Showing papers in "Journal of Interdisciplinary History in 2000"

The Origins of African-American Culture

Abstract: The political, economic, and social structures of West African societies -from Gambia to the Niger Delta- varied considerably during the time of the slave trade. Analysis of the ethnic origins of the Africans brought to America as slaves reveals the continuing influence of the multifarious strains on the formation of African-American culture and identity.

Archaeology and Probate Inventories in the Study of Eighteenth-Century Life

Abstract: Comparison of probate inventories with the findings of archeological research shows that neither, by itself, gives a complete account of eighteenth-century material culture. Data from excavations and inventory studies in Delaware illustrate how these sources can be used together to gain a better understanding of life. Archaeology provides particularly important data on poor households.

"Not for Ornament": Patenting Activity by Nineteenth-Century Women Inventors

Abstract: Contrary to claims that nineteenth-century women did not contribute to inventive activity and that their work was insulated from technological progress, women inventors pursued profit opportunities and distributed patents in much the same way as their male counterparts whose patent rates responded to market incentives. Women in rural and frontier regions were especially inventive. A random sample of assignment contracts indicates that the rate at which women commercialized inventions kept pace with patenting. The evidence indicates that nineteenth-century women were active participants in the market for technology and suggests that the diffusion of household articles may have been more pervasive than previously thought.

Food for growth: trends in Indonesia's food supply, 1880-1995.

Abstract: A decline in Indonesia's per capita rice supply until the 1970s was marginal in relation to food supply as a whole. Until the 1970s, trends were determined by non-rice food crops. Indonesia was long unable to satisfy an increase in the demand for food with a higher supply of rice. From 1905 to 1920, cassava products met the additional demand for carbohydrates, which grew with purchasing power. During the interwar years, per capita food supply decreased slightly, mainly because demand shifted from staple foods to cheap manufactures. From 1943 to 1970, Indonesia experienced a drastic fall in food supply per capita due to an acceleration in population growth, restrictive regulations imposed on food markets, and the general demise of the Indonesian economy. The upward trend in per capita food supply since the 1960s was caused largely by increases in rice production, generated by government support to rice farmers. Higher incomes brought an increased demand for food, which could be met with inexpensive rice.

Urban Labor Markets, In-Migration, and Demographic Growth: Bremen, 1815-1914

Abstract: In this study of the port city of Bremen during the nineteenth century, particular emphasis is placed on the impact of changing labor-market conditions on the structure of in-migration and the relative contribution of in-migrants to urban demographic growth. Until the 1880s, the persistence of pre-industrial employment structures limited the opportunities for permanent settlement. Family formation was delayed, and completed family size was smaller than in the case of the native born. Age- and disease-specific mortality data confirm that many in-migrants remained marginal elements within urban society. Only following the onset of industrialization in the late nineteenth century was there a significant improvement in in-migrant mortality. By 1905, the life expectancy of in-migrant men was generally higher than that of their native-born counterparts; the benefits for in-migrant women were even more substantial.

The Car and British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring, 1896-1939 (review)

Abstract: economic expectations than to health. He is especially critical of the argument that cholera epidemics played a leading role in persuading taxpayers and city leaders to institute sanitary reforms. In the early twentieth century, urban males aged thirty to sixty-nine in Germany still faced a marked deacit in survival, whereas infants and females had overcome their disadvantages. Vögele attributes the persistent pattern of early death for adult males to “years of hard work in unhealthy surroundings” rather than to any speciac diseases (119), but he does not explain why older urban males in Germany did not also show this disadvantage. Much of his statistical analysis relies on the examination of associations between two factors rather than on multifactor models. Yet, his logical analysis pays close attention to interactions among factors, especially as those may have differed between England and Germany. On the question of whether diphtheria antitoxin, introduced in 1895, proved effective, Vögele answers in the negative. He argues that diphtheria as a disease with a cyclical nature happened to be waning in the 1890s. That the case fatality rate of diphtheria dropped by half he takes as evidence of milder cases rather than better medical treatment. Vögele makes good use of the detailed regional research of Liverpool historical geographers, and brings advances in German historical writing to bear. Photographs showing the sad conditions of urban life accompany the text. Extensive tables and appendixes, as well as a lengthy and helpful bibliography, are included. Vögele closes with an appeal for a new kind of health history that includes more comparative multinational and microlevel studies dealing with towns, urban districts, and even streets. This book convincingly modiaes the conventional explanation for rapid gains in urban health.

