Imperialism and Idealism
Subtitle: American Diplomats in China, 1861-1898
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: January 1986
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 250
ISBN-13: 9780253329189
Subjects: Diplomacy; Diplomatic History; History; Politics / Current Events; History: World; USA; International Relations; Political History; United States - General; 1861-1865; 1865-1898; 19th century; Americans; China; Foreign relations; United States
Description: In 1894, eighteen-year-old Rachel Bella Kahn travelled from Russia to the United States for an arranged marriage to Abraham Calof, an immigrant homesteader in North Dakota. Rachel Calof's Story combines her memoir of a hard pioneering life on the prairie with scholarly essays that provide historical and cultural background and show her narrative to be both unique and a representative western tale. Her narrative is riveting and candid, laced with humor and irony. The memoir, written by Rachel Bella Calof in 1936, recounts aspects of her childhood and teenage years in a Jewish community, (shtetl) in Russia, but focuses largely on her life between 1894 and 1904, when she and her husband carved out a life as homesteaders. She recalls her horror at the hardships of pioneer life, especially the crowding of many family members into the 12 x 14' dirt-floored shanties that were their first dewllings. "Of all the privations I knew as a homesteader," says Calof, "the lack of privacy was the hardest to bear." Money, food, and fuel were scarce, and during bitter winters, three Calof householdsAbraham and Rachel with their growing children, along with his parents and a brother's familywould pool resources and live together (with livestock) in one shanty. - Publisher.