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Another Perspective on the Texas Textbook Controversy

Recently, the Texas State Board of Education faced a firestorm of protest, from conservatives and liberals alike, over the statewide adoption of textbooks for teaching history. On November 21, 2014, the Board approved the use of 89 social studies textbooks. This vote was the culmination of a long and contentious debate about what to include in — and exclude from — textbooks. Some conservative groups thought the books’ content was “anti-American,” contending that publishers shortchanged America’s accomplishments. Specifically, they wanted more emphasis on the beneficial economic impact of the free market and the role of Christianity among the Founding Fathers. Others thought that the textbooks already contained a deeply conservative (and flawed) interpretation of the past. These critics warned that they distorted, exaggerated, and ignored some tough truths about the American past. In her testimony before the education board, Dr. Jacqueline Jones, the Chair of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin, said, “We do our students a disservice when we scrub history clean of unpleasant truths and when we present an inaccurate view of the past that promotes a simple-minded, ideologically driven point of view.”

A cartoon depicting three young school children one covering his mouth with a book, a girl covering her eyes with a book, and another boy covering his ears with two books

Public debate over the content of history textbooks goes back nearly 130 years, at least since the founding of the American Historical Association (AHA). In several reports in the 1890s, historians laid out a prescribed curricula for elementary and high school students. These initial reports received little criticism compared to what would come. Throughout the twentieth century, professors of history, teachers, parents, teacher educators, and other concerned citizens engaged in several high profile debates about the nature and purpose of history education in the nation’s public schools. One controversy from the 1930s about a popular textbook series created by Harold Rugg, a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, provides historical context for what Texas just experienced in its debate over textbooks.

Black and white photograph of Professor Harold Rugg next to an image of his controversial book, Changing Civilizations in the Modern World

There are some similarities to the present-day — a struggling economy and calls for a more patriotic version of American history in our schools.The Great Depression and the Second World War witnessed dynamic curricular reform for history and social studies. After the stock market crashed in 1929, many Americans embraced what came to be called the social reconstructionist curriculum. Observing the consequences of capitalism run amok, Americans became more comfortable with curricula that not only critiqued economic inequality but also encouraged students to ask critical questions about the American past. Harold Rugg wrote his popular textbook series during the Depression.

Beginning in the late-1920s, Rugg began writing and publishing social studies textbooks centered on the question of “the American problem.” The textbook series was titled Man and His Changing Society, with individual titles like An Introduction to American Civilization, Changing Civilizations in the Modern World, and An Introduction to the Problems of American Culture. The textbooks focused on the economic and demographic growth of modern cultures and the development of decision-making skills. Rugg wanted junior high school texts to provide a comprehensive introduction to the modern world so that students could face the chief concerns that they would face as adults. Rugg’s textbooks opened with a dramatic historic episode, focused on key concepts, told dramatic stories, and included stimulating photos and cartoons. In addition, the textbooks raised serious questions about the nation’s social and economic institutions. This included critiques of unequal distribution of wealth and civil rights for African Americans..

The Great Depression’s horrible poverty helped Rugg’s social reconstructionist ideas gain prominence. Social reconstructionist curricula focused on the economic challenges facing the United States and the ways that schools could improve society. In 1933’s The Great Technology, Rugg called for “social engineering in the form of technological experts who would design and operate the economy in the public interest.” For Rugg, the challenge was to “design and operate a system of production and distribution which will produce the maximum amount of goods needed by the people and will distribute them in such a way that each person will be given at least the highest minimum standard of living possible.” George Counts, one of Rugg’s colleagues at Teachers College, expressed a similar view of education in 1932’s Dare the School Build a New Social Order? Counts pushed for a system of public education where teachers and students would critically examine America’s social institutions and chart solutions to the challenges that lay ahead.

As Rugg’s popular textbooks gained widespread use, a small group of influential conservatives challenged his social reconstructionist agenda. The bulk of criticism came from business journalists, retired military, and professional historians. Most of the criticism took place in New York and New Jersey. The fervor over Rugg’s textbook series led some school boards to censor the books or declare that they contained nothing subversive. As a result, Rugg’s accusers, many of whom Rugg debated face-to-face in public forums, were relatively unsuccessful at removing the textbooks from classrooms during the 1930s.

The 1940s were a different story, though. The Second World War brought a dramatic change not only in the minds of the public but also in what people wanted from history education. Instead of reading about how to improve American society, many people wanted their children to hear about what was right in American institutions. The United States was fighting a vicious two-front war against the Japanese Empire in the Pacific and Nazi Germany and its allies in Europe and North Africa. In the battle for hearts and minds against fascism, schools told students that it was honorable to give one’s life for American democracy. Social reconstructionist education was overtaken by patriotic education.

Black and white photograph of Allan Nevins in his library — Allan Nevins in his library.

In order for a patriotic education to take root, Americans needed to know more U.S. History than what schools were teaching. In 1942, Allan Nevins, a professor of American history at Columbia University, wrote an article titled “American History for Americans” for the New York Times Magazine. Nevins believed that “young people are all too ignorant of American history.” He speculated that “the majority of American children never receive the equivalent of a full year’s careful work in our national history.” Nevins blamed schools and colleges. “Our education requirements in American history and government have been and are deplorably haphazard, chaotic, and ineffective,” he wrote. In 1943, the New York Times conducted a survey of 7,000 college freshmen at 36 colleges that seemed to confirm Nevins’ opinion. The findings found a striking “ignorance of even the most elementary aspects of United States history.”

After the Second World War, social reconstructionist educators faced more powerful opponents: anti-communist crusaders. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) rounded up U.S. citizens suspected of communist ties. Professional educators feared for their jobs if they taught anything remotely critical in their American History courses. The risk of being labeled a communist was a serious threat. A few additional changes effectively killed the social reconstructionist movement. Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. This change reinforced the emerging understanding that the United States was not only a Christian nation but that it inhabited God’s chosen people. It was thus necessary to teach children that their Christianity was an asset against the godless communists in the Soviet Union, China, and elsewhere in the world. Then the U.S. economy rebounded after WWII. Consumer goods were more readily available. The average white citizen benefited from much better living conditions. Capitalism, it seemed, was proving that it offered many advantages over communism.

