political history Archives

Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution by Ada Ferrer (2014)

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Cuba was profoundly shaped by its proximity to and multi-layered relationship with Haiti, or Saint-Domingue as it was called before the 1803 Haitian Revolution. In the decades leading up to Saint-Domingue’s 1791 slave revolt, Cuban planters looked with envy on the booming sugar economy of their neighbor to the southeast and sought to emulate its success. After the revolution in Haiti, Cuba was able to take advantage of the implosion of Saint-Domingue’s sugar industry. Sugar production machinery and human expertise vanished from Saint-Domingue and reappeared in Cuba. Within twenty years of the first Haitian slave revolt, Cuba had surged ahead to become the largest sugar producer in the Caribbean. Necessary to that, of course, was human capital in the form of enslaved Africans or Afro-Caribbeans, some of whom may have been captives from Haiti. Between 1791 and 1821, slaves were imported into Cuba at a rate four times greater than in the previous thirty-year period. As a result, Cuban elites were forced to confront the growing probability, and then actual occurrence, of slave revolts.

Ferrer shapes her narrative around the “mirror,” or reversal, of historical processes: the collapse of one colony’s sugar economy and the rapid growth of another’s; the liberation gained by slaves on one island and the expansion of slavery and entrenchment of enslavement structures on the other; revolution and independence in one place and colonialist counterrevolution in the other; fears of re-enslavement on the part of former slaves and fears of revolt on the part of the elites. She argues that for Cuba, the Haitian Revolution in 1791 served as a temporal “hinge” between the “first and second slaveries.” The second slavery distinguished itself from the first in its larger scale and in its existence alongside a growing “specter” of abolitionist political movements and the reality of enslaved people successfully claiming and obtaining their own freedom.

Nineteenth-Century Photograph of Enslaved People Drying Bagasse in Cuba via University of Miami Digital Collections

The first half of Freedom’s Mirror takes the reader up to Haitian independence and victory over Napoleon’s forces in 1804. These chapters trace the evolution of Cuba’s “sugar revolution,” Cuban attempts to deter the import of negros franceses – Saint-Domingue slaves who might foment rebellion — and a short-lived alliance between the Spanish army based in the city of Santo Domingo (including soldiers from Cuba) and the Haitian rebels. The second half of the book showcases the conflicts resulting from the rise of coffee plantations in lands occupied by communities of runaway slaves, the 1808 turmoil in Cuba caused by Napoleon’s installation of his brother on the Spanish throne, featuring discussions of independence and slavery abolition, and the 1812 Aponte Rebellion.

Map of Haiti via Digital Public Library of America

Freedom’s Mirror, however, is not just a story about the causal relationship between the Haitian Revolution and Cuba’s transformation, and Ferrer does not confine her investigation to economic or political factors. What interests Ferrer are the “quotidian links – material and symbolic – between the radical antislavery movement that emerged in Saint-Domingue at the same time that slavery was expanding in colonial Cuba” (11). In particular, she tracks the circulation of knowledge, rumor, conversation, religious symbolism, anxieties and hopes that mapped onto infrastructures of commerce, slave-trading, government activity, and military action.

Toussaint L’Ouverture via New York Public Library

In 1801, for example, Toussaint Louverture’s forces occupied Santo Domingo and issued public proclamations. These were carried by ship crews and disseminated in Cuba, as were first-hand accounts of Spanish refugees from that occupation who had fled to Cuba. This, according to Ferrer, is the mechanism by which Cubans came to know of the events of the rebellion and the “spectacular ascent” of Toussaint Louverture (153). Eleven years later, images of the coronation of the Haitian King Christophe appeared in the prison holding suspects from Aponte’s revolutionary movement in Cuba. In the tradition of Lynn Hunt’s treatment of the “invention” of human rights, Ferrer uses her sources—city council minutes, port registers, trading licenses, letters, confessions of revolutionaries on the eve of their executions, and printed images of Haitian leaders—to document that this circulation of information and rumor transformed the interior experiences and decision-making of historical actors and ordinary people in both Cuba and Haiti.

Freedom’s Mirror situates Cuba in a regional history, primarily the interactions between Cuba and Haiti. Ferrer is fundamentally attuned to the circulation of knowledge, symbolism, and ideas. In bringing those into the light, she shows us that economic, political, and military realities never cease to shape, and be shaped by, subjective perceptions and individual actions.

Voting Rights Still Threatened 100 Years After the 19th Amendment

by Laurie Green

100 years ago, Congress approved the 19^th Amendment, which prohibited the denial or limitation of voting rights “on account of sex.”

The agonizing, fourteen-month struggle by suffragists to get three-quarters of the states to ratify the Amendment, especially its dramatic culmination in the Tennessee statehouse, has garnered much attention. But it may come as a surprise that Texas, a state that has become notorious nationwide for passing some of the most restrictive voting legislation, ratified the Amendment in just 14 days.

Black and white image of women Register to Vote in Travis County, 1918 — Women Register to Vote in Travis County, 1918. (via Texas State Library and Archives Commission)

To be sure, Texas’s speedy ratification of the 19^th Amendment represents a beacon for women’s political power in the U.S., but a critical assessment of the process it took to win it tells us far more about today’s political atmosphere and cautions us to compare the marketing of voting rights laws with their actual implications.

In a one-party state like Texas, the primaries were the elections that mattered, and 1918 marked the first time women could participate — thanks, in part, to campaigning by thousands of members of the all-white Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA).

