bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The “Natural Elevation” of Equity
Authors: Kessler Amalia D.
Published: May 2017

Chapter 1 explores the reasons why equity took root in American soil despite the long-standing suspicion, dating primarily from the seventeenth-century English Revolution and exacerbated by the colonial experience, that it was linked to royal tyranny. Challenging those who offer an exclusively functionalist explanation, focused on commercial needs, it emphasizes the important role played in equity’s early nineteenth-century institutionalization by two leading, contemporary jurists—James Kent, Chancellor of New York, and Joseph Story, U.S. Supreme Court justice and author of the leading contemporary treatises on equity. The chapter argues that these men conceptualized equity procedure as a quasi-inquisitorial system intended to bolster a powerful, discretion-laden judicial elite. This elite, they insisted, would promote national greatness and thereby elevate the standing of the new nation vis-à-vis its older, European competitors. At the same time, they believed, such judges would maintain a firm grip on the helm of state, fostering the new country’s commercial growth, while also assisting it to avoid the worst dangers and excesses of democratization. With time, however, Kent’s and Story’s very success in institutionalizing chancery’s quasi-inquisitorial procedure and linking it to an elitist vision of social and political rule would contribute to ushering in a backlash against it.
A Troubled Inheritance
Authors: Kessler Amalia D.
Published: May 2017

Chapter 2 examines New York Chancery, the leading court of equity in the early United States. It argues that as of about 1800, chancery largely followed English equity’s model of quasi-inquisitorial procedure but that by the 1840s the court had embraced the oral, adversarial methods of the common law. New York Chancery’s turn against quasi-inquisitorial procedure was rooted in certain long-standing structural features of the court—most importantly, a disjunction between its quasi-inquisitorial logic (which called for a large, professional staff) and the choice to rely on a very minimal, part-time staff, assisted by lay individuals commissioned on a case-by-case basis. This disjunction created opportunities for lawyers to subvert equity’s quasi-inquisitorial logic by inserting themselves into proceedings that were supposed to be conducted entirely by judicial officers outside the presence of the parties and their counsel. Driven by lawyers’ eagerness to exercise more procedure control, a series of incremental changes occurred—first in proceedings before masters and then in those before examiners— resulting in the near-complete transformation of equity into an oral, adversarial system of procedure. The stage was thus set for the emergence of the Field Code of 1848 and its unified, oral and adversarial model of procedure.
Market Freedom and Adversarial Adjudication
Authors: Kessler Amalia D.
Published: May 2017

Chapter 5 considers the broader values with which Americans, including nonlawyers, came to invest adversarial procedure. Troubled by the radical economic transformations of the era (including the emergence of a growing class of dispossessed laborers), many Americans—and especially those influenced by then prevalent religious revivalism and utopian fervor—argued for the adoption of European-style conciliation courts as a means of tempering market excesses. Largely ignored in the scholarly literature, the ensuing debates in Florida, California, and New York were part of a transnational discussion launched by Jeremy Bentham, who coined the term “conciliation court” based on an institution created by the French Revolutionaries and exported throughout much of Europe (and its colonies). In the United States, these debates resulted in the enactment of state constitutional provisions authorizing legislatures to establish conciliation courts and legislation that did so. But the courts themselves failed to take meaningful root in the antebellum period. Their ultimately triumphant opponents rejected them as paternalistic institutions, suited only to feudal or despotic European nations. A nation that was so distinctively liberty-oriented and market-based, they argued, necessarily employed a distinctively adversarial approach to social, economic, and (perhaps especially) labor relations—and thus to legal procedure as well.
The Freedmen’s Bureau Exception
Authors: Kessler Amalia D.
Published: May 2017

Chapter 6 examines the Freedmen’s Bureau courts as an exception to the otherwise prevailing failure of conciliation courts to take root in American soil. Created to integrate the newly freed African-Americans into Southern society and to reconfigure the latter on free labor foundations, the Bureau courts were understood by Northern architects of Reconstruction to be a kind of conciliation court. Long promoted as able to attenuate market-driven conflict and restore communal harmony, the conciliation court seemed tailor-made for the Reconstruction South with its mounting tensions between white landowners and penniless, recently freed slaves. But the free labor values that Northerners viewed as self-evident truths that Bureau courts (qua conciliation courts) would simply help the parties to recognize were seen by white Southerners as foreign values, imposed on them by force. Appealing to the defense of adversarialism developed before the war, Southerners denounced the Bureau courts as un-American. With the Supreme Court’s decision in Ex parte Milligan (prohibiting military tribunals from trying civilians) and the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, their campaign to dismantle the Bureau courts and to preserve their racial supremacy would prove victorious. The restoration of adversarial justice would thereafter be framed as a triumph of due process.
Conclusion
Authors: Kessler Amalia D.
Published: May 2017

