Faculty Publications
Asian-American Spies: How Asian Americans Helped Win the Allied Victory
Brian Masaru Hayashi
Oxford University Press (2020)
Spies deep behind enemy lines; double agents; a Chinese American James Bond; black propaganda radio broadcasters; guerrilla fighters; pirates; smugglers; prostitutes and dancers as spies; and Asian Americans collaborating with Axis Powers.
All these colorful individuals form the story of Asian Americans in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of today's CIA. Brian Masaru Hayashi brings to light for the first time the role played by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Americans in America's first centralized intelligence agency in its fight against the Imperial Japanese forces in east Asia during World War II. They served deep behind enemy lines gathering intelligence for American and Chinese troops locked in a desperate struggle against Imperial Japanese forces on the Asian continent. Other Asian Americans produced and disseminated statements by bogus peace groups inside the Japanese empire to weaken the fighting resolve of the Japanese. Still others served with guerrilla forces attacking enemy supply and communication lines behind enemy lines. Engaged in this deadly conflict, these Asian Americans agents encountered pirates, smugglers, prostitutes, and dancers serving as the enemy's spies, all the while being subverted from within the OSS by a double agent and without by co-ethnic collaborators in wartime Shanghai.
Drawing on recently declassified documents, Asian American Spies challenges the romanticized and stereotyped image of these Chinese, Japanese, and Korean American agents--the Model Minority-while offering a fresh perspective on the Allied victory in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Fulfilling the Sacred Trust: The UN Plan for International Accountability
Mary Ann Heiss
Cornell University Press (2020)
Fulfilling the Sacred Trust explores the implementation of international accountability for dependent territories under the United Nations during the early Cold War era. Although the Western nations that drafted the UN Charter saw the organization as a means of maintaining the international status quo they controlled, newly independent nations saw the UN as an instrument of decolonization and an agent of change disrupting global political norms. Mary Ann Heiss documents the unprecedented process through which these new nations came to wrest control of the United Nations from the World War II victors that founded it, allowing the UN to become a vehicle for global reform.
Heiss examines the consequences of these early changes on the global political landscape in the midst of heightened international tensions playing out in Europe, the developing world, and within the UN General Assembly. She puts this anti-colonial advocacy for accountability into perspective by making connections between the campaign for international accountability in the United Nations and other postwar international reform efforts such as the anti-apartheid movement, Pan-Africanism, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the drive for global human rights.
Chronicling the combative history of this campaign, Fulfilling the Sacred Trust details the global impact of the larger UN reformist effort. Heiss demonstrates the unintended impact of decolonization of the United Nations and its agenda, as well as the shift in global influence from the developed to the developing world.
Saint-Making in Early Modern Russia: Religious Tradition and Innovation in the Cult of Nil Stolobenskii
Isolde Thyrêt
New Academia Press (2019)
Based on a case study of the formation of the cult of the Russian saint Nil Stolobenskii in the 17th century, this book provides insight into the complex dynamics of the saint-making process in early modern Russia. Utilizing a large array of documentary, literary and visual sources, the author investigates the importance of a growing patronage network for the cults of early Russian saints and the role that local laymen and monks and high-ranking Russian Orthodox church officials played in the development of the hagiographic, liturgical and iconographic image of individual saints and in the creation of the physical infrastructure of their cults. Saint-Making in Early Modern Russia challenges the prevailing view that the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy determined the success of a saint’s cult in the Muscovite period by demonstrating the crucial contribution of the leaders of the Nilov Hermitage to the development of Nil Stolobenskii’s cult in the 17th century. By placing the achievements of these monastic figures within the wider theological, spiritual and artistic framework of Eastern Orthodoxy that they operated in, this study affords the reader a rare view into the creativity of native Russian religious culture before the influx of Western ideas started to reshape the Russian Orthodox spiritual experience in the later 17th century. In light of its interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the topic, this book will appeal to historians, art historians and experts in religious studies who are interested in the cult of saints in both Russia and the West.