Not all women got the chance to vote, however. Despite efforts by Black activists, including suffragists, Texas’s all-white primary system trumped women’s newly won right nearly everywhere in the state. Even still, the support from TESA secured the election of a pro-suffrage governor, William Hobby, and convinced him to introduce an equal suffrage amendment to the Texas constitution.

Like today, however, reactions to heightened immigration from Mexico – largely by those fleeing the violence of the Mexican Revolution – influenced Texas’s equal suffrage movement. Believing the specter of adding Mexican-born women to voter rolls would alienate legislators who would otherwise back women’s suffrage, Governor Hobby proposed a two-part amendment that would extend full suffrage to women but reverse a policy allowing foreign-born residents to vote if they had petitioned for naturalization.

Tasked with getting voters to approve the amendment on May 24, 1919, TESA adhered to advice from national women’s suffrage leaders willing to alienate Mexican American and African American suffragists for another state win. “In the winning or losing of the Second Amendment on your ballot,” read a TESA leaflet addressed to the Men of Texas, “the State chooses between her women and the alien enemies within our gates as citizens.”

Image of a printed flyer saying, "Men of Texas: The women of Texas need your help on May 24th" issued by the Texas Equal Suffrage Association — Printed flyer saying, “Men of Texas: The women of Texas need your help on May 24th” issued by the Texas Equal Suffrage Association [FP E.4 B #26 (Folder 6)] via Austin History Center

While this tactic won the allegiance of many Texans, it lost them the election — not a total surprise because immigrant men on a pathway to citizenship still retained the right to vote.

Just eleven days later, Congress approved the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting the denial of voting rights on the basis of only sex. It took Hobby just two weeks to call a special session to approve the federal amendment’s simple language.

By 1921, Mexican-born women awaiting naturalization had lost their right to vote. In 1923, a restructured all-white primary law closed out even Black women who had managed to register earlier.

And again, on this 100^th anniversary of Congress’s approval of women’s suffrage, voting rights are imperiled in Texas, this time by measures espoused as necessary to end voter fraud: the voter identification law already in place, threatened purges of voting rolls to eliminate non-citizens, and bills that nearly passed in this legislative session that would have classified registration mistakes as felonies.

In practice, these measures have targeted the same kinds of groups excluded from voting a century ago, such as the African American and immigrant women unable to reap the benefits of the 19^th Amendment.

Photograph of women Congress members wearing white attend President Trump’s State of the Union address at the US Capitol on February 5, 2019 — Women Congress members wearing white attend President Trump’s State of the Union address at the US Capitol on February 5, 2019. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images (via Slate)

Photos of congresswomen wearing white at the 2019 State of the Union address illustrate how that history of injustices may have inspired women to figure so prominently in movements for truly universal voting rights. Those sworn in for the first time this year include many who could not have joined major suffrage organizations in 1919. But as crucial as it has been and will be to gain further political power for women by voting them into office, we can’t isolate that from burning voting rights issues today, in which Texas, like then, is a leader in voting restriction.

Laurie B. Green is an associate professor of history and a faculty affiliate in the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Versions of this op-ed have been featured in The Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express News, Abilene Reporter News, Amarillo Globe News, and The El Paso Times.

More by Laurie Green:
Women’s March, Like Many Before It, Struggles for Unity
The Media Matters: Reflections on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Discovery of Hunger in the U.S.

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Great Books on Women’s History: United States
Remembering the Tex-Son Strike: Legacies of Latina-led Labor Activism in San Antonio, Texas

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.

Historians on Marriage and Sexuality in the United States

People celebrate the Obergefell vs Hodges decision in front of the Supreme Court in 2015 (Ted Eytan, via Flickr)

by Alexander Taft

In June 2015, by a vote of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court of the United States resolved decades of debate by declaring marriage a fundamental right regardless of sexual orientation. The Obergefell v. Hodges decision changed the landscape of American marriage law, but what was this landscape in the first place? Two historians of marriage and sexuality in the United States have spent decades taking on that very question. Nancy Cott and George Chauncey have both participated in recent history as expert witnesses, amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief writers, and eminent scholars analyzing marriage and homosexuality. They show us how incorrect we often are when we think of these histories in the United States. These historians have made history a friend to the court as much as any lobbyist or interest group.

Nancy Cott’s Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation lays out centuries of marriage law in the United States. Far from the moral absolute marked by religious teachings that many might assume marriage was, it is a complicated and shifting concept in the history of the Western world. Cott points out that marriage has a national concern that secular governments legislate in order to create the best “civic units” out of the family. Society became concerned with civic character and then tried to improve these norms by engineering a certain type of family. The common practice of unofficial divorce and separation led to a formal legal process for divorces just as much as the legal definition led to formal divorces. We are accustomed to thinking of these everyday things as defined from above, yet our community practices often find their way into law as often as the other way around.

The history of marriage in the United States certainly does not have the kind of unchanging moral character that many opponents to marriage equality claim. “Traditional” families are constantly changing. Two centuries ago, the most important people in deciding a match may well have been the community in which the couple lived. Small rural towns had a deep interest and broad powers in marital arrangements. Cott’s book is full of such examples of unofficial activities that reflected community interests, not the interests of the individuals involved. Marriage today is much more of an individual choice based on one’s own expectations from life, even if still affected by an idea of “normalcy” and pressures to fit into a family, a faith, or some other kind of community. Ultimately, the majority of Americans are free to marry outside of their “tribe,” because whatever social costs that are associated are considerably lower. Similarly, marriage was limited to “consenting” and “free” individuals. This meant that slaves were barred from this institution while also condemned as immoral for engaging in extramarital intercourse; a key aspect of reconstruction was the construction of ex-slave marriage. If marriage is an ever-changing reality, why shouldn’t the court consider homosexuals simply another kind of marriage?