The Conclusion reflects on the accuracy of the nineteenth-century American perception that the United States possessed a distinctively adversarial legal culture and considers how developments traced in this book relate to the present. A comparative overview of nineteenth-century continental European and English civil procedure reveals that Americans were correct that their legal culture was uniquely adversarial. But the postbellum emergence of industrialization and concomitant birth of the regulatory state gave rise to new specialist lawyers, valued more for their expertise and negotiating skills than for their ability to litigate. The path connecting the late nineteenth-century zenith of adversarialism to the present was thus indirect. Nonetheless, the Conclusion argues that the history recounted in this book contributed to making American legal culture today distinctively adversarial. And it suggests that, while there are virtues to adversarialism, Americans have paid a high price for this inheritance—including comparatively greater difficulty in obtaining access to justice. Although a comprehensive reform proposal lies beyond this book, the Conclusion explores some nonadversarial possibilities raised by Americans’ forgotten history of equity and conciliation courts. The starting point, it argues, is to abandon the (constructed and contingent) assumption that due process and adversarial procedure are necessarily the same.
Excerpts from the Abbreviation
Authors: ‘Alī al-Sha‘rānī ‘Abd al-Wahhāb ibn Aḥmad ibn
Published: May 2017

This section presents excerpts from the English text of The Abbreviation of Advice for Callow Jurists and Gullible Mendicants on Befriending Emirs. ʻAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʻrānī first talks about how he befriended Emir Husām al-Dīn ibn Baghdād and his children. He says he had not accepted any of their gifts, tasted their food or drink, nor worn their clothes, nor used their bedding. He also mentions Muhammad ibn Baghdād, who brought him into the private quarters where his children were and ordered them to kiss his sandals. He then proceeds to explain how mendicants should behave in relation to emirs.
Introduction: Conventionalization, Bifurcation, and Social Relationships on the Small Organic Farm
Authors: Fitzmaurice Connor J. , Gareau Brian J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter transports the reader into the aisles of a New England Whole Foods Market, through the stalls of a regional farmers’ market, and into the fields of Scenic View Farm to introduce the challenges faced when trying to understand small farmers’ practices in light of the contemporary agricultural economy. It then outlines dominant theories in the study of organic agriculture, such as conventionalization and bifurcation, which often focus centrally on the market conditions and regulatory environment of the organic sector at the expense of the everyday practices of organic farmers. The chapter then introduces theoretical constructs of good matches and relational work from economic sociology as a means of understanding how small farmers balance market conditions with a host of other concerns in their routine farming practices and economic decisions. Finally, the chapter outlines the organization of the book, which moves from the broader history and context of organic agriculture to the everyday experiences of the farmers at Scenic View, before looking to the future of sustainable farming practices.
Making Sense of Organics: A Brief History
Authors: Fitzmaurice Connor J. , Gareau Brian J.
Published: May 2017

The increasing popularity of organic agriculture has revolutionized American consumers’ access to organic products. However, the industrial scale of the modern organic sector has little in common with the goals of sustainability farmers and activists envisioned over the course of the organic movement’s history. This chapter charts that history. The story of the organic farming movement, and even the very definition of organic farming that today’s consumers have inherited, is a story of people—people pushing back against the perceived encroachment of industrialization into their lives and onto their dinner plates. It begins with the emergence of organic farming, from the 1920s to the 1940s, as a conservative response to the rationalization and industrialization of farming. It then charts organic’s incorporation into the rising tide of the counterculture during the 1960s and 70s, as society became aware of the environmental degradation being wrought by industrial agriculture. Finally, the chapter examines the ways consumer concerns about the health and safety of industrial foods began to move organic foods into the national spotlight as a safer consumer alternative.
Organic Hits the Mainstream
Authors: Fitzmaurice Connor J. , Gareau Brian J.
Published: May 2017

