bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Conjectural History and Scottish Philosophers
Authors: Emerson Roger L. 
Published: July 2012

"Conjectural history" is used here to "denote any rational or naturalistic account of the origins and development of institutions, beliefs or practices not based on documents or copies of documents or other artifacts contemporary (or thought to be contemporary) with the subjects studied." Many recent historians have focused on the apparent emergence within Scotland of a large number of sophisticated conjectural histories around ¡750, and analysed them within the framework of a Marxist-oriented social science. This paper argues that such a perspective is "inappropriate and misguided." If one looks at these works as an outcome of what went before, rather than a forerunner of what came after, they begin to lose their modernistic flavour.
Conjectural histories of the Scottish Enlightenment were based essentially on four sources: the Bible and its commentaries, the classics, modern works of philosophy and travel accounts. Each had an influence on the works produced. The parallels between the Biblical and the secular conjectural histories are, for example, instructive and it is clear that no Scottish historian could consistently hold a doctrine of economic deter- minism or historical materialism and still reconcile this position with his Calvinist beliefs. Works such as Lucretius' On the Nature of Things had influenced the con- jectural histories of the Renaissance and continued to be used by the Scots just as they were by the English deists, whose speculations about historical development were also helpful to Scottish writers. Travel accounts provided information concerning mankind at various stages of civilization, but no explanation of the developmental process.
While the study of history was a popular pursuit during the Scottish Enlightenment this inte rest followed trends on the continent and elsewhere. Furthermore, an examination of the great works of this period suggests that they were firmly based on the writings of scholars of a generation before. Certainly the leading writers of the "golden age" from roughly 1730 to 1790 gave a more sophisticated, detailed and elaborate treatment cf these ideas, but the sources, problems and concepts which they elucidated were not new. In their analyses, they did not employ historical materialism or economic determinism, though they were undoubtedly more political-economic, dynamic and secular in their attitude. They desired change for Scotland out of a patriotic regard for the comparative backwardness of their country, but the causes and cures for that condition were not fundamentally economic in nature. If these writings are examinedas a unit, and seen in context, the conjectural historians of the Scottish Enlightenment appear to be an understandable outcome of their intellectual milieu. The author supports this conclusion by a close examination of the work of Hume and Smith. This further explicates his theme that a nascent economic determinism was not the impetus for this writing that recent historians have read into these works.
The Politicians and the “Pearsonalities”: The Diefenbaker Government and the Conduct of Canadian External Relations
Authors: Hilliker John F. 
Published: July 2012

Après vingt-deux ans de règne Libéral, les Conservateurs, sous John Diefenbaker, prirent le pouvoir en 1957. Ils héritèrent d'un Ministère les affaires extérieures qui avait été fortement influencé par les attitudes, les techniques et la personnalité du leader Libéral d'alors, Lester Pearson. Diefenbaker fut profondément méfiant à l'égard du présumé caractère partisan du ministère, et inquiet de l'influence que les protégés de Pearson, les Pearsonalities. Malgré son inexpérience, le premier ministre assuma d'abord la responsabilité du portefeuille, afin d'en amorcer la transformation. Même après la nomination de Sidney Smith au poste de secrétaire d'Etat, Diefenbaker continua d'être intéressé aux affaires du ministère, dont il s'occupait activement. Après la décès inattendu de Smith en 1959, le portefeuille fut confié à Howard Green, auquel le premier ministre accordait une plus grande confiance. L'auteur affirme que, dans l'ensemble, Green réussit à maintenir une saine indépendance face au contrôle de ses hauts fonctionnaires. S'ils n hésitaient pas à présenter leurs propres initiatives - l'aide à l'Afrique francophone est citée en exemple - les hauts fonctionnaires semblent avoir prudemment évité tout élément partisan. Au même moment, l'intérêt sélectif mais prononcé que le premier ministre portait à certains aspects de la politique étrangère fit que les décisions sur ces questions furent parfois soustraites à l'influence du ministère. Dans des questions telles l'appartenance de l'Afrique du Sud au Commonwealth et les relations avec l'Union soviétique, les opinions et les actions du premier ministre pouvaient avoir un effet décisif. Dans des questions de politique, comme l'entrée de la Grande Bretagne à la CEE, les fonctionnaires des Affaires extérieures devaient tenir compte d'une autre influence puissante: Vintervention parfois indépendante du Haut commissaire du Canada à Londres, George Drew, qui était très respecté et qui avait accès direct au premier ministre.
Cette concurrence entre les centre du pouvoir portait parfois à confusion; le meilleur exemple en est peut-être la façon dont le gouvernement a mené le débat sur les armes nucléaires. Ce débat a contribué à la démission du gouvernement et à sa subséquente défaite électorale. Les questions de politique étrangère n'ont pas dominé l'élection, mais le réputation d'indécision du gouvernement découlait largement de sa conduite en matière d'affaires extérieures. En ce sens, la façon dont Diefenbaker s'occupa des décisions de politique étrangère influença profondément l'élection.
Urbanisation et éducation : La centralisation scolaire à Montréal au début du XXe siècle
Authors: Heap Ruby 
Published: July 2012

