almost half area of England, Scotland, and Wales and, at times, evokes from its patriots Shakespearean overtones of This happy breed of men, this This precious stone set in silver sea. Newfoundland, like New England, has often thought of herself as little world, her people as breed apart. There are reasons--the sense of geographic distinctiveness and set boundaries being one of them. Joel Garreau's ironical style nevertheless conveyed sense that differences between regions are quantitative, not qualitative. …

The central european university history department working paper series 1: women in history – women's history: central and eastern european perspectives, 1994

The central european university history department working paper series 1: women in history – women's history: central and eastern european perspectives, 1994