With the passage of the U.S. Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) of 1990, organic food left the fringes of America’s agricultural economy and received federal recognition— and regulation. But how did organic farming become a niche market governed by regulations aimed at limiting the use of synthetic chemical pesticides and fertilizers, rather than by more holistic concerns about society and ecology? This chapter provides an overview of the regulatory processes that yielded both the OFPA and the final USDA organic standards implemented in 2000. While the federal government’s approach to organic farming began with a holistic, process-based definition of organic agriculture in the USDA’s 1980 “Report and Recommendations on Organic Farming,” the final standards came to focus on issues surrounding chemical inputs. This process served to settle the organic market by providing commensurability, offering a consistent basis for consumer choice, not broad agricultural sustainability.
Who Farms?
Authors: Fitzmaurice Connor J. , Gareau Brian J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how the individuals working at Scenic View Farm, along with the fifteen other farmers and farm workers interviewed in this book, ended up pursuing jobs in agriculture. The chapter situates these farmers in comparison to national averages in terms of age, education, and political ideology. Lifestyle concerns dominated their career decisions, and they overwhelmingly wanted a career that would keep them out of the office and in the outdoors. For them, farming was the best way to achieve the lifestyle they desired. Most also wanted to farm organically, or at least sustainably, fearing that pesticides would prevent their full enjoyment of the lifestyle. Some drew on themes of agrarianism to frame their work as a solution to the problems of modern life. The chapter also examines how the diverse lifestyle concerns of these individuals shaped concrete farming and business practices, such as whether to pursue wholesale arrangements with large market actors like Whole Foods. As a whole, these farmers made choices to maintain practices and identities through which they could live lives consonant with their visions of good, honest work.
No-Nonsense Organic: Negotiating Everyday Concerns about the Environment, Health, and the Aesthetics of Farming
Authors: Fitzmaurice Connor J. , Gareau Brian J.
Published: May 2017

This chapter addresses some of the big issues consumers and scholars assume, even implicitly, matter to committed organic movement farmers: the environment and health. Certainly, these concerns play a role in organic practices. However, this chapter shows that they are rarely explicitly addressed. Instead, such issues take on an instrumentalism and practicality in everyday experiences. Concerns about health and the environment were directly related to visceral experiences of farming, like experiencing the simple pleasure of eating a sun-warmed tomato off the vine. The big issues of sustainability acquire a taken-for-granted character, propagated in farmers’ networks of relationships. This chapter shows, once again, the centrality of lifestyle considerations in the making of organic practices. However, lifestyle concerns can also thwart more sustainable practices. For some farmers, the pursuit of a comfortable lifestyle required abandoning hallmarks of organic practice, like fallow periods for their fields in order to increase the amount of land under cultivation. As farmers struggle for livelihoods, they can become caught in a cycle of intensification that gradually erodes alternative practices. The chapter also discusses how the ability to remain alternative in light of such pressures is necessarily tied to forms of privilege—especially access to land and consumers.
Conclusion: An Alternative Agriculture for Our Time
Authors: Fitzmaurice Connor J. , Gareau Brian J.
Published: May 2017

Without abandoning the practical idea of farming as a business, the small-scale farmers in this book foster connections between consumer experiences and expectations and farming practices that support their visions of organic.
They try to build new, alternative markets to challenge the watering down of “organic” that the full-force entrance of corporate market logics ushered in. However, there are limitations to how sustainable such farming operations can be without further changing the relationships the modern food system is based upon. This chapter begins by recognizing the many limitations of localism, including the potentially neoliberal aspects of such efforts. However, the neoliberal notion that individuals can and should bring forth their own interests and engage in political contestation could (paradoxically) be the very kernel that further popularizes small-scale food production networks that provide safer, more healthful food and a better sense of community than the isolating conventional shopping experience. Finally, the chapter considers how deepening consumer involvement in the process of agriculture, incorporating concerns about social justice into local food systems, and addressing the inefficiencies of decentralized food production could push local agriculture to be even more alternative.
The Christian Imprint: The Shaping of Republican-Era Theology
Authors: Starr Chloë
Published: May 2017

The 1920s and 1930s produced some of the most exciting and voluminous theology in Chinese history as Chinese leaders gained more prominence in churches, revival movements drew converts in, mission education began to provide a stream of theology graduates, and the Chinese Christian press expanded. The nature of “Chinese Christianity” was a prime source of reflection, but so too was the Chinese state itself and the nature of Christian duty to the nation. Chapter Two surveys the state of Chinese Christianity at the beginning of the twentieth century (considering the effects of internal church developments, anti-imperialism, Christian education, elite social responsibility, and the Anti-Christian movements), then explores the notion of theology as a collective publishing exercise, via a reading of Republican Christian journals.
The Public and Personal Faces of the Church: Xu Zongze’s Sui si sui bi and the Shengjiao zazhi (Revue Catholique)
Authors: Starr Chloë
Published: May 2017

