Historian Volume 72 Issue 1 2010 Dionysios Stathakopoulos - Constantinople - Capital of Byzantium - by Jonathan Harris

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EDITOR hisn_260 151..252
Richard Spall
Ohio Wesleyan University
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STUDENT EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS
SENIOR EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS
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WORD PROCESSING: LAURIE GEORGE
2010 Phi Alpha Theta
AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST
Muslim Communities of Grace: The Su Brotherhoods in Islamic Religious Life. By
Jamil M. Abun-Nasr. (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. x,
280. $27.50.)
Where and with whom religious authority resides within the Muslim commu-
nity are questions that have especially absorbed scholars of Islam in recent years.
Though this might seem like a presentist concern posed by the Islamist challenge,
the roots of this thorny problem go back to the very origins of Islam. Disputes of
various kindswhether between Sunnis and Shis or Salayya reformers and
charismatic Su shaykhshave at their heart the question of who are the true
successors of the Prophet Muhammad.
Jamil M. Abun-Nasr examines the claim of the awliy to spiritual leadership.
The awliy, most commonly translated as saints or the friends of God, are
legendary mystics initially revered and later immortalized in hagiography. Succes-
sors of these early saints became the eponymous founders of Su tariqas or orders
and the most populous brotherhoods that emerged in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Abun-Nasr himself denes awliy as confederates of God
or guardians of the believers in an effort to underscore the social preeminence
that these spiritually endowed shaykhs held for their followers (1). His central
thesis is that Susm took shape as a distinctive social movement due to the ability
of the awliy to ll a spiritual void left rst by the caliphs and later by the ulama.
This idea is in itself not startlingly original, but it allows Abun-Nasr to create a
coherent narrative that spans fourteen hundred years.
Abun-Nasr describes this work as a synthesis and not a Su work of
reference (4). Readers will nonetheless nd it a useful Baedaker. Its early chapters
contain lucid explanations of Su doctrine, especially as they relate to the concept
of walya or guardianship. Later chapters provide capsule histories of impor-
tant Su gures and the major tariqas. Abun-Nasr is best at putting individual
Sus and Su movements in their immediate historical and social contexts. As the
author of the pathbreaking 1965 study, The Tijaniyya, Abun-Nasr not surpris-
ingly devotes much of his attention to developments in North and West Africa. In
the nal chapters, the author attempts to parse the ways different Su shaykhs
responded to European colonial rule and its aftermath.
Despite the books merits, in more than a few areas the author skates over an
apparent difculty or misses an opportunity to consider alternative explanations.
For example, Abun-Nasr makes no mention of the neo-Susm controversy that
1 5 2 TH E HI S T O R I A N
raged a decade ago, even though his discussion of how tariqas morphed into
broad-based brotherhoods bears directly on the question. He makes only a
perfunctory nod toward the later history of Su movements in Central and
Southeast Asia. Shiisms inuence on Su doctrine is not mentioned at all, and the
book ends wanly with a mere three pages devoted to the prospects of contempo-
rary Susm. Lastly, Abun-Nasr makes little use of the growing monograph litera-
ture of the past fteen years that deals precisely with his concerns.
These reservations aside, Muslim Communities of Grace remains an informa-
tive, accessible book, written with empathy and erudition. Students will nd it
benecial but not entirely up-to-date.
Oregon State University Jonathan G. Katz
Slavery and the Birth of an African City: Lagos, 17601900. By Kristin Mann.
(Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 473. $55.00.)
This study is an impressive addition to the several books on slavery and the
Atlantic slave trade in West Africa previously written by scholars such as Robin
Law, Paul Lovejoy, and Martin A. Klein. The primary focus is on the economic
transition from slavery to palm oil production and the emergence of Lagos as a
commercial city on the Nigerian coast. The arrival of the English, Dutch, French,
and Portuguese for slaves changed the economic history of Lagos. As a result of
the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade, villages and cities in West Africa became
victims of the European quest for slaves because of their strategic location along
the coast. Aside from Lagos, the Portuguese and British built castles in Elmina and
Cape Coast in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) to pursue their economic interests.
This book is signicant for its contribution towards developing an enhanced
understanding of the transatlantic economy as well as the centrality of Lagos in
the economic history of Nigeria. Kristin Mann presents an excellent analysis
explaining how the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and the beginning of the
new European imperialism in the mid-nineteenth century transformed Lagos into
a nexus for legitimate European trade. As the author argues, palm oil production
led to the increased use of slave labor, which explained why the rulers of Lagos
were reluctant to end the slave trade. However, with the eventual abolition of the
slave trade, Lagos developed rapidly not only as an economic, urban, and indus-
trial center, but also as a seat of political power for the British.
Mann explains the land tenure system and emphasizes the centrality of land as
a major source of wealth, power, and control, especially for the kings who not
only derived enormous income from the increasing demand for slaves, but also
1 5 3 BO O K RE V I E W S
held control over land. The centrality of land became more apparent with the
transition from slavery to palm products. Lagosians, according to the author,
adapted to changes and new economic opportunities that were open to them as a
result of the introduction of legitimate trade. The end of the slave trade led to a
reorganization of labor and gave a new perspective to land ownership and the use
of land.
The use of oral narratives, archival documents, and extensive literature gives
this book a level of authenticity. Oral narratives, especially relating to land, are
important to reconstruct the economic history of West Africa. However, Mann did
not appear to have conducted enough interviews to have a good overall, inclusive
representation of the entire society, which needed to include additional royal,
commoner, and gender commentaries. Since Nigerian oral history is replete on
land, slavery, and Lagosian economics, the author should have provided more
narratives. A map of Nigeria showing the location of Lagos would have been
helpful to a reader unfamiliar with the geography of West Africa as well.
Slavery and the Birth of an African City is an original and insightful work. This
book is well written and well organized. It is an important guide to the history of
the Atlantic slave trade, to the economic history of Lagos, and to the intervention
of the British, especially since 1861 when Lagos was annexed. Overowing with
anthropological, cultural, and historical information, this book will be of interest
to general readers and undergraduate and graduate students of West African
history and anthropology.
Monmouth University Julius O. Adekunle
Friends of God: Islamic Images of Piety, Commitment, and Servanthood. By John
Renard. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2008. Pp. xx, 346.
$24.95.)
Since the seventh-century rise of Islam, literate Muslims have recorded accounts of
Friends of God, a term signifying men and women whose acts and beliefs set a
standard for devotion among the larger society in which they live and die. These
individuals are not prophets, but they live exemplary lives, sometimes even com-
muning with the divine through miraculous deeds. John Renard is a professor of
theological studies, and in his newest book he examines an impressive range of
sources that range from twelfth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Senegal
(with stops also in Andalusia, Indonesia, and Morocco), showing that this body
of literature is not anchored to a specic time or place.
