Showing papers in "The American Historical Review in 1986"

Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis

Abstract: TH1OSE WHO WOULD CODIFY THE MEANINGS OF WORDS fight a losing battle, for words, like the ideas and things they are mneant to signify, have a history. Neither Oxford dons nor the Academie FranUaise have been entirely able to stem the tide, to capture and fix mneanings free of the play of huinan invention and imagination. Mary Wortley Montagu added bite to her witty denunciation "of the fair sex" ("my only consolation for being of that gender has been the assurance of never being mnarried to any one among them") by deliberately misusing the grammatical reference. ' Through the ages, people have made figurative allusions by employing gramnmnatical termns to evoke traits of character or sexuality. For example, the usage offered by the Dictionnaire de la langue francaise in 1876 was, "On ne sait de quel genre il est, s'il est mile ou femelle, se dit d'un homnme tres-cache, dont on ne connait pas les sentiments."2 And Gladstone made this distinction in 1878: "Athene has nothing of sex except the gender, nothing of the woman except the form."3 Most recently-too recently to find its way into dictionaries or the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences-feminists have in a imore literal and serious vein begun to use "gender" as a way of referring to the social organization of the relationship between the sexes. The connection to grammar is both explicit and full of unexamined possibilities. Explicit because the grammatical usage involves formal

Pricing the priceless child : the changing social value of children

Abstract: Preface (1994)AcknowledgmentsIntroduction31From Mobs to Memorials: The Sacralization of Child Life222From Useful to Useless: Moral Conflict Over Child Labor563From Child Labor to Child Work: Redefining the Economic World of Children734From a Proper Burial to a Proper Education: The Case of Children's Insurance1135From Wrongful Death to Wrongful Birth: The Changing Legal Evaluation of Children1386From Baby Farms to Black-Market Babies: The Changing Market for Children1697From Useful to Useless and Back to Useful? Emerging Patterns in the Valuation of Children208Notes229Index267

All manners of food : eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction 2. The Civilizing of Appetite 3. Potages and Potlatch: Eating in the Middle Ages 4. From Renaissance to Revolution: Court and Country Food 5. From Renaissance to Revolution: France and England - Some possible explanations 6. The Calling of Cooking: Chefs and their Publics since the Revolution 7. The Calling of Cooking: The Trade Press 8. Domestic Cookery in the Bourgeois Age 9. The Enlightenment of the Domestic Cook? 10. Of Gastronomes and Guides 11. Food Dislikes 12. Diminishing Contrasts Increasing Varieties.

The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem

Abstract: THE MIDDLE AGES, THE SO-CALLED MIDDLE TIME between antiquity and the era of the early modern reformers, a full one thousand years of European history, has been subject to wild swings in interpretive emphasis, ranging from the "dark ages" described by Renaissance humanists, Protestant reformers, and enlightened philosophes to the "golden age" depicted by Restoration Romantics and neo-Scholastic Catholics.' But each of those outlooks still shared the common presupposition that medieval culture was essentially "Christian" or "Catholic," whether it was vilified as so much superstition or revered as so much authoritative tradition. Precisely that common assumption has come under scrutiny in the last twenty years. All the texts pored over by generations of medievalists, some historians now claim, have disclosed the views only of a minuscule clerical elite; the great mass of medieval folk lived in a "folklore" culture best likened to that observed by anthropologists in Third World countries.2 Forms of primitive magic and not faith largely governed religious-cultural attitudes and practices.3 This

A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First Evangelical Network, 1735–1755

Abstract: This homespun hymn serves as a reminder that the events of the late 1730s and 1 740s that historians have analyzed separately and severally as the American Great Awakening, the English Evangelical Revival, and the Scottish Cambuslang Wark, were perceived by many participants as parts of a single God-inspired phenomenon. Given the direction of the historiography during the past twenty years, the reminder is both timely and necessary. The religious revivals of the period 1735 to 1750 have attracted the attention of an impressive number of historians, but few have made more than passing reference to their broad appeal. Rather, as the historical literature developed, the focus of inquiry narrowed from national and denominational levels of analysis to detailed studies of the regional and local settings. As a result, historians have gained new insights into the nature, causes, and meaning of the revivals, but our understanding of a revival in one country has remained isolated from our

President Johnson's War On Poverty: Rhetoric and History

Abstract: Analyzes the success or failure of the antipoverty programs in terms of their own discourse.