The early Cold War provided a climate for history education that has influenced the recent Texas history textbook controversy. U.S. citizens are still debating the role of Christianity in the nation’s history and whether elementary and high school students should learn the unpleasant truths that have been a part of America’s history. These different visions for history education will continue to divide politicians, professors of history, teachers, parents, teacher educators, students, and other concerned citizens in the years to come.

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

The Future of Cuba-Texas Relations

By Jonathan C. Brown

Jonathan Brown teaches courses on the history of Latin American revolutions. He is now completing a manuscript on “How the Cuban Revolution Changed the World.” Professor Brown took the first of his four trips to Cuba in 2006. On the very day that the government announced President Fidel Castro’s incapacitating illness (August 1), Brown was touring the prison cum-museum where Fidel and Raúl Castro spent two years as political prisoners. Brown heard the news of the leadership change from the museum guide herself at the moment she was showing him the prison beds these two revolutionaries occupied in 1954. What a memorable moment for an historian!Since then, Professor Brown has busied himself negotiating the exchange agreement between the University of Texas and the Universidad de La Habana, organizing two UT conferences on Cuba, bringing three Cuban scholars to campus as visiting professors, reading thousands of documents on U.S.-Cuba relations, and delivering dozens of talks and papers on his research. Here are his thoughts on the implications for Texas-Cuba connections.

Within a week of President Barack Obama’s announcement about the renewal of diplomatic relations with Cuba, the Austin American Statesman ran a cartoon entitled “America Prepares to Invade Cuba.” It depicted a line of passengers dressed in beach wear boarding a plane heading to Havana.

The skyline of Havana has scarcely changed since 1959. The building below left is the Hotel Nacional, built in the 1920s. Photo by Reggie Wallesen. — The skyline of Havana has scarcely changed since 1959. The building below left is the Hotel Nacional, built in the 1920s.

Perhaps the cartoonist exaggerated, for President Obama merely loosened existing restrictions. Cuban Americans may travel to the island several times per year and send more money to relatives there. Non-Cuban Americans may travel there more freely, although special licenses are still required. The U.S. government will allow Americans to use their credit and debit cards in Cuba. The president may have cut the Gordian Knot ending 54 years of mutual hostility and eliminating one of the last vestiges of the Cold War. But he did not sever it completely.

Likely presidential candidate Jeb Bush has already stated that, if elected, he would reinstate travel restrictions. With two conservative Cuban Americans also likely to run for the presidency, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the Cuban Embargo will remain a lively issue of debate. By the way, Jeb Bush holds a BA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

The Cold War between Washington and Havana will not end until Congress says it’s over. That may not happen any time soon. Many Senators and Congressmen from Texas oppose the repeal of three pieces of “Cuban boycott” legislation dating from 1963, 1992, and 1996. Together these laws restrict travel, trade, and investment.

What changes may we expect in Texas-Cuba relations in the near term? More Texans will visit Cuba, not technically as tourists but in “cultural” exchanges. Students too. Literature professor César Salgado already is planning to take UT students on a Maymester trip to Cuba at the end of the spring semester.

President Obama’s announcement has ended restrictions on the use of U.S. credit and debit cards in Cuba—a positive boon that will enable Texans to compete for hotel rooms and rental cars on a par with travelers from Mexico and Canada. United and American Airlines are contemplating direct flights to Cuba from Houston and Dallas. For now, we Texans have to go through special charter flights from Miami International Airport. Of course, there are illegal alternatives that I do not recommend.

The Cuban and Texas flags flying together during a pleasure ride outside of Havana. This event (minus the Texas flag) made page 3 of the NY Times on November 12, 2007.

Will U.S. recognition encourage Cuban politics to become more democratic? Cuban leaders will say they have already established democracy. The Revolution assures equality for all and no citizen lacks for health care, education, and basic subsistance. Socialism, they say, has no room for the privileged and wealthy “one percent.” President Raúl Castro told the Cuban people that U.S. diplomatic recognition will not make the Communist Party give up power. He will hold power until 2018, when most of this year’s freshmen class will graduate from UT-Austin.

Where is Fidel Castro? He’s retired. Fidel never recovered fully from his 2006 operation for an intestinal blockage, and he has not appeared in public for many months. Raúl Castro is his brother.

Would Cuban political continuity be a good thing? Yes and no. Political stability will preserve the integrity of the Revolutionary Police and Armed Forces. Gang warfare, drug trafficking, and blatant corruption do not plague the Cubans as they do citizens of other Latin American countries. Even though many neighborhoods are blighted for the lack of building materials, Americans should feel safe wandering through Cuban cities. For example, personal safety in Havana compares favorably to Chicago, where the mayor’s son got mugged last month. Political continuity also has a downside. As in China, more engagement with the United States will not make the Cuban government any more tolerant of political protest. Dissidents will continue to face intimidation, prison terms, and deportation. At the very least, diplomatic engagement should remove Washington’s hostility as an excuse for suppressing domestic protesters.

Will Texas benefit economically from the loosening of restrictions? Very definitely, yes. Texans already sell agricultural products to Cuba through a “humanitarian” exclusionary clause in the embargo. American suppliers may send food and pharmaceuticals if the Cuban government pays for them before shipment. The arrangement is cumbersome.

A family stops by a booth at the Havana trade fair in 2008.

For several years, the Texas-Cuba Trade Association, of which I am a volunteer consultant, has lobbied Washington to remove U.S. export limitations. President Obama accomplished as much as he could and Texas producers expect Cuban trade to expand. One Texas A & M economist predicts that our state’s exports to Cuba of chicken, pork, rice, beans, wheat, and corn could top $400 million within a couple of years.