The author rightfully advises his scholarly readers to begin this book by
reading part three, which offers a useful discussion of the methodological ques-
tions for students of such a genre of literature. Hagiography, Renard writes, is
not historiography (247). And yet, in chapters ten and eleven he offers a per-
ceptive set of questions and analyses that make this book an ideal reading in
graduate seminars that focus not only on Islamic studies, but also on method-
ological issues in history, anthropology, or religious studies tout court. It shows a
twenty-rst-century English speaker how to understand these accounts of saintly
people in Arab-speaking, non-Western societies over the past thirteen centuries.
The substance of the book is found in parts one and two, which offer a
comprehensive overview of this multilayered body of literature that includes more
than twenty primary sources as well as a host of descriptive secondary sources.
Part one consists of ve chapters that show that these hagiographies adhere to a
narrative arc encompassing all stages of life and religious experience. These are:
birth, conversion, dreams, miracles, and death. The four chapters of part two
survey the sociopolitical signicance of these saints.
Parts one and two whet the curiosity of scholarly readers, pointing them
towards new research projects. Given the vast number of times and places treated
in this book, Renard cannot place each saints story within his or her historical
context. Thus, when Friends of God, like Ahmad Yasawi, provide wheat to the
poor, the author cannot analyze why there was such a pressing need for charitable
distributions of a lling starch in Central Asia at that time (38). In a like manner,
the same can be said for other stories in this book, which suggests that there is
interesting work to be done on the topics of women or urban trades.
In truth, the author expresses a desire to see hagiographical narratives . . . lib-
erated from the tyranny of bland facticity, but Renards book provides evidence
of the rich data available in them (257). Clearly, these sources provide untold
amounts of information about the social and economic conditions of the period in
which they were written. For this reason, this book should be a staple on library
shelves and on graduate reading lists.
Purdue University Stacy E. Holden
Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Saids Orientalism. By Ibn Warraq.
(Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007. Pp. 556. $29.95.)
The lives of the late Edward Said and of Ibn Warraq (pen name) exhibit a few
parallels. Born in British-ruled Palestine, Said was in his midteens when his Arab
parents sent him to a New England prep school. He remained in the United States
and taught comparative literature at Columbia University for several decades.
Born in British-ruled India, Warraq began his schooling at a Pakistani madrasah,
but his father soon sent him abroad to acquire a British education. Saids family
was Christian, but he became a secular humanist and agnostic. Although he never
was a Muslim, he championed Palestinian and Arab nationalisms that increasingly
acquired an Islamic identity. Warraqs family was Muslim, but he, too, became a
secular humanist and agnostic. In 1995 he published a book called Why I Am Not
a Muslim. There are also major differences between their points of view. Said is
known for his criticism of the West, particularly in his famous book Orientalism
[1978], while Warraq correctly titles his new book Defending the West.
With scorn and personal insult, Warraq criticizes Orientalism as badly
researched and even more badly argued. According to Warraq, Said smears the
reputation of Western scholars who devoted their lives to a study of the Middle
East and South Asia, the so-called Orientalists. They were not lackeys of European
imperialism, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, who portrayed the Oriental other as
unchanging and passive, and so naturally inferior to the virile, creative West. He
is outraged when Said declares that every European, in what he could say about
the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethno-
centric (32). What angers Warraq most of all is that, he argues, Said encouraged
self-pity and victimhood among Muslims that gave them an excuse not to recog-
nize and correct their own failings.
Warraq had planned to compile an anthology that would dispute Orientalism.
This original plan explains the organization into short sections, the abundant
quotations, and over a hundred pages called Orientalism in Painting and Sculp-
ture, Music and Literature. However, only a small part of Warraqs book directly
analyzes Saids work. Mostly, with a converts passion, Warraq defends and
praises Western civilization. Its valuesrationalism, universalism, self-criticism
contrast, he says, with the Islamic worldself-satised, narrow-minded, and
lacking in curiosity about non-Islamic peoples and times. Although enthusiastic
about the West, Warraq has only contempt for the French intellectuals associated
with postmodernism who denied the possibility of objective truth and who
despised their own heritage. Drawing upon these condence tricks, Said creates
a master fraud that bound American academics and Middle East tyrants in
unstated bonds of anti-American complicity (247). Warraq describes Saids tone
as one of intellectual terrorism (18).
Is Warraq beating the proverbial dead horse? Was Robert Irwins For Lust of
Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies [2006] sufcient refutation?
Perhaps Saids Orientalism is a book that survives attack because readers like its
thesis.
Miami University David M. Fahey
THE AMERICAS
The Making of a Confederate: Walter Lenoirs Civil War. By William L. Barney.
(Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xv, 245. $22.00.)
Professional historians of the Civil War have long recognized that slavery, as
Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural Address, was somehow the cause
of the war. The key word is somehow; the consensus on the centrality of
slavery has opened up many new questions, especially with regard to the Upper
South, where the secession movement had little strength before April 1861. Why
were slaveholders in states like North Carolina so reluctant to secede, and even
more signicant, why did they ght so loyally for the Confederacy, not just with
their muskets and swords during the war, but with their pens and votes afterward?
This author seeks answers to these questions in the life of a single western North
Carolina farmer, slaveholder, and soldier named Walter Lenoir.
Lenoir was one of eight children reared in a house grandly named Fort
Deance by his grandfather, a Revolutionary War hero. The Lenoirs owned
slaves but were never comfortable with the practice. Walter was particularly
disenchanted with the institution, which he considered both immoral and trouble-
some, and in 1860 he traveled to Minnesota to nd a place where he could farm
in freedom. He disliked punishing his slaves and tried to avoid selling them, but
could not bring himself to give up the human property that made possible his life
as an upper-class landowner. He opposed secession, but when Lincoln called for
troops to suppress the rebellion after Fort Sumter was red upon, he enlisted in
the 37
th
North Carolina infantry regiment, fought at Second Bull Run, and was
seriously wounded at Ox Hill in 1862.
Walter Lenoir was transformed by his wartime experience. From the moment
the war began, he conceived of it as a defense of his homeland against Northern
aggression, rather than a war to defend slavery. He found an identity as a soldier,
and longed to rejoin the ranks even after his wounded leg was amputated. He
came close to undergoing a religious conversion, and instead adopted the cause of
the Confederacy as the subject of his lifelong devotion. After the war, he accepted
emancipation as a relief from the burden of caring for slaves but resisted the idea
that black (or poor white) people should share any of the political and social
authority that he and other landowners had monopolized before the war. The
reluctant slaveholder had become a diehard Confederate.