The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History

Abstract: IN A SERIES OF LECTURES delivered nearly a century ago, Vasilii 0. Kliuchevskii, the dean of prerevolutionary Russian historians, complained that scholars had studied particular groups in Russia but not the larger social structure.1 Since then historians have written many more studies of specific groups but have yet to reconsider traditional assumptions and ideas about prerevolutionary Russian society that still pervade the historiography. The persistence of antiquated sociological views, for the most part formulated in the second half of the nineteenth century, stands in striking contrast to other fields of European history, where stratification, terminology, and patterns of social change have been the focus of a continuing and much-needed debate. But in Russian historiography the fundamental conceptions of prerevolutionary historians have been uncritically preserved, even in the most sophisticated studies of individual groups, and historians have casually used such basic terms as "class" and "estate" interchangeably.2 At the core of prerevolutionary historiography is a cluster of ideas about Russia's peculiar system of "4estates" (sosloviia; in the singular, soslovie) and their development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The traditional conception of the social structure posited the existence of four main estates (nobility, clergy, townspeople, and peasantry)-a model not unlike the formal structure of medieval Europe. Such a simple system, which seemed logical enough in preindustrial Russia, enjoyed widespread acceptance in both scholarly and popular writings. To quote one historian-journalist, writing in 1859, "Every estate has its own role in the state: the clergy pray, the nobles serve in war and peace, the peasants plough and feed the people, and the merchants are the means that provide each with what it needs.'3 The idea of four estates was, moreover, explicitly recognized in Russian

The American occupation of Japan : the origins of the cold war in Asia

Abstract: This book provides a novel perspective on the origins of the Cold War in Asia, tracing it all the way back to the occupation of Japan after the Second World War. Schaller argues that the reconstruction of postwar Japan not only shaped the future of that country but the future of U.S. policy throughout postwar Asia, leading up to the controversial interventions in China, Korea, and Vietnam. The author shows how after the war, the United States sought to develop Japan as a stable bulwark against both Soviet expansion and Asian revolution. Schaller depicts the intense contest that raged among Americans, pitting the flamboyant Occupation Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, against virtually all civilian and military planners in Washington, including the president. First hailed as a hero and given nearly free reign to shape Japan's future, MacArthur was ultimately denounced by Truman and his advisors as a "bunko artist" who had wrecked Japan's economy and opened it to Communist influence. In place of MacArthur's ambitious social and economic reforms, the new Occupation program reconcentrated power in the hands of Japans's old elite. The book shows how Communist control of China and North Korea cut Japan off from its historic trading partners and forced officials to focus on developing the rich but unstable Southeast Asian states. Washington feared that economic blackmail alone would pull Japan into the Soviet orbit. Determined to secure Japan--the ultimate "domino"--the United States spurned possible detente with China, extended military aid to the French in Indochina, and finally entered the Korean War. About the Author: Michael Schaller is Professor of History at the University of Arizona

Autonomy and community : the royal manor of Havering, 1200-1500

Abstract: List of figures and tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction Part I. Havering, the Crown and External Control, 1200-1500: 1. Royal profit and the privileges of the ancient demesne, 1200-65 2. External demands and Havering's resistance, 1265-1500 Part II. Economic Independence and its Consequences, 1251-1460: 3. Differentiated landholding and the population, 1251-1460 4. A commercial economy, 1350-1460 Part III. Community, Conflict and Change, 1352-1500: 5. The manor court and the resolution of local problems, 1352-1460 6. New problems, new solutions: the liberty of Havering-Atte-Bower, 1460-1500 Appendices Bibliography Index.

