bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Multiple and Material Legacies of Stephen Skowronek
Authors: Carpenter Daniel P.
Published: February 2016

Stephen Skowronek’sBuilding aNew American Stateremains one of the most influential books in political science and history of the past two decades. In political science,Buildingengendered a set of deep disciplinary transformations that simultaneously sent scholars sprinting into the history books for new cases with which to ply and test theory, goaded them into rethinking what it meant for the United States to possess a “state,” and welcomed them in embracing the study of institutions as a worthwhile endeavor in political science. In history, Skowronek’s book challenged scholars to reconceive the Gilded Age and Progressive Era as a fundamentally distinct period of governance, a peculiar challenge to the institutional forms that had dominated nineteenth-century American politics. Two decades later, historians and political scientists are still laboring to answer Skowronek’s call.
Of Labor Tragedy and Legal Farce
Authors: Williams Heather L.
Published: February 2016

It is commonly assumed that transnational activist networks have greater power to compel state and private sector actors to address rights-based grievances as networks grow and activists gain greater visibility in the mass media. However, evidence from case studies of transnational mobilization suggests that the opposite may hold true under given circumstances. This article examines the struggle for an independent union in the Tijuana-based Han Young welding facility, which in 1997 and 1998 became one of the most important tests to date of labor law and institutions across the U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing international press, the Han Young factory conflict eventually drew in national labor unions, a multinational corporation, state governments, the U.S. and Mexican congresses, powerful private-sector lobbies, Mexican district courts, labor secretariats, national and regional media in Mexico and the United States, and eventually then Mexican president Ernest Zedillo and then U.S. president Bill Clinton. Despite the prominence of the case, however, the Han Young struggle ended in almost total defeat for labor. Evidence from the Han Young case suggests that as conflicts become more complex and drawn out, transnational activists' real influence may decrease, as redress of particular demands requires increasingly complex and surgical interventions to resolve problems. When conflicts implicate internecine power struggles among government actors, solving problems requires confrontations not only over social demands, but also over implementation of agreements when they are reached.
Globalization and Transnational Labor Organizing
Authors: Armbruster-Sandoval Ralph
Published: February 2016

The proliferation of garment industry sweatshops over the past 20 years has generated numerous cross-border (transnational) organizing campaigns involving U.S., Mexican, and Central American labor unions and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). This article examines one such campaign that took place at the Honduran maquiladora factory known as Kimi. The Kimi workers (along with their transnational allies) struggled for six years before they were legally recognized as a union, and they negotiated one of the few collective bargaining agreements in the entire Central American region. The factory eventually shut down, however. Based on Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink's “boomerang effect” model, this case study analyzes why these positive and negative outcomes occurred. It concludes with some observations about “the enemy” and offers short-, medium-, and long-term suggestions for the broader antisweatshop movement.
Transnational Activist Networks and the Emergence of Labor Internationalism in the NAFTA Countries
Authors: Stillerman Joel
Published: February 2016

Recent accounts of transnational activism have examined a variety of social movement organizations (SMOs) but have paid little attention to labor transnationalism. This article utilizes and adapts this new transnational social movements scholarship to understand contemporary labor activism in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) countries. Exploring the preexisting networks and intramovement cleavages that helped spawn labor opposition to NAFTA, it focuses on labor activists' complaints under the treaty's labor side accord. I explore how rising political opportunities associated with the treaty and its new institutions created new political arenas, targets for activists, and incentives for cross-border collaboration. The cross-border political exchanges that formed part of labor activists' strategies to utilize these new institutions helped activists create new movement frames, transnational identities, and coalitions. While these outcomes support the findings of literature on transnational SMOs, they point to the particular dilemmas labor activists faced in confronting these issues due to their vulnerability, the status of unions as formal organizations embedded in national institutional structures, and the difficulty of imagining policies and strategies that might be effective in this new transnational sphere.
Migration and the Nation
Authors: Moch Leslie Page
Published: February 2016

The theme of this year’s meeting, “International Perspectives on Social Science History,” rises out of two realities. The first is the recognized international character of phenomena under study, such as fertility decline, political contention, family strategies in response to changing conditions, gendered work, migration, labor, and policing. The second is the way in which the Social Science History Association (SSHA) operates across borders and among scholars in the Americas, Europe, and Asia to investigate common scholarly problems. The attention of migration scholars is now focused on global movements of people and international migrations, particularly immigration. The politics and policies of receiving newcomers are very important now–in the Americas and in Europe. The SSHA is giving its attention to the old and new international immigrants to the United States, as in last year’s session on Nancy Foner’s fine book on New York,From Ellis Island to JFK(2000), and the presidential address by Caroline Brettell (2002) on the quantitative and qualitative methods by which we can understand human movement.
Hedging His Bets
Authors: Bonastia Chris
Published: February 2016