Au tournant du siècle, Montréal est traversée, comme la plupart des grandes villes nord-américaines, par un mouvement réformiste dirigé par la bourgeoisie, dont l'un des principaux objectifs est d'introduire dans l'administration municipale un mode de gestion de type bureaucratique, tel qu'appliqué dans les grandes entreprises. ¡l s'agit, essentiellement, de soumettre le gouvernement municipal aux règles de l'économie, de l'efficacité et de la rationalité grâce à la centralisation des pouvoirs administratifs au sein d'un "bureau de contrôle", organisme non-partisan fonctionnant indépendam- ment du Conseil de Ville qui abrite la "machine politique" génératrice de corruption.
Or les réformistes désirent aussi introduire ce mode de gestion dans le système éducatif. À Montréal, les promoteurs de la centralisation scolaire se confondent ainsi, dans une large mesure, avec les partisans de la réforme municipale, regroupés au sein du Comité des citoyens. En 1909, devant la Commission royale d'enquête sur les écoles catholiques de Montréal, ils revendiqueront la fusion de toutes les commissions sco- laires catholiques de la métropole, faisant valoir les nombreux avantages de cette réforme: uniformisation de la taxe scolaire, administration plus efficace et moins coûteuse, meilleure classification des écoles, établissement d'écoles supérieures accueillant les élèves ayant complété le cours primaire actuel. Les porte-parole du mouvement ouvrier réclament aussi la centralisation, mesure qui permettra, selon eux, d'établir l'uniformité des livres sur l'ensemble du territoire montréalais et de réduire, par le fait même, le coût des manuels scolaires. Les partisans de la centrali- sation se heurtent toutefois à Vopposition de l'ensemble du clergé, qui tient à conserver le cadre paroissial de la commission scolaire, au sein duquel il exerce une influence considérable.
En 1916, le gouvernement libéral de Lomer Gouin vient trancher le débat en adoptant une loi qui donne largement satisfaction aux promoteurs de la centralisation tout en offrant des garanties au clergé montréalais. Celle-ci fusionne la Commission des Écoles catholiques de Montréal avec vingt-trois municipalités scolaires indépen- dantes. Elle confie Vadministration financière de la nouvelle commission scolaire à un bureau central de sept membres, alors que quatre commissions de district adminis- treront les écoles au point de vue pédagogique. Cette réforme aboutit à un nouveau partage des pouvoirs entre clercs et laïcs. La présidence des commissions de district est confiée aux premiers, tandis que les seconds se retrouvent majoritaires au bureau central. De plus, la présidence de la CECM reviendra, en 1919, à un partisan de la centralisation, le juge Eugène Lafontaine, ce qui témoigne de la montée du pouvoir laïc au sein du système scolaire public montréalais au début du XXe siècle.
Students Abroad: Preconfederation Educational Links Between Newfoundland and the Mainland of Canada
Authors: MacLeod Malcolm 
Published: July 2012