Has the U.S. economic boycott really kept Cuba poor, as its leaders often claim? Only somewhat. Since 1990, when the Soviet subsidies ended, Cuba came to rely on trade and investment from every country of the world except the United States. Still, the Cubans are barely better off than when they lost Moscow’s largesse. Government over-regulation prevents entrepreneurial initiative. I traveled through the countryside last summer and observed little growing in the fields other than invasive spiny bushes called marabú. Cubans have to buy two-thirds of their foodstuffs from abroad.

Rural transport in the Sierra Maestra mountains where Fidel Castro fought as a guerrilla leader.

Will Texas corporations receive repayment for the land and businesses confiscated by the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and 1960? No, they will not. Texas cattlemen as well as Standard Oil (today ExxonMobil of Irving, Texas) had grazing lands and oil refineries seized by revolutionary militias. Today, the Cuban government cannot afford repayment. Yet it will be strong enough to resist any such demands.

Will Cuban-Americans living in Texas be able to reclaim their lost properties? They might try but they will not succeed. Political continuity will reject such claims, and citizens now living in those houses and working those lands will resist as well.

How will loosening restrictions in U.S.-Cuban relations affect revolutionary programs promoting socialist equality? It already has. Since the end of generous Soviet subsidies in 1990, the Castro government promoted more tourism. Needing foreign exchange, Fidel also encouraged relatives abroad to send cash remittances to family members in depressed Cuba. Those Cuban citizens who had relatives abroad suddenly got more money to buy essentials than those who still depended principally on state rationing.

Cuba still maintains a dual monetary system. The state pays its employees in pesos. The hotels, shops, and restaurants operate on convertible dollarized pesos, called the CUC. One CUC equals about 20 pesos. Workers in the tourist industry get tips in CUCs and automatically make more money than state workers, teachers, public health workers, and even physicians. Therefore, income differentials are already disrupting socialist equality.

Will Cuban race relations change with an upsurge of tourism? Some experts say that more than half of Cuba’s eleven million people have some degree of African heritage. Remember that sugar and slaves went together in the Caribbean like cotton and slavery did in Texas. Because sugar grew all over Cuba and cotton only in the Deep South, African influences are much stronger in Cuban society and culture than in the United States. The 1959 Revolution further boosted Afro-Cuban prominence because many middle-class whites chose to flee to Miami.

Two visiting yankis sit in with a Havana street band. The author plays the bongos and on my right, John Parke Wright, a Florida cattleman, riffs on the harmonica. — Two visiting yanquis sit in with a Havana street band. The author plays the bongos and on my right, John Parke Wright, a Florida cattleman, riffs on the harmonica.

Cuban race relations are refreshing and debilitating all at the same time. Today in the streets of Havana, visitors notice how easily persons of diverse racial backgrounds mingle. They work, play, socialize, marry, eat, and live together to a greater extent than in the United States. Fidel Castro boasted that the revolution ended discrimination in Cuba because it eliminated class distinctions. Yet racial prejudice did not end. White males continue to dominate the ruling party and military elites. Moreover, hotel employers apparently believe that European tourists prefer white hostesses and black maids, white waiters and black kitchen workers. More white Cubans live abroad and their remittances go predominately to white relatives in Cuba. The poorest and least healthy Cubans are mainly black.

Cubans lounging on the wall along the famous Malecón, Havana’s seaside boulevard.

Is President Obama correct that United States recognition will benefit the Cuban people? It will not change the government, and economically some will benefit more than others. However, I am convinced that U.S. diplomatic recognition of Cuba will benefit Texans as much as the Cuban people. Those UT students who want to learn about the Cold War in Latin America and about the largest Caribbean island will take advantage of the executive order. So will Texans who cherish the freedom to experience the only capital (Havana) of Latin America that does not have a traffic jam, the only cities of Latin America that still look like they did 50 years ago, and new places to snorkel that are not in Mexico. Believe it or not, Cuba has more live music than Austin.

Cuba’s government is renovating run-down buildings such as this one in the historic Havana Vieja.

Finally, what about those vintage Fords and Chevys? In the near term, they will remain the vehicles of choice in urban transportation. These 1940 and 1950 American models – DeSotos, Imperials, Buicks, Chryslers, Cadillacs, Nash Ramblers, and a Studebaker or two – share the roads with Soviet Ladas of the 1970s and modern Japanese automobiles. Detroit’s old cars have become part of the cultural identity of the country. But sooner or later, whenever commercial restrictions are lifted by Congress, Texas collectors may be able to repatriate many of these old-fashioned gems.

This author’s advice: Get yourself to Cuba before this aspect of the country’s charm disappears.

The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, by Frederick John Dealtry Lugard (1965)

by Ogechukwu Ezekwem

Born to an English family in India in 1858, Frederick Lugard rose to become the colonial Governor of Nigeria, Britain’s most valued African possession. His The Dual Mandate, first published in 1922, became a handbook for all British administrators in tropical Africa, and influenced British colonial policies across the continent. It offered a comprehensive evaluation of the nature and challenges of British rule in Africa.

Lugard asserted that the direct cause of Africa’s partition was France’s search for rehabilitation in north and west Africa, following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. This ambition resulted in a scramble between France and Germany for African spheres of influence, to which Britain was “unwillingly” compelled to participate. To shield British spheres of influence from external intrusion, the British Foreign Office declared them as Protectorates. Territories acquired through conquest, cession, settlement, or annexation were designated as Crown Colonies. Apart from east and southern Africa, where the terrain and temperate weather offered convenient habitation to European settlers, the African tropics held few incentives for white settlers. However, the region provided abundant sources of raw materials and markets for manufactured goods.