Drawing on primary sources from the Nixon Presidential Materials and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), this article examines HUD's attempts during the Nixon era to implement “pro-integrative” policies and the White House response to these efforts. Specifically, this article provides an explanation for why President Richard Nixon elected to dismantle residential integration initiatives while allowing similar policies in employment and education to proceed with some force. In contrast to existing work arguing that Nixon's civil rights positions were designed to maximize political payoffs, I contend that Nixon's strategies are more accurately characterized as blame avoidance. Whenever possible, Nixon attempted to shift the onus of political responsibility for controversial civil rights decisions onto other political actors. This argument is clarified by a second primary theoretical point, which argues that institutional vulnerability increases the likelihood of presidential attacks. In the case examined here, HUD's distinctive institutional weakness—shaped by its conflicting missions and unwieldy structure, and laid bare by scandals in the Federal Housing Administration—gave the president a relatively low-risk political opportunity to dismantle civil rights efforts, a chance he did not have in the areas of education and employment.
Polling the Opinions
Authors: Reilly Benjamin
Published: February 2016

There has long been agreement among scholars that the French National Convention can be usefully divided into three political categories, the Mountain, the Plain, and the Gironde, yet there has been much less agreement about the size and composition of these categories. In order to test existing categories of classification, especially those of Patrick (1969, 1972) and Lewis-Beck et al. (1988), this article examines a neglected body of data, the anti-inviolability opinions produced during King Louis XVI's trial, and uses them as an opinion poll with which to examine the political identity of a cross-section of deputies in the National Convention in the winter of 1792-93.
Grammars of Death
Authors: Anderton Douglas L. , Leonard Susan Hautaniemi
Published: February 2016

Historical mortality analysis is often confounded by changing disease environments, diagnostic criteria, and terminology. Recorded causes of death are shaped by these local and historical contexts. We analyze changing literal causes of death during the shift from miasmatic to germ theories of disease using death records from two Massachusetts towns for selected years spanning 1850 to 1912. This analysis demonstrates that (1) International Classification of Diseases (ICD) classifications are more stable, yet potentially less informative, than the literal causes recorded in death accounts, (2) recorded causes of death often include additional qualifications and elaborations beyond basic literal causes of death, and the use of such qualifiers rose dramatically during the late nineteenth century, (3) social biases are clearly evident in the extent to which causes of death were further described or qualified, and (4) the additional descriptive qualification of deaths during this period of often ambiguous historical causes of death can potentially aid in efforts to classify causes of death and derive robust estimates of cause-specific mortality trends.
African American Fraternal Associations in American History: An Introduction
Authors: Trotter Joe W.
Published: February 2016

The growth of black fraternal associations is closely intertwined with the larger history of voluntary associations in American society. In the aftermath of the American Revolution, compared to its European counterparts, the United States soon gained a reputation as “a nation of joiners.” As early as the 1830s, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville described the proliferation of voluntary associations as a hallmark of American democracy. In his view, such associations distinguished America from the more hierarchically organized societies of Western Europe. “The citizen of the United States,” Tocqueville (1947 [1835]: 109) declared, “is taught from his earliest infancy to rely upon his own exertions in order to resist the evils and the difficulties of life; he looks upon social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he only claims its assistance when he is quite unable to shift without it.” Near the turn of the twentieth century, a writer for theNorth American Reviewdescribed the final decades of the nineteenth century as the “Golden Age of Fraternity” (Harwood 1897).
Organization Despite Adversity
Authors: Skocpol Theda , Oser Jennifer Lynn
Published: February 2016

A prominent form of voluntary organization in the United States from the nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, fraternal associations are self-selecting brotherhoods and sisterhoods that provide mutual aid to members, enact group rituals, and engage in community service. Synthesizing primary and secondary evidence, this article documents that African Americans historically organized large numbers of translocal fraternal voluntary federations. Some black fraternal associations paralleled white groups, while others were distinctive to African Americans. In regions where blacks lived in significant numbers, African Americans often created more fraternal lodges per capita than whites; and women played a much more prominent role in African American fraternalism than they did in white fraternalism. Rivaling churches as community institutions, many black fraternal federations became active in struggles for equal civil rights.
“What a Mighty Power We Can Be”
Authors: Camp Bayliss J. , Kent Orit
Published: February 2016