Drugs on the Page: Pharmacopoeias and Healing Knowledge in the Early Modern Atlantic World
Matthew James Crawford and Joseph M. Gabriel
University of Pittsburgh Press (2019)
In the early modern Atlantic World, pharmacopoeias — official lists of medicaments and medicinal preparations published by municipal, national, or imperial governments — organized the world of healing goods, giving rise to new and valuable medical commodities such as cinchona bark, guaiacum and ipecac. Pharmacopoeias and related texts, developed by governments and official medical bodies as a means to standardize therapeutic practice, were particularly important to scientific and colonial enterprises. They served, in part, as tools for making sense of encounters with a diversity of peoples, places and things provoked by the commercial and colonial expansion of early modern Europe.
Drugs on the Page explores practices of recording, organizing and transmitting information about medicinal substances by artisans, colonial officials, indigenous peoples and others who, unlike European pharmacists and physicians, rarely had a recognized role in the production of official texts and medicines. Drawing on examples across various national and imperial contexts, contributors to this volume offer new and valuable insights into the entangled histories of knowledge resulting from interactions and negotiations between Europeans, Africans and Native Americans from 1500 to 1850.
Modernity and the Great Depression: The Transformation of American Society, 1930-1941
Kenneth J. Bindas
University Press of Kansas (2018)
“Bindas’ provocative and imaginative interpretation of a crucial moment in the development of contemporary America is both thoughtful and thought provoking, opening new avenues of inquiry for future historians.” David Welky —Journal of Southern History
The Andean Wonder Drug: Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic 1630-1800
Matthew James Crawford
University of Pittsburgh Press (2016)
In the 18th century, malaria was a prevalent and deadly disease, and the only effective treatment was found in the Andean forests of Spanish America: a medicinal bark harvested from cinchona trees that would later give rise to the antimalarial drug quinine. In 1751, the Spanish Crown asserted control over the production and distribution of this medicament by establishing a royal reserve of “fever trees” in Quito. Through this pilot project, the Crown pursued a new vision of imperialism informed by science and invigorated through commerce. But ultimately this project failed, much like the broader imperial reforms that it represented. Drawing on extensive archival research, Matthew Crawford explains why, showing how indigenous healers, laborers, merchants, colonial officials and Creole elites contested European science and thwarted imperial reform by asserting their authority to speak for the natural world. The Andean Wonder Drug uses the story of cinchona bark to demonstrate how the imperial politics of knowledge in the Spanish Atlantic ultimately undermined efforts to transform European science into a tool of empire.
Democracy and the American Civil War: Race and African Americans in the Nineteenth Century
Kevin Adams and Leonne M. Hudson
Kent State University Press (2016)
In 1865, after four tumultuous years of fighting, Americans welcomed the opportunity to return to a life of normalcy. President Abraham Lincoln issued his emancipation decree in January 1863 and had set the stage for what he hoped would be a smooth transition from war to peace with the announcement of his reconstruction program in December 1863 and with his call of “malice toward none and charity for all” in his Second Inaugural Address in March 1865. Lincoln’s dream of completing the process of reconstructing the nation was cut short just one month later by the hand of an assassin.
The essays in this volume — by Adams and Hudson along with Stanley Harrold, John David Smith, Mitchell Snay and Fay Yarbrough — represent an exemplary collection on the importance of democracy and race during and after America’s most devastating conflict. Ranging from a consideration of antebellum abolitionists to the racial policies adopted by Native American tribes that had allied with the Confederacy to the ambiguous legacies of Reconstruction, these chapters are thoroughly researched, persuasively argued and beautifully crafted. Democracy and the American Civil War is a compelling examination of black Americans and their quest for citizenship rights in the face of violence and ostracism.
As volume co-editor Leonne Hudson points out in his introduction, Lincoln’s actions were significant steps on the road toward the fulfillment of the democratic tenets contained in the foundational documents of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. By the end of the Civil War, President Lincoln had come to realize that individual freedom was an inalienable right. Furthermore, he believed that in a democratic nation all men were not only entitled to freedom but to equality as well. Although African Americans had played an unforgettable role in helping to preserve the Union, they found their path to full democracy littered with political and legal obstacles that would bedevil them for decades.