1897 print depicting a battle between British forces and Mahdist fighters in the Sudan (Library of Congress)

According to Lugard, Britain held a dual responsibility in Africa: administration and economic benefits for the metropole, as well as the “native’s” uplifting. His recommendations for Africa’s governance revolved around three principles – decentralization, continuity, and cooperation. Decentralization at all levels of government, with a strong coordinating authority in the center, allowed for greater efficiency. Continuity was vital because Africans trusted foreigners reluctantly. Therefore, effective British officers should retain their posts without undue interruptions. He also proposed that, during Governors’ annual leaves, they should be represented by a Lieutenant Governor, selected from the Provincial Administrative Staff, rather than the Colonial Secretary. Decentralization and continuity could only be achieved if cooperation existed within the administrative chains, especially between the provincial staff and local rulers. The success of Lugard’s Indirect Rule policy — administration through local chiefs, under the close supervision of British colonial officers — a system that he tested comprehensively in Nigeria, depended on cooperation. He also encouraged local heirs’ education in order to prevent the emergence of a separate educated class that might challenge the authority of accepted rulers. As a way of harnessing the empire’s economic benefits for Britain’s post-World War 1 recovery, Lugard recommended the construction of strategic railways across British Africa. He concluded that British governance offered happiness and welfare to “primitive” peoples. “If unrest and desire for independence exists,” he asserted, “it is because the natives have been taught the value of freedom and independence, which for centuries they had not known.”

Early 20th-century European poses with African Pigmies (Wikimedia)

Lugard writes in a clear style. His book is a masterpiece of literature and policymaking, though contemporary readers will find his defense of British colonialism in Africa racist and paternalistic. Firstly, he reiterated the supposed unwilling nature of Britain’s involvement in Africa. He blamed Africa’s partition on French and German rivalry, while ignoring that Britain’s economic interests and national prestige hung in the balance too. Secondly, he argued that Britain practiced a beneficent regime that taught Africans the value of freedom and liberty, hence their desire for independence. He ignored colonialism’s oppressive nature and the shortcomings of British rule, which caused protests against the government. He overlooked the “freedom and liberty” existing in indigenous structures, hence the sustained resistance by Africans against European domination. Lugard’s administrative template rules out an independent Africa, free from British control, at least for the indefinite future. Nonetheless, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa is illuminating for readers seeking to understand the foundations of British colonial policies in Africa.

You may also like Ogechukwu Ezekwem’s review of The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England 1660-1770

Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, by Daniela Bleichmar (2012)

by Christina Marie Villarreal

The European Enlightenment occurred as an ongoing dialogue of ideas—a discourse composed of voices from around the globe. As Daniela Bleichmar demonstrates, southern Europe, long ignored in scholarship on the Enlightenment, had a crucial voice in the conversation.

In Visible Empires, Bleichmar claims that Imperial Spain, more than any other contemporary empire, used visual documents like paintings and maps to make the empire tangible and, in this way, “governable.” Images, she argues, made visible the hidden or secret. Bleichmar highlights the Hispanic World’s investment in knowledge production at the peripheries of empire. She emphasizes how scientific investigations, specifically botanist and natural history expeditions, fit into the Spanish Empire’s attempt to reestablish itself as a European political and economic power in the late eighteenth century. Her findings demonstrate how relationships between the center and periphery of empire were often a matter of perspective.

Bleichmar makes use of the long ignored and beautiful visual archive of botanical paintings produced by Spanish expeditions around the Atlantic. She reads these centuries-old detailed depictions of flora and fauna to stress the relevance of vision to governing of the empire. For Spain, these illustrations provided visual evidence of worlds across the sea and of our ability to understand nature. They buttressed Spain’s ownership of the unseen. The Spanish metropole also used this method to understand the racial compositions of distant populations. New Spain’s casta paintings and Peru’s taxonomical illustrations gave the metropole a window into their kingdoms abroad. Simultaneously, the project supplied the peripheries of empire with the agency to codify their populations. While knowledge of its far-off inhabitants gave the metropole a sense of discovery and ownership, the power to produce pictures of their world gave people on the periphery power of their own.

An image from "Flora Huayaquilensis," a visual collection of South America's plants as seen by Spanish botanist Juan José Tafalla during a 1785 expedition through Peru and Chile. ([Juan Tafalla], “Flora Huayaquilensis,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage - See more at: http://otago.ourheritage.ac.nz/items/show/7696#sthash.r8R9WHhx.dpuf)

An image from “Flora Huayaquilensis,” a visual collection of South America’s plants seen by Spanish botanist Juan José Tafalla during a 1785 expedition through Peru and Chile. ([Juan Tafalla], “Flora Huayaquilensis,” ourheritage.ac.nz | OUR Heritage)

During the Enlightenment, intellectuals and others contested and refined the themes of art, science, and knowledge using visual representations. The “correct” representation did not always come from the center or metropole but, as Bleichmar explains, it was often difficult to tell where in the empire botanical Enlightenment projects began. Indeed, knowledge moved in multiple directions. Bleichmar explores how some naturalists understood colonial agendas in ways that differed from the intentions of the Spanish metropole. Consider Basco y Vargas’ pepper initiative in the Philippines. He prioritized his local economic goals over the philosophical inquiries coming from Spain. In this case, the periphery directed knowledge production as Basco y Vargas determined what botanical investigation to support.

Allegiances and relationships to a “center” thus differed depending on local context. However, by suggesting “the goal of this intensive natural history investigation… was nothing less than to rediscover and reconquer the empire at a time of intense crisis,” Bleichmar seems to suggest that Spain held more control over the direction of knowledge production. In addition, the author admits that the only a limited audience saw or studied the visual illustrations produced by enlightenment botanist. These minor inconsistencies leave the reader with a lingering question: to what extent did “visual” knowledge shape the empire at large?

Botanical drawing from “Flora Huayaquilensis” (Pinterest/Carlos Adanero)

Aside from images, Bleichmar also examines the tremendous written archive that preserves the voices of botanist and economists. While historians typically use images in their work without fully exploring the significance they held for their creators, the author’s examination of written sources provides the reader with a fuller understanding of the botanical illustrations. Paired with Bleichmar’s engaging prose, Visible Empires constitutes a thorough interpretation of southern European Enlightenment and provides a fine example of a historical investigation achieved with beautiful visual sources.