Marriage may be a concept in flux, but what about homosexuality? Today we identify people with their sexual orientation, but was that the case in the past? Many assume that throughout history, these communities were wholly underground — persecuted and kept hidden by families ashamed of their “perverse” siblings. But George Chauncey, along with a wide field of historians, have helped us to reconsider. Rather than being a gay or a lesbian, often individuals engaged in various kinds of sexual behaviors. In fact, Chauncey’s ground-breaking book, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940, outlined how urban men who participated in homosexual behaviors often considered themselves to be “normal,” that is, not defined by their same-sex intercourse, as long as they played the “active” role in intercourse. Those men engaging in the “passive” role in intercourse were seen from the outside as primarily a public nuisance on par with prostitution (which they often engaged in). The homosexual subculture of turn-of-the-century New York was visible and defined by specific kinds of sexual activities, not necessarily nature-born identities. In fact, the words we use today, such as “gay,” “lesbian,” and likely even “homosexual” would not have been known by the vast majority of people.

Twelve years before Obergefell, the Supreme Court laid the groundwork for this legal breakthrough. The June 2003 case, Lawrence v. Texas, challenged and then overturned what were commonly known as “sodomy laws” that declared sodomy illegal. Much of the debate surrounding these laws considered them to be expressions of long-standing morals; an accepted societal conclusion that homosexuality itself was illegal. However, Chauncey’s amicus curiae brief (with input from a number of historians) decimated this belief by pointing out that “sodomy” itself was a dubious term that had shifted throughout history. He pointed out for example that famed thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas considered every sexual act that was not direct penetrative vaginal sex to be sodomy. He also explained that the history of sexuality shows that these “morals” were recent inventions and historically changeable. His brief was specifically quoted by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote, whose opinion overturned decades of legal persecution.

Historians have much to teach, but not only to students. Society is improved by their scholarship, often because our collective memories are too short and our ability to see past our biases and preconceptions is often lacking.

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Ideological Origins of a Cold Warrior: John Foster Dulles and his Grandfather

by Paula O’Donnell

Dulles with President Eisenhower in 1956 (via Wikipedia)

To experts on the history of U.S. foreign policy, the Dulles brothers’ service during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidency marks an important watershed in the evolution of American interventionism. In the context of brewing conflict with the Soviet Union, Eisenhower’s administration aimed to protect developing countries of the “Third World” from being converted to Communism. However, as recovery efforts following World War II mobilized international diplomatic efforts to broker world peace, U.S. officials were reluctant to deploy troops abroad. John Foster Dulles was Eisenhower’s secretary of state during this time. His brother, Allen Dulles, served as director of the recently founded Central Intelligence Agency. Together, the Dulles brothers used this agency to eliminate perceived communist threats in the Third World through covert operations, establishing a powerful precedent for “regime change” as foreign policy strategy.

What fewer scholars and policy enthusiasts know is that the Dulles brothers were products of an elite political family with a strong internationalist tradition. John Foster Dulles’ personal papers, stored at his alma mater Princeton University, exhibit how the eldest brother’s upbringing and family network, consisting of diplomats, missionaries, and international lawyers, influenced his developing world view. This is particularly the case with his maternal grandfather, John W. Foster, a prominent patriarchal presence during Dulles’ childhood. Ideological continuity between Foster and his oldest grandson is evident in their comparable career paths, their methods of preparing subsequent male generations, and their published texts and speeches which analyze the role of U.S. foreign policy in international affairs.

John W. Foster, Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison (via Wikipedia)

Dulles’ personal papers suggest that he modeled his career after that of his grandfather. Foster had also served as secretary of state, at the end of President Benjamin Harrison’s administration. He inhabited this role during the fall of the Hawaiian monarchy in January 1893, an event that led to U.S. annexation of the archipelago. Foster then left political office to pioneer U.S. corporate legal practices and distinguish himself as an international diplomat. Notably, he mediated negotiations at the close of the First Sino-Japanese War and drafted the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed on April 17, 1895. Dulles’ career subsequently followed a similar path. He also became an international corporate lawyer, partially through his grandfather’s connections, at the elite law firm Sullivan and Cromwell LLC. As partner at this firm, Dulles represented powerful U.S. corporations with vested interests abroad, such as the United Fruit Company. Dulles simultaneously cultivated a long-term career in international diplomacy, serving as secretary to the Economic Reparations Committee at the Treaty of Versailles and later as delegate to the San Francisco Conference which established the United Nations.

Continuity is also evident in the two figures’ strategies for patriarchal mentorship. While Dulles was still a child, he spent his summers at his grandfather’s house on Henderson Harbor in upstate New York. Very early most mornings, Foster took his grandsons fishing. On these excursions, the Dulles brothers learned how to catch their own lunch and cook over an open fire. They ate as they listened to their grandfather’s stories of his experiences abroad, often in the company of distinguished guests such as William Howard Taft, Andrew Carnegie, or Bernard Baruch. These trips taught the boys that self-reliance was a masculine virtue while, at the same time, integrating them into a network of white male elites. Dulles later applied similar methods to raising his sons, taking them on month-long sailing voyages up the Canadian coastline, where they learned to navigate by starlight and catch their own food. For both Foster and Dulles, traveling by water was a fruitful exercise in battling uncontrollable elements, which they believed benefitted male members of subsequent generations.

Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, and John Foster Dulles at the United Nations in New York City (via National Archives and Records Administration)

Dulles’ and Foster’s published texts and speeches exhibit their shared value of an activist, and interventionist, American foreign policy. Foster had written two books on U.S. diplomacy, both treasured by his progeny. The first of these, A Century of American Diplomacy: Being a Brief Review of the Foreign Relations of the United States 1776-1876, published in 1900, recounted a diplomatic history of the United States, with emphasis on the functions of the state department. Foster exhibited profound enthusiasm for the foresighted genius of the founding fathers and for the “honorable position” characteristic of U.S. diplomacy. The closing chapter examined the importance of the Monroe Doctrine to U.S. foreign policy. President James Monroe first articulated the Doctrine in an address to Congress in 1823. It established U.S. rights to exclusive influence over the whole Western Hemisphere in response to colonial ambitions of the Holy Alliance (Russia, Prussia, and Austria) following the decline of the Spanish Empire. Like his grandfather, Dulles viewed the Monroe Doctrine, as the “most essential expression” of American foreign policy. During the Cold War, Dulles drew parallels between the threat of the Holy Alliance and the one posed by the Soviet Union. Despite writing at dramatically different times in U.S. history, both Dulles and his grandfather interpreted the Monroe Doctrine to sanction American use of force in the interest of preventing the spread of European political influence.

Dulles’ history goes to show how an analysis of his service as secretary of state, or the C.I.A. operations he sanctioned, are not sufficient for understanding how U.S. policymakers justified intervention during the Cold War. The secretary’s relationship with his grandfather and his understanding of U.S. history shaped his worldview in significant ways. It is important to pay attention to the durability of intellectual and ideological influences that inform the most prominent individuals who execute foreign policy in the United States. This is especially so since American society still grapples with ideological convictions regarding gender, class, religion and nationality that echo sentiments advanced by Dulles and his contemporaries. Such intellectual and ideological understandings will continue to have a dramatic impact on the U.S. foreign and domestic policies. Scholars would do well to recognize and wrestle with the durability of these beliefs, if they believe history might help Americans understand the many ramifications sure to emerge as a result.

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Americans Against the City, By Stephen Conn (2014)

By Emily Whalen

“Have you ever lived in the suburbs?” New York City Mayor Ed Koch asked in a 1982 interview for Playboy magazine. The interviewer had asked the famously witty Koch if he would ever consider a gubernatorial campaign for the state—if Koch won the race, it would mean a move away from the Big Apple and to the governor’s mansion in semi-rural Albany. “It’s sterile,” Koch continued, “It’s nothing. It’s wasting your life, and people do not wish to waste their lives once they’ve seen New York!”

Koch’s bluntness likely closed the door to a potential governorship, despite his popularity among urban constituents. During Koch’s long tenure as mayor (1978-1989) most Americans harbored distinctly anti-urban attitudes, preferring the serenity and monotony of suburban life over the clamor and chaos of the “greatest city in the world.” In fact, as Stephen Conn argues in Americans Against the City, the story of American anti-urbanism—a generalized distaste for the dirt, diversity, and disarray of the city—stretches across the nation’s history. According to Conn, since the end of the Civil War, the American political and physical landscapes have been deeply interrelated. Where and how we live shapes our political attitudes and expectations. Focusing on the material, social, and cultural elements of living habits inside and outside the city, Conn argues that the anti-urban strain in American culture—manifest in the growth of suburbs and decentralized cities—relates directly to a mistrust of centralized government. Progressives in the 1920s saw the dense cities of the Northeast as workshops where the problems of governance could be perfected. Yet by the end of the Second World War, that optimism had faded. Cold Warriors and their successors on both ends of the political spectrum tried to reclaim their independence from big government by rejecting urban life. Conn links the decline of “urbanity” (a sense of collective responsibility and tolerance) in modern politics to this national decentralization—the “hustle and bustle” of a true city provides “lessons in civility and diversity” that once enriched our political process. As Americans fled to suburbs, urbanity—and civility—plummeted.

new_york_city_aerial_view_1919 — New York City in 1919 epitomized the benefits and problems of urban life (via Wikimedia Commons).

Beginning with Frederick Jackson Turner (whose 1893 essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” Conn describes as “a Mid-Westerner’s revenge on…an overbearing East Coast.”), Americans have been skeptical of cities. Conn examines how a sense of exceptionalism convinced many Southerners and Westerners in the late 19th century that urban centers like New York City and Chicago posed a threat to American values, like ruggedness, self-sufficiency, and independence. Furthermore, city-dwellers at the turn of the century faced real problems, such as unsanitary living conditions, corrupt political machines, and overcrowding. Yet the solutions that urban-skeptical reformers offered didn’t address these issues; instead, most of these projects aimed to push people out of cities. The problems of the city, according to people like Benton MacKaye, arose from the density and variation of urban life and would not follow Americans into nature. MacKay designed the Appalachian Trail, the 2,200-mile hiking trail extending from Maine to Georgia, in 1921 in the hopes that city-dwellers would follow it out of the urbanized Northeast and, after finding a more wholesome existence, never return.

appalachian_trail_heading_to_double_springs_gap_from_clingmans_dome — The Appalachian Trail (via Wikimedia Commons).