For the greater part of his adult life, the polymath Roman Catholic theologian Xu Zongze (P. Joseph Zi, S.J., 1886–1947) edited the premier Catholic journal Shengjiao zazhi, or Revue Catholique, from the Jesuit compound in Shanghai, the effective center of the Chinese Roman Catholic world. The directions in which he guided the magazine and the theological, historical, and social articles he wrote offer important insight into the evolution of Chinese Catholicism during the 1920s and 1930s. This chapter sets Xu’s biji, or “thoughts and jottings,” against his “official” magazine essays to explore the congruence or tension between the two voices, and suggests that the theologian and archivist was able to express himself differently in different forms. The unofficial, low-brow jottings constitute a personal view, in a Chinese form, to complement the official (Western-style) theological essays of the magazine.
Wu Leichuan, Christianity and Chinese Culture, and the Kingdom of Heaven
Authors: Starr Chloë
Published: May 2017

This chapter reassesses Wu Leichuan (L. C. Wu)’s reconciliation of Christianity with Chinese culture by foregrounding the centrality of the Kingdom of Heaven in his thinking. This chapter analyzes the desire to build the Kingdom of God on earth, including especially in economic realms, in Wu’s 1936 Christianity and Chinese Culture. Wu has often been labeled a “Confucian-Christian,” and various studies have engaged with his contextualized Christianity as he negotiates between classical Chinese culture and an emerging modern culture, but the chapter draws greater attention to the theologians with whom Wu is in dialogue: the British, German, and American Social Gospel proponents whose writings on the kingdom had such a critical effect on Wu.
The Church and the People’s Republic of China
Authors: Starr Chloë
Published: May 2017

If the early twentieth century saw great growth in the Chinese church, the first decade of the second half of the century saw persecution and a mass falling away from the church. By the end of the 1960s, when public religious activity in China had been shut down for several years, the rest of the world wondered if a Chinese church still existed. The focus of this chapter is the key decade of the 1950s, and particularly the policies and events of the first years of that decade. The chapter discusses the very different responses of Roman Catholic and certain Protestant church leaders to the leadership of New China and to the creation of state patriotic bodies during the difficult transition to a “post-denominational” church.
State Regulation, Church Growth, and Textual Profusion
Authors: Starr Chloë
Published: May 2017

The great growth in the Chinese church and what this might mean for a future China has been the source of much recent media debate as the world has begun to catch up with the development of Chinese Christianities over the past three decades. Chapter 8 assesses how state regulation has attempted to channel and control that growth and analyzes the three broad categories of writing that have emerged out of that attempt, in the form of official church, unofficial church, and academic writings. While “theology” proper designates the output of the state seminaries in an official Chinese construct of categories, the chapter also addresses the burgeoning theological writings in academia and outside the state church.
Yang Huilin: An Academic Search for Meaning
Authors: Starr Chloë
Published: May 2017

Among scholars of Christian theology and philosophy working in universities in China are card-carrying CCP members, many without any personal faith or denominational allegiance, yet whose thinking and writing on Chinese Christianity and culture have proved significant in and beyond academia. While far from representative of the church, their academic scholarship is valuable for its theological insight as well as for the institutional presence of its practitioners. This chapter considers the writings of Yang Huilin (b. 1954), a key figure in the Sino-Christian theology movement and a professor of comparative literature and religious studies, whose work triangulates between philosophy, literary/critical theory, and theology. The chapter suggests that recurrent questions across Yang’s work condense ultimately into two: the use of language and the pursuit of meaning. These culminate in his promotion of a “Chinese Scriptural Reasoning” and call for a “nonreligious religion.”
Rayon Goes to War
Authors: Blanc Paul David
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the use of viscose rayon as a strategic maté by both sides during World War II. Viscose may have been coming into its own in World War II, but the military roots of the viscose rayon industry go much farther back than that. In fact, in the 1920s a recurring critique of the rapidly expanding artificial silk industry was rayon's potential use as a platform for rapid conversion to munitions manufacturing. This concern was driven in large part by the close chemical and manufacturing links between artificial silk made through the nitrocellulose process and the production of explosives. The United States entered the war after the initial European epidemic of toxic jaundice from tetrachlorethane. For Germany and Italy, rayon meant textile independence. In Japan, silk played this role. In the United States, the rayon production boom of the World War II era was only one small part of a far larger mobilization effort. Unfortunately, there was no parallel war time expansion in experimental research into the dangers of carbon disulfide.
The Heart of the Matter
Authors: Blanc Paul David
Published: May 2017