Witchcraft Fears and Psychosocial Factors in Disease

Abstract: Historians, anthropologists, and psychologists have tended to discount the role of “psychosomatic” disease in witchcraft beliefs because they have misunderstood, and therefore underestimated, the connection between interpersonal relations, psychological well-being, and physical health. Current medical knowledge about the relationship between psychological distress, the physiological stress reaction, and somatic disorders, however, gives grounds for a more positive assessment of the traditional notion that ill will can cause illness and accidents. Disturbed interpersonal relations can cause, or contribute to, an extremely wide range of physical maladies, with or without any accompanying fear of witchcraft or magic. Evidence of this effect can be found in reports from a wide range of cultures. It is a significant element in a systematic sample of witch cases from early modern Wurttemberg.

Morals and Moral Regulation in Protestant France

Abstract: The investigation by the consistory of the Reformed Church of Montauban of an unmarried pregnancy and attempted abortion in the sixteenth century offers important insights into moral and social relationships within the early modern European community. Though the effect of the consistory's activities on the lives of those that it sought to discipline ought not be overestimated (intrusive as those activities might be by modern standards), a close reading of the narrative embedded in the consistorial records provides a valuable understanding of the Protestant church's role in reordering traditional attitudes and everyday behavior.

Individual Life Chances, 1850-1910: A Norwegian-American Example

Abstract: Norwegian-American farm children who came of age during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Midwest faced an era of declining real wages and increasing land prices. Two data sets constructed from parish records, community genealogies, and the United States federal census illustrate structural inequalities in marital opportunity and length of residence in the natal family, according to the sex and birth order of children. Utilizing time-dependent proportional hazards models, the results indicate that earlier-born sons and daughters were more likely to marry and that daughters tended to leave home earlier than their brothers. The results also indicate that marriage, for sons and daughters alike, was more likely among children who left the rural settlement of their parents.

Mastering the Market: The State and the Grain Trade in Northern France, 1700-1860 (review)

Abstract: REED GEIGER A case could be made that three loosely related assertions underlying Miller’s case study of the French state’s regulation of the grain trade in upper Normandy and Paris have gradually become underlying assumptions of most recent work in French history. First, the French Revolution produced a model of bad government; its violent, coercive, and ineffectual acts were a disaster for the French people. Second, the rise of French capitalism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not unduly hampered by a “mercantilist” state; the motives and policies of French administrators and politicians were, in their own French way, “liberal,” and their generally intelligent and well-intentioned attempts to regulate the market were intended to stimulate the growth of market forces and thus obviate the need for regulation in the long run. Third, historians in general have become much more respectful of the power of “market forces” and, with reservations, more friendly toward their efforts; any move to thwart or even channel supply and demand is seen as likely to be ineffective at best and disastrous at worst. Since I have asserted or implied each of these positions in my recent work on French canal policy, I am in sympathy with the ideological framework of Miller’s monograph. Moreover, I agree with Miller, her administrators, and a host of earlier historians (notably Kaplan in his three massive works on the Old Regime’s subsistence trades) that “the food supply was too important to be left to individuals,” that is, the market (1).1 The arst responsibility of any state was to assure townspeople (and especially Parisians) a sufacient supply of affordable bread because the alternative was bread riots that might lead to revolutions. But Miller goes much further. She claims that “market ofacials, subdelegates, mayors, and police lieutenants” learned over time how to regulate the grain trades with, rather than against, market forces and that “increasingly skillful state intervention” “created and shored up the links between producers [farmers], merchant-millers, bakers, and consumers,” thus creating a more powerful and effective state and market (5, 3, 295).