This collection enriches our understanding of democracy, race and the Civil War, and it reminds us that the historical importance of democracy and the complexity of race are topics with which we should continue to engage.
Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan in the Reconstruction Era
Elaine Frantz Parsons
University of North Carolina Press (2016)
The first comprehensive examination of the 19th century Ku Klux Klan since the 1970s, Ku-Klux pinpoints the group's rise with startling acuity. Historians have traced the origins of the Klan to Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866, but the details behind the group's emergence have long remained shadowy. By parsing the earliest descriptions of the Klan, Elaine Frantz Parsons reveals that it was only as reports of the Tennessee Klan's mysterious and menacing activities began circulating in northern newspapers that whites enthusiastically formed their own Klan groups throughout the South. The spread of the Klan was thus intimately connected with the politics and mass media of the North.
Shedding new light on the ideas that motivated the Klan, Parsons explores Klansmen's appropriation of images and language from northern urban forms such as minstrelsy, burlesque and business culture. While the Klan sought to retain the prewar racial order, the figure of the Ku-Klux became a joint creation of northern popular cultural entrepreneurs and southern whites seeking, perversely and violently, to modernize the South. Innovative and packed with fresh insight, Parsons' book offers the definitive account of the rise of the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction.
The Lost Territories: Thailand’s History of National Humiliation
Shane Strate
University of Hawaii Press (2015)
It is a cherished belief among Thai people that their country was never colonized. Yet politicians, scholars, and other media figures chronically inveigh against Western colonialism and the imperialist theft of Thai territory. Thai historians insist that the country adapted to the Western-dominated world order more successfully than other Southeast Asian kingdoms and celebrate their proud history of independence. But many Thai leaders view the West as a threat and portray Thailand as a victim. Clearly Thailand's relationship with the West is ambivalent.
The Lost Territories explores this conundrum by examining two important and contrasting strands of Thai historiography: the well-known Royal-Nationalist ideology, which celebrates Thailand's long history of uninterrupted independence, and what the author terms “National Humiliation discourse,” its mirror image. Shane Strate examines the origins and consequences of National Humiliation discourse, showing how the modern Thai state has used the idea of national humiliation to sponsor a form of anti-Western nationalism. Unlike triumphalist Royal-Nationalist narratives, National Humiliation history depicts Thailand as a victim of Western imperialist bullying. Focusing on key themes such as extraterritoriality, trade imbalances and territorial loss, National Humiliation history maintains that the West impeded Thailand's development even while professing its support and cooperation. Although the state remains the hero in this narrative, it is a tragic heroism defined by suffering and foreign oppression.
Through his insightful analysis of state and media sources, Strate demonstrates how Thai politicians have deployed National Humiliation imagery in support of ethnic chauvinism and military expansion. He shows how the discourse became the ideological foundation of Thailand's irredentist strategy, the state's anti-Catholic campaign and its acceptance of pan-Asianism during World War II; and how the “state as victim” narrative has been used by politicians to redefine Thai identity and elevate the military into the role of national savior. The Lost Territories will be of particular interest to historians and political scientists for the light it sheds on many episodes of Thai foreign policy, including the contemporary dispute over Preah Vihear. The book's analysis of the manipulation of historical memory will interest academics exploring similar phenomena worldwide.