This article shows that the rituals of fraternal organizations were more than mere theatrics; that is, that they served as expressions and enactments of important ideas about individual and collective identity, gender, equality, and collective action. Responding to gaps in past work on this subject, we examine variation in master narratives and modes of ritual enactment, comparing male and female and white and African American groups from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The fraternal orders examined used elements of one of three ideal-typical ritual models to initiate their members: these models are referred to here as proprietorship, helpmateship, and pilgrimage. Following Clawson 1989, we find that men's groups of both races used ritual models focusing on autonomy and incorporation into hierarchy. Women's groups de-emphasized connections between members and focused instead on “traditional” Victorian norms and roles for women. African American groups—and particularly those without white counterparts—emphasized the equality of members as well as the importance of collective efforts for social improvement. We discuss the complex ways ideas about race and gender were articulated within civic organizations at the turn of the century and how these findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between culture and collective action.
Duty to the Race
Authors: Liazos Ariane , Ganz Marshall
Published: February 2016

In 1904, leaders of three major white fraternal orders launched a nationally coordinated legislative and legal campaign to force their black counterparts out of existence, a struggle that spread to atleast 29 states and culminated in victories for the African American groups before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1912 and 1929. The organizational structures of the black orders, usually consisting of a tripartite system of local, state, and national lodges, were critical in this successful defense of the legal right to form and operate fraternal organizations. These structures enabled fraternal members and leaders to turn local disputes into national ones, devise strategies based on the interplay of different levels of government, and sustain a discourse that facilitated internal mobilization and minimized external opposition. While most scholarship on resistance to Jim Crow has focused on local activism, the defense mounted by these orders facilitated the development of sophisticated, nationwide networks binding together local fraternal leaders and African American lawyers. These networks became a critical venue for the development of oppositional traditions, organizational infrastructures, and leadership ties that kept resistance alive under Jim Crow and laid the building blocks for future political and civil rights-related work. In particular, these fraternal lawyers, a number of whom went on to work for the NAACP, honed skills in these trials that were also central to the NAACP’s legal strategy, especially in learning to tailor cases to achieve federal hearings.
Punishment, Power, and History
Authors: Spierenburg Pieter
Published: February 2016

This article reevaluates the work of Michel Foucault and Norbert Elias, in so far as it relates to criminal justice history. After an examination of the content of Foucault’s Surveiller et punir (1975), it discusses Foucault’s receptions among criminal justice historians. Some of the latter appear to have attributed views to the French philosopher that are not backed up by his 1975 study. Notably the “revisionist” historians of prisons have done so. As a preliminary conclusion, it is posited that Foucault and Elias have more in common than some scholars, including the author in earlier publications, have argued. They resemble each other to the extent that they both thought it imperative to analyze historical change in order to better understand our own world.

Nevertheless, Elias is to be preferred over Foucault when it concerns (1) the pace of historical change and (2) these theorists’ conception of power. It is demonstrated that Foucault’s notion of an abrupt and total change of the penal system between 1760 and 1840 is incongruent with reality and leads to ad hoc explanations. Rather, a long-term change occurred from about 1600 onward, while several elements of the modern penal system (as claimed by Foucault) did not become visible until after 1840. With respect to the concept of power, Elias and Foucault converge again on one crucial point: the notion of the omnipresence of power. However, whereas Elias defines power as a structural property of every social relationship and acknowledges its two-sidedness, Foucault’s concept of power has a more top-down character, and he often depicts power as an external force that people have to accommodate. Although Foucault’s notion of the interconnectedness of power and knowledge is valuable, Elias has a more encompassing view of sources of power.
The Mule, the South, and Economic Progress
Authors: Sawers Larry
Published: February 2016

This article examines the choice of draft animal in Southern agriculture in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century and shows that the preference for the mule over the horse reflected the South’s geography. The mule was well suited to the crops that dominated the region. The long, hot summers favored the heat-tolerant mule. The region’s geography made it difficult to produce good pastures and encouraged mule breeding to locate at considerable distances from Southern farms. The consequent variation in the price of mules relative to the price of horses across the South shaped the choice of work stock. Also important were the forms of labor organization on Southern farms. This research shows that the choice of the mule over the horse represented an important and progressive step for Southern agriculture.
Labor Markets, Regional Diversity, and Cotton Harvest Mechanization in the Post-World War II United States
Authors: Heinicke Craig , Grove Wayne A.
Published: February 2016