This chapter considers the evidence linking carbon disulfide and heart disease. It first examines how the viscose rayon industry fared in the aftermath of World War II, paying attention to changes in the landscape for rayon and cellophane, including the growing presence of synthetic polymers. It then discusses carbon disulfide poisoning cases, including cases of central nervous system disease consistent with vascular insult. It also looks at Enrico Vigliani's 1955 publication that included experimental laboratory studies evaluating potential mechanisms by which carbon disulfide might induce atherosclerosis, zeroing in on lipid metabolism; John Tiller and Richard Schilling's study of possible heart disease deaths among the workers of the three Courtaulds factories in North Wales; and Dr. Thomas Mancuso's investigation of the neuropsychiatric toxicity of carbon disulfide—his analysis concentrated on death by suicide.
Rayon Will Be with Us
Authors: Blanc Paul David
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the continued production of viscose rayon, suggesting that it may not disappear from our everyday lives anytime soon despite the emergence of new knowledge about the toxicity of carbon disulfide. Viscose was a pacesetter at the start of the twentieth century, the first major synthetic-fiber success story. Even as rayon went offline in much of Europe and North America in the last decades of the twentieth century, carbon disulfide is still very much a part of an ongoing and indeed expanding viscose-manufacturing industry. Indeed, carbon disulfide has made another comeback, not through pharmaceuticals but via agribusiness. Both viscose rayon and cellophane have retained a symbolic presence in society. Viscose remain very much in existence, thanks to technological innovation and savvy green marketing. Today rayon is marketed as an eco-friendly, nearly green product. As Halston aptly expressed in an advertisement made for ITT Rayonier, Inc., “Rayon. It's going to be with us a long, long time”.
The Progressives’ Century
Authors: Skowronek Stephen , Engel Stephen M.
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. A hundred years ago, Progressivism was an insurgent political movement poised to dislodge an allegedly outmoded, unjust, and unworkable system of government. Today, the tables have turned. Progressivism is on the defensive. Once the inspiration for a reconstruction of the American state, the movement now bears the heavy weight of its many shortfalls. Contemporary conservatives have laid siege to the Progressives' handiwork, indicting their programs, their priorities, and their basic precepts. This book returns to the original thrust of reform, in search of fresh insight into the current juncture. It directs attention back to the ideas, aspirations, and practices that took the offensive in the development of modern American government. In taking advantage of the uniquely holistic character of these diagnoses and prescriptions, it seeks to open up the current conversation about government and politics, to push beyond controversies over the fate of particular policies. The focus is on the nation-state and its legitimating norms.
The Progressive Struggle with the Courts
Authors: Tamanaha Brian Z.
Published: May 2017

This chapter analyzes the conflict between conservative and progressive judicial philosophies. In a century-long battle over the courts, conservatives are defenders of the rule of law, while progressives are the champions of justice. This difference has created an asymmetry: conservatives occupy the rhetorical high ground, and progressives struggle to square their position with the judicial duty to apply the law. Justice Scalia's textualism-originalism, Justice Thomas' originalism, and Justice Roberts' claim that judges call balls and strikes—all emphasize fidelity to the law. In contrast, Justice Breyer pragmatically views judging as a means to social ends. Justice Sotomayor (when still a circuit judge), has said that, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better [judicial] conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life”.
From Promoting to Ending Big Government
Authors: Cooper John Milton
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the transformation of the political rhetoric surrounding the size and scope of government. The memorable presidential elections of 2012 also marked the centennial of another especially pivotal contest. On one side, Republicans were running against strong, activist government—at least as far as the economy and social welfare were concerned. Their Democratic opponents touted their own specific programs, but shied away from mounting any full-throated defense of activist government. In the talk about government, small was beautiful—always for one side and most of the time, rhetorically at least, for the other. In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson squared off in a great debate about how a more active government might best enhance democracy. Their rivalry reminds us that America's political leaders are not culturally constrained to run away from government, and that American electoral politics need not be confined to a simple dichotomous choice between two varieties, big and small.
The Democratic Fit
Authors: Mellow Nicole
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses how Progressives began supporting eugenic initiatives in order to cultivate a citizenry with the necessary attributes—at minimum, independence, rationality, moral behavior, and devotion to American institutions—out of the patchwork polity entrenched in the existing party system. Against the backdrop of growing immigration and urban industrial poverty, the eugenics campaign, targeting the “socially inadequate,” flourished as an effort to increase the proportion of citizens deemed fit to those identified as unfit. Teddy Roosevelt, whose concerns about “race suicide” led him to speak and write often on the topic, was among the most high-profile advocates of eugenics, campaigning actively to encourage greater reproduction rates among those citizens possessing ideal citizen characteristics.
Toward a More Inclusive Community
Authors: Nackenoff Carol
Published: May 2017