The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Construction of the Virginia Kendall Reserve
Kenneth J. Bindas
Kent State University Press (2013)
“An important contribution to our understanding of how the New Deal transformed our lives and landscape by exploring in depth the history and meaning of one small park. The authors deserve our thanks.” – Carroll Van West, author of Tennessee’s New Deal Landscape
Conflicting Memories On The 'River Of Death': The Chickamauga Battlefield and the Spanish-American War, 1863-1933
Bradley Keefer
Kent State University Press (2011)
On Sept. 19 and 20, 1863, the Union Army of the Cumberland and the Confederate Army of Tennessee fought a horrific battle along Chickamauga Creek in northern Georgia. Beginning with an account of the fierce fighting, author Bradley Keefer examines how the veterans of both sides constructed memories of this battle during the three decades leading to the creation of the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park. Three years after the park’s 1895 dedication, the War Department made the Chickamauga battlefield the main training site for volunteer troops during the Spanish-American War, further reinforcing the heroic connections between the Civil War and the current generation of soldiers. However, rapidly deteriorating conditions at the camp contributed to a typhoid fever epidemic that killed more than 700 men and created a rift between the Civil War veterans and Spanish-American War soldiers that lingers to this day on the grounds of the National Military Park
Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness
Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor
University of North Carolina Press (2009)
In 1925 Leonard Rhinelander, the youngest son of a wealthy New York society family, sued to end his marriage to Alice Jones, a former domestic servant and the daughter of a “colored” cabman. After being married only one month, Rhinelander pressed for the dissolution of his marriage on the grounds that his wife had lied to him about her racial background. The subsequent marital annulment trial became a massive public spectacle, not only in New York but across the nation—despite the fact that the state had never outlawed interracial marriage.
Elizabeth Smith-Pryor makes extensive use of trial transcripts, in addition to contemporary newspaper coverage and archival sources, to explore why Leonard Rhinelander was allowed his day in court. She moves fluidly between legal history, a day-by-day narrative of the trial itself, and analyses of the trial’s place in the culture of the 1920s North to show how notions of race, property and the law were — and are — inextricably intertwined.
Class and Race in the Frontier Army: Military Life in the West: 1870-1890
Kevin Adams
University of Oklahoma Press (2009)
Historians have long assumed that ethnic and racial divisions in post-Civil War America were reflected in the U.S. Army, of whose enlistees 40 percent were foreign-born. Now Kevin Adams shows that the frontier army was characterized by a "Victorian class divide" that overshadowed ethnic prejudices. Class and Race in the Frontier Army marks the first application of recent research on class, race and ethnicity to the social and cultural history of military life on the western frontier. Adams draws on a wealth of military records and soldiers' diaries and letters to reconstruct everyday army life — from work and leisure to consumption, intellectual pursuits and political activity — and shows that an inflexible class barrier stood between officers and enlisted men.
NATO and the Warsaw Pact: Intrabloc Conflicts
Mary Ann Heiss and S. Victor Papacosma
Kent State University Press (2008)
There is no shortage of literature addressing the workings, influence and importance of NATO and the Warsaw Pact individually or how the two blocs faced off during the decades of the Cold War. However, little has been written about the various intrabloc tensions that plagued both alliances during the Cold War or about how those tensions affected the alliances’ operation. The essays in NATO and the Warsaw Pact seek to address that glaring gap in the historiography by utilizing a wide range of case studies to explore these often-significant tensions, dispelling in the process all thoughts that the alliances always operated smoothly and without internal dissent.
The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe
Timothy Scarnecchia
University of Rochester Press (2008)
The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe details a democratic tradition developed in the 1940s and 1950s, and a movement that would fall victim to an increasingly elitist and divisive political culture by the 1960s. Providing biographical sketches of key personalities within the genealogy of nationalist politics, Timothy Scarnecchia weaves an intricate narrative that traces the trajectories of earlier democratic traditions in Zimbabwe, including women's political movements, township organizations and trade unions. This work suggests that intense rivalries for control of the nationalist leadership after 1960, the "sell-out" politics of that period and Cold War funding for rival groups contributed to a unique political impasse, ultimately resulting in the largely autocratic and violent political state today. The author further proposes that this recourse to political violence, "top-down" nationalism and the abandonment of urban democratic traditions are all hallmarks of a particular type of nationalism equally unsustainable in Zimbabwe then as it is now.
Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese-American Internment
Brian Masuru Hayashi
Princeton University Press (2008)
During World War II some 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and detained in concentration camps in several states. These Japanese Americans lost millions of dollars in property and were forced to live in so-called “assembly centers” surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed sentries.