In the decades before Confederation in 1949, one important link between the Dominion of Canada and the reluctant tenth province was the increasing reliance of New- foundland students upon Canadian institutions for advanced education and training. Five volumes of Who's Who in Newfoundland, published between 1927 and 1961, provide biographical information on 344 individuals who left the colony to pursue educational opportunities abroad. The major focus for such opportunities shifted over time from Great Britain to the mainland of Canada. Institutions in the Maritime provinces drew over half of these students, while colleges and schools in Ontario received almost one-quarter. In some instances, Newfoundlanders became an impor- tant proportion of the student body at individual colleges -for example, students from western Newfoundland at Saint Francis Xavier and students from the south coast at Mount Allison. The highest proportion was probably the 15 per cent which Newfoundlander s formed in the general student body at Nova Scotia Technical College in the several years around 1940.
The establishment of Memorial University College in 1925 did two things: it made Newfoundland more self-contained in matters of higher education, and it strengthened certain patterns of international linkage, especially with Canada. Fledgling Memo- rial's major formal affiliations were with the universities of the Maritime provinces: Memorial s president joined representatives of Acadia, Dalhousie, Saint Mary's, King's, Mount Allison and Saint Francis Xavier on the unified Atlantic region govern- ing body of Nova Scotia Technical College and 55 per cent of the degrees held by Memorial's preconfederation faculty members were from Canadian institutions.
This paper demonstrates how natural it was for Newfoundland to be drawn within the Canadian educational orbit in the first half of the twentieth century, while charac- teristic patterns in the links that were formed between two North American countries are illustrated.
The First Mrs. Rochester: Wrongful Confinement, Social Redundancy, and Commitment to the Private Asylum, 1883‑1923
Authors: Warsh Cheryl Krasnick 
Published: July 2012

Historians have debated the growth of asylums as either a movement towards social
control or as a benevolent reform; yet commitment was primarily initiated by kin. The
rapid overcrowding of asylums reflected the success of institutions in responding to
family crises. Through analysis of 1,134 case histories of a private asylum, the
Homewood Retreat of Guelph, Ontario, the dynamics of the late Victorian and
Edwardian middle-class household are evident in the circumstances which culminated in
the decision to commit. Urban industrialization and the declining birth rate rendered
households less able to care for the insane, while the permeation of capitalist relations
into family life rendered the heads of households less willing to care for nonproductive
adult members, particularly socially redundant women. The diagnosis of neurasthenia
enabled members of the middle class to institutionalize kin for behaviour which,
although not violent or destructive, was irritating and antagonistic, thereby reflecting the
high standard of middle-class proprieties.
Quatre-Vingt-Neuf Revisited: Social Interests and Political Conflict in the French Revolution
Authors: Comninel George C. 
Published: July 2012

Fifty years after its publication, Quatre-Vingt-Neuf — Georges Lefebvre's classic statement of the social interpretation of the French Revolution — is widely thought to have been discredited. Revisionist historians have effectively challenged the idea that the bourgeoisie was a revolutionary capitalist class overthrowing feudalism, and this has been taken to repudiate both Lefebvre's interpretation and Marxist history generally.
Yet the new revisionist orthodoxy has been unable to provide a credible alternative account of the origins and course of the Revolution. A “new” social interpretation is therefore suggested which, ironically, is very close to that originally offered by Lefebvre for, while the idea of a bourgeois-capitalist class revolution clearly is refuted by the historical evidence, a return to Quatre-Vingt-Neuf reveals that this concept did not play a central role in Lefebvre's account. Nor is it integral to Marx's historical materialist method of analysis. Indeed, a fresh historical materialist class analysis of the ancien régime supports a very different social interpretation than that of “bourgeois revolution,” one largely consistent with Lefebvre's interpretation of the complex but integral social revolution unleashed in 1789.
Discours du président : Historiens, archives et archivistes : un ménage à trois
Authors: Robert Jean-Claude 
Published: July 2012