In The Making of a Confederate, the author addresses important issues
including the relationship between slaveholding and secession, the causes of
Confederate defeat, the surprising prevalence of white land tenancy before Recon-
struction, and the workings of postwar memoryby examining a single case in
clear, enthralling detail. This is a highly readable book, with scholarly apparatus
wisely limited to brief essays at the end of each chapter. The author does not
attempt to provide universal answers for the large questions he raises, but instead
offers a beautifully crafted example of brick-in-the-wall historiography that
answers those questions convincingly for one person, leaving to other historians
the task of arguing whether Lenoir was the rule or the exception.
East Carolina University Gerald J. Prokopowicz
Taming Democracy: The People, the Founders and the Troubled Ending of the
American Revolution. By Terry Bouton. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press,
2007. Pp. v, 332. $29.95.)
The authors engrossing and passionate neo-Progressive analysis of the American
Revolution in Pennsylvania depicts a struggle between the ordinary many and
the elite fewand the few won (14).
The book is divided into three sections. The Rise of Democracy (17631776)
describes a prewar consensus in which rich and poor Pennsylvanians supported a
democratic polity that shrunk the gap between rich and poor. Confronting the
Counter-Revolution (17761787) chronicles the elites challenge to economic
and political democracy. In a stunning reversal, the moneyed men espoused
values that had far more in common with the beliefs of their former British
masters than they did with the ideals of 1776 (61). Taming Democracy (1787
1799) focuses on the state Constitution of 1790 and the Whiskey and Fries
Rebellions to document the failure to halt the trend toward elite rule.
Terry Bouton adds richness to a story that has been told before. Giving
ordinary Pennsylvanians a voice, he reminds readers that most Americans did not
share the vision of the founders and that many risked their lives to preserve
their ideals. He enables readers to appreciate the very real costs people paid when
men like Robert Morris implemented policies designed to line the pockets of their
friends. As farmers faced the loss of their homes and livelihoods, they strove
valiantly to defend what little they had. In the end, the elite triumphed and
democracy was tamed.
Despite its virtues, Taming Democracy is awed. Convinced of the virtue of
the people and the perdy of the elite, Boutons argument resembles a brief for
the prosecution rather than a judicious analysis. While the poorer sort were
invariably seless and public spirited, Federalists were duplicitous, shame-
less, and corrupt men whose masterful and ruthless campaign to ratify the
Constitution meant nothing less than a tragic tale of democracy betrayed
(74, 81, 257).
Boutons repeated claim that the postwar elite engaged in a replay of British
transgressions ignores a crucial constitutional difference between American and
British leaders. The colonists saw taxation without representation as a funda-
mental attack on liberty as well as a threat to the economic status of the poor.
Bouton, however, sees constitutional issues as almost irrelevant; indeed this is the
only way that he can claim that Pennsylvanias leaders (who were elected) were no
different from the English tyrants they replaced.
Bouton correctly highlights Pennsylvanias class divisions and argues that
economic issues were a major source of antagonism throughout the state. But he
paints his argument too broadly. The ethnic and religious issues that divided
Pennsylvanians mattered; they were not simply unfortunate obstacles keeping
people from recognizing their real interests. Similarly, elite Pennsylvanians
cared about more than their pocketbooks. Benjamin Franklin, for example, did
not oppose the proprietors solely because he advocated progressive taxation or
because the Penns were speculators. His concerns were constitutional as well as
economic. And although Robert Morris and his ilk were undeniably aristocratic,
one can argue that the movement to checks and balances, however undemocratic,
was not a betrayal of the spirit of 1776, but a return to prewar Republican
ideology. Finally, the debates at the Constitutional Convention reveal that some
founders hoped to check tyranny as well as to subvert democracy.
University of Mississippi Sheila L. Skemp
The Age of Lincoln. By Orville Vernon Burton. (New York, N.Y.: Hill and Wang,
2007. Pp. 420. $27.00.)
In this detailed and insightful synthesis of nineteenth- century America, the author
examines how Abraham Lincolns hopeful determination of the human spirit
shaped nineteenth-century America but ultimately faltered (3). While the Age of
Jackson ushered in the extraordinary opening of democracy, the Age of Lincoln
drew on that democratic momentum and fused it with a millennial impulse,
propelling Americans in the North and the South to believe in the near attain-
ment of Christian perfection and a patriotic certainty that America was meant to
witness it (4). The Civil War and Reconstruction gave shape to a new order of
freedom, one grounded in monumental constitutional changes, but post-
Reconstruction Americas embrace of materialism, combined with the economic
inequity of a new industrial order, resulted in the eclipse of antebellum Americas
millennial aspirations.
Orville Vernon Burton begins with an overview of territorial expansion, eco-
nomic change, and the emergence of sectional politics during the rst four decades
of the nineteenth century. Although many Americans shared a belief that they
could advance the millenniumby right living, citizens also expressed anxiety over
geographical change, slavery, and unrestrained capitalism (11, 30). By the
1850s, slavery and sectionalism had catapulted Americans away from a common
ideological understanding of national destiny. Preston Brookss 1856 caning of
Charles Sumner on the U.S. Senate oor particularly politicized the emotional
divide between the North and the South, making millennial hopes for America
seem fragile and threatened. When war began ve years later, Abraham Lincoln,
inuenced by the Southern concept of honor yet rmly opposed to slavery, made
a commitment to the Union his rst priority. Once it became likely that the border
slave states that remained in the Union would not join the Confederacy, however,
Lincoln moved rapidly to dismantle slavery, transforming Americas central
meaning by signing the Emancipation Proclamation and pushing the country in
a millennial direction already well advanced by African Americans (167). If
Americans had not yet realized the millennium, surely their Lord had come a
decisive step closer, Burton argues (167).
Lincolns assassination did not immediately thwart millennial hopes for
freedom in America; throughout and after Reconstruction, African Americans and
some white Republicans fought for legal equality for all men (but, to the anger of
women suffragists, not for all women). Lincolns new meaning of freedom,
however, contained a fundamental aw: It had to be vigorously defended (313).
Although African Americans continued to push for equal rights, Reconstruction
failed, Burton insists, because whites in the North and the South ultimately could
not set free their racial beliefs (320). Industrialism, moreover, brought dramatic
changes to many late-nineteenth-century Americans, whose ideological aspira-
tions shifted from millennial perfectionism to economic materialism. The end of
the century marked a sad denouement in race relations and millennial expecta-
tions. Corporate Americas embrace of materialism and corruption replaced Lin-
colns vision of political freedom; even African Americans, the most ardent
supporters of a new millennial order, became wrapped up in the material focus of
a consumer society.