As hand-harvest labor disappeared from the American cotton fields after World War II, labor market dynamics differed between two key production regions, the South and the West. In the South, predominantly resident African Americans and whites harvested cotton, whereas in the West the labor market was composed of white residents, domestic Latino migrant workers, and Mexican nationals temporarily immigrating under the sponsorship of the U.S. government (braceros). We use newly reconstructed data for the two regions and estimate for the first time the regional causes of the demise of the hand-harvest labor force from 1949 to 1964. Whereas cheaper harvest mechanization substantially affected both regions, the downward trend in cotton prices and government programs to control cotton acreage played important roles in the disappearance of hand–harvested cotton in the South, but not in the West.
Women in the Great Migration
Authors: White Katherine J. Curtis
Published: February 2016

Using data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), this analysis examines the economic activity of black and white southern-born female migrants participating in the Great Migration. Labor force participation and occupational SEI scores are investigated with specific focus on racial differences within and between migrant groups. Black migrants had a higher probability of participating in the labor force, yet their employment was concentrated among the lower SEI occupations throughout the period. Racial differences also were observed among the influence of personal, household, and location characteristics on economic activity such that the positive associations were less pronounced, while the negative impacts were differentially felt among black migrant women; education was less beneficial, and the deterring effects of marital status were less pronounced for black migrants. Racial differences narrowed at the end of the Great Migration for the southern migrants, reflecting a pattern most similar to nonmigrant northerners and more advantageous than that observed for nonmigrant southern women.
Indirect British Rule, State Formation, and Welfarism in Kerala, India, 1860–1957
Authors: Desai Manali
Published: February 2016

This article examines the relationship between a strong nineteenth-century welfarist expansion between the 1860s and early 1940s, in Kerala, India, under indirect British rule, and the “exceptional” antipoverty regime that democratically elected Communists implemented during the postcolonial (post 1947) era in the state. While much attention has focused on Kerala as a model of social development and on postindependence state policies in creating it, no single work has attempted to understand the significance of its prior legacy of welfare. This article uses methods of comparative historical sociology to trace the historical making of Kerala's “exceptionalism.” It argues that the early welfare policies in Kerala were implemented in a dependent colonial context and aimed at warding off annexation by the British, but their unintended consequences were to stimulate what they were precisely designed to avoid—radical caste and class movements. The analysis suggests that the form and content of welfare policies are shaped by the exigencies of state formation, as state autonomy theorists would argue; however, it shows that political struggles are the decisive determining factors of the former.
Institutional and Legal Responses to Begging in Medieval England
Authors: Clark Elaine
Published: February 2016

A great many factors other than philanthrophy influenced social policy in England during the Middle Ages. Although political thinkers steadfastly acknowledged the importance of received tradition, especially the religious command to help the poor, many lawmakers were profoundly ambivalent about begging. It is true that the opinion of the nineteenth century implied that medieval almsgiving was so “reckless” that English “beggars had an easy life,” but more recent research has challenged this perspective, bringing the parameters of medieval mendicancy into sharper focus. Seen individually, beggars were pathetic and vulnerable, but if viewed collectively they were thought to be dangerous and willfully idle. Parliament's decision to regulate begging in the years after the first appearance of the Black Death (1349–50) compelled the king's subjects to rethink the claims of the needy, even though almsgiving had long seemed a positive aspect of community life. Obviously by the close of the fourteenth century something had happened to broaden the story of casual relief, extending its boundaries beyond religious impulse to include the frustrations and passions that animated the political arena. Here contentious voices sounded, although parliamentary argument and debate were often tempered by the conviction that men of affairs could legislate a more orderly realm. Even so, efforts at social planning were by no means limited to statutory decree or confined to the late medieval world.
Higher Places in the Industrial Machinery?
Authors: Maloney Thomas N.
Published: February 2016

The economic history of African American workers since 1940 has been marked by alternating episodes of progress and stagnation. Sharp gains in relative incomes during the 1940s were followed by little change in this measure in the 1950s. Renewed progress from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s was followed by a new period of stagnation and even decline in relative pay in the 1980s and early 1990s. The important episodes of progress were to a great degree driven by changes on the demand side of the labor market: rapid growth in labor demand—especially for blue-collar workers—during WorldWar II and the effect of new antidiscrimination policies on the demand for black labor after 1965 (Donohue and Heckman 1991; Jaynes andWilliams 1989: 294–96).
Bringing Structure Back In
Authors: Lucassen Leo
Published: February 2016