Dans ce discours, le président invite les historiens à s'impliquer davantage dans les activités para-académiques, particulièrement dans les domaines qui touchent au rapport entre la société et la discipline historique. Cette allocution porte sur un objet précis, la conservation des archives judiciaires du Québec, puisque que les activités d'un groupe professionnel, les archivistes, auront de lourdes conséquences sur les recherches futures des historiens.
Cette communication s'articule autour de trois points. Elle peut de l'expérience d'un comité interministériel chargé de déterminer le niveau de conservation des pièces archivistiques, elle pose ensuite le problème du rapport entre anniversaire historique et archives, puis offre quelques réflexions sur le rapport entre historiens et archivistes. L'auteur rend hommage à la mémoire de Jacques Ducharme, archiviste et membre important de ce comité interministériel, et dont l'esprit de collaboration a servi de modèle aux deux professions. Cette analyse demande aux historiens de se pencher à nouveau sur le rapport des sources avec la connaissance historique car les archives de demain sont en train de se constituer sous nos yeux.
Ethnic Farmers and the “Outside” World: Mennonites in Manitoba and Nebraska, 1874-1900
Authors: Loewen Royden 
Published: July 2012

Historians have suggested that two types of farmers settled on the Canadian prairie; one was the commercially oriented Anglo-Canadian farmer, the other was the European ethnic group settler bent on transplanting an “Old World” way of life on the periphery of mainstream society. These latter settlements — comprised of Ukrainians, German-Catholics, French-Canadians, Doukhobors, and Mennonites — have been described as isolated “ethnic islands in a Canadian sea”. This essay, however, argues that even the Mennonites or rural, sectarian, immigrant communities were not dependent on geographical isolation or a transplanted subsistence agriculture. It suggests that their aims were to reproduce their ethnic communities with financial resources derived from a judicious interaction with the marketplace and an adaption of agricultural practices to a new physical environment. It counters the impression that, while Anglo-Canadian farmers adapted quickly to the exigencies of their environments, ethnic farmers like the Mennonites transplanted their traditional ways without change.
The essay focuses on the experience of a small but representative Mennonite immigrant group, the “Kleine Gemeinde”, who settled in both the East Reserve, Manitoba, and in Jefferson County, Nebraska in 1874. The writings of these farmers and the parallel Canadian and American public record suggest that these ethnic farmers adapted quickly to their new environments. New climates, labour conditions, and markets brought changes to their crop selections, levels of mechanization, and cultivation practices. The East Reserve farms were relatively small, mixed operations but, it is argued, that rather than suggesting a peasant existence, these facts point to rational market choices in a relatively primitive Manitoba economy. Changes that these Mennonite farmers made during their first generation in Canada reflect the development of Manitoba's economy. A comparison of East Reserve with its sister settlement in Nebraska indicates that, between 1874 and 1900, the two communities diverged significantly in their farming practices. That divergence reflected differences in the economy and physiography of Manitoba and Nebraska. More important than cultural predispositions in shaping their agriculture was the Mennonites' willingness to adapt to a new climate and cultivate a sustained relationship with the markets of the “outside world”.
Creating a New Staple: Capital, Technology, and Monopoly in British Columbia’s Resource Sector, 1901-1925
Authors: Mouat Jeremy 
Published: July 2012

