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June 2003
Volume 90, No. 1
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| Articles
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| Information,
Markets, and Corruption: Transcontinental Railroads in the Gilded
Age |
Americans
have feared corruption since the birth of the Republic, but all
corruption is not the same. It has a history, and the history of
modern corporate corruption, back in the news because of scandals
at Enron and other corporations, begins in the Gilded Age. The ability
to manipulate and corrupt public information in order to ensure
private profit was a marker of the first modern American corporations,
the transcontinental railroads. Such corruption, Richard
White argues, was central to their operation. It made their
promoters wealthy, it defrauded investors and wasted capital, and
it helped bankrupt railroads and foster unsustainable development.
Corruption was not just a sideshow or a political issue in the Gilded
Age. It was critical to how the developing economy worked.
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| "Something Cloudy in Their
Looks": The Origins of the Yamasee War Reconsidered |
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In 1715 virtually every
Indian nation in the North American Southeast attacked the British
colony of South Carolina. The Yamasee War, as the event has come
to be known, nearly destroyed the colony and profoundly changed
the entire region. William L. Ramsey explores the
factors that brought so many Indian nations together and takes issue
with traditional explanations that emphasize trader misconduct as
a cause of war. Instead, Ramsey argues that what strained Carolina’s
economic and diplomatic relations with many southeastern Indian
trade partners and allies was the colony’s deepening involvement
in the broader Atlantic economy.
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
Map by William L. Ramsey and
W. L. Ramsey Jr. |
| Rethinking the
Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise |
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By conducting a counterfactual
exercise, Gary J. Kornblith seeks to shed new light
on long-standing scholarly debates about the causes of the Civil
War. What might have happened, he asks, had Henry Clay rather than
James K. Polk won the presidential election of 1844? Grounding his
speculations in both classic and current historiography, Kornblith
asserts that the most likely outcomes would have been no annexation
of Texas, no war with Mexico, no Mexican cession, no overturning
of the second party system, no Civil War, and the persistence of
American slavery into the twentieth century. Such a counterfactual
exercise can usefully reinstill a sense of historical contingency
and human agency.
Image courtesy Library of Congress, Prints
and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-1972. |
| American Indians
and Land Monopolies in the Gilded Age |
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During the Gilded
Age, monopolization of land was a concern not only in the United
States but also among the Civilized Tribes of the Indian Territory,
where it provoked a similar ideological discourse. Rather than acknowledge
shared concerns and values, however, both Indians and non-Indians
differentiated their political dilemmas and economic cultures. A
comparable focus on cultural distinctiveness has limited historians'
vision, Alexandra Harmon contends, preventing them
from seeing underlying correspondences and connections between Indian
and non-Indian intellectual history. By juxtaposing the U.S. and
Indian debates about land allocation, Harmon exposes the irony in
Congress's 1887 decision to require the wholesale redistribution
of Indian property--a measure unthinkable in U.S. society.
Image from John Bartlett Meserve, “Chief
Coleman Cole,” reprinted from Chronicles of Oklahoma,
March 1936. Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society |
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Special Essay |
| Diaspora and
Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study |
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How do immigration and ethnicity fit
into the recent efforts of American historians to write transnational
history? Surveying studies of Irish immigration, Kevin Kenny
evaluates current scholarly efforts to put migration in global context.
Diasporic approaches examine the movement of people, capital, and
ideas across national and regional boundaries, and they highlight
reciprocal interactions and a common sensibility in a globally scattered
population. But the concept of diaspora obscures the emergence in
countries of settlement of nationally specific ethnicities that
differentiate an ostensibly unitary people, be they Irish, Italian,
or African. Understanding American immigration and ethnicity in
global context thus requires a powerful and flexible framework of
inquiry that combines both cross-national comparison and diasporic
history.
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| Exhibition
Reviews |
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"The Rankins of Cherry Hill: Struggling with the Loss of
Their World," by Susan P. Schoelwer
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
"An American Vision: Henry Francis du Pont's Winterthur Museum,"
by Dennis K. McDaniel
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
"To Sustain the Union: Central Illinois in the Civil War,"
by Trevor Jones
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
"Just over the Line: Chester County and the Underground Railroad,"
by T. Stephen Whitman
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
"Facing Southwest: The Houses of John Gaw Meem," by
Jeff Sanders
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
"On Track: Transit and the American City," by Janet Davidson
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
Virtual Vietnam Archive, by Patrick Hagopian
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
"Loss and Renewal: Transforming Tragic Sites," by Rebecca
E. Deen
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
"Treasures Untold: Unique Collections from Devoted Fans,"
by Diane Pecknold
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
"Sunrise in His Pocket: The Life, Legend, and Legacy of Davy
Crockett," by Joseph G. Dawson III
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
Image courtesy Country Music Hall of Fame
and Museum. |
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| Book Reviews |
| A complete listing of book reviews is available here.
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| [Top]
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| Web Site Reviews |
| George Washington: A National Treasure, by
David Steinberg
[Full
text at historycooperative.org]
Wright American Fiction 1851–1875, by Robert K.
Nelson
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
Harpweek, by Matthew Schneirov
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
Voices of the Colorado Plateau, by Jon T. Coleman
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
Within These Walls . . . , by Cynthia Robinson
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
IPUMS, by Joel Perlmann
[Full text at historycooperative.org]
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| Letters to the Editor
[Full
text at historycooperative.org]
Announcements
[Full
text at historycooperative.org]
Recent Scholarship
[Full
text at historycooperative.org] |
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On the cover: These "fullblood" Indians,
known as Snakes, spent time in the Muskogee city jail in 1901 for
rebelling against the congressionally mandated allotment of Creek
nation lands. From Ronnie Williams, "Pictorial Essay on the
Dawes Commission," reprinted from Chronicles of Oklahoma,
Summer 1975. Courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society. See
Alexandra Harmon, "American Indians and Land Monopolies in
the Gilded Age," p. 106.
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