In this insightful and groundbreaking work, Brian Hayashi reevaluates the three-year ordeal of interred Japanese Americans. Using previously undiscovered documents, he examines the forces behind the U.S. government’s decision to establish internment camps. His conclusion: The motives of government officials and top military brass likely transcended the standard explanations of racism, wartime hysteria and leadership failure. Among the other surprising factors that played into the decision, Hayashi writes, were land development in the American West and plans for the American occupation of Japan.
What was the long-term impact of America’s actions? While many historians have explored that question, Hayashi takes a fresh look at how U.S. concentration camps affected not only their victims and American civil liberties, but also people living in locations as diverse as American Indian reservations and northeast Thailand.
U.S.- China Educational Exchange: State, Society, and Intercultural Relations, 1905-1950
Hongshan Li
Rutgers University Press (2007)
U.S.-China relations became increasingly important and complex in the 20th century. While economic, political and military interactions all grew over time, the most dramatic expansion took place in educational exchange, turning it into the strongest tie between the two nations. By the end of the 1940s, tens of thousands of Chinese and American students and scholars had crisscrossed the Pacific, leaving indelible marks on both societies. Although all exchange programs were terminated during the Cold War, the two nations reemerged as top partners within a decade after the reestablishment of diplomatic relations.
Remembering the Great Depression in the Rural South
Kenneth J. Bindas
University Press of Florida; First edition (2007)
Collected over a period of four years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these reminiscences from people in rural Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee are primarily concerned with lessons learned. Looking back on their youth, the narrators explore how the Depression defined their lives and their experiences, from subsistence and government assistance, to food and home life, fear and privation. Revealing a common consciousness among people who witnessed profound change and endured, these stories underscore the meaning of collective memory. Their simple tales form the larger story of how the American people continued to rely on the individualistic ethos even as they adopted and accepted the new ideology of social cooperation. Students and scholars of both the 1930s and oral history methodology will welcome this volume.
Satchel Paige and Company: Essays on the Kansas City Monarchs, Their Greatest Star and the Negro Leagues
Leslie A. Heaphy
McFarland & Company (2007)
Though Satchel Paige lived into the early 1980s, much of our information about his life and especially his career is the stuff of anecdote. He is nevertheless a central figure — arguably the central figure — in our reconstructions of Negro Leagues history. This collection of papers from the ninth annual Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference focuses on the celebrity of Satchel Paige and the team he is most closely associated with, the Kansas City Monarchs. Accounts of Paige's exploits are scrutinized and the effects of his fame, on both the contemporary perception of black baseball and its depiction in the years since, are discussed.
Black Baseball and Chicago: Essays on the Players, Teams and Games of the Negro Leagues Most Important City
Leslie A. Heaphy
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers (2006)
Founded in 1920, the Negro National League originally comprised teams throughout the Midwest, but the league’s groundwork was laid in one city — Chicago. Two of the season’s eight inaugural teams were based in the South Side, which was also the adopted home of Rube Foster, the “Father of the Negro Leagues.” A former standout pitcher in the Windy City, Foster founded the dominant Chicago American Giants. As the first president of the Negro National League, Foster controlled all major aspects of the game, from personnel to equipment and ticket sales, and his influence left black baseball indelibly associated with Chicago. This essay collection presents notable papers delivered at the 2005 Jerry Malloy Negro League Conference in Chicago. With contributions from many Negro Leagues experts, the work offers a cohesive history of Chicago's long relationship with black baseball.
The Holy Reich
Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945
Richard Steigmann-Gall
Cambridge University Press (2004)
Analyzing the previously unexplored religious views of the Nazi elite, Richard Steigmann-Gall argues against the consensus that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it. He demonstrates that many participants in the Nazi movement believed that the contours of their ideology were based on a Christian understanding of Germany’s ills and their cure. A program usually regarded as secular in inspiration — the creation of a racialist ‘people’s community’ embracing antisemitism, antiliberalism and anti-Marxism — was, for these Nazis, conceived in explicitly Christian terms. His examination centers on the concept of ‘positive Christianity,’ a religion espoused by many members of the party leadership. He also explores the struggle the "positive Christians" waged with the party’s paganists — those who rejected Christianity in toto as foreign and corrupting — and demonstrates that this was not just a conflict over religion, but over the very meaning of Nazi ideology itself.
