Between 1865 and 1882 the United States Navy experienced both a quantitative and qualitative decline. The navy faced dramatically reduced appropriations following the Civil War as it returned to its traditional peacetime missions and fleet dispositions. Those missions included the promotion and protection of American commerce, protecting American citizens and their property overseas, and acting in support of national policies. The navy accomplished these missions by dispersing its ships, singly and in small squadrons, to areas around the world where America had interests. Beginning in 1873 a series of war scares convinced American naval officers that the navy had fallen hopelessly behind the navies of other countries. A revolution in naval technology, which had begun in the 1860s, continued at an accelerating rate. Officers argued that navy could no longer fulfill its missions and desperately required rehabilitation. Concerned officers called on Congress to build a larger, modern navy. Their efforts bore fruit with the authorization of the ABCD ships in 1883. As the navy rebuilt, furious debates racked the officer corps. The proper role of technology lay at the heart of most of the debates. One of the most serious revolved around the use of steam power. The navy had been using steam power in an auxiliary role since the 1840s. At issue in the 1880s was whether it should remain an auxiliary power source or assume a primary role. The answer had profound strategic ramifications. An all steam navy would require coaling stations in its areas of operation. For those stations to be of use in wartime they would have to be sovereign U.S. territory. Another debate addressed the navys core missions. By the 1890s the navy had defined a new national security mission and a new force structure centered on battleships. Despite their apparent success, proponents of naval expansion found they had limited influence. Funding never matched requests, resulting in the creation of an unbalanced fleet with an inadequate logistical infrastructure.
Posts Tagged ‘History’:
Living with the Dead in Postrevolutionary Paris, 1795-1820s
This dissertation examines the different ways that Parisians used the dead to process and respond to the disruption of the French Revolution in its aftermath. It focuses on a series of civic projects that the post-revolutionary population designed and used to contain the dead after the Terror, such as cemeteries, catacombs, and museums. Academics, artists, and ordinary Parisians used these new spaces to resolve some of the most difficult legacies of the French Revolution, including collapsed social networks, ambiguous moral authority, and fractured historical knowledge. Moreover, the political divisions that characterized France during the Revolutionary decade only hardened in the nineteenth century as the nation lurched from Republic to Empire to Restoration and back to Revolution in 1830. In this climate of discord and instability, secular death rituals and new burial spaces (above and below ground) helped Parisians construct a socially cohesive culture of the dead that reinforced emotional and social connections among the living. Rather than focusing on long-changing attitudes towards death and dying, as scholars like Philippe Aries have traditionally done, this dissertation interprets the dead as a passive, but important group that helped Parisians work through the trauma of the Revolution after the Terror. It argues that seemingly mundane activities like inscribing a tombstone or touring the Paris Catacombs were actually significant acts of integration that responded directly to the violence and conflict of the revolutionary era
On the wings of a ‘homesick angel’: The Heroic Journey of a World War II tail gunner
This research utilizes a life story approach to explore heroism and heroic leadership. It identifies similarities and relationships between the life experience of military veterans and the conceptual framework of Joseph Campbells Heroic Journey. The Heroic Journey is a transcendental experience of personal discovery during which participants are transformed by great challenges along a “road of trials,” experience enlightenment and personal meaning, and ultimately obtain the power to bestow “boons” upon their fellow man. It is based primarily on the rites of passage formula that has been shared globally in ancient myths for thousands of years. The research provides a literature review of heroism and World War II combat as a source of broad comparison between military service and Campbells Heroic Journey. The literature also provides historical and social context for the lived experience of the participant, Mr. Leslie Les) Spillman, whose life story is the focus of this research. Les was a typical rural farm boy who found himself swept away by a World War II heroic adventure that helped define his generation. Les Heroic Journey led him to serve as a B-17 tail gunner whose heroic path crossed with General George S. Pattons when he was shot down on his fifth mission and rescued by General Pattons 3rd Army. Throughout his combat experience and post-war civilian career, Les remained true to heroic virtues and took advantage of the lessons he learned during his “road of trials.” This research provides a chronological narrative of his life story, its relationship to Campbells Heroic Journey, and lessons in leadership and life.