Deciphering Global Epidemics: Analytical Approaches to the Disease Records of World Cities, 1888-1912 (review)

Abstract: monizing psychoanalysis as the villain of the piece, the Shapiros stirred up a arestorm of acrimony. However, their approach released parents of Tourette’s patients from the closet of guilt and made it possible for them to be more effective in helping each other and their offspring. Haloperidol turned out to be a mixed blessing because of unpleasant side effects, but better organic therapies continued to be developed as clinical science improved, and controversy focused more precisely on the details of the neurological basis for Tourette’s. A Cursing Brain? presents this history with authority. Kushner’s historical detective work, his understanding of the science, and the balance with which he presents the controversies make his book an exemplar of good practice in the history of science. It is highly recommended for its methodology, its literary quality, and the stern lessons that it provides for anyone brave enough to navigate the shoals of clinical research.

Cuba and the Latin American Terms of Trade: Old Theories, New Evidence

Abstract: There is little historical evidence to support the thesis that deteriorating terms of trade hindered Cuban and Latin American economic growth, at precisely the time when large international disparities in income began to emerge (1820s to 1870s). For Cuba at least, it was resurgent Spanish imperialism in the form of new tariffs, taxes, and outright prohibitions that distorted patterns of trade, particularly with the United States. Likewise for Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Peru, the terms of trade do not appear to have contributed significantly, if at all, to underdevelopment.

The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900-1925 (review)

Abstract: economic and social processes at work in the garment industry across urban American during the early twentieth century. Many of them are reminiscent of contemporary developments in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. Competition between progressive loft manufactories and contract sweatshops and the conoict between wouldbe industrial unionists among garment workers and the old-guard leadership of the United Garment Workers, which was extremely powerful in New York City and Chicago, are evident in Baltimore before 1920. A move toward the establishment of permanent arbitration was strikingly parallel to the “Protocol of Peace” adopted slightly earlier in New York City. The need to deal with Baltimore’s runaway shops in the 1930s resonates with accounts of Amalgamated campaigns in rural Pennsylvania during the same period. Thus, analysis of the Baltimore experience offers parallels and insights that should prove useful to scholars interested in wider national patterns affecting the garment industry in these years. Argersinger provides a healthy blend of institutional trade-union history and the new social history. She offers detailed discussions of union conventions, programs, and publications, but also examines ethnic and gender conoict and cooperation within the union. She draws no sweeping generalizations from the analysis, but acknowledges both the unequal treatment accorded to women within the union and the willingness on the part of many women leaders within the organization to place class interests above women’s interests in their union work. She also thoughtfully treats the ethnic divisions and conoicts within the union. Hers is a balanced account that presents the conoicts and contradictions in the Amalgamated without judging the participants or taking sides.

Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End (review)

Abstract: deserves more than a mere listing in the bibliography. Bronfen’s interesting effort to disentangle hysteria from the sexual context, especially incest, is not completely convincing, though there can be no certainties in such a question. Her forays into literature can also be tedious. Those (long) parts of the book are a distraction from what would be a much more valuable exploration of hysteria’s place in the culture now. Has it transmogriaed into psychosomatic helplessness? Has Prozac dulled it? Is it the fate of women in patriarchy? How does hysteria relate to sexual abuse? In other words, Bronfen has begun an inquiry that needs much further work.

Media Technology and Society: A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet (review)

Abstract: was “unnatural, perverted, or ugly” (204). Despite its strengths, the book contains several weaknesses. The arst is its lack of a clear thesis. Although the careful typology of critiques of luxury and waste draws subtle and valuable distinctions, the book does not contain an overarching theme other than the unsurprising view that American radicals distrusted luxury and waste. Moreover, the author is forced to point out that luxury and waste did not lie at the center of the thinking of a number of the radicals whose thought he examines. Finally, despite pointing out divergences within the critiques of luxury and wealth, the book mentions, but does not stress, the degree to which American radicals like Edward Bellamy proposed a consumerist utopia as the solution to the nation’s deep social conoicts. This book gives short shrift to the American radical celebration of abundance—provided that such abundance be fairly distributed to those who produced it. In other words, if he had more fully included views about consumption, he would have found a greater degree of dissent among radicals and a point of departure for explaining their different economic, social, and moral visions. A stress on consumption would have undermined Riukulehto’s conclusion that “All the critics were of the same ilk regarding their main attitudes towards luxury and waste” (197). A second weakness is that the book’s prose is often awkward and unclear. As a case in point, “But we will return to this problematics more minutely in a later chapter” (141). Third, when the book strays from the texts, which Riukulehto examines with care, if not with original insight, it bogs down in pedestrian and, in some cases, dated summaries of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and of such social movements, as Populism, Socialism, and the Social Gospel. Moreover, the book does not situate radical thought within the context of speciac debates of the time; too often radical discourse is not connected to political and economic debates or, indeed, to the social strife that was characteristic of the period under examination.

Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity, American Life Sciences, and "The Problems of Sex" (review)

Abstract: therapy to licensed physicians, it was almost totally gone by early 1910. Caplan argues, however, that during its short life, the Emmanuel Movement forced American psychiatrists and neurologists to abandon the rigid somaticism to which they had clung for decades. In so doing, it provided the cultural space necessary for Freud’s 1909 lectures in the United States not only to be heard but to be applauded. In many ways, Caplan’s text is contentious. He is particularly critical of the disproportionate attention paid to the reception of psychoanalysis in the United States, arguing that the resulting “surfeit of literature has grossly distorted our understanding not only of the history of psychotherapy but also of the history of psychiatry in the U.S” (151). Nor is the enormous importance that he attributes to the short-lived Emmanuel Movement completely persuasive. But, overall, his work will be both stimulating and useful to a large scholarly audience.

A Predatory Social Structure: Informers in Westminster, 1737-1741

Abstract: Archival data about, and contemporary accounts of, the Gin Acts illustrate the careers of 198 informers known to have operated in Westminster between 1737 and 1741, providing an idea of their interrelationships. Visible links among the informers appear to have been generally weak. Most of the sample at hand operated as isolates on an opportunistic basis, informing only once. Their network, such as it was, seems to have functioned primarily as a clearinghouse, connecting informers with victims in neighborhoods where the informers were as yet unknown and thus less vulnerable to attack by the community.

Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-Century British Painting (review)

Abstract: DAVID ARMITAGE Picturing Imperial Power offers both less and more than its title promises— less, because the bulk of the book covers only the last quarter of the eighteenth century; more, because it treats paintings from North America, Calcutta, and the West Indies, by artists from British America, Italy, and India, as well as from Britain itself. Tobin forges an eclectic methodology to cope with such catholic materials. The opening chapter invokes a panoply of theorists to almost comic effect: “Michael Foucault’s equation of knowledge with power . . . [t]he Marxist notion of mystiacation . . . Susan Stewart’s and Harriet Guest’s discussions of the exotic and Michael Taussig’s discussion of mimesis . . . Stuart Hall’s and Dick Hebdige’s ideas about the semiotics of clothing . . . [and] Judith Butler’s discussion of drag, Peggy Phelan’s notion of performing identities, and Homi Bhabha’s analysis of colonial discourse” all jostle in a single paragraph (15). Tobin describes the result as “cultural studies meets colonial discourse analysis” (13); a more accurate summary might be “the New Imperial History meets the New Art History.” The “subjects” of colonial depiction are as diverse in kind as they are in origin, ranging from African servants in England and Mohawk warriors and Highland soldiers in North America to West Indian slaves, Calcutta judges, and even Indian plants. These subjects comprise both colonialists and colonized; they encompass the victims, the victors, and the spoils of empire. A less precise and historical account might have conoated the various genres in which these subjects were depicted into a single “imperial” discourse, uninoected by time or space and representative of the very homogeneity usually attributed to the process of imperialism itself. The interconnectedness of the late eighteenth-century British Empire enables Tobin to draw her various subjects into dialogue, but her exquisite attention to their rooted particularity prevents any facile assimilation. Accordingly, the strongest chapters of the book are those with the strongest sense of place and context, particularly the analysis of Benjamin West’s “William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians” (1771/72) and the account of the much less well-known West Indian scenes by the Italian painter Agostino Brunias. Less novel, because more derivative of the work of such earlier writers as Honour and Dabydeen, is the chapter on black servants in English domestic portraiture.1 More challenging, but less conclusive, are the chapters on “Cultural Cross-Dressing in British America” (treating especially the portraits of the Mohawk Joseph Brant and Colonel Guy Johnson, the acting superintendent of Indian