Manhood Lost: Fallen Drunkards and Redeeming Women in the Nineteenth-Century United States
Elaine Frantz Parsons
Johns Hopkins University Press (2003)
In fiction, drama, poems and pamphlets, 19th century reformers told the familiar tale of the decent young man who fell victim to demon rum: Robbed of his manhood by his first drink, he slid inevitably into an abyss of despair and depravity. In its discounting of the importance of free will, argues Elaine Frantz Parsons, this story led to increased emphasis on environmental influences as root causes of drunkenness, poverty and moral corruption — thus inadvertently opening the door to state intervention in the form of Prohibition.
Parsons also identifies the emergence of a complementary narrative of "female invasion" — womanhood as a moral force powerful enough to sway choice. As did many social reformers, women temperance advocates capitalized on notions of feminine virtue and domestic responsibilities to create a public role for themselves. Entering a distinctively male space — the saloon — to rescue fathers, brothers and sons, women at the same time began to enter another male bastion — politics — again justifying their transgression in terms of rescuing the nation's manhood.
The Negro Leagues, 1869-1960
Leslie A. Heaphy
McFarland & Company (2002)
The Negro Leagues had some of the best talent in the game, but from their earliest days they were segregated from those leagues that received all the recognition. This complete history of the Negro Leagues begins with the second half of the 19th century, discussing the early attempts by African American players to be allowed to play with white teammates, and progressing through the creation of the "Gentleman’s Agreement" in the 1890s which kept baseball segregated. It then discusses the establishment of the first successful Negro League in 1920 and examines various aspects of the game for the players (lodgings, travel accommodations, families, off-season jobs, play and life in Latin America, difficulties encountered because of race). The history ends in 1960, when the Birmingham Black Barons went out of business and took the Negro Leagues with them. Also included are stories of individual players, owners, umpires and others involved with the Negro Leagues in the United States and in Latin America.
River of Enterprise: The Commercial Origins of Regional Identity in the Ohio Valley, 1790-1850
Kim M. Gruenwald
Indiana University Press (2002)
River of Enterprise explores the world of merchants in the Ohio River valley and the way commerce
underlay the development of a regional identity, before the politics of slavery split the region in two, north and south of the river.
Swing, That Modern Sound
Kenneth J. Bindas
University Press of Mississippi (2001)
During the spring and summer of 1935, popular memory has told us, swing was born when Benny Goodman and his band won the approval of the audience at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles after a grueling tour that began in New York City.
Between God and Tsar: Religious Symbolism and the Royal Women of Muscovite Russia
Isolde Thyrêt
Northern Illinois University Press (2001)
Challenging traditional interpretations of the roles of royal women in patriarchal Muscovite society, Between God and Tsar opens a new approach to understanding medieval Russia. Drawing upon a wide range of sources in anthropology, sociology, art history and literature, it sheds light on the lives of the tsaritsy, about which little has been known, and on the surrounding culture. This pioneering study demonstrates that the wives of the early tsars played complex roles in government, especially during times of crisis, and shows how religious culture perpetuated the expressions of their legitimacy as female rulers. Thyrêt explores Orthodox iconography — such as that of the Golden Palace of the Tsaritsy, which proclaims Irina Godunova's right to act as an independent ruler — and shows how the Muscovite court used gendered images to reveal the spiritual power of female rulers. Myths and legends adapted from one generation to another also underscore royal wives' claim to authority based on their great spiritual power. Illuminating medieval Russia's art, literature and culture. Between God and Tsar offers stimulating insights into the power of Russia's royal women and how it was manifest in Muscovite culture.
Empire and Revolution: The United States and the Third World since 1945
Mary Ann Heiss and Peter Hahn, eds.
The Ohio State University Press (2000)
The 10 essays in this volume represent state-of-the-art surveys of 10 singular episodes in U.S. interaction with the Third World since 1945. Each author seeks to present a unique approach to a specific topic within U.S.-Third World relations. The essays cover the globe and include studies of the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia. They make use of a variety of source material and employ a wide range of analytical devices, such as the national security paradigm, the idea of economic development and culture.