More books on Early Modern science:

Jorge Cañizares Esguerra’s review of Shores of Knowledge: New World Discoveries and the Scientific Imagination

Laurie Wood’s review of The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe

Harper’s Weekly’s Portrayal of the Civil War: The New Archive (No. 11)

By Charley S. Binkow

Images of war surround us today. We see high-definition photographs and videos of violence on our televisions, smartphones, and laptops almost constantly. But what was living through war like when people didn’t have instant videos or photographs? George Mason University’s Virginia Civil War Archive gives us a glimpse into the American media’s portrayal of the war at a time when ink-prints dominated the newspapers.

During the Civil War, Harper’s Weekly was one of the authoritative voices in news, both in the North and the South. What set them apart from their competition? Their prints brought the war to the people and illuminated a world far removed from our own. You can see Fredricksburg, Virginia before it saw battle, a map of the Battle of Bull’s Run, and a portrayal of rebels firing into a train near Tunstall’s Station.

A Band of Rebels Firing Into the Cars Near Tunstall’s Station, Virginia, June 13, 1862 (George Mason University Libraries)

The collection is quite well organized. You can browse by titles, subjects, people, and more. A Civil War historian trying to find primary visual documents concerning Richmond during wartime can do so with a click of a button. An art historian can explore the different landscapes and figures expertly drawn by Harper’s staff—some of America’s best illustrators of the time worked for Harper’s. Almost anyone can find something interesting in this collection.

Harpers Weekly’s map of the Battle of Bull’s Run (George Mason University Libraries)

My personal favorite pieces are those that depict war scenes and their aftermath, like this dynamic, busy drawing of Colonel Hunter’s attack at the Battle of Bull Run or this poignant one of soldiers carrying away the wounded after battle. A lot of people relied on Harper’s Weekly and other newspapers to give them information about the Civil War. Seeing what these artists chose to portray, what they chose to omit, and how they created their scenes is fascinating.

Carrying the wounded at the Battle of Bull Run (George Mason University Libraries)

This collection is one of many quality archives in the George Mason database. Eager history enthusiasts should take advantage of these primary documents. They’re informative, detailed, and just downright interesting.

More discoveries in the New Archive:

A website that charts the demographic, geographic and environmental history of the slave trade

And newly declassified government documents that tell the story of Radio Free Europe

Reagan on War: A Reappraisal of the Weinberger Doctrine, 1980-1984, by Gail E. S. Yoshitani (2012)

by Simon Miles

Few presidents have left as complicated and politically charged a legacy as Ronald Reagan. Hailed as a pioneer of conservatism by some and reviled as an enemy of the middle class and a supporter of dictators by others, Reagan’s legacy has largely been shaped by debate between partisan pundits. Gradually, however, a limited body of more moderate of “Reagan revisionism” has begun to emerge. Historians and political scientists, writing with the benefit of temporal distance from events and increased access to sources have begun to produce more nuanced accounts of the Reagan administration – especially in the realm of foreign policy – that acknowledge the administration’s shortcomings and its successes.

Gail Yoshitani’s Reagan on War is one such book. Yoshitani, a professor of history at the US Military Academy at West Point, offers an in-depth look at the Reagan administration’s development of a strategic doctrine for the use of force based on extensive archival research. She demonstrates how a doctrine for the use of force emerged, but also how the Reagan administration, and the president in particular, chose to either adhere to or eschew these doctrines depending on Reagan’s goals Throughout Reagan on War, Yoshitani asks two important questions. First, what role did Reagan personally play in shaping his administration’s foreign policy? Second, to what extent did Reagan’s advisors, neoconservative and otherwise, influence the administration’s foreign policy?

Yoshitani’s account of US foreign policy during the early 1980s places Reagan at the center of events. As president, Yoshitani argues, Reagan set the course for US Cold War strategy. His perception of American resources as infinite and his determination to rebuild not only US military and economic strength, but also the country’s morale, guided policy during the 1980s. Reagan firmly believed that the solution to America’s “Vietnam syndrome” was strong presidential leadership (which he felt had been particularly lacking during the preceding Carter administration) and “peace through strength.” Yoshitani is clear, however, that Reagan’s advisors were responsible for developing policies to achieve these goals.

President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan view the caskets of the 17 US victims of the 1983 attack against the US Embassy in Beirut (The Reagan Library)

The key question faced by the Reagan administration in Yoshitani’s analysis was not only how to deal with the Soviet Union, but also when the United States should use military force overseas in the aftermath of Vietnam. Reagan’s advisors had differing policy prescriptions for this dilemma and Yoshitani examines the various doctrines proposed by Director of Central Intelligence William Casey, the Pentagon (in particular Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Vessey), Secretary of State George Shultz, and finally Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Casey’s approach to the use of force centered on proxy forces, usually the militaries of right-wing governments in Latin America, to repel communism. Proxy forces would bear the brunt of combat and create a permissive context for any future American military involvement, if desired, by cultivating a local perceived ally that the United States could support. Vessey and his Pentagon colleagues favored direct and decisive US engagement with limited, realistic goals, such as the removal of Palestinian Liberation Organization fighters from Lebanon. Shultz saw the military as a tool to be deployed in support of diplomacy. Deploying troops was a clear sign of resolve, he argued, but should be done sparingly to ensure that the Soviet Union would not feel compelled to become involved to counterbalance American involvement around the world. Weinberger, synthesizing these approaches, outlined six litmus tests for US policy-makers to govern the use of force: necessity to US or allied national interest; wholehearted commitment; defined political and military objectives; correlation between objectives and forces committed; public support; and the absence of a non-military alternative. Though Reagan did not always adhere to the Weinberger Doctrine, Yoshitani argues, it formed the heuristic framework in which the administration considered the use of force.

President Ronald Reagan at his desk in the Oval Office (Library of Congress)

Yoshitani makes a valuable contribution to the historiography of Reagan’s foreign policy by exploring Reagan as an individual, his advisors, and their approach to policy-making and the Cold War. The 1980s are already fertile ground for historians, with ample material accessible at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, the National Archives and Records Administration, and in smaller repositories such as the Hoover Institution Archives. This valuable and insightful book will be of considerable interest to students of the Cold War.