Some questions can only be answered by numbers. Although migration has psychological, emotional, and political aspects, one of the key questions about migration, in the past or present, is “how much?” I share with other students of migration the belief that the level of mobility in any society is a crucial determinant of other qualities of that society.
Strikes as Sequences of Interaction
Authors: Biggs Michael
Published: February 2016

Theories of strikes—or any kind of conflict—are theories of interaction. Marxists envisage class conflict as a dialectical struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie. Neoclassical economists imagine strikes as an unintended consequence of bargaining between rational actors.The tumult of class conflict is far removed from the quiet of rational bargaining, yet these theories are alike in this respect: strikes ensue from dyadic interaction. Adding political authorities to the dyad of workers and employers extends interaction to three sets of actors.
New Light on the “Dark Ages”
Authors: Steckel Richard H.
Published: February 2016

Based on a modest sample of skeletons from northern Europe, average heights fell from 173.4 centimeters in the early Middle Ages to a low of roughly 167 centimeters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Taking the data at face value, this decline of approximately 6.4 centimeters substantially exceeds any prolonged downturns found during industrialization in several countries that have been studied. Significantly, recovery to levels achieved in the early Middle Ages was not attained until the early twentieth century. It is plausible to link the decline in average height to climate deterioration; growing inequality; urbanization and the expansion of trade and commerce, which facilitated the spread of diseases; fluctuations in population size that impinged on nutritional status; the global spread of diseases associated with European expansion and colonization; and conflicts or wars over state building or religion. Because it is reasonable to believe that greater exposure to pathogens accompanied urbanization and industrialization, and there is evidence of climate moderation, increasing efficiency in agriculture, and greater interregional and international trade in foodstuffs, it is plausible to link the reversal of the long-term height decline with dietary improvements.
Growing Incomes, Shrinking People—Can Economic Development Be Hazardous to Your Health?
Authors: Haines Michael R.
Published: February 2016

This article examines declining adult human stature in the nineteenth century in three countries: the United States, England, and the Netherlands. While this was not unprecedented, these three relatively important nations did experience a deterioration in the biological standard of living at a time when economic development was proceeding at a goodly pace. England and the Netherlands were among the most urbanized countries in Europe at the time, while the United States was still predominantly rural and agrarian. The essay argues that a confluence of circumstances contributed to the worsening of the physical condition of these populations even while real income per capita was growing. Among the factors involved were rapid urbanization without adequate public health and sanitation; a transport revolution and related commercialization, which brought people and goods into much closer contact; the consequent integration of disease environments, both within and across nations; and a growing dependence of the working populations on wage income along with a probable growing inequality in wealth and income, exacerbating the impact of fluctuations in food prices. Technological change had an impact on these events by lowering the relative prices of industrial goods. While the termMalthusian crisis(i.e., a shortage of subsistence followed by a rise in mortality) seems inappropriate in these cases, a similar process may have been taking place. It suggests that such a crisis may not commence with an increase in mortality but rather with an adjustment of the human organism to new nutritional circumstances.
The Criminal Class Revisited
Authors: Boritch Helen
Published: February 2016

Much of the renewed interest in the history of crime and punishment over the past two decades has centered on various aspects of the nineteenth-century notion of a criminal class. Although recidivism was widely regarded as the defining feature of the criminal class, little of this research has focused on systematic investigations of either differences between recidivists and the rest of the prison population or the nature and extent of recidivism-related differences in sentence outcomes. This article examines these two issues using data on offenders committed to Middlesex County Jail, Ontario, from 1871 to 1920. The results show that while recidivists differed from first-time committals to prison in terms of a number of sociodemographic and case-related characteristics, they bore little resemblance to contemporary stereotypes about the criminal class. In addition, the findings reveal both similarities and noteworthy differences with respect to the factors associated with harsher sentencing outcomes for recidivists and nonrecidivists.
Fit for Annexation but Unfit to Vote?
Authors: Basson Lauren L.
Published: February 2016

In the wake of Hawaii's annexation by the United States, congressmen engaged in a series of intense debates about the suffrage laws that would govern the new territory. This article documents how these 1900 congressional debates contributed to a growing schism between the territorial definition of the state and the sociopolitical definition of the nation. The state officially expanded beyond the North American continent while the definition of the nation remained racially restrictive. A simultaneous espousal of inclusive, universalistic principles and exclusive, racist preferences characterized efforts among European American policy makers and political observers to exercise political domination over indigenous Hawaiians while, at the same time, maintaining white control of political power.
Excess Female Mortality in Nineteenth-Century England and Wales
Authors: McNay Kirsty , Humphries Jane , Klasen Stephan
Published: February 2016