Touguo Lishi Kan Taiwan: Zhanhou Taiwan De Jingji, Zhengzhi, Wenjiao He Duiwai Guanxi
(Taiwan in Historical Perspective: Economy, Politics, Culture and Education, and Foreign Relations in Postwar Taiwan)
Hongshan Li
Hong Kong: Asian Science Press, (1999)
The 16 essays included in this book represent historical examinations done by Chinese scholars in the United States on the postwar Taiwan. The economic takeoff, political reform, and cultural and educational development in Taiwan after World War II — and its relations with mainland China and the United States — were all shaped by the Cold War. The Cold War, while presenting Taiwan with a great challenge, provided the island opportunities for the recovery and development after World War II. The successful modernization of Taiwan was made possible by its government and people who took full advantage of the favorable conditions created during the Cold War years. This book helps enhance our understanding of the postwar development of Taiwan and the multifaceted impact of the Cold War.
Image, Perception, and the Making of U.S.-China Relations
Hongshan Li
University Press of America (1998)
Image, Perception, and the Making of U.S.-China Relations examines major events in the history of the relationship between the U.S. and China to show the development and effects of national images and perceptions. These essays expose the effects of ideology as represented through foreign policy and the actions of leaders, as well as the role of the media and governments in shaping public opinion and attitudes. They show the evolution of the influential forces from the 19th century through the 20th century.
The Odyssey of a Southerner: The Life and Times of Gustavus Woodson Smith
Leonne Hundson
Mercer University Press (1998)
The Odyssey of a Southerner, an interpretative biography of Gustavus Woodson Smith, looks at a life that spanned almost 75 years of the 19th century. Smith gained notoriety during the century as a filibuster, construction superintendent and industrial engineer. The Kentucky native and West Point graduate served in the only company of engineer soldiers in the United States Army during the Mexican War. After the outbreak of hostilities, he left New York City to join the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis’s appointment of Smith as a major general called attention to the problems of the Confederate system of appointments which made a sick man of unproven competence the second in command of the Confederate Army of the Potomac. In the battle of Seven Pines, southern defeat came due to questionable leadership of which Smith was an example. Davis passed over Smith and instead name Robert E. Lee to take control of the Army of Northern Virginia. Dedicated to southern nationalism, Smith left Richmond to join the Georgia state militia where he served during the remainder of the Civil War. After the war, Smith entered the private world in both the insurance and iron businesses. But his postwar years are best remembered for the books he wrote, ranging from insurance reform to military tactics and history. This is the only book-length study of Smith.
China and the United States
Hongshan Li
University Press of America (1997)
This essay collection presents a new examination and fresh insight into Sino-American relations from the end of World War II to the 1960s. The compilation breaks new ground by exploring some of the untouched Chinese and Soviet Communist sources to document the major events and crises in East Asia. It also identifies a new pattern of confrontations between China and America during the Cold War. Based on extensive multi-archival research utilizing recently released records, the authors move the study away from the usual Soviet-American rivalry and instead focus on the relatively unknown area of communists' interactions and conflicts in order to answer questions such as why Beijing sent troops to Korea, what role China played in the Vietnam War, and why Mao caused crises in the Taiwan Straits. The articles in the book examine Chinese perceptions and positions, and discuss the nature and goals of China's foreign policy and its impact on Sino-American relations during this crucial period.
Empire and Nationhood
Mary Ann Heiss
Columbia University Press (1997)
Diane Kunz author of Butter and Guns-America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy:
An impressive study of the causes, course and consequences of the Iranian oil seizure. Using primary and secondary sources in an exemplary fashion, Heiss has explicated the strategic and diplomatic aspects of a complicated triangular balancing act.