As suburbs proliferated across the nation, Conn argues, they sustained “decentralized cities,” where whites and other privileged groups left urban centers at the end of the work day and returned to homogenous housing developments. “Most suburbs,” Conn explains, rather than developing a unique culture, “functioned to reject the city while simultaneously taking advantage of it.” Decentralized cities like Albuquerque, NM relied on federal government spending for growth, largely for maintaining and constructing roads, despite the anti-government attitudes of their citizens. Other decentralized cities in the Midwest, like Columbus, OH, embarked on “urban renewal” schemes in which the living history of the city fell victim to commercial development. In 1979, city leaders demolished Columbus’s historic train station to make way for a convention center and parking lot. “Beyond expressing their contempt for trains,” Conn argues, “those who ordered the building torn down expressed their contempt for Columbus’s past.” Dismissing the benefits of city dwelling, and the importance of a city’s history, anti-urban sentiments poisoned most urban renewal schemes of the late 19th century.

800px-union_station_mural_by_gregory_ackers_columbus_ohio_1987 — This 1987 mural by Gregory Ackers depicts Columbus’ historic Union Station. In 2014, new construction on the lot blocked the mural from public view (via Wikimedia Commons).

Conn looks at many cities across the country in his history of anti-urbanism, including a place familiar to Texans: Houston. Houston city leaders refused to accept federal zoning requirements throughout the 20th century, even when it meant passing on attractive funding opportunities that would enrich public governance and culture. During the Cold War, Houston’s elite saw nefarious designs behind the push for federal zoning laws. “Zoning was part of a transitive property that led straight to Moscow: zoning = planning = government interference = Stalinism,” Conn relates. Affluent, white residents believed that the free market, not public regulation, would solve Houston’s successive housing crises. Yet, because housing areas were largely segregated by color, privileged Houstonites ignored the problems their poor and marginalized neighbors faced, all while undermining public programs designed to improve general welfare. The elites “simply could not acknowledge that the ‘market’ does not function the same way for all Americans.”

Houston also serves as an example of how modern “gated communities” attempt–and fail–to cultivate the vibrant urbanity lacking in decentralized cities. Communities, Conn demonstrates, are just as much about exclusion as inclusion, and the gated oases of suburbia represent “exactly the opposite of city life.” The gated communities suggest “a society where social ties have frayed, where we simply do not trust each other and do not even want to make the attempt.” That exclusion—in Houston, as in Greenwich, CT—often follows racial and socioeconomic lines.

aerial_indian_creek_near_dallas_6039814731 — Sprawling suburbs, like Indian Creek outside of Dallas, characterize many cities of the American Southwest (via Wikimedia Commons).

Americans Against the City pays close attention to both liberal and conservative anti-urbanism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Conn describes the “hippie” communes and environmental movements of the 1970s as “essentially different versions of white flight” from urban issues. Yet toward the end of the book, Martin Anderson (one of President Reagan’s most important economic advisors) and the New Right bear the brunt of Conn’s criticism. These men largely promoted policies based on the idea that the market is more democratic than public government, while simultaneously benefitting from federal access and funding. Fighting against public spending on services and entitlements, Anderson helped entrench the now-prevalent idea that the government has no “role to play in promoting the general welfare, except as it enhances private wealth.”

Americans Against The City stands as a well-researched and provocative history of the ideas and politics rooted in our physical environment. Conn’s easy writing style and fascinating evidence make the book a pleasure to read. His conclusions resonate with the contemporary moment and offer a new explanation for the fraying political consensus. Suburbs, Conn explains, disconnect us from our geography–disassociating our work lives from our personal lives, our futures from our histories. As a result, although Americans are more mobile than ever, we feel detached from our political geography. This disruption lies at the heart of a creeping polarization in our political discourse, canceling out opportunities for compromise and eroding a sense of collective responsibility. The values of democratic government, Conn reminds us, arose from urban milieux. It remains to be seen whether they will survive in the suburbs.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 by Hunter S. Thompson (1972)

by Jack Loveridge

“How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?”

Forty years on, that question still haunts the pages of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 like the ghost of Boss Tweed. First appearing as a series of articles in Rolling Stone magazine, Thompson’s coverage of the 1972 presidential election shines light on the darker side of the democratic process. Thompson, author of Hell’s Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has the right kind of eyes to see the corruption, the lunacy, and the sheer depravity of choosing a chief executive in modern America. In his landmark work of Gonzo journalism, Thompson chronicles the Democratic Party’s struggle to mount a viable challenge to Richard Nixon as the Vietnam War raged on with no end in sight.

Thompson powerfully sets the stage for the 1972 Democratic primary contest – a party divided, old coalitions fragmenting, and the chaos of the 1968 election looming over the process. For the first time, the Democrats would choose their nominee exclusively through state primaries, rather than a combination of elections and back-room deals. The list of candidates – including Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine, Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Washington, and Gov. George Wallace of Alabama – proved familiar but uninspiring. In the midst of this drab battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, Thompson spots an honest man in a pack of party hacks: Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

McGovern, who died last weekend at the age of 90, emerged in 1972 as the unlikely presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. As a rare liberal spokesman from a conservative state, McGovern championed the anti-war movement in the U. S. Senate. McGovern, a former history professor and decorated World War II bomber pilot, passionately protested the Vietnam War on the Senate floor, lamenting: “I am sick and tired of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” McGovern’s fledgling campaign picked up steam through the primaries of 1972 and Hunter S. Thompson went along for the ride.