Sex differences in mortality among historical populations are an intriguing yet neglected issue. In mid-nineteenth-century England and Wales, although women and girls enjoyed an overall longevity advantage, they tended to die at higher rates than males at ages when modern life tables show female advantage. We use multilevel modeling to analyze these sex differences in mortality. We identify significant regional variation, related to local demographic conditions, economic structure, and the nature of female employment. But some regional variation remains unexplained, suggesting the need for further investigation.
From Moderator to Leader
Authors: Strahan Randall , Gunning Matthew , Vining Richard L.
Published: February 2016

In this article, we examine participation in floor debates by U.S. House Speakers in the First through Twenty-sixth Congresses (1789-1841). Consistent with the often-stated view that Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky transformed the office of Speaker by using the prerogatives of the office more expansively than other early Speakers, Clay stands out among the Speakers of this period for the frequency and length in which he engaged in House debates. However, we also find that Speakers were regularly participating in floor debates over a decade before Clay held the office and that the five Speakers who succeeded Clay did not regularly participate in debate. Although Clay was not the first Speaker to participate regularly in floor debate, we propose that he transformed the office by effectively using all of the leadership tools available to the Speaker, demonstrating to his House colleagues the benefits of having the Speakership function as the central leadership institution for the chamber.
Detention at Angel Island
Authors: Barde Robert , Bobonis Gustavo J.
Published: February 2016

Between 1910 and 1940 the Angel Island Immigration Station was the primary port of entry for Asians into the United States, the place of enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act and other anti-Asian immigration policies. Even in the absence of substantiating data, it is frequently asserted that almost all entering Chinese were detained at Angel Island and that they were detained for weeks, months, even years. This article presents the first empirical evidence on how long people arriving at San Francisco were detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station. The use of newly discovered data on passengers of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (PMSS) for the period 1913-19 adds an empirical basis to our understanding of how immigration laws were administered in classifying and detaining aliens seeking to enter the United States, which arrivals were detained at Angel Island, and for how long. Results show that many Chinese were not detained at all; there was great variation in length of detention for Chinese who were detained; only some of this variation can be explained by the type of “exempt” status claimed for admission under the Chinese exclusion laws; Japanese arrivals had an even higher incidence of detention; and many detainees were either non-Asian, had come on ships from Central or South America, or were not “immigrants” at all.
Party Politics during the Louisiana Purchase
Authors: Theriault Sean M.
Published: February 2016

The powerful personalities of Thomas Jefferson and Napoléon dominate Louisiana Purchase narratives. Such a focus obscures the important institutional, electoral, and partisan dynamics that help explain the transfer of Louisiana to the United States. This article offers new insight into relationships between the Federalists and the Republicans as well as the institutional relationship between Congress and the president. During the purchase, both political parties at times sacrificed the consistency of their issue positions on the altar of electoral politics. The politicians’ actions were based not only on their personalities and partisan affiliations but also on their institutional contexts. By additionally considering the partisan and institutional dynamics of the early 1800s, this article provides a more complete understanding of the Louisiana Purchase.
Racial Differences in Health Insurance Coverage and Medical Expenditures in the United States
Authors: Thomasson Melissa A.
Published: February 2016

This article uses a unique data set from 1957 to examine the racial gap in health insurance coverage and the extent to which that gap influenced racial differences in health care spending. Results indicate that black households in 1957 were statistically significantly less likely to purchase health insurance than white households, even after controlling for differences in income, years of schooling, age, family size, marital status, and other personal and job-related characteristics. Findings in the article also provide weak support for the hypothesis that a racial gap in health insurance coverage contributed to racial differences in health care spending between blacks and whites; even after controlling for differences in income, education, and other characteristics, racial differences in medical expenditures were smaller for insured than for uninsured families, although the result is not statistically significant.
From Friendly Society to Compulsory Medical Aid Association
Authors: Verhoef Grietjie
Published: February 2016

The compulsory medical benefit scheme for white public servants in South Africa grew out of a friendly society founded in 1905. This development diverged from the experience of other members of the British Commonwealth, where universal health insurance schemes developed following the British example. The Civil Servants’ Medical Benefit Association (CSMBA) addressed the needs of white public servants, leaving the non-white communities without any form of government-sponsored medical support, apart from health care provided at government hospitals. The CSMBA was a well-managed medical benefit association, but when it was appointed the compulsory medical benefit association for white public servants, government intervention affected the financial viability of the organization, despite the payment of a state subsidy.
Modernization and Inequality in Pre-Famine Ireland
Authors: Miller David W. , Hochberg Leonard J.
Published: February 2016