This paper examines the mining industry of British Columbia, the province's leading staple during the period when the region was brought within the network of world trade. Specifically, it describes the emergence of zinc production as the most profitable sector of the industry, from the early 1900s through to the mid-1920s. A good deal of importance was attached to discovering some means of treating zinc ore in the early 1900s. Increasing amounts of zinc were being found in the silver-lead ore of eastern British Columbia. Zinc was seen as a contaminant, and smelters penalised mine-owners who shipped ore that was over 10 per cent zinc. The presence of zinc rendered relatively valuable ore (in terms of its silver and lead content) uneconomical. Concern over “the zinc problem” was such that, by 1905, the federal government, responding to the lobbying efforts of mine-owners, appointed a commission “to Investigate the Zinc Resources of British Columbia and the Conditions Affecting Their Exploitation”. During the next twenty years, mining companies in the Kootenays explored a number of different ways to overcome zinc's unfortunate impact upon the mining industry.
These efforts to discover an adequate means to treat zinc ore illustrate the way in which technology and capital became the key ingredients of a distinctively new mining industry. The paper argues that the emergence of zinc mining reflected a fundamental restructuring of the industry, as the focus shifted from the discovery and exploitation of bonanza deposits of gold and silver to the less spectacular production of copper, lead, and zinc. Technology, economies of scale, and substantial capital investment were the hallmarks of the new industry. Not only was the industry profoundly altered — experiencing what other scholars have described as the second industrial revolution — but new vertically integrated companies displaced the traditional mining company.
The paper describes the clearest example of this trend, outlining the early career of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada [Cominco], a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Cominco was able to put in place the necessary technology to tap its enormous lead-zinc deposit at Kimberley, and successfully treat zinc at its Trail refinery. Within two decades, and largely as a result of its ability to treat zinc, Cominco became the most profitable mining company ever to operate in British Columbia. The conclusion suggests some consequences of Cominco's ascendancy.
The Reconstruction of Rural Society in the Aftermath of the Mayan Rebellion of 1847
Authors: Angel Barbara A. 
Published: July 2012

In 1847, Mayan peasants under the leadership of their traditional caciques rose up against the creole authorities of the state of Yucatán. This rebellion, known to contemporaries and later historians as the Caste War, has been described as the most prolonged and bloody resistance on the part of an indigenous group in the Americas since the Spanish conquest. While the rebellion itself poses challenging questions regarding the nature of peasant involvement in movements for social change, this paper deals with the government's efforts to restore order in the countryside, and the response of the Mayan campesinos as they found themselves caught up in a struggle which they could not avoid. The study focuses on a specific region of the Yucatán peninsula, the Sierra or Puuc, which, because of its strategic location between the northwest region dominated by the government and the hinterland controlled by various rebel groups, played a pivotal role in the war.
The paper assesses the results of the government's pacification policy, examines the question of migration and flight of refugees into zones of refuge, and discusses the survival strategies adopted by Mayan peasants in the communities of the Puuc. The study also addresses the role of non-combatants in guerrilla warfare, and their ambiguous relationship with both sides in the conflict, as potential allies or enemies.
L’arme favorite de l’épicier indépendant : éléments d’une histoire sociale du crédit (Montréal, 1920-1940)
Authors: Taschereau Sylvie 
Published: July 2012

À Montréal, dans la première moitié du 20e siècle, les détaillants indépendants de l'alimentation ont l'habitude de faire crédit à leur clientèle des milieux populaires, en leur permettant d'ouvrir un compte courant, réglé en principe à intervalles réguliers. À cette époque, pour une large part de la population, le revenu familial suffit à peine à couvrir les besoins de base et ne permet pas de faire face aux impondérables. Le crédit qu’accordent les détaillants de quartier donne au budget familial un peu de la souplesse qui lui manque et représente en quelque sorte un filet de sécurité à une époque où les revenus des familles ouvrières sont peu élevés et instables. Aussi, en dépit du danger d'endettement qu'il représente, il est activement recherché par les résidents des quartiers populaires.
Dans le contexte économique et social des années 1920 à 1940, et à ce moment de l'évolution du commerce de l'alimentation, les détaillants indépendants qui accordent crédit se trouvent placés dans une situation paradoxale. D'abord, le progrès important des chaînes de magasins dans le secteur de l'alimentation les inquiète vivement. Or tandis que les chaînes appliquent en principe la règle du « cash & carry », le crédit qu'accordent les détaillants indépendants leur permet de se distinguer de leurs concurrents et de retenir leur clientèle des quartiers populaires. Dans ce sens, cette pratique devient leur « arme favorite », suivant l'expression d'un contemporain. Il s'agit cependant d'une arme à deux tranchants. Pour la majorité des petits commerçants, dont les entreprises sont fragiles et manquent de capital, le crédit représente une charge considérable. Les détaillants les mieux établis se trouvent eux aussi partagés entre la crainte de perdre leur clientèle au profit des chaînes et le désir d'éliminer cette forme de crédit qu'ils ne gèrent pas nécessairement à profit.