Burton deftly covers a wide range of issues in this expansive work. The authors
bibliographic references are deep and wide-rangingreaders will wish for foot-
notes because of the rich array of sources consulted by the author. An attempt to
cover the tremendous social, political, economic, and religious developments of an
entire century is ambitious, and some areas could bear further scrutiny. African
Americans and women sometimes receive uneven treatment. Burton provides rich
analysis of African American attitudes toward freedom during and after the Civil
War. The reader wishes for even more detail and nuance during the antebellum
years. Still, Burtons discussion of Native Americans, late-nineteenth-century
industrial workers, and a myriad of other groups and events bears witness to the
wide, sophisticated scope of this book, which is sure to make an impact on lay
readers and professional historians alike.
Baylor University Kimberly R. Kellison
The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History. By
Donald T. Critchlow. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. 359.
$27.95.)
This authors new book is a history of American conservatism since the rise of the
New Right. Donald T. Critchlow performs a valuable service in bringing together
various aspects of the recent history of American conservatism that typically have
been dealt with separately. The period of conservative intellectual ferment after
World War II, the emergence of the New Right in the early and middle 1960s,
Barry Goldwaters related presidential campaign of 1964, the travails of the New
Right during the later 1960s and 1970s, the period of New Right triumph in the
1980s, and the uncertain course of conservatism since then are all addressed in
turn. Critchlows narrative relies not only on the growing secondary literature on
these various topics but also his own archival research. At his best, Critchlow
enables readers to see how these various parts of a larger story t together. His
discussion of how the New Right began to prosper in the 1970s and his account
of the emergence of inuential conservative think tanks such as the American
Enterprise Institute (AEI) also deserve praise for lling in some of the important
gaps in the tale of how New Right conservatives moved from the margin to the
mainstream.
The Conservative Ascendancy is, however, disappointing in other respects.
Critchlow does little to explain the kind of moderate conservatism against which
the New Right rst rebelled during the later years of the Eisenhower presidency.
Instead, Critchlow contends that the New Right arose simply in opposition to
New Deal liberalism and me-too Republicans. This failure to take moderate
conservatism seriously as a distinct, coherent political category blurs Critchlows
analysis throughout his book. So, too, does his tendency to see Great Society
liberalism as essentially the same as New Deal-era liberalism, despite the very
signicant differences between those two reform agendas. He also tends to over-
state the importance of leading individuals such as Goldwater and Ronald Reagan
in explaining the rise of the New Right.
Critchlows account also suffers from his strained efforts to argue that New
Right conservatism continued to advance after the 1980s and achieved dominance
during the George W. Bush administration. This seems unconvincing, in part
because the top priorities of Goldwater/Reagan-style conservatism were essen-
tially libertarian in nature, in the economic realm especially. The New Rights
social agenda was mostly stillborn during the Goldwater/Reagan era, in part
because that agenda conicted with the libertarian orientation of so many leading
New Rightists. Critchlow acknowledges at times that conservative priorities have
shifted somewhat since the 1980s, but does not explicate clearly and persuasively
what that reveals about the New Rights current state.
Thus, Critchlows book, although useful in helping to understand the history of
American conservatism since World War II, seems unlikely to become the deni-
tive account of that subject.
Ohio State University David Stebenne
Separate Peoples, One Land: The Minds of Cherokees, Blacks, and Whites on the
Tennessee Frontier. By Cynthia Cumfer. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North
Carolina Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 324. $59.95.)
This is an ambitious book on multiple levels. To include American Indians,
African Americans, and European Americans in one study of a late-eighteenth-
and early-nineteenth-century borderland is difcult enough. To examine relations
inside as well as between all three groups adds signicantly to the task. And then
to make the mental worlds of all groups its primary subject raises the challenge
even higher. The movement of settlers and slaves into the trans-Appalachian West,
which began in the 1760s, affected how all communities thought about their
relations with each other as well as about their own social organizations. In turn,
even the slightest alteration in ideology and imagination inuenced how each
group approached the other into the rst decade of the nineteenth century.
Cynthia Cumfer displays this complicated process as it unfolded in the present-
day state of Tennessee. This is an articial selection of territory that excludes some
groups and relationships from her analysis, as she does acknowledge, but the
author nonetheless captures intellectual change among peoples seldom studied for
this purpose.
Diplomatic relations between the Cherokees and white Tennesseeans are
closely examined in part one, where Cumfers ability to compare and connect
changes in thought across group lines offers new insight. Although specialists in
American Indian history are already aware that state and tribal governments
relationships with the national government were stressfully intertwined at the
very beginnings of the United States, Cumfer explicitly demonstrates how the
Chickamaugan Cherokees reformulation of diplomatic kinship actually
interfaced with Tennesseean Americans own redenition of their political ties to
the new nation. She also highlights some important overlap between Cherokee
and Federalist visions of reciprocity, but unfortunately tends to isolate and exag-
gerate the Cherokees particular inuence on the formation of U.S. Indian
policy.
In part two, the author shifts readers attention to what happened inside the
three groups on the Tennessee frontier. Cherokee views about invaders impact
on identity reached a divergence, with Upper Town villages attempting to retain
ancestral land through accommodation and Chickamauga villages seeking inde-
pendence through warfare and trade. As slaves and free blacks moved into
Tennessee, they replaced paternalism with a patronage system by forging church
ties with whites, performing military service, and selling goods and services in
frontier markets. European Americans, meanwhile, refashioned their social and
family networks into a new concept of happiness. Contractual marriage, volun-
tary association, and political participation leaned toward greater social equality
among whites, but not without heightening their sense of superiority over Ameri-
can Indians and African Americans.
Cumfer combs through an impressive volume and variety of documents to
bring readers closer to the imaginative worlds of Indians, settlers, and slaves in
early Tennessee (19). She also addresses important historiographical debates
pertaining to American Indian policy and frontier society. Plenty of material in
Separate Peoples, One Land will seem abstract and speculative to many readers,
but the example set by its steadfast attention to popular thought across cultural
lines makes this an invaluable book.
Vanderbilt University Daniel H. Usner Jr.
The Perils of Peace: Americas Struggle for Survival after Yorktown. By Thomas
Fleming. (New York, N.Y.: Harper Collins Press, 2007. Pp. 352. $27.95.)
In this penetrating account of the struggle by the rebellious American colonists,
their European allies, and their British opponents, respectively, to win the
peace in the wake of Lord Cornwalliss shocking defeat at Yorktown in
October 1781, historian and novelist Thomas Fleming lends credence to W. L.