Thompson and Senator McGovern, 1972. (Image courtesy of bpx/Flickr Creative Commons)

As a sort of embedded journalist with the McGovern campaign, Thompson shunned the idea of impartial reporting. Objective journalism, he argued, is a “pompous contradiction in terms.” After all, selecting sources and choosing verbs are subjective activities. Besides, Thompson reasoned, artificial objectivity blinded most journalists to the dishonesty of politicians like Richard Nixon, his main antagonist. By this reasoning, Thompson publicly declared his support for McGovern early in the primaries.

At times, Thompson’s irreverent style (which he termed “Gonzo journalism”) also blurs the line between fiction and reality. On the campaign trail, he reported that a rumor was circulating that frontrunner Ed Muskie had been treated with a powerful psychoactive drug called Ibogaine. His report was true. There was indeed a rumor, but Thompson had started it himself. Similarly, Thompson sets his sights on derailing Hubert Humphrey’s nomination bid. Over the course of a brutal series of primary battles between Humphrey and McGovern, Thompson tells of suspected election fraud and attempts to circumvent the newly-instated primary system by the “old ward heeler” from Minnesota.

Hunter S. Thompson at the 1988 Miami Book Fair (Image courtesy of MDCarchives/Wikimedia Commons)

From the primaries to the convention, Thompson’s colorful prose proves both gripping and darkly humorous. The unprecedented access he gained to McGovern campaign staffers and Democratic Party chiefs enabled him to document every day of the historic contest in graphic detail. Thompson does not simply regurgitate press releases and the transcripts of pool interviews. He vividly relates the feel of life on the campaign trail – the blind euphoria, the hopeless despair, the money, the loneliness, the alcohol, and all. Thompson’s clarity and wit have firmly established Fear and Loathing as an celebrated work of political journalism and its author as an icon of American literature.

But what of the hero? What of George McGovern?

McGovern lost every state in the Union, save for Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. Nixon’s landslide victory represented the first time a Republican carried every Southern state and delivered the incumbent a then-record 520 electoral votes. Thompson rattles with contempt in his reflections on the Nixon landslide, but maintains enough composure to analyze the reasons for McGovern’s devastating loss. First, the ugly primary fights with Humphrey left the liberal McGovern labeled as the candidate of “Amnesty, Acid, and Abortion.” Second, the fractured Democratic establishment never fully united behind its nominee.

Senator McGovern, 1972 (Image courtesy of Library of Congress)

Perhaps most significantly, McGovern’s running mate, Sen. Tom Eagleton of Missouri, was revealed to have undergone electroconvulsive therapy for depression. After waffling for days, McGovern asked Eagleton step down to be replaced by former Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver. Through these debacles, Thompson portrays McGovern as an honest man making foolish mistakes. These political errors undermined public confidence in McGovern’s judgment and reinforced his image as “too liberal” for the country.

While the American public rejected McGovern in 1972, Thompson viewed him as the last best hope for America. As he writes: “The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes […] is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been.”

President Nixon at a campaign event, 1972 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

In light of the social upheaval of the 1960s and the persistent trauma of war in Vietnam, McGovern’s grassroots campaign provided a powerful contrast to the heavy-handed and often secretive Nixon Administration. Indeed, as Thompson tracked McGovern’s campaign for Rolling Stone, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein diligently investigated the June 17, 1972 Watergate burglary in the pages of the Washington Post. To avoid a probable impeachment, Nixon resigned the presidency just over two years later. As Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 brilliantly reveals, George McGovern inspired many with a vision of an honest and humane government, intent on building peace at home and abroad. It is a vision that has been eroding ever since.

Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues: The Court Society of Colonial Mexico 1702-1710 by Christoph Rosenmüller (2008)

by Susan Zakaib

Christopher Rosenmüller is one of a number of recent scholars to revisit history’s “great men,” who were the focus of most studies on colonial Spanish America until social history’s rise to popularity in the 1960s. These historians are reassessing the roles of individual rulers and colonial institutions, using methodologies borrowed from social and cultural history more often used to examine the ruled rather than rulers. Rosenmüller brings to life the “palace intrigues” of the Duke of Albuquerque, who served as viceroy of New Spain (now Mexico) from 1702 until 1710. His approach, though centering on a single figure, echoes that of many social historians: he examines the viceroy not as an intrepid leader or a cog in an imperial machine, but as a participant in a complex social network. While scholars have already begun to examine the relationship between social networks and state power in early modern Europe, Rosenmüller is the first to apply this methodology to new world viceroys, who are surprisingly understudied. The result is at once a compelling biography and an insightful contribution to scholarship on colonial Mexico.

Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues explores Albuquerque’s political career in vivid detail, focusing especially on his relationships with New Spain’s elites. Although royal law required viceroys to remain detached from local society, in practice the rule was rarely observed. From the late seventeenth century onward, especially, these representatives of the King often constructed a power base by fostering close ties with local traders, entrepreneurs, and friars, waiving royal laws that harmed these elites’ businesses in return for their loyalty. Viceroys also bolstered their local authority by appointing their clients and allies to offices in the colony. Albuquerque was no exception to these trends.