Many social welfare initiatives that have found their way into the administrative state can be traced to proposals advanced by the mobilized women of the Progressive era. These female reformers identified a range of new social problems and pressed government to address them with new policy initiatives. This chapter examines three particular tensions that emerged as the vision of a national community of newly empowered and aware citizens, operating at local levels to solve newly uncovered social problems, clashed with other values shared by the reformers. First, the inclusiveness of the project and the aspiration to build mutual respect among equals was in tension with the idea of maternalism, which employed sex differences and female sensibilities as the basis of social transformation. Second, there was a clash between the reform processes advocated and the substantive ends sought. Third, the aim of empowering citizens to act locally on their own behalf proved incongruous with a simultaneous emphasis on expertise and a keen interest in the specialized knowledge needed to solve social and economic challenges of the day.
The Progressive Seedbed
Authors: Smith Rogers M.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses conceptions of America's political community advanced by Progressive-era thinkers and activists that proved especially significant in American political development. These are the white middle-class reformist nationalism of Herbert Croly and Theodore Roosevelt; the varied and more radical efforts to blend democracy with cultural pluralism advanced by John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, Horace Kallen, and W. E. B. Du Bois; and the visions of economic democracy urged by Walter Weyl, Florence Kelley, and the National Consumers League. Although all have since remained politically important, their relative political prominence and their places on the prevailing American political spectrum have shifted over time. The chapter discusses these shifts and how they have remained central to the nation's politics.
Completing the Constitution
Authors: Carpenter Daniel
Published: May 2017

This chapter is meant to be, in part, a counterpoint to the poorly researched and weakly supported myth of an alleged Madison-to-Wilson shift from limited government to social democracy and expansive government. These hallucinations not only get the early republic wrong but in fact were debunked a generation ago, by Oscar and Mary Handlin, Willard Hurst, and then Gordon Wood; in addition, William Novak's painstaking inquiries have shown that republican regulation continued through the nineteenth century. These fantasies construct an equally imaginary, radicalized Progressive era, one that underplays critical transformations before 1900 and ignores the role of state governments in the changes that occurred. Progressive-era commercial regulation would not have been possible without the institutional models provided by earlier state laws and agencies, and it would not have succeeded politically without the active participation of state government regulators and elected officials.
Rights Through Knowledge and Reason
Authors: Frymer Paul
Published: May 2017

This chapter focuses on the work of African American activists in the Department of Labor (DOL) during the Progressive era, and on two men in particular: W. E. B. Du Bois and George E. Haynes. The labor problem was in many ways at the heart of the Progressive project, and the establishment of the DOL and its forerunner, the Bureau of Labor, represented an early victory. Like many of these early institutional victories, the DOL was not a huge success. Its power was at the margins, and it rarely used such power for anything more than conciliation and tepid reformism. In the area of race, the DOL did little to disturb a racially fragmented labor market dominated by white employers and by unions that discriminated against African Americans. But the department, following the Progressive spirit of believing in the power of knowledge, science, and expertise to expose societal problems and begin the process of solving them, participated in a quite wide-ranging examination of black labor in American life. Some of this was through issued reports. Du Bois wrote three of these reports for the Bureau of Labor in the years around 1900. In addition, the DOL created the Division of Negro Economics, headed by George Haynes.
The (Long) Administrative Century
Authors: Grisinger Joanna
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the emergence of regulatory governance from the Progressive movement. The Progressives laid the groundwork for an entirely new “branch” of the federal government by thinking comprehensively about how regulatory authority should be structured. These reformers created an enduring model for federal management of the marketplace: independent commissions and relatively independent executive agencies given quasi-legislative, quasi-executive, and quasi-judicial authority (that is, all the powers that the Constitution intentionally kept separate). Thus, the Progressive legacy can be traced not just to the growth of the administrative state but also to this ongoing determination to prove that agency governance can be reconciled with constitutionally separated powers. Without any firm resolution of this tension, twentieth-century governance was marked by these two systems of governance often working at cross-purposes, each compromising the integrity of the other.
What Is to Be Done?
Authors: Ackerman Bruce
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that the bottom-up tools developed by Progressives to generate and register the interests of the public have not kept up with the times. Progressives must now move beyond the innovations that their predecessors have successfully entrenched in the living Constitution. Without renewed critique and reconstruction, it is all too likely that these earlier achievements will degenerate into farce or tragedy. Like it or not, we face the very same issue posed by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 1: “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force”.
A Devil’s Looking Glass, circa 1576
Authors: Thrush Coll
Published: May 2017

Dr. Dee’s Mirror
Obsidian
Mexica, 15th–16th century A.D.
Diameter: 18.400 cm
M&ME 1966, 10-1, 1
Enlightenment: Religion

Earth, spit up the black drink from the Underworld,pour itztli, hot black glass, out onto yourself.Black glass waits in craters and on smoking slopes; it waits for the people....
A Debtor’s Petition, 1676
Authors: Thrush Coll
Published: May 2017

Come listen to me and I will declare
a story as true as you ever did hear
I merry will be while my money doth last
and only will shew that the worst is past.