Georges assertion that [w]ars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate
our allies. Indeed, Flemings recapitulation of military, diplomatic, and nan-
cial affairs on both sides of the Atlantic suggests that wars also teach Americans
to hate themselves.
Flemings narrative opens with the British surrender at Yorktown and George
Washingtons dour but well-grounded insistence that the war could still be lost.
The presence of twenty-six thousand enemy troops and armed loyalists on Ameri-
can soil constituted a continuing military threat. Exacerbating that situation was
the imminent departure of the French warships and foot soldiers that made the
Yorktown victory possible. To make matters worse, the nations coffers were
empty, leaving Washington meager provisions and no pay for his dwindling,
long-suffering armyforces that he needed not only for defense but also for
possible forays against British strongholds in New York, Charleston, Savannah, or
even Canada.
Washington also feared that France, Americas chief ally in the war, had its own
agenda, one that might delay a peace settlement or cast it in unfavorable terms for
the edgling nation. Spains demands further complicated that process. Flemings
detailed account of the backstabbing and ineptitude that characterized the new
nations diplomatic corps covers familiar ground; even so, his depiction of the
feud between Arthur Lee and Silas Deane that divided an already impotent
Continental Congress fosters incredulity and not a little angst. His narrative raises
Ambassador Franklin to new heights while vilifying Peace Commissioner John
Adams for his insufferable pettiness. On the larger stage, Fleming deftly shifts to
and fro between Paris, where Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, comte de Ver-
gennes, negotiated brilliantly on behalf of young King Louis XVI, and London,
where a burgeoning cast of politicos swirled in contrary orbits around their
intractable monarch, George III.
Fleming recounts the Newburgh conspiracy and various mutinies among
disgruntled Continental troops, implicating Superintendent of Finance Robert
Morris and Alexander Hamilton in a concerted effort to pressure penniless Con-
gress. Meanwhile, hostilities between British and American troops continued in
various locations even after the guns of Yorktown were silenced, and Admiral
Rodneys unexpected victory over de Grasses French eet in the West Indies
breathed new life into George IIIs hopes for an unbroken empire or, at least, an
honorable peace. Were readers not already aware of the outcome of these various
intrigues, the suspense Fleming evokes would make for an all-night read.
In works such as Liberty!: The American Revolution and Washingtons Secret
War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge, Fleming demonstrated his ability to
cast familiar events in a new light. This latest contribution to the scholarship of
the nations founding, The Perils of Peace: Americas Struggle for Survival After
Yorktown, goes a step further, enlarging the historical stage to link seemingly
isolated developments and redening familiar scenes by providing a richer con-
text . . . one that often leads to more intricate analyses. It is a work that deserves
to be read by serious historians, though the level of detail regarding diplomatic
affairs and the extensive roster of dramatis personae may dissuade the casual
reader and biology major.
Coastal Carolina University John J. Navin
The Road to Disunion: Volume II, Secessionists Triumphant, 18541861. By William
W. Freehling. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 605.
$35.00.)
This book completes the authors massive two-volume opus on the Souths path
to the Civil War, begun fteen years earlier with The Road to Disunion: Volume
I, Secessionists at Bay, 17761854. No more prodigious and penetrating work has
been published on the subject in many decades. Though William W. Freehling
knows that the reasons for the Norths willingness to ght the slave power to the
death have never been easy to understand, he nds even more mysterious why
Southerners risked a potentially suicidal rebellion against Northerners who dis-
claimed any intention of forcing abolition on the Southern states (xii). These two
volumes are the fruits of his lifelong study of how Southerners hatred of Northern
critics eventually overcame their dread of disunion, their divisions from each
other, and their distrust of the re-eaters (6).
Freehlings explanation of how this happened is both complex and colorful. He
paints a South that differed from east to west as well as from north to south. It was
internally divided by race, class, and slaveholding, as well as by its inhabitants
stands on such issues as the proslavery argument, Caribbean expansion, reopen-
ing the slave trade, and attempts to reenslave freedmen. These differences were
overcome, however, by Southern ire at Northern invasions, not just John Browns
violence, but invasions by antislavery religion, Yankee free-labor entrepreneurs,
and antislavery political patronage.
The largest portion of the book describes in minute detail the fateful process
of what Freehling sees as the ve separate secession crises of 18601861. If the
secessionists were held at bay before 1854 by the ability of the Southern minority
to dominate the national majority, this section reveals how the secessionist minor-
ity of that minority were able to drive the country to war. They were aided in their
efforts by lucky contingencies, not least the happenstance of Georgians celebrating
the completion of a railroad to Charleston at just the right moment for their
purposes. Throughout the two volumes of his magnum opus, Freehling draws
attention to coincidence, contingency, and individual impulse in the making of
events, reminding his readers both that men are free agents and that they are never
in full control of their future. Not everyone will agree with Freehlings highly
original and intriguing argument, but even the most seasoned scholars of this era
will learn from it and will be forced to rethink many of their settled convictions
about how the war came.
The whole story is told with an unashamed emphasis on mainstream political
history. It employs an energetic and often colloquial style (referring often to
Cuffees and rednecks) that paints word pictures of striking individuals and
fetching places (vii). Freehling has toned down somewhat his rst volumes zest
for nicknames, imaginary conversations, and plays on words, but some will still
prefer the slower-paced, graceful style of his rst prize-winning book, Prelude to
Civil War, to either of these volumes (xv).
University of Alabama Lawrence Frederick Kohl
Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the
Democratic Party. By Paul Frymer. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2008. Pp. xii, 194. $24.95.)
Although the phrase institutional racism has been in most scholars vocabular-
ies for many years, Paul Frymer emphasizes that Americans still too readily see
racism as individual pathology rather than a manifestation of American institu-
tions. With Black and Blue Frymer seeks to change that mindset. For him,
institutions shaped the split between white and black workers and played a
larger role in the racism of the labor movement than is commonly acknowledged
(ix). Frymer analyzes the way many institutions struggled with the issue of race,
with the courts and legal system receiving the most attention, followed by the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC), and various unions. All of these institutions, he argues, have
had a complicated relationship with the issue of race, at times exacerbating the
racial divide and at other times struggling to surmount race-based problems.
From the beginning of the New Deal era, Frymer argues, racial problems were
sewn into the Democratic Party and the liberal state it created. The Wagner Act of
1935, which created the NLRB, ignored the interests of civil rights groups and
instead ensured the rights of white workers in segregated blue-collar unions.