In recent debates over the utility of colonial and postcolonial theory for understanding the Irish past, Stephen Howe has suggested that Ireland be conceived as a seedbed for “hybrid forms” of colonialism. This essay presents a way to operationalize that suggestion by taking advantage of variants on classic central-place theory that have been proposed by students of developing countries. The analysis exploits the relatively rich demographic, administrative, and commercial data available for Ireland on the eve of the famine, a period in which the utility of a conventional colonial model is especially germane to major interpretive issues. The authors use various visualization techniques to explore these data and suggest ways of framing further research and interpretation in both Irish history and the study of other societies whose pasts have included colonial relationships.
Relations among Internal, Continental, and Transatlantic Migration in Late Imperial Austria
Authors: Steidl Annemarie , Stockhammer Engelbert , Zeitlhofer Hermann
Published: February 2016

The article investigates the relations among internal, Continental, and transatlantic migration in late imperial Austria by combining information from passenger records of ships to the United States and internal district-level migration data from the Austrian census. Combined with other statistical sources, a snapshot of migration to the United States is provided in the context of long-standing patterns of internal and Continental migration and the changing socioeconomic structures of the empire. The relationships between internal and transatlantic movements and the determinants of migration to the United States are analyzed by means of regression analysis. In late imperial Austria internal mobility was negatively related to transatlantic migration. This suggests the existence of different migration systems with different patterns of internal, Continental, and transatlantic migration.
Goods at Pawn
Authors: McCants Anne E. C.
Published: February 2016

The pawnshop was a critical component of urban credit networks in early modern Europe, serving as a source of ready cash in an era before there was widespread access to deposit banking and formal consumer loans. This article examines the use of the pawnshop, among other financial strategies, such as shop credit and loans between kin and neighbors, by a sample of poor to middling citizen households in eighteenth-century Amsterdam. It also evaluates the multiple links between consumer behavior and the acquisition of either savings or debt. Petty credit from the pawnshop came at a high price, and its use presumed prior access to consumer goods suitable for pawning. Thus we find that the poorest households did not rely on the pawnshop as often or as extensively as their better-situated peers for whom collateral was more easily obtained. Better-situated households also enjoyed easier access to shop credit, the terms of which were more favorable for the consumer. None of these households, however, were in positions to save to the extent necessary for participation in the larger capital markets of Amsterdam and the world.
The “Other Braceros”
Authors: Heisler Barbara Schmitter
Published: February 2016

This article explores the contradictions between the bracero program and the temporary labor program using German prisoners of war in the United States during World War II. Despite the bilateral agreement between Mexico and the United States aimed at protecting the braceros, “who came as allies,” they remained alien workers and outsiders. In contrast, German prisoners of war, who came as enemies, were often transformed into personal friends “like our own boys.” This article uses archival records, in-depth interviews with former prisoners of war, and secondary sources to analyze several structural factors that help explain these divergent outcomes.
Churches as Organizational Resources
Authors: Stepan-Norris Judith , Southworth Caleb
Published: February 2016

Employing a historical dataset on Detroit in the 1950s, this article uses geographic models to show the political impact of churches and religious populations on presidential voting. Multilevel models separate the relative impact of individual denomination, the effect of congregants in neighborhoods, and the importance of the physical presence of a church. Existing studies of geography and religion examine a few denominations; here a full set of religious denominations is compared on support for Democratic Party voting and “social movement-like” voting for the Progressive Party. Mainline Protestant churches are associated with support for a conservative social agenda. The presence of synagogues and Catholic churches in neighborhoods is positively related to progressive electoral outcomes. Black Protestant churches are positively related to Democratic Party voting but did not alter the Progressive Party vote. The effect of denomination on political behavior and the geographic extent of a church’s influence on surrounding urban communities are shown to be spatially segregated and to depend on the class structure of neighborhoods.
A Local Analysis of Early-Eighteenth-Century Cherokee Settlement
Authors: Gragson Ted L. , Bolstad Paul V.
Published: February 2016

Results of an original analysis of Cherokee town placement and population c. 1721 are presented. Period and contemporary information were analyzed using local statistics to produce multivalued, mappable characterizations of the intensity of the processes of town placement and population. The analysis focuses on the scale and the space in which these processes took place among the Cherokee in order to open the way for examining the legacy of human-induced environmental change in southern Appalachia.
Inequality in the West
Authors: Tolnay Stewart E. , Eichenlaub Suzanne C.
Published: February 2016