The course and consequences of British involvement in the Dutch political and religious disputes of the early seventeenth century
This dissertation examines one incident in the intimate interplay between the United Provinces and Great Britain during the early modern period: British participation in the political and religious conflict that rocked the Dutch Republic during the early seventeenth century, and the profound impact that this involvement had on both lands. Although the Dutch disputes began over predestination, they quickly took on political overtones as the two sides, the Remonstrants Arminians) and their Calvinist Contra-Remonstrant opponents, vehemently argued about the role that government should play in church affairs. Leading political figures in the country supported separate sides in the disputes, as did the governing bodies of the various provinces—heightening the conflict even more. By late 1611 King James I and other leading English figures had become closely involved in the disputes. The causes of this intervention were not surprisingly) both religious and political. The King believed that it was his responsibility to support the orthodox beliefs of the Contra-Remonstrants against what he believed were the heresies espoused by the Remonstrants. At the same time he and his advisors correctly observed that the political and religious unrest brought about by the disputes was seriously undermining the unity and strength of an important ally. Although King Jamess initial impulse was to try to defuse the conflict, when that endeavor proved impossible, he threw his governments considerable influence behind the Contra-Remonstrants. This assistance ultimately helped the Contra-Remonstrants and their political allies secure victory in the conflict. Not all the influence came about as a result of this direct involvement, however. My research shows that both sides in the conflict relied to a remarkable extent on British precedents and sources in arguing their positions. The disputes also had an impact on Great Britain. Observers there closely followed developments in the United Provinces and repeatedly expressed concern that the conflict would spread to the British Isles—fears that proved only too true. The Dutch disputes directly contributed to an increase in discord about predestination in Great Britain during the 1620s. As in the United Provinces, these clashes took on both political and religious connotations.
‘Not by might, nor by power, but by spirit’: The global reform efforts of the Young Women’s Christian Association of the United States, 1895-1939
My dissertation uses the activities of the United States Young Womens Christian Association USYWCA) as a case study to explore U.S. cultural imperialism in India, Argentina, the Philippines, and Nigeria. USYWCA Secretaries aspired to create an apolitical and non-governmental space, which I have labeled “Y-space.” According to its proponents, Y-space would not only be located in physical places and programs, but would also extend to create a global fellowship of women. Liberal, emancipatory, and ecumenical, this space would be tied in Christian fellowship to other organizations such as the Young Mens Christian Association and the World Student Christian Federation. However, it would also ideally reach beyond a purely religious fellowship. USYWCA Secretaries intended that Y-space would be a feminist space, which would advance womens interests and equality with men. They envisioned Y-space as modern, egalitarian, and based in voluntary association that valued individualism and was ultimately generated from the grass-roots. USYWCA Secretaries also envisioned Y-space as transformative, as it enabled women to absorb a common sensibility, regardless of their geographic location. Women within Y-space would therefore be cosmopolitan and color blind, valuing women from diverse classes, races, and nations. Because USYWCA Secretaries generally eschewed rhetorics of nation and empire, they tended to view their efforts as politically neutral and even at times anti-imperial. However, I find their efforts to be more mixed and nuanced. Each of the chapters therefore addresses not only the intentions of the USYWCA Secretaries, but also the ways that their attempts to achieve Y-space often served to bolster or perpetuate existing race, class, and national hierarchies. In chapter one, I assess the efforts of USYWCA Secretaries to establish Y-space in the United States. While the Secretaries generally believed that they were meeting the needs of women and that their programs were egalitarian and democratic, I find that their efforts had racial and class limits, and often excluded poor and non-white women. Chapter two examines the USYWCA Secretaries attempts to create a type of egalitarian and multicultural Social Gospel in India. However, I find that they were unable to transcend their colonial context, and despite their anti-imperial protestations, they served the interests of the British Empire. Chapter three considers the YWCAs building in Buenos Aires, which USYWCA Secretaries intended would help women enter the public sphere by providing a physically safe place for migrating women and a socially respectable space for working women. However, rather than serving the needs of poor women or women from Buenos Aires, the YWCA focused its efforts on the needs of white-collar and Euro-American women, and it served the interests of U.S. and British capital in Argentina. In the Philippines, the subject of chapter four, YWCA recreation programs appeared to value Filipinas and to overturn many colonial assumptions. However, these programs were also geared to facilitate womens internalization of colonial constructions of the body, establish U.S. women as experts, and perpetuate national difference and colonial culture. In the final chapter, I examine the activities of Celestine Smith, the only African-American USYWCA Secretary to go abroad with the YWCA prior to World War II. In Nigeria, Smith attempted to create the same types of programs that the USYWCA developed elsewhere. However, the USYWCA refused to support her work—not only because the overtly race-based British colonialism in Nigeria disrupted USYWCA Secretaries sense of Y-space as race-blind, but also because white USYWCA leaders were unable to fully confront their own racism. Taken together, these case studies show that although the USYWCA Secretaries viewed their projects as both liberatory and exceptional, their work tended to advance U.S. interests. First, while USYWCA Secretaries believed that they were creating an apolitical and value-free space, Y-space was rooted in their conception that women should aspire to U.S. standards, regardless of who the women were or where they were located. This meant that the end goal of Y-space was Americanization, and it served imperial political functions that the Secretaries failed to recognize. For example, while USYWCA Secretaries perceived themselves as being exceptionally inclusive—particularly when compared against the exclusivity of other Euro-American entities—there were ways in which they maintained exclusivity. Whereas they saw themselves as anti-imperial, not only did they depend upon existing colonial structures, but they also often contributed to them. While they saw themselves as cosmopolitan, they advanced U.S. national interests as well as those of individual women. Second, once in the various locations—spanning different geographic, economic, and political contexts—USYWCA Secretaries had to contend with the politics of these places, which were often already deeply intertwined with both formal and informal colonial infrastructures. Because of this, Y-space could not escape local politics, either in the United States, where politics had a great deal to do with racial segregation and immigration, or outside of the United States, where the U.S. was a formal imperial power, an economic power, and a participant in the early 20th century global imperial system that was dominated by Great Britain. This meant that the USYWCAs work was intraimperial, rather than apolitical. The importance of this research goes beyond the insights it provides into the USYWCA and its international programs. The case of the USYWCAs work abroad reveals how the denial of empire contributed to multiple forms of it: cultural transformation, economic dominance, direct colonial rule, and intraimperial collaborations.