Years of Recovery : British Economic Policy 1945-51

Abstract: Years of Recovery was the first comprehensive study of the transition from war to peace in the British economy under the Labour government of 1945–51. It includes a full account of the successive crises and turning-points in those hectic years – the coal and convertibility crises of 1947, devaluation in 1949 and rearmament in 1951. These episodes, apart from their dramatic interest, light up the dilemmas of policy and the underlying economic trends and pressures in a country delicately poised between economic disaster and full recovery. Many of the debates on economic policy that are still in progress – on incomes policy, demand management, the welfare state and relations with Europe, for example – have their roots in those years. Many of the trends originating then persisted long afterwards. The book also examines the interaction between events and policy and the role in a managed economy of the policy-making machine. Now that the public records are open to 1954, it has been possible to make use of official documents to review the possibilities of action that were canvassed and the thinking and differences of opinion that underlay ministerial decisions. Combining personal involvement with thorough research, this fascinating study will be a major contribution to our understanding of post-war economic policy. Alec Cairncross was Chancellor of the University of Glasgow and a former Master of St Peter’s College, Oxford. He spent the years covered by this volume as a civil servant in London, Berlin and Paris before moving to Glasgow as Professor of Applied Economics. This classic book of some of his most brilliant research was first published in 1985.

Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians

Abstract: Myth and history are close kin inasmuch as both explain how things got to be the way they are by telling some sort of story. But our common parlance reckons myth to be false while history is, or aspires to be, true. Accordingly, a historian who rejects someone else's conclusions calls them mythical, while claiming that his own views are true. But what seems true to one historian will seem false to another, so one historian's truth becomes another's myth, even at the moment of utterance. A century and more ago, when history was first established as an academic discipline, our predecessors recognized this dilemma and believed they had a remedy. Scientific source criticism would get the facts straight, whereupon a conscientious and careful historian needed only to arrange the facts into a readable narrative to produce genuinely scientific history. And science, of course, like the stars above, was true and eternal, as Newton and Laplace had demonstrated to the satisfaction of all reasonable persons everywhere. Yet, in practice, revisionism continued to prevail within the newly constituted historical profession, as it had since the time of Herodotus. For a generation or two, this continued volatility could be attributed to scholarly success in discovering new facts by diligent work in the archives; but early in this century thoughtful historians began to realize that the arrangement of facts to make a history involved subjective judgments and intellectual choices that had little or nothing to do with source criticism, scientific or otherwise. In reacting against an almost mechanical vision of scientific method, it is easy to underestimate actual achievements. For the ideal of scientific history did allow our predecessors to put some forms of bias behind them. In particular, academic historians of the nineteenth century came close to transcending older religious controversies. Protestant and Catholic histories of post-Reformation Europe ceased to be separate and distinct traditions of learning-a transformation nicely illustrated in the Anglo-American world by the career of Lord Acton, a Roman Catholic who became Regius Professor of History at Cambridge and editor of the first Cambridge Modern History. This was a great accomplishment. So was the accumulation of an enormous fund of exact and reliable data through painstaking

Turner, the Boltonians, and the Borderlands

Abstract: FOR MUCH OF THIS CENTURY, Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis has been regarded as a most useful, if not the most useful, concept for understanding the distinctive features of American civilization. The existence of a frontier, Turner argued, explained much of the difference between Europe and the New World. As he put it in the famous paper that he delivered to the American Historical Association in 1893, "The peculiarity of American institutions is the fact that they have been compelled to adapt themselves to the changes of an expanding peopleto the changes involved in crossing a continent, in winning a wilderness, and in developing ... the primitive economic and political conditions of the frontier into the complexity of city life."' Turner suggested that circumstances peculiar to the American frontier, such as free land, opportunity, and common danger from Indians, shaped American character and institutions in specific ways: the frontier quickened assimilation of immigrants, had a "consolidating" and "nationalizing" effect on young America, and promoted democracy.2 Moreover, Turner wrote, "to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics": inventiveness, practicality, inquisitiveness, restlessness, optimism, and individualism.3 This overarching explanation of American history rejected the conventional wisdom that American institutions and character had been transplanted unchanged from Europe. As Ray Allen Billington, the foremost explicator of Turner's ideas, once wrote, Turner "shook the academic world to its foundations."4 Radical as it was, Turner's frontier thesis came to enjoy widespread acceptance, spawning a remarkable series of books and articles before coming under attack in the 1930s and 1940s. Much of the criticism was well-founded.