The Art of The Possible: Documents On Great Power Diplomacy, 1814 - 1914
Ralph Menning
McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Langua (1996)
An anthology for courses dealing with great power diplomacy in the 19th century, this book raises crucial questions in the history of European foreign relations and seeks to address those questions through excerpts from the documentary record. Included are sources from conference protocol and treaties as well as from previously untapped sources such as speeches, diary entries and correspondence. Half the documents included have been translated into English for the first time. Each chapter is introduced by a brief paragraph placing that chapter in a larger historical context. Each document or group of documents comes with a head note that introduces the reader to the debates that document has generated and provides a point of departure for discussion or independent research. The text includes maps and concludes with a bibliographical essay that discusses issues of historiography and provides an extensive list for further readings.
For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism Among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895-1942
Brian Masuru Hayashi
Stanford University Press (1995)
Japanese Americans in general and Protestant Japanese Americans in particular are usually described as models of cultural assimilation to American life. This book paints a much more complex picture of the Japanese American community in Los Angeles (the largest in the continental United States in the years before World War II), in the process showing that, before Pearl Harbor, the primary allegiance of many Japanese Americans was to Japan. The author argues, on the basis of previously unused archives of three Japanese Protestant churches spanning almost a half century that Protestantism did not accelerate assimilation, and that there was not an extensive assimilation process underway in the prewar years. He suggests that what has been seen as evidence of assimilation (e.g., the learning of English) may have meant something very different to the people in question (e.g., a demonstration of the superior learning abilities of the Japanese). The book shows that among both first- and second-generation Japanese immigrants, there was a strong shift from assimilationist aspirations in the 1920s to nationalistic identification with Japan in the 1930s, a shift that was in some ways fostered by a growing adherence to evangelical Protestantism. The first chapter, set in 1942, describes how the Protestant Japanese Americans in internment camps were divided into pro- and anti-United States factions. The reason for this division is found in their prewar experiences, as shown in the subsequent chapters devoted to historical background, socioeconomic conditions, types of social organization, the ideology of Issei (first-generation) males, the influence of Issei women, the ambivalent world of Nisei (second-generation) children and the place of the Protestants in the larger, non-Protestant Japanese American community.
NATO in the Post-Cold War Era: Does It Have a Future?
S. Victor Papacosma & Mary Ann Heiss
Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed edition (1995)
Established in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) performed its assigned mission exceedingly well as it secured peace for its member states and avoided military confrontation between the superpowers during the remaining four decades of the Cold War. But with the dramatic changes that began in 1989, an identity crisis has plagued NATO. Whereas the Cold War years had essentially defined who would be fighting whom in a future conflict, the uncertain post-1989 years are introducing new and possibly calamitous variables. Despite the fact that hardly a voice has been heard calling for its dissolution and that states from the former Warsaw Pact are seeking membership, NATO's members face the demanding task of defining the new strategic challenges and formulating appropriate policies and responses. The articles in this volume combine to present a comprehensive investigation of the diverse problems confronting NATO. The contributions each provide relevant historical background before analyzing current conditions and projecting into the future.
All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA’s Federal Music Project and American Society, 1935-1939
Kenneth J. Bindas
University of Tennessee Press (1995)
Established in 1935 under the aegis of the Works Progress Administration, the Federal Music Project (FMP) was designed to employ musicians who were hard hit by the economic devastation of the Great Depression. All of This Music Belongs to the Nation is the first book-length study of the FMP and the many paradoxes and conflicts that marked its four-year existence.
America's Musical Pulse: Popular Music in the Twentieth-Century Society
Kenneth J. Bindas
Praeger Paperback ( 1992)
Popular music may be viewed as primary documents of society, and America's Musical Pulse documents the American experience as recorded in popular sound. Whether jazz, blues, swing, country or rock, the music, the impulse behind it and the reaction to it reveal the attitudes of an era or generation. Always a major preoccupation of students, music is often ignored by teaching professionals, who might profitably channel this interest to further understandings of American social history and such diverse fields as sociology, political science, literature, communications, and business as well as music. In this interdisciplinary collection, scholars, educators and writers from a variety of fields and perspectives relate topics concerning 20th-century popular music to issues of politics, class, economics, race, gender and the social context. The focus throughout is to place music in societal perspective and encourage investigation of the complex issues behind the popular tunes, rhythms and lyrics.