More on the presidency of Ronald Reagan:

Joseph Parrott’s review of The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War

Dolph Briscoe’s review of The Age of Reagan: A History

Jonathan Hunt looks back on the 1986 Reykjavík Summit between Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev

Black Slaves, Indian Masters: Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South, by Barbara Krauthamer (2013)

by Nakia Parker

For decades, scholars peered at the painful and complex topic of American slavery through a purely “black-white” lens—in other words, black slaves who had white masters. The sad reality that some Native Americans, (in particular, the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole, or “the Five Tribes”) also participated in chattel and race-based slavery, was rarely acknowledged in the historical annals. Only in the latter part of the 20th century did historians begin to address this oversight. Several groundbreaking studies recognized the momentous repercussions of this practice for Native and African American populations alike during the antebellum era and down to the present day. Barbara Krauthamer, a professor of Native American and African American history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, adds an exhaustive and compelling contribution to the research in this area. The first full-length monograph chronicling chattel slavery in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, Krauthamer amply demonstrates how both before and after the era of Indian Removal in the mid-nineteenth century slavery also intersected with issues of race and gender in complicated ways.

Krauthamer tracks white commodification and enslavement of Choctaw and Chickasaw bodies starting in the late seventeenth century and its transition to the commodification and enslavement of black bodies by Choctaw and Chickasaw slaveholders in the eighteenth century. In addition, Krauthamer adroitly debunks the myth that the main cause for American Indian participation in chattel slavery stemmed from their desire for European, and later American goods, unable to resist the inescapable forces of the market economy and capitalism. Krauthamer acknowledges the catastrophic economic consequences of the American seizure of Indian lands, of the racist rhetoric that Native Americans needed to be properly “civilized,” and of the exigencies caused by depletion of the deer population, which severely curtailed trade opportunities. But she persuasively argues that the decision to engage in chattel slaveholding resulted from a conscious and deliberate choice on the part of Indian slaveholders to embrace racial ideology that “degraded blackness and associated it exclusively with enslavement.” For some influential and wealthy members of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, adopting race-based slavery provided the most efficient way to maintain an increasingly tenuous hold on political and cultural autonomy in the face of aggressive American expansion, while pursuing self-interested economic and diplomatic goals.

Holmes_Colbert — *Holmes Colbert, a prominent leader in the Chickasaw Nation and the owner of several enslaved African-Americans (Wikimedia Commons)*

Krauthamer also addresses the “leniency thesis” that many early scholars of Native American history advocated — that life under the yoke of an Indian master was somehow more “benevolent” than enslaved life under whites — but that has been successfully challenged, by Tiya Miles and Claudio Saunt among others. By the mid-nineteenth century, laws existed in both nations that banned intermarriage between blacks and Indians: for example, Choctaw lawmakers allowed white men to achieve citizenship through marriage to a Choctaw woman, but forbade “a negro or descendent of a negro” from enjoying the same privilege; likewise, in the Chickasaw nation, the punishment for “publicly taking up with a negro slave” was a steep fine, whipping, or the ultimate punishment, banishment from the nation and the dissolving of all kinship ties. Krauthamer also cites accounts from WPA slave narratives detailing instances of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Native American owners.

*Chickasaw Freedmen filing for allotment in Oklahoma (Oklahoma Historical Society)*

Krauthamer also shows that despite horrific conditions, enslaved people living in “Indian country” engaged in covert and overt forms of resistance. One particularly compelling experience of slave resistance concerns the story of Prince, who, angered that his Choctaw owner Richard Harkins failed to give his slaves a Christmas celebration, brutally murdered him and then unceremoniously dumped the body into the river in 1858. Prince finally confessed, but implicated his Aunt Lucy in the crime. Although Lucy denied her involvement and no evidence existed to prove that she participated in the murder, Lavinia Harkins, the widow of the murdered man and thus also Lucy’s owner, demanded that Lucy be burned alive along with Prince. This harrowing tale highlights the intersections of race, gender, and power relations that informed the interactions between “black slaves and Indian masters” in Indian Territory.

PI013 — *Peter Pitchlynn, or “Hat-choo-tuck-nee,” a Choctaw chief and later tribal delegate to Washington (LC-USZ62-58502, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.)*

Even Emancipation and the end of the Civil War did not bring immediate relief to the enslaved living in the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations. Although the Choctaw and Chickasaw sided with the Confederacy during the conflict, the United States considered them to be separate political polities; therefore, the abolition of slavery as stated in the Thirteenth Amendment did not apply in Indian Territory. Instead, the Choctaw/Chickasaw treaty of 1866 outlined the details of emancipation, citizenship, and land claims for the Freedmen, but inextricably (and problematically) linked these issues with Indian sovereignty, land rights, and annuities—one could not be obtained without the other. This knotty situation became further complicated with the passage of laws enacted by Choctaw and Chickasaw political leaders that seem eerily similar to the “Black Codes” of the Reconstruction era South. Former slaves in Choctaw country who did not have a work contract could be arrested for “vagrancy” by the lighthorsemen (police force) and then be auctioned off to the highest bidder—slavery by another name. Once again, the now emancipated slaves in Indian Territory, in particular African-American men, engaged in resisting these harsh measures and formed groups that lobbied for political and economic justice before the Freedmen’s Bureau and Indian leaders.

Riverside, the home of Benjamin Franklin Colbert at Colbert's Ferry — *Riverside, the home of Benjamin Colbert in Colbert’s Ferry, OK (Oklahoma Historical Society)*

Black Slaves, Indian Masters proves a much needed addition to African American and Native American histories of slavery. Krauthamer uses an exhaustive number of sources to bolster her argument–slave narratives, government records, personal correspondence of Indian leaders such as diaries and letters, and official papers of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations. Her work not only expands the lens of the study of slavery beyond the “black and white,” but also can provide insight into the current tensions and issues of citizenship and identity existing between descendants of the enslaved and nations such as the Cherokee and Seminole today.