Survey of Medieval Winchester

Abstract: By the fourteenth century Winchester had lost its former eminence, but in trades, manufactures, and population, as well as by virtue of its administrative and ecclesiastical role, the city was still one of the major provincial centres in England. This Survey is based on a reconstruction of the histories of the houses, plots, gardens, and fields in the city and suburbs between c. 1300 and c. 1540, although in many instances both earlier and later periods are also covered. The reconstruction takes the form of a gazetteer (Part ii) of 1,128 histories of properties, together with accounts of 56 parish churches and the international fair of St. Giles, all illustrated by detailed maps. There is also a biographical register (Part iii) concerning more than 8,000 property-holders, most of whom lived in Winchester. This is the first time that it has been possible to piece together such a precise and detailed picture of both the topgraphy and the inhabitants of a medieval town. Part i of the book contains a full discussion of the significance of this material and, in a manner relevant to an understanding of life in medieval towns in general, describes and defines such matters as the evolution of the physical environment, housing, land-tenure, property values, the parochial structure, the practice and organization of trades, and the ways in which the citizens of Winchester adapted to the declining status of their city.

Gildas : new approaches

Abstract: Gildas's 'De Excidio Britanniae' is the prime source of our knowledge of post-Roman Britain, but because it is such an isolated text, for which we have no obvious historical, geographical or cultural background, it is a work which raises more questions than answers. Much effort has been expended on extracting historical facts from 'De excidio', but Gildas did not set out to write history as we understand it. The common approach of the contributors to this volume is to look at tha author and his text on their own terms, for themselves rather than for the items of evidence which we can get out of them. Who was Gildas, and what was his position in society? What was his intellectual background - what he had learnt of Latin and Christian culture through his education, and what did he know of British language and literary traditions? What audience was he adressing? All these questions can be given some kind of answer by a close study of the text of the 'De excidio'. But there is also important evidence from Continental sources on early fifth-centyry Britain, and from Irish sources on Gildas's own repuation and career. This is a volume which no student of post-Roman Britain can afford to ignore; it does not attempt to present clear-cut conclusions or optimistic certainties, but establishes a basis on which further research can be carried out.

The Legenda aurea: A Reexamination of Its Paradoxical History

Abstract: In the thirteenth century a young Dominican friar, Jacobus de Voragine, compiled the book that came to be known as the "Legenda aurea," a collection of medieval lore about the saints and holidays of the church. Through the centuries this noted book has had a conspicuously uneven reputation: enormous popularity in the late Middle Ages, a precipitous decline during the Renaissance, and a gradual rehabilitation in the modern era. Sherry L. Reames s study of the "Legenda aurea" offers the first comprehensive account of the book s history and of the qualities that differentiate it from earlier and less controversial works about the saints. The fresh perspective introduced by this study will provide new insights and challenge old myths for historians, literary critics, theologians, and students concerned with medieval culture and hagiography."

Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066

Abstract: This fully-illustrated study addresses the disputed roles of Anglo-Saxon women within medieval scholarship Originally cast as the companions and equals of men, women have more recently appeared in Anglo-Saxon accounts as servants and slaves, habitually beaten, disregarded and abused Re-examining an extensive range of source material including wills, charters, letters, chronicles, archaeological discoveries, place-names and poetry, Christine Fell resolves this contradiction locating the distortion and prejudice within past scholarship Two concluding chapters examine the impact of the Norman Conquest which triggered a dramatic shift in this pattern of equality that extended beyond the social, economic and political position of women, and tainted the records of written history