Minority workers, who were trying to break into discriminatory industries, thus
found the labor relations board unsuited to their needs and had to look elsewhere
for support. Within the government they found that support from the Fair
Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) and the EEOC. Outside the govern-
ment, black workers found their champion in the NAACP. Although the govern-
ment agencies often had little power, the NAACPs legal campaign produced
substantial results, particularly in the 1960s and afterwards. In a number of court
cases, the civil rights organization persuaded judges to use the power of the purse
to force unions to the wall. Labor unions could either stop discriminating or face
nes that would bankrupt them. Some of the unions were, in Frymers words,
bled to death, but most grudgingly opened their doors so that by the early
1980s many labor unions had minority memberships that approximated the
general population (93). The NAACPs legal strategy helped black workers secure
jobs, but Frymer shows this was no unadulterated victory. In winning these court
cases, the NAACP simultaneously nancially eviscerated many unions. Black
workers were nally able to join labor organizations but only as they lost their
clout.
The story Frymer tells in this slender volume is a provocative and essential
one. It is, however, not without aws. For a book examining the intersection of
race and American institutions, it virtually ignores the Republican Party and the
Left, key players in recent historical accounts of the period. Frymer could also tell
his readers more about the people who held the judicial and other institutional
positions central to his account. Who these people were, who appointed them,
and the nature of their politics are matters largely unexplored. Institutions matter
but, as Frymer knows, the people who administered those institutions mattered
too. In the end, though, these are minor reservations about a ne and thoughtful
book.
DePaul University James Wolnger
After Redemption: Jim Crow and the Transformation of African American Religion in
the Delta, 18751915. By John M. Giggie. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University
Press, 2008. Pp. vii, 315. $21.95.)
In this engaging and innovative history of African American culture in what
historians call the nadir period between Reconstruction and the Great Migra-
tion, the author seeks to persuade readers that African Americans responded to
this particularly oppressive era in such creative ways that they literally trans-
formed their religious lives. John M. Giggie suggests that they therefore exercised
more agency in shaping their culture and broader lives than historians typically
recognize, and that historians must adjust their understanding of this oppressive
period of the nations history.
Readers may recognize in Giggies work echoes of slavery histories from a
generation ago that stressed slaves abilities to shape their culture in slave quar-
ters, away from the watchful gaze of owners. But if these histories stressed the
ability of African Americans to preserve their African cultural heritage, Giggie
stresses the African American efforts during this later moment to chart new
ground, to shape their religious imagination in light of the modernizing innova-
tions of the railroads, commercialism, and growing materialism. Giggie focuses on
the Delta regions of Mississippi and Arkansas in his study, though his ndings
there might project more broadly to other areas of the agrarian South.
Giggie sees African Americans using those very same cultural, economic,
technological, and legal developments that historians have used to measure the
regression in African American freedom and agency during this period in ways
that allowed themto carve out space that they could control themselves. Railroads
illustrate Giggies point most vividly. Whites clearly used train travel to draw lines
between the races and thereby place African Americans in a subservient position.
It was no accident that the U.S. Supreme Court used a case involving train travel,
Plessy v. Ferguson, to pronounce that the U.S. Constitution countenanced segre-
gation. But Giggie sees African Americans taking an instrument of oppression and
using it in their religious imagery and imagination to transform trains into vehicles
of salvation. Thus, African American preachers told of riding trains to heaven.
More importantly, religious bodies established themselves near train stops and
even held revivals at train stations. African Americans used trains to further social
and institutional networks of mutual aid and support like churches, as well as
male fraternal orders.
Trains also played critical roles in spreading commercial culture throughout
America, including the Delta region, and, to a lesser extent than for more afuent
whites, even for poor African Americans. Black churches used commercial devel-
opment, and the middle class material culture that it spread, to help build and
sustain a distinct cultural space for African Americans. They prescribed ways for
African Americans to enter the material market that would assert their dignity
and, just possibly, render them more acceptable to the broader society (though
white society did not respond accordingly).
Giggies work is thoughtful, well documented, and tightly argued. He makes a
strong case for seeing within the nadir period of African American history spaces
of autonomous action and pathways for future progress toward greater equality
in American society. This book will be especially appealing to scholars and
advanced students who will most readily appreciate its subtle arguments and
intricacies.
Saint Vincent College Timothy Kelly
Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War. By Michael D.
Gordin. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xv, 209. $24.95.)
This author has written a stimulating book that brims with insights and is based
on an impressive amount of research. Dust jacket blurbs by prominent scholars
hail it as a remarkable, thought-provoking book, bold and provocative, and
powerful. It is all these things. Unfortunately, it is also poorly structured, at
times repetitive, and contains some howlers that should have been caught along
the way. Still, it is a welcome addition to the literature on the nal days of World
War II in the Pacic.
Michael D. Gordins most prominent argument is unassailable: no American
civilian or military ofcial could possibly have known what effect atomic bombs
would have (assuming they exploded, which was not certain) with regard to
hastening Japans surrender. Others have pointed this out in passing, but no one
has explored the ramications of what appears to be an obvious conclusion as
thoroughly as has Gordin. Many historians, who know what actually did happen,
have written as though Harry S. Truman and those around him knew beforehand
what would happen. Such an ahistorical approach has given rise to a number of
interpretations that cannot withstand analysis. One is what Gordin refers to as the
two bomb myth: that the United States knew in advance that two bombs
would be sufcient to induce surrender and so decided to use two and only two
(47). Another is that Truman, knowing that the Japanese were so close to capitu-
lation that a Soviet declaration of war against them would be sufcient, engaged
in a race to use the bombs before this happened. There are others. Gordins
demolition of these myths alone makes his book a signicant contribution.
Five Days in August is less successful in other areas. Gordin spends an inor-
dinate amount of time discussing which individuals regarded the bombs as
special weapons and which considered them ordinary weapons, albeit more
powerful than conventional high explosives or incendiaries. Similarly, his inclu-
sion of a history of Tinian (the island from which the atomic raids were launched)
smacks more of padding than of furthering readers understanding of the larger
issues.
Some parts of the book are just plain wrong. Gordin repeats the old chestnut
that when President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the policy of Uncondi-
tional Surrender at the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, he surprised
Churchill and much of his own staff and military (23). That is false. Roosevelt
had indicated his agreement with a State Department recommendation to insist
on unconditional surrender months earlier; he had told the Joint Chiefs of Staff
before he left for Casablanca that he intended to press it with Churchill, and
Churchill himself had sought and received approval of the doctrine from the
British War Cabinet days before Roosevelts announcement. Unaccountably,
Gordin includes in his footnotes reference to an article (published more than fty
years ago) that refutes FDRs later claim that the idea popped into his mind
while he was at the conference.
These reservations aside, Gordin has written a challenging book that ranges far
beyond the ve days mentioned in his title.