The first red Clausewitz: Friedrich Engels and nineteenth-century socialist military thought
Between the European revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century and the end of that century, Friedrich Engels functioned as a writer, analyst, and critic concerning military affairs. His most essential commentaries were published, disseminated, and internalized by supporters of the proletarian revolution. This project concentrates on the tactical, operational, and technical aspects of Engels’ military thought and the development of his concepts from his earliest writings until his death. Historians and biographers routinely ignore these aspects of military theory in examinations of Engels’ work. This project will demonstrate that Engels possessed a remarkable level of military knowledge and a degree of insight at the operational and tactical levels of warfare and that he should be considered not only as an important social and economic thinker, but also among the most significant contributors to the field of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century military history and theory. Engels’ most significant contributions exist in the manner by which he, as a key member of the socialist leadership in the nineteenth century, integrated the fundamentals of armed insurgency into the conduct of a proletarian revolution. By drawing on the experiences of the French Revolution and the wars of Napoleon, and then the impact of mass industrialization, Engels was the first person to specifically incorporate a force dynamic into the trajectory of a socialist revolution. Despite the fact that he was a civilian with no formal military training beyond service as a Prussian artilleryman in 1842, his contributions to the field of revolutionary military theory earn him distinction as one of the most important socialist writers of the nineteenth century.
Law and the Culture of Debt in Moscow on the Eve of the Great Reforms, 1850-1870
This dissertation is a legal and cultural history of personal debt in mid-nineteenth-century Moscow region. Historians have shown how the judicial reform of 1864 dismantled an old legal apparatus that was vulnerable to administrative interference and ultimately depended upon the tsars personal authority, replacing it with independent judges, jury trials, and courtroom oratory. But as many legal scholars will agree, political rhetoric about law and high-profile appellate cases fail to capture the full diversity of legal phenomena. I therefore study imperial Russian law in transition from the perspective of individuals who used the courts and formed their legal strategies and attitudes about law long before the reform. I do so through close readings of previously unexamined materials from two major archives in Russia: the Central Historical Archive of Moscow and the State Archive of the Russian Federation, including the records of county- and province-level courts and administrative bodies, supplemented by the records of the charitable Imperial Prison Society. I also analyze the relevant legislation found in imperial Russias Complete Collection of the Laws. Specific topics covered in the study include the cultural and social profiles of creditors and debtors and of their relations, the connection between debt and kinship structures and strategies, the institution of debt imprisonment and its rituals, various aspects of court procedure, as well as the previously unstudied issue of white-collar crime in imperial Russia. I have found that debt was ubiquitous in Russian life, as in other pre-industrial societies in which cash was scarce, incomes erratic, and formal credit institutions insufficient. It was also overwhelmingly personal, relying heavily on kinship, acquaintance, and the reputations of borrowers and lenders. My research contradicts the conventional view of Russian society at mid-century as a system of predominantly separate and closed estates. The system of private credit centered in Moscow connected merchants, civil servants, and the landowning gentry, and even wealthy peasants, some of whom lived or owned property in far-away provinces privately-owned serfs were of course subordinate to their landlords in matters involving property). The credit network was sufficiently extensive and diverse to place an additional burden on Russias already overworked legal system. The central theme of my study is the engagement of ordinary Russian lenders and borrowers of varying wealth and status, male and female, with each other and with the legal system and through it with the state) during a crucial turning point in Russias social and political history. My research also questions the dominant notion of a closed system of inquisitorial justice in pre-reform courts. The cases I examined reveal the pre-reform legal process as messy, incomplete, polyphonic, and open to extra-legal influences, including those of tsarist administrative officials. Private individuals retained significant discretion and initiative both according to the law and in practice, beginning with the way a debt transaction was formalized and ending with the decision to imprison a debtor or to commit an insolvent to a criminal trial. I therefore argue that pre-reform law with all its faults was a site of conflict, cooperation, and negotiation among diverse individuals seeking to protect and promote their property interests and between private persons and government officials. I show the law to be a key tool for Russias propertied classes for asserting their own rights against other private individuals and/or against the state. Thus, I reinterpret the relationship between individuals and the administration, modifying the commonly held view of the Nicholaevan bureaucracy as a monolith imposing itself on the tsars subjects. As the only study of imperial civil law in practice, this dissertation offers unique evidence on the operations of state and society in Russia at the key period of the Great Reforms, as well as establishes a basis for understanding subsequent legal developments.