    King’s Bench. Queen’s Bench. Wood Street. Poultry.    Fleet. Ludgate. Tothill Fields. Coldbath Fields....
A Lost Museum, 1793
Authors: Thrush Coll
Published: May 2017

Sparry bodies, eagle stones, Muscovy mica, ponderous earths;           garnets of twenty-six sides, violet fluors, Brazil rubies, Peru emeralds.

    Eora people are singing, Eora people are dreaming,    Eora people are stick-firing the land,    Eora people are seeing the ships come in. Eora people    are greeting the newcomers, Eora people...
That Kind Urbanity of Manner
Authors: Thrush Coll
Published: May 2017

This chapter analyzes how London became a place driven by ritual. As scholars of the early nineteenth century have noted, British society experienced a social revolution in which an ever more formal culture “acquired taboos, introduced strict rules of propriety, and became reticent about sex and the emotions revolting from the customs of their elders.” The word most often used to describe this new reality was “manners.” Simultaneously lauded and lambasted by authors from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens, ritual, in the form of manners, comportment, sentiment, and protocol, began to transform Georgian values into what would eventually come to be known as Victorian culture.
Civilization Itself Consents
Authors: Thrush Coll
Published: May 2017

This chapter considers two moments—an ethnographic display of military regimentation from the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and an anti-modern jeremiad from the first years of the twentieth. Both involved North American Indigenous people and were deeply shaped by narratives of civilization and progress. But perhaps more importantly, both happened in a specific place and time: the late Victorian and Edwardian city, where particular kinds of urban development created new anxieties about London and its empire. These strands came together at a series of large-scale Indigenous spectacles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A Seneca runner, a group of Aboriginal Australian cricketers, a Maori rugby side, and Lakota Wild West Show performers all riveted London, and their presence there speaks much not just about Indigenous visitors but about Victorian and Edwardian—and imperial—culture.
The City of Long Memory
Authors: Thrush Coll
Published: May 2017

This chapter talks about a certain repatriation that has taken place in London: the remembering and reclaiming of the city and of Indigenous travelers by descendant communities. In this entanglement of memory between the city and its Indigenous history, activism, ceremony, and reenactment are central to the story. Indigenous communities, particularly from Canada, have continued to assert relationships to the Crown through journeys to London, in a tradition that goes back to earlier journeys by Indigenous diplomats. Furthermore, the development of a Maori community in London attests to a lived Indigenous presence in the city, even if other travelers such as Pocahontas remain metaphors in a new, allegedly multicultural city. Together, these stories illustrate the ways in which memory has entangled London in Indigenous history, even as the city has tended to forget its own empire.
Epilogue
Authors: Thrush Coll
Published: May 2017