In the early eighteenth century, King Philip V began a campaign to curtail these practices, in hopes of ensuring that the viceregal court would serve royal prerogatives rather than local ones. Instead of extending royal authority as the King had ordered, however, Albuquerque, continued the tradition of power-by-patronage. In doing so, he not only filled his own coffers and reduced local opposition to his rule, but also helped New Spain’s elites to deflect the royal reforms that threatened their interests. Yet, as Rosenmüller demonstrates, Albuquerque’s disobedience ultimately worked to the Crown’s advantage. The Bourbon dynasty only recently had wrenched the Spanish throne from the long-reigning Hapsburgs, which made the maintenance of the viceroy’s local power networks more critical than ever. By pandering to local interests, Rosenmüller argues, Albuquerque played a crucial role in maintaining New Spain’s loyalty to the Bourbons during a period of instability.

Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, the 10th Duke of Alburquerque

Although Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues neglects to address the roles of non-elites in viceregal political culture, it is nevertheless an excellent study. Rosenmüller’s consideration of local actions and interests alongside broader political developments tells the fascinating story of Albuquerque himself, but also reveals the workings of Spain’s imperial power more broadly. It shows that viceroys were not mere mouthpieces of royal authority, but active mediators between colony and metropolis, charged with balancing their often-competing interests. Consequently, the maintenance of the Crown’s authority and legitimacy in early eighteenth-century New Spain was as much a product of local interests and political intrigues as of royal policy. Taken together with Alejandro Cañeque’s The King’s Living Image (2004), Patrons, Partisans, and Palace Intrigues provides valuable insight into the role of viceroys in upholding and legitimating colonial rule, which is critical to understanding political culture in colonial Mexico.

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The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan by Ayesha Jalal (1985)

by Jack Loveridge

Reflecting on the origins of Pakistan nearly forty years after the 1947 partition of India, Ayesha Jalal weaves a convincing revisionist narrative of the nation’s birth. Jalal’s focus falls on the political strategies employed by the Muslim League and its leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, in the run-up to the partition. Though it occasionally suffers from rough transitions and reads much like the dissertation from which it emerged, the work demonstrates great conceptual clarity. Painstakingly researched, Jalal’s work covers roughly a quarter century of Indian nationalist history, sensibly intensifying its focus as it advances through the final years of British rule in India. A blunt but insightful question drives Jalal’s inquiry: “[H]ow did a Pakistan come about which fitted the interests of most Muslims so poorly?”

Jalal pursues this question diligently, methodically investigating the relationship between the Muslim League and its varied constituents. She thoroughly exposes the province-level pressures navigated by Jinnah, his lieutenant Liaquat Ali Khan, and other Muslim Leaguers as they made their claim to represent all of India’s Muslims. Jalal charts the notion of Pakistan as it gains strategic viability and as Jinnah advances himself as the “one man to deal with” in Indian Muslim affairs. Pakistan thus emerges variously as a threat against Congress, a bargaining tool with the British, and a rallying cry for once disparate Muslim factions.

Jalal’s analysis of the continued deterioration of relations between Muslim League and an obstinate Congress following the instatement of Louis Mountbatten, India’s ultimate viceroy, provides perhaps the most compelling passage. London’s desire to maintain a firm bond with a strong central government in the Subcontinent, along with the quickened pace of British withdrawal upended Jinnah’s underlying agenda in Bengal and the Punjab and confirmed Pakistan as a political reality. The possibility of a single Union of India collapsed and a truncated Pakistan emerged from Jinnah’s longstanding bluff. The answer to Jalal’s query thus boldly challenges earlier scholarship on Indian communalism and paves the way for a host of new questions on the origins of Pakistan.

Photo credits:

Hulton Getty, “New Delhi, Lord Mountbatten and the main leaders of India negotiate the partition India according to the British plan. From left to right: Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Vice-President of the Interim Government; Lord Hastings Ismay, adviser to Lord Mountbatten; Lord Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy of India; and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Quaid-e-Azam (All-India Muslim League,” 3 June 1947

Hulton Getty via Flickr Creative Commons (user Eye 4 It)

Jack Loveridge’s review of Jawaharlal Nehru’s biography.

Voices of India’s Partition, Part V: Interview with Professor Mohammad Amin

Voices of India’s Partition, Part IV: Interview with Professor Masood ul Hasan

Voices of India’s Partition, Part III: Interview with Professor Irfan Habib

Voices of India’s Partition, Part II: Interview with Mr. S.M. Mehdi

Voices of India’s Partition, Part I: Interview with Mrs. Zahra Haider

The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor (2009)

by James Hudson

For many historians of China and even for many Chinese, Chiang Kai-shek, leader of China’s Nationalist Party and then founder of the Republic of China in Taiwan, was a classic “bad guy” of history. He was incompetent and ruthless. He cared little for the Chinese people or for those who worked under him. In popular history such interpretations of Chiang abound, but Jay Taylor’s biography casts the General in a different light, crediting Chiang with establishing and strengthening a faltering economy during a period of intense political and social turmoil. Taylor also observes that, while “Chiang could be heartless and sometimes ruthless, but he lacked the pathological megalomania and the absolutist ideology of a totalitarian dictator,” and regarding the potential of his own ideas was “more self-delusional than hypocritical.”