In 2011, Dr. Krauthamer was a fellow at The Institute for Historical Studies at UT-Austin. During this time, she delivered a workshop “Enslaved women and the Politics of Self-Liberation.”

You can fin d Black Slaves, Indian Masters here. And be sure to explore Envisioning Emancipation, a powerful collection of photographs portraying the lives of enslaved and freed African-Americans that Dr. Krauthamer compiled with renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis.

No Mere Shadows: Faces of Widowhood in Early Colonial Mexico, by Shirley Cushing Flint (2013)

What would Mexico City—or Tenochtitan as it was known to its indigenous population—have looked like to ten year old Doña Luisa Estrada, when she arrived with her parents in 1524, three years after it fell to Spain? What is clear is that her life soon intermingled in the early conquest society. At thirteen she married 26 year old conquistador Jorge de Alvarado. He also experienced the New World as young child: he had been participating in expeditions since he was nine. After his death, Doña Luisa administered his grant of tribute Indians (encomiendas) and accumulated estates that stretched from Mexico City to Guatemala. While unfortunately neither left what certainly would have been fascinating memoirs, tantalizing glimpses of their lives appear in Shirley Cushing Flint’s No Mere Shadows: Faces of Widowhood in Early Colonial Mexico.

Flint was initially fascinated by the history of one of Doña Luisa’s sisters, Doña Beatriz de Estrada. Doña Beatriz leveraged her fortune to finance the famous expedition of her husband, Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, to the American southwest. As the author delved into the collective biographies of Estrada wives, husbands, and children she discovered how three generations accumulated and diversified forms of economic wealth and social status, acquired assets in the core and then the periphery, and constantly engaged in lawsuits to maintain them.

Spanish colonial map of Culhuacán, now in present-day Mexico City, 1588 (Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin)

Separate chapters explore the ups and downs of the Estrada family’s marriages, widowhood, children, and finances. These include the matriarch, Doña Marina (Gutiérrez Flores de la Caballería), who arrived as the wife of the newly appointed royal treasurer Alonso de Estrada and who, on his death, managed the extensive properties of urban and rural real estate including a profitable mill. She arranged favorable marriages for her daughters, not only for young Doña Luisa and Doña Beatriz to conquistadors Alvarado and Coronado, but for her daughter Doña Francisca, whose husband possessed the most valuable grant of Indians for tribute after Hernán Cortés. The fortunes of the next generation waned with the marriage of granddaughter Doña María to Alonso Ávila, as he was beheaded in 1566 over charges that he participated in a conspiracy to challenge royal hegemony. She spent her later years in Spain attempting to recover the family fortunes.

Tracing these compelling personal vignettes of the lives of the Estradas provides rare insights into the challenges and opportunities of life for Spanish women in post-conquest Mexico.

Sixteen Months in a Leaky Boat

by Kristie Flannery

A few weeks ago José Salvador Alvarenga drifted onto a small island in the South Pacific Ocean in a worn-out, 24-foot long, fiberglass boat, wearing nothing but a tattered pair of underpants. With the aid of a Spanish interpreter, Alvarenga explained to surprised locals that he had been lost at sea for at least sixteen months after his fishing boat was pushed out to sea off the coast of Mexico. He said that he stayed alive by catching and eating raw fish, turtles, and birds.

Media outlets around the world have rushed to tell Alvarenga’s amazing story of survival, but from the beginning they have doubted the veracity of the fishermen’s version of events. Underlying the media’s skepticism is the belief that it is simply not possible for a human to survive for so long at sea without food and fresh water.

Jose Salvador Alvarenga, who spent 13 months on a remote Pacific island, after being rescued. (Image courtesy of Mashable)

One Fox News article asked, “Was it all a mirage?” The Sydney Morning Herald described Alvarenga’s story as “a tale of ocean survival that smells a bit fishy.” Searching for holes in Alvarenga’s story, a number of reports pointed out that Alvarenga was rather plump for someone who had been through such an ordeal (Doctors later confirmed that his paradoxically bloated appearance is consistent with a state of long term starvation).

Could Alvarenga really have drifted for 8000 miles from Mexico to the Ebon atoll in the Marshall Islands? If we look into the history of the great Pacific Ocean, we find several stories of survival that suggest Alvarenga is telling the truth.

In his famous history of The Manila Galleon, William Lytle Schurz talked about the survivors of one of these large Spanish treasure ships that was lost crossing the Pacific from Mexico in 1693. Two men made it all the way to the Philippines in conditions similar to what Alvarenga endured (thanks to Steph Mawson for this reference). The Galleon‘s

fate was eventually learned from two men picked up long after near the town of Binangonan de Lampon. In the boat in which they had managed to reach the Philippines was the corpse of a dead companion. One of the two survivors had gone stark mad from his sufferings. Before the burning galleon had foundered six men put off from her side in an open boat and headed westward. After three weeks their food gave out and two of the starving men slid over the gunwales into the sea. Those who were left then ate their jackboots and their belts to stave of starvation. At last it was decided to draw lots as to which of the four should be eaten by the rest. One of the three preferred to starve rather than to turn cannibal. It was only the last two who survived these horrible experiences, one without his reason, the other broken by his sufferings and long under the shadow of the Church for having partaken of human flesh.

Maris Pacifici by Abraham Ortelius (1589), the first printed map of the Pacific and the Americas. (Image courtesy of Helmink Antique Maps)

Early 17th century map of the Pacific. (Image courtesy of Bibliothèque Nationale de France)

Perhaps the most famous Pacific castaway is the British Naval Captain William Bligh. In 1789, Bligh and eighteen of his men were forced to disembark from Bligh’s ship The Bounty and climb into a 25-foot long launch boat; a tiny vessel intended for carrying people and supplies from ship to shore. The mutineers surely believed that their deposed Captain and his supporters faced a certain death. Yet over the next forty-seven days, Bligh used a quadrant and a pocket watch to navigate the very crowded launch from near Tonga to the Dutch settlement at West Timor, a 4350 mile journey.