The Pennsylvania State University Robert James Maddox
Hostile Intent: U.S. Covert Operations in Chile, 19641974. By Kristian Gustafson.
(Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2007. Pp. 317. $29.95.)
This is a profoundly provocative book that examines U.S. covert operations in
Chile. For its revisionism, it will likely be dismissed as naive, foolish, or ideologi-
cally motivated. Based on careful analysis of recently declassied records (some
redacted) and interviews with key gures (some anonymous), Kristian Gustafson
contends that the evidence linking American antipathy to Salvador Allendes rise
to power beginning in 1958 with all that transpired in Chile is thin. That four
administrations sought to prevent communist inroads in the hemisphere is unde-
niable, but hostile intent does not make the U.S. government the agent of what
occurred. He insists that where State Department, CIA, or U.S. corporations did
act in Chile, the impact of their deeds was far less than conventional wisdom
insinuates. The State Department and CIA did endeavor to manipulate the
Chilean press, fund opposition groups, encourage strikes, and create anti-Allende
propaganda, but that does not constitute proof that the Nixon administration
arranged the 1973 coup, ordered Allendes assassination, or groomed Augosto
Pinochet for dictatorship. The CIA, Gustafson concludes, for years proved totally
unable to control events, had no contacts with Pinochet, and even failed to predict
the coup.
Gustafson lays out a narrative that ends in tragedy, although he nds no real
villains, just amazingly awed humans, immense bureaucratic inefciency, de-
cient operational controls, and intractable problems. He does not apologize for
U.S. deeds because the actions carried out by the CIA did not infringe on U.S.
laws (243). For Gustafson, covert operations are legitimate tools of statecraft.
Thus, ethics are not his paradigm of analysis; Realpolitik is. The documents
recently released, he asserts, refute the orthodox assumption that U.S. government
machinations derailed the political career of Allende and, failing that, orchestrated
the coup that toppled him in 1973 and led to the dismal years of the Pinochet
dictatorship.
Gustafson too casually dismisses the impact of U.S. operations in Guatemala
and the Dominican Republic by designating these countries as insignicant
players in the hemisphere. And, for all his attention to three U.S. ambassadors in
Chile and their difcult relations with State Department ofcials, presidents, and
the CIA, the reasons for their appointment or removal during crucial moments are
never fully explained. Finally, there is the difculty of taking Henry Kissingers
words at face value. Given recent revelations of inconsistencies between declas-
sied documents and his memoirs (and Kissingers defense of this obfuscation),
readers should think carefully about unhesitatingly accepting his explanations of
events.
This is a fascinating monograph that questions long-held assumptions about
the State Departments and CIAs ability to inuence the course of events. Cer-
tainly, as the author points out, the American publics long-held assumption that
the CIA has the resources and power to determine any outcome it desires and so
must be the agent of what occurred in Chile is insulting and condescending to
Chileans, many of whom have long contended, even as they bemoaned the
Pinochet dictatorship, that they did not need U.S. collusion to turn their nation
away from Allendes path to socialism.
University of Texas at Arlington Joyce S. Goldberg
Providence and the Invention of the United States, 16071876. By Nicholas Guyatt.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. ix, 341. $24.99.)
The authors study of providential thinking will prove instructive even for schol-
ars long familiar with the myth of American exceptionalism. Nicholas Guyatt
divides his book into two sections: one considering how colonists looked to and
beyond England in dening the importance of their own errand into the wilder-
ness, and a second examining the challenge of Native Americans and African
American slaves to providential nationalism.
Examining a variety of sources, Guyatt focuses on three different forms of
providentialism: judicial (the argument that God rewards or punishes nations
according to the virtue of their leaders and citizens); historical (the claim that God
designates some nations to play special roles); and apocalyptic (the notion that
history can literally play out the events outlined in Revelation). He argues that
Puritans brought to the New World a certainty that God had called England to be
a holy nation. But the English Revolution played havoc with that belief, as the
Restoration negated Oliver Cromwells conviction that the apocalyptic Puritan
kingdom was about to dawn. In response, colonists concluded that America had
supplanted England as the instrument of Gods will and justied their War of
Independence on this reading of historical providence.
Keeping the providential dream alive after the Revolution meant dening roles
for racial outsiders. Most European Americans dismissed Native Americans and
African Americans as inferiors who should at best be resettled far from white
society. But Northern abolitionists invoked judicial providentialism to argue that
unless African American slaves were freed and welcomed into a biracial, egalitar-
ian America, God would punish the nation for failing to live up to its calling as a
beacon of freedom.
Sectional tensions over slavery eventually led to war, seemingly conrming the
abolitionist threat that God would not abide the evils of slavery. But even the
Union victory did not persuade Americans to incorporate the freed slaves as social
equals. Rather, they were left to suffer new forms of chauvinism while white
Americans turned to the promises of historical providentialism, believing that the
war had forged them into a new people, ready to meet their divine destiny.
Readers will be least familiar with the English dimensions of American provi-
dentialism and will nd section one of this book particularly informative. The
contours of section two are more well known, though Guyatts discussion of
colonization schemes for Indians and African Americans is well taken, and his
analysis of Lincolns racism and theological nationalism is illuminating. One
dimension curiously absent is a consideration of postmillennial providentialism.
Most antebellum reformers abandoned apocalypticism, believing the millennium
would dawn not through catastrophe but through Christians efforts to create
societies obedient to God. Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison could
demand social and political perfection because their Bible told them the kingdom
of God was possible. America was thus the land of millennial opportunitya
promise of hope that balanced the verdict of doom Garrison predicted for those
who rejected Gods call.
That omission aside, it is easy to thank Guyatt for providing a sophisticated
overview of a millennial nation.
DePauw University Valarie H. Ziegler
President McKinley, War and Empire. Vol. 2, President McKinley and Americas New
Empire. By Richard F. Hamilton. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers,
2007. Pp. xix, 193. $39.95.)
Josephine Tey in Daughter of Time [1951] popularized the term Tonypandy, by
which her bedridden detective, Alan Grant, identied the persistence of myth and
misinformation in the popular historical memory. Richard F. Hamilton seems to
be on a similar quest. Scanning some widely adopted college history texts, Hamil-
ton discovered that the claims of progressive historians, particularly Charles
Beard and Julius Platt, continue to inform the explanations of empire and
imperialism dished out to college students. In the American history survey,
Tonypandy rules.
Certainly historians, especially those who write textbooks, can be taken to task
for overgeneralizing and reducing complex causal relations to simple confusions.