Chiang’s collaboration and subsequent rivalry with the Allied Commander in China during World War II, General Joseph Stilwell, was chronicled by Barbara Tuchman in her famous book, Stilwell and the American Experience in China: 1911-45. Although Tuchman portrays Stilwell as one of the most brilliant military minds of his generation, she often paints Chiang as nothing more than an inept tyrant, whom Stilwell affectionately referred to as “peanut.”

But Taylor provides Chiang’s side of the story, noting that the American general bore just as much responsibility for the nationalists’ failure to engage the Japanese and eventually defeat the communists, and that in the end Stilwell’s deep animosity for Chiang “clouded his judgment.” In this regard one also wonders if Taylor reaches too far. For instance, although he accounts for Stilwell’s impulsive character, he does not address the fact that all of the American commanders who worked with Chiang—Joseph Stilwell, Albert Wedemeyer, and even George Marshall, who eventually became Secretary of State—found him difficult to deal with. Some other leaders, such as Gandhi, Franklin Roosevelt, and commander of the Flying Tigers, Claire Chennault, found Chiang personable and charming. Such appeal was no doubt augmented by the influence of his wife. Educated in the United States and fluent in English, Madame Chiang Kai-shek remained her husband’s constant advocate throughout the war with Japan, representing the Nationalist Party abroad, even becoming the first woman to ever testify before Congress, pressing the continued need for American aid during World War II.

Perception of the seeming luxurious lifestyle of Chiang and his wife both at home and abroad at times strengthened and at times weakened the nationalist cause. But although the comforts enjoyed by Asia’s most influential couple may seem extravagant today, Taylor concludes that “luxury and constant attendance by personal servants, however, do not necessarily ruin prospects for a serious life. [Winston] Churchill all his life was dressed and undressed by someone else.”

For both popular as well as academic audiences, this book stands as a thorough and engaging read of a complex man and his leadership of China in the early twentieth century.

Photo credits:

Roberts, “Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt are shown on the White House lawn February 24, 1943 during the former’s visit to the Capitol,” 24 February 1943
U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs via The Library of Congress

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The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government by David K. Johnson (2006)

by Joseph Parrott

In 1958 Frank Kameny was out of a job. A Harvard trained astronomer and veteran of World War II, he had been working for the Army Map Service. In the wake of the Russian launch of Sputnik in October of 1957, the American government was rushing to catch up, and the young scientist seemed poised to play a role in the new emphasis on space exploration. Yet within just a few months, Kameny’s career was over because he was a homosexual. His story was not unique. He was one of many victims of the Lavender Scare – a manifestation of Cold War paranoia and social bigotry that led to the dismissal of hundreds and possibly thousands of gays and lesbians from government jobs.

Historian David K. Johnson sheds light on this forgotten episode in American history. The Lavender Scare grew from the McCarthy persecutions of the 1950s, but Johnson argues that its policies lasted far longer and became more institutionalized than the anti-communist hysteria. The government dismissed homosexuals on the grounds that emotional weakness and the likelihood of blackmail made them security risks. No evidence supported these accusations and medical experts challenged the idea that homosexuals were in any way different from the majority of employees, but to little avail. Executive departments hurried to dismiss employees suspected of homosexuality, lest ambitious congressmen – already suspicious of the expansion of bureaucratic policymaking – target them for public scrutiny. In the midst of the Cold War, fear, politics, and prejudice combined “to conflate homosexuals and communists.”

The Lavender Scare offers an arresting political narrative, but Johnson also makes sure to present the very human face of this drama. Johnson utilizes extensive interviews to demonstrate the way the purges changed the lives of victims and the social milieu of Washington D.C. itself. The rapid growth of the federal government during the Depression and its relatively egalitarian hiring practices attracted large numbers of young people seeking employment, including many homosexuals hoping to escape the limitations of small town life. By 1945, Washington was, in the words of one resident, “a very gay city,” where vibrant communities thrived and authorities tolerated homosexual activity. In an effortless combination of social and political history, the author shows how the rise of the national security state transformed gay Washington, forcing many to leave and others to endure years of joblessness.

Persecution also inspired a nascent movement in defense of gay lifestyles. Activists like Frank Kameny recast the discrimination against homosexuals as an issue of civil rights. The Mattachine Society of Washington organized picketing and supported challenges to government dismissals, consciously combining “political activism with service to and affirmation of the gay subculture.” Johnson explores how these vocal demands led the government to reevaluate its policies and the connection between the private and public lives of its employees. These early manifestations of homosexual activism not only helped end decades of vocational persecution, but they also informed the networks and tactics that would come to define a movement.

In light of Frank Kameny’s death last October at the age of 86, it is appropriate to look back at the origins of the LGBT activism. The recent repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy demonstrates that cause of homosexual equality has made great strides, specifically in regard to government service. But at the same time, the continuing debate over the necessity of this policy and calls to reinstate it remind the country that Kameny’s ultimate goals have not yet been achieved. David Johnson’s smart, well-written, and truly engaging book clearly lays out the history of anti-gay sentiment in the modern federal government. It also, perhaps, hints at ways activists can continue to challenge discrimination in the future.

Photo credits:

United Press, Joseph Raymond McCarthy, 1954

Library of Commons via Wikimedia Commons

Kay Tobin Lahusen, “Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameny, and John Fryer in disguise as “Dr. H. Anonymous,”” 1972

New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division via Wikimedia Commons

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