This concluding chapter reviews the gallery “London Before London,” which is described as a vision of indigenous humanity. Upon viewing “London Before London,” one could be reminded of the many museums that have been established by Indigenous communities and nations in the past half century, in which Indigenous people have taken charge of the public interpretation of their lived history and culture, presenting themselves not as static denizens of a distant past, but as active, dynamic participants in survivance. Out of this impression, the chapter argues that this new kind of Indigenous story had percolated its way back to the center of the empire, transforming the way Londoners told stories about their own indigenous ancestors.
Strategic Miscalculation
Authors: Stewart Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses how there was a good deal of confusion about what strategy to follow in defending East Africa. The thinking of the few politicians interested in the subject, and within the regional governments, was flawed, with the dangers misunderstood or overlooked. Successive British governments showed no real sense of recognizing that this could be an important wartime hub for raw materials and training. These significant failings were compounded by the failure of senior military officers to make a compelling argument about Italian intentions and the potential challenge these presented. While the Chiefs of Staff in London were right to assume that Mussolini would focus on Egypt, due to the vital importance attached to controlling the Suez Canal, they were wrong to conclude that he would enter the war at the first opportunity.
Hoping for the Best
Authors: Stewart Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines how the British Empire's position in East Africa remained politically unclear and militarily vulnerable. This had left a clear sense that whilst they were undoubtedly hoping for the best in terms of local defense and security issues, they were failing to make any preparations for the worst. In reality, in both London and Cairo the extent of their opponent's weakness was still entirely unknown. Gaining reliable intelligence about the intentions of their soon-to-be enemies had proven a difficult task due to the restrictions on military activity during the preceding years. However, it was eventually reported that general mobilization had been ordered across Italian East Africa, with considerable troop movements towards French and British Somaliland and in the direction of the Kenyan border.
The Advance from Kenya
Authors: Stewart Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter looks at how preparations on the southern front were nearly complete by late January 1941, and Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham's forces were poised to advance. Accompanied by his aide, who had recently arrived in Kenya, the general had spent the previous few weeks travelling and had visited almost all of his command area. Here, Cunningham faced a diverse variety of problems, such as a potentially significant political issue, as some of the newly arrived South African officers were quick to agitate that they should only have to serve under their own national commanders. However, throughout the advance from Kenya the Italians seemed prepared to withdraw very readily. This was, in large part, a result of their main operational weakness: their leadership.
Triumph in the Mountains
Authors: Stewart Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter follows the British and Commonwealth troops as they passed through Keren. This town was important to both the Italian and British and Commonwealth forces as road and rail routes through it afforded access to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, and to Massawa, the main port in the southern Red Sea. To capture it, Major-General William Platt's two Indian divisions would have to confront the best Italian troops remaining in East Africa. The chapter shows how the attack on the Keren position had been the pivotal point in the East Africa campaign as it delivered the decisive blow to the Italians and allowed Platt the opportunity to accomplish what Wavell had asked him to do: secure the Sudanese border and then clearing the Italians from the coast beyond.
A Third Front
Authors: Stewart Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter considers the final element of General Wavell's grand plan: providing support for the rebellion in Ethiopia. What this did was to open up a third front in the war for Italian East Africa, as mobile attacks on isolated posts and ambushes along the main routes helped to create “a deep sense of insecurity in the minds of Italian forces.” The defending troops came to fear the possibility of being captured by the irregular forces that increasingly swarmed around them and their real value lay in this psychological distraction. In sponsoring the use of these forces, Wavell demonstrated once again his formidable understanding of warfare and the degree to which the greatest weapon was not always bullets and bombs but something a little more sophisticated.
Winning the War, Worrying about the Peace
Authors: Stewart Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses how two main objectives remained for General Wavell's commanders, following the Italians' defeat at the Red Sea. From the south, General Cunningham's rapid march had left him poised outside Addis Ababa and its capture would complete the main part of the plan that had been given to him, leaving only the hinterland beyond to be brought under control. As for General Platt, he was now looking to link up with his counterpart, which would complete the devastating pincer movement and destroy any remaining enemy forces in the process. The final military action of the campaign fought in East Africa began on November 27 as artillery opened fire on the main Dalflecha Ridge which, along with the plateau at Maldiba, was the principal target of the attack.
North American Slave Traders in the Age of Revolution, 1776–1807
Authors: Marques Leonardo
Published: May 2017

The chapter explores the creation of a U.S. branch of the transatlantic slave trade in the aftermath of U.S. independence. It looks at the central role played by Rhode Island merchants in this traffic, the tensions generated by the expansion of abolitionism in the region, and the broader political debates on the national level.
The United States and the Contraband Slave Trade to Brazil, 1831–1856
Authors: Marques Leonardo
Published: May 2017

Chapter 5 discusses the forms of U.S. participation in the transatlantic slave trade to Brazil during the illegal era. It shows how Portuguese and Brazilian slave traders employed multiple U.S. resources in the traffic and the political tensions generated by the multiple forms of U.S. participation in the slave trade.
Crisis, 1859–1867
Authors: Marques Leonardo
Published: May 2017

Chapter 7 looks at the political implications of U.S. involvement in the transatlantic slave trade. It shows how different parties dealt with the growing accusations of U.S. involvement in the traffic during the crisis of the 1850s and the impact of the U.S. Civil War on its suppression.
Conclusion
Authors: Marques Leonardo
Published: May 2017

The conclusion discusses the broader transformations in the forms of U.S. participation in the transatlantic slave trade, the main geopolitical and economic obstacles to its suppression, and the broader political consequences of this participation.
History
Authors: Rutten Ellen
Published: May 2017

This chapter traces the transnational history of sincerity rhetoric, with particular emphasis on those traditions within older debates that inform and shape today's sincerity concerns. Linking Henri Peyre and Lionel Trilling's classical studies to recent research into sincerity rhetoric, the chapter considers discursive historical threads that prevail in contemporary readings of the term especially (although not only) in Russia. It explores the historical roots of the three thematic interconnections that dominate contemporary sincerity talk: sincerity and memory, sincerity and commodification, and sincerity and media. It also discusses the notion that contemporary views of sincerity are sociopolitically defined, skeptical by default, and media specific; how idiosyncratic they are for post-Soviet Russia; and how post-Soviet takes on sincerity use and revise historical and non-Russian readings of sincerity. Finally, it describes how sincerity emerged as a concern for cultural critics in mid-twentieth-century Western Europe and the United States, especially after World War II.