Amazingly, only one man died on this voyage. Greg Denning’s history of the mutiny Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty wrote that:

“From [Bligh’s] careful record of every item consumed … the total food each man had in forty-eight days was this: seven pounds bread, one pound salt pork, one pint rum, five ounces wine, two and one-quarter coconuts, one banana, one pint coconut milk, one and one-quarter raw seabirds, four ounces fish … A sailor’s ordinary food allowance has been calculated at about 4,450 calories a day. On the figures I have given here a nutritionist estimates that the launch people were reduced to 345 calories a day. This would mean a possible daily energy deficit of 4,105 calories and a total weight loss of 56 pounds.

In 1947, the intrepid Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdhal and five other men crossed the Pacific Ocean from Peru to Polynesia in a small, balsa-wood raft named “Kon Tiki” that Heyerdhal built with his own hands. The boat was a replica of a pre-Inca raft, and the purpose of this dangerous exhibition was to prove Heyerdhal’s theory that it was the South Americans who first discovered and populated Polynesia thousands of years ago using similar vessels.

Kon-Tiki raft, circa 1947 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

800px-Expedition_Kon-Tiki_1947._Across_the_Pacific._(8765728430)

A Kon-Tiki expedition across the Pacific, 1947 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Although the Kon Tiki’s voyage doesn’t exactly prove Heyerdhal’s origins theory, (which for most scholars doesn’t hold water), the fact that six men completed a 101-day long, 4300-mile voyage on a 40 square-foot raft was at the time, and continues to be, a pretty exciting feat. The raft didn’t have oars and couldn’t really be steered in any direction. Although the Kon Tiki was equipped with US army supplied food, the crew reported a rich supply of fish (and sharks!) in the warm-water currents that carried them to Polynesia. If you are interested in Heyerdhal’s adventure, the story of the Kon Tiki is told in Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg’s 2012 film, which is currently available on Netflix.

After reading this piece, you might agree that Alvarenga deserves an apology from the news outlets around the world who rushed to accuse the fisherman of fabricating his story. We historians of the Pacific world know that the history of this largest ocean is punctuated by amazing stories of survival that should be celebrated.

A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552-1610, by R. Po-chia Hsia (2010)

by Shery Chanis

Hsia’s book on Matteo Ricci expands the traditional narratives of the Age of Expansion and transforms our understanding of them. Beyond the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds, early modern Europeans, Jesuits among them, also ventured to Asia. Published on the four-hundredth anniversary of Matteo Ricci’s death, Ronnie Hsia’s biography of the Jesuit also marks part of a larger effort to commemorate one of the most important figures in the history of Christianity in China. In addition, this book shows a shift in focus to China by Hsia, who has produced an abundance of works on German social and cultural history during the Reformation era.

Hsia departs from other Ricci biographies with a more down-to-earth and rounded portrayal of the Jesuit missionary. Rather than claiming Ricci to be a saint or a pioneer cultural accommodationist who allowed Chinese converts to continue certain Chinese rituals, Hsia examines the context in which Ricci operated in two new ways. First, Hsia includes many other Jesuits in his book, illustrating that Ricci was part of a greater effort of the China Mission. Hsia discusses many Chinese figures along Ricci’s path, some of whom helped the Jesuit mission, some debated with the Jesuit, some were converted, and some collaborated with Ricci on various works. Second, Hsia discusses Ricci’s emotions at various stages of his mission. Although Ricci was highly successful in China, Hsia shows that he also experienced melancholy and sadness in his tenure in China.

After a creative prologue about Ricci’s death and burial, Hsia outlines Ricci’s life, from his birth in Macerata, Italy to his burial in Beijing, China. Hsia traces Ricci’s education and training in Europe and his journey to Asia before settling in China. Hsia devotes a chapter to each Chinese city where Ricci lived – Macao, Zhaoqing, Shaozhou, Nanchang, Nanjing, and Beijing –to illustrate Ricci’s northward movement within the Chinese empire moving towards the capital, his ultimate goal. Hsia follows this with a discussion of The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, which he argues is Ricci’s most important work. Hsia concludes his book with an Epilogue, witha brief historiography of works on Ricci in the four centuries since his death, from Nicholas Trigault to Jonathan Spence to Chinese scholars including Lin Jinshui and Sun Shangyang.

Detail from the China section of Matteo Ricci’s 1602 map, the “Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography” (Image courtesy of Library of Congress)

Hsia’s innovative approach continues with his attention to Michele Ruggieri, Ricci’s fellow Italian Jesuit and partner at the beginning of the Jesuit mission in China. Not only does Hsia devote an entire chapter to Ruggieri, he also includes a legal case against Ruggieri in his appendix. Hsia’s inclusion of Ruggieri, who is usually seen only in Ricci’s shadow, helps expand our knowledge of the Jesuit mission in China.

Hsia’s increasing focus on China in his scholarship is also reflected in his incorporation of many Chinese sources in his book. In addition to Ricci’s extant letters and published works, Hsia includes such Chinese materials as local gazetteers, tax records, poems, and letters. This offering of a more balanced perspective between Europe and China makes his focus and methodology less Eurocentric, which is also a strength of this book. Hsia’s inclusion of photographs he has taken in some of the cities Ricci had lived also serves as a great addition to the book.

ILLUSTRATION DEPICTS JESUIT FATHER MATTEO RICCI

Matteo Ricci in the traditional garb of a Chinese literatus (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Hsia’s micro-historical approach of focusing on one Jesuit does not provide a full account of the Jesuit mission in China which can be viewed as a weakness of the book. In addition, the book title might be somewhat misleading, since Hsia is interested in not only Ricci in Beijing, the Forbidden City, but also in other places. Nonetheless, Hsia has provided an intriguing account of an important figure in the Jesuit China mission who was also part of the larger narrative of the Age of Expansion.

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