The western region of the United States has exhibited racial and ethnic diversity that rivals that found in any other part of the country. Yet the socioeconomic differences among western racial and ethnic groups have been studied much less intensively than corresponding differences in other regions of the United States. In this article we use data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series from 1940 through 2000 to describe the recent history of occupational inequality in the West. We find evidence of a persistent and significant occupationaldisadvantagefor African Americans, Native Americans, and Mexicans. In contrast, the two Asian groups included in our analysis, Chinese and Japanese, frequently enjoyed an actual occupationaladvantagerelative not only to other racial and ethnic minority groups but also to the majority native-born white population. Controlling for group differences in educational attainment explains much of the racial and ethnic variation in occupational inequality, but further analysis shows that it is inaccurate to assume that all groups enjoy the same occupational benefits from additional schooling. As a result, controlling for education without considering such differential occupational returns to schooling can yield a misleading picture of occupational inequality. Finally, we interpret these findings in relation to different theoretical perspectives on racial and ethnic inequality in the United States.
Temporary Internal Migrations in Spain, 1860–1930
Authors: Silvestre Javier
Published: February 2016

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century industrialization provoked quantitative and qualitative changes in traditional European migratory patterns. Most of the economic and social history literature concerning the study of European internal migration during the industrializing period has emphasized permanent migration. This article shows, however, that temporary internal migration was common not only in preindustrial societies but in industrializing ones too. The article also examines the causes and the consequences of the persistence of temporary internal migrations in Spain from the mid-nineteenth century to the period leading up to the outbreak of the Spanish civil war (1936–39). Aggregate data sources are used in depth for this purpose. The information derived from aggregate sources is supplemented by reference to secondary sources, mainly comprising local and regional studies.
A Time-Series Analysis of War and Levels of Interpersonal Violence in an English Military Town, 1700–1781
Authors: Warner Jessica , Gmel Gerhard , Graham Kathryn , Erickson Bonnie
Published: February 2016

More than 7,000 assaults were reported to the magistrates of Portsmouth, England, between 1700 and 1781. Time-series analyses were run to see (1) what effects, if any, war had on levels of aggression and (2) whether overall levels of aggression decreased over time. Aggression was measured in two ways: (1) the extent to which assailants ganged up on adversaries and (2) levels of violence in individual confrontations (whether a weapon was used, and if so, what type; whether assailants refrained from using a weapon; and whether they stopped short of physical violence and instead merely insulted or threatened their enemies). Neither measure showed a significant variation over time. The participation of women in brawls decreased, but the aggressiveness of those who continued to brawl actually increased. Complaints about insults and threats declined, while complaints of a more serious nature showed a modest increase, reflecting, among other things, the emergence of new definitions of actionable behavior.
Toward a History of Education Markets in the United States
Authors: Beadie Nancy
Published: February 2016

The recent shift away from the idea of centrally planned public systems and toward market-based models of schooling opens new territory for scholarship in the history of education. What is the history of education markets? How has the structure of education markets changed over time? This article addresses these questions by surveying existing literature, with an emphasis on the early national and antebellum periods. In the process it brings new perspectives to standard narratives of the history of education in the nineteenth century, particularly regarding the development of state-based educational systems. It then proposes areas for future research and concludes by introducing two examples of new work in this field.
Tuition Funding for Common Schools
Authors: Beadie Nancy
Published: February 2016

Funding for schools of all kinds was largely market-based until the Civil War. Parents in New York and other northern states continued to pay tuition, or rate bills, in addition to taxes to support common schools. Previous research relied on aggregate state-level data to estimate the amount of funding from public and nonpublic sources for common schools, while existing case studies of local school practices focus exclusively on Massachusetts or on urban locations and thus on exceptions to the rule. This study looks at local practices of school funding for multiple types of schools in one unexceptional rural town in western New York from 1815 to 1850. The results reveal considerable in-state variation in the proportion of public and private funding for common schools that is otherwise obscured by state-level data. The proportion of school funds that came from tuition was much higher for rural areas than for urban areas. The article also compares tuition funding for common schools with that for other types of market-based schooling, including two local venture schools and one local academy. The results show that, although tuition prices for academies and venture schools were predictably higher than for common schools, the overall structure of school funding for rural common schools and academies was more similar than different in New York in the antebellum era.