Blazing Walls, Blazing Brothers: Monks and the Making of the Demon in the Pachomian Koinonia
This dissertation contributes to the study of late antique demonology and the development of Christian monasticism in fourth century Egypt. In particular, I explore the relationship between the development of the Pachomian Koinonia and the belief its members held about demons. While there has been no previous publication devoted to this relationship, David Brakke has included a chapter on Pachomian demonology in his book Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity. I differ with Brakke in two general ways. First, I place greater emphasis upon the fact that demons in Late Antique Egypt were not only threats to a persons thoughts, but also to physical bodies. Second, I place greater emphasis upon what communal life added to a monks struggle against demonic attacks both upon his body and upon his mind. In order to carry out this task, I have made a close examination of Coptic, Greek, and Latin Pachomian texts, clearly identified in the first chapter. I have also made an analysis of other texts to place the Pachomian material in the wider cultural context of fourth century Egypt. Using this material, I describe what demons were believed to be and what they were believed to be capable of doing by people living in that time and place. I then explore what role communal life played in the Pachomian attempt to resist the demons. I conclude that the communal life shared by the Pachomian monks was a source of protection against demonic attack. In the third chapter, I show that the presence of experienced monks protected the less experienced from violent demonic attack. In the fourth chapter, I show that communal life also protected the monk from demonic assaults upon his thoughts.
The trend towards the debasement of American currency
This dissertation examines the 98.3% debasement of American currency from 1792 until the present time. The thesis is that the trend towards debasement occurred subtly due to ten discrete events, none of which were primarily intended to induce currency debasement, and many of which occurred more than one hundred years before the actual debasement occurred. This dissertation presents a monetary economic history of these years and presents arguments to how these ten events resulted in the massive debasement that we see today.
Cultural analysis of the early Japanese immigration to the United States during Meiji to Taisho era (1868–1926)
Scope and Method of Study. Focusing on the years between 1868 and 1926 during which Japan underwent drastic socioeconomic, political, and cultural changes, this study traces the “pushes” forces that caused the people to leave Japan) and “pulls” things that attracted the people to go to Hawaii and the United States) of Japanese immigration. Utilizing a variety of primary sources such as Japanese and American newspapers, Nihon Gaiko Bunsho, Reports of the Immigration Commission, Japanese and the U.S. census records, and works of the Meiji intellectuals, this study offers cultural analysis of the Japanese immigration to Hawaii and the United States. Findings and Conclusions. Following the opening of Japan, the Japanese immigration was a byproduct of nations rapid modernization which created a modern nation-state. Unlike colonized countries, modernization/Westernization was voluntary for the Japanese and was a way of achieving the national policy called fukoku kyohei. Nakahama Manjiro, a castaway who obtained navigation and shipbuilding skills in the United States, not only inspired the young Japanese but also facilitated Japans modernization process. Nationalistic leaders promoted fukoku kyohei to equalize with the West by repealing “unequal treaties.” To pursue this policy, the government fostered the growth of industries—Mitsubishi played an important role in developing the nations maritime industry and the Imperial Navy. While actively adopting advanced western science and technology, Japanese cultural values were emphasized for implanting the institutionalized nationalism. The Meiji intellectuals like Fukuzawa Yukichi contributed to the governments aim by indoctrinating the superiority of Japanese over other Asians. Significantly, the cooperation between the government and industries for achieving fukoku kyohei both directly and indirectly resulted in a large-scale overseas emigration. The emigrants remittance became an important source of foreign currencies required for carrying out expensive modernization. Meanwhile, the Japanese emigration alleviated the labor shortage problem in Hawaii and the United States. This study illustrates that the government with the help of certain individuals created a climate, which made immigration possible. The socioeconomic conditions of the emigrants as well as the national policy and attitude towards the West made the United States the place to go as opposed to China.