Hamilton is right to remind them, too, that they can never be too rigorous in their
construction of interpretations and use of evidence. Having said that, what then
to make of this book? It does point to some serious failings in the early literature
on the American Empire, where Big Business became shorthand for an amor-
phous body of elite actors who never had the coherence that progressive historians
ascribed to them. Those historians often used what now seem crude interpretive
schemes, and their evidence was sometimes thin.
Is this new? Do Americans need to revisit the sins of their forefathers to set the
current record straight? Much of the history that Hamilton discusses in this book
was written between fty and ninety years ago. How many young historians
teaching and writing today have actually read Frederick Merk, Beard, or Pratt?
That is not to say that these historians have no legacy, nor that current historians
do not share some of their biases. Hamilton is certainly correct when he argues
that the fruits of empire were paltry compared to historians claims that the
imperial moment marked a major point of departure in American history. The
fabled China Market took another century to materialize.
Hamiltons preoccupation with the Beardian progressives seems to have led
him into his own misreading of the evidence. For one thing, he concentrates
heavily on the economics of empire, less so on global political and security
matters. Yet the modern steel and coal navy became one of the major instruments
of empire. The decision to build it in the 1880s and to expand it in the era
afterwards marked a national commitment to a larger role in the world. Navalism
and imperialism went hand in hand. For another, Hamilton does not acknowledge
the ways in which Walter LaFebers explanation of empire marked a departure
from the Beardian school. For LaFeber, the new in the New Empire was a
commitment to nonterritorial expansion. Here, the Open Door concept and
access to markets were crucial. Americans sought the fruits of empire without the
military and administrative burdens Europeans assumed in creating their formal
empires. As a result, Hamiltons evidence that Americas empire added little
territory or population misses the point.
His argument that political elites engineered the imperial departure is one that
most historians would accept. They could only wish that he spent more time in
President McKinley, War and Empire developing that interpretation rather than
reghting the historiographic battles of a now-distant past.
Bard College Mark Lytle
Eleanor Roosevelt: A Biography. By Cynthia M. Harris. (Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood Press, 2007. Pp. 191. $35.00.)
An American icon is rendered human and accessible in this authors new volume
in Greenwood Presss synthetic, popular biography series conceived and written
for high school students and public libraries. Cynthia M. Harris breaks no new
evidentiary or historiographical ground, but ably synthesizes the wide-ranging
literature on Roosevelt to paint a thoroughif at times supercial and
underanalyzedportrait of the woman who became the rst lady of the world
(143).
Harris has considerable ground to cover: Roosevelt lived a very long, engaged
life. Born in 1884, her life and work spanned major developments of the twentieth
centuryProgressive reform and the civil rights movement; the Great Depression;
world wars, both hot and colduntil her death in 1962. She played multiple,
often contradictory roles: devoted wife and mother; reformer and activist; politi-
cal operative and diplomat; and professional writer and journalist. Harris, not
surprisingly, adopts a chronological approach and moves methodically through
Roosevelts life, with the personal and public alternately addressed in each
chapter. Though a comprehensive, readable story of an extraordinary life, too
often Eleanor Roosevelt descends into details and events unmoored from the
wider historical context.
Harriss tone is sometimes patronizing, and she misses opportunities to deepen
the analysis. For example, Eleanor and Franklin clashed over the construction of
her cottage at Val Kill in the mid-1920s. She wanted some oversight on the
project, but Franklin refused. Given his control of the purse strings and societal
expectations, Eleanor lost this battle. Once more, this perennial challenger to the
status quo was left angry, depressed, and thwarted: a condition by no means
limited to Eleanor and worthy of more extended commentary than simply that she
was showing a bit of pique (50).
Harris also struggles to understand the uctuating, tenuous, and unequal
nature of the Roosevelts political alliance: how to balance Eleanors legitimate
inuence on Franklin with his calculated use of her as his bridge to the under-
privileged to mollify and cement the support of, in particular, women, African
Americans, and the poor without meeting their demands (71). Time and again,
Harris tells readers that Eleanor was [e]xcluded in 1936 from Franklins political
life (94). Yet she simultaneously asserts Eleanors continuing signicance, includ-
ing the overblown conclusion that Eleanor saved Franklins 1940 nomination
at the Democratic National Convention (111).
Harris is to be applauded, however, for raising the difcult issues, including the
alcoholism that killed Roosevelts beloved father; the complex and unconven-
tional nature of her marriage; her intimate relationships, with men and women,
outside her marriage; and her depression, anxiety, and insecurity. Harris deals
forthrightly with the major turning point in Eleanors marriage, which became a
platonic, if loving, partnership after her devastating 1918 discovery of Franklins
affair with Lucy Mercer, their social secretary. More importantly, thereafter, she
was a changed woman who would pursue her own interests . . . and ideals
(37).
And Harris ably analyzes Eleanors professional life as a teacher, factory owner,
journalist, writer, political commentator, and diplomat. Beyond her unpaid labor
as her husbands eyes and ears, Eleanor worked for wages that guaranteed her
some economic freedom; more importantly, perhaps, she worked for fulllment,
both personal and ideological.
With a comprehensive bibliographic essay, Eleanor Roosevelt is a useful
research tool for high school students and is also an engaging introduction to the
subject for the general public. Readers looking to be challenged or for new
interpretations of Eleanor Roosevelt and her life and times will need to look
elsewhere.
University of Redlands Kathleen Feeley
Consumers Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 18651920.
By Kristin L. Hoganson. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press,
2007. Pp. 402. $65.00.)
Admirers of the authors rst book, Fighting for American Manhood (Yale, 1998),
will not be disappointed with this one. In Consumers Imperium, Kristin L.
Hoganson again puts forward an original and provocative thesis and works
doggedly to prove it. The thesis is that American culture at the turn of the
twentieth century reected American imperialism in a myriad of ways, and that
Americas aggressive entry into global politics and overseas trade not only affected
but also shaped (produced) American domesticity. The author has done an
impressive amount of research in contemporary periodicals and institutional
records and has mined archival sources in several regions of the country. A
forty-three-page bibliography shows the studys grounding in relevant primary
and secondary literatures.
Hoganson correctly states that studies of late-nineteenth-century American
overseas expansion have generally been uninterested in how imperialism abroad
affected patterns of domestic consumption, leisure, and taste. Most scholars of
foreign policy and diplomacy, as well as of military and naval history, assumed
that foreign policy and domestic affairs (the private realm, or womens history)
inhabited separate worldsthat the foreign and the domestic were binary terms.
Hoganson builds on recent scholarship by cultural and gender studies scholars to
challenge the idea that imperialism was something that happened overseas, ana-
lyzing American homes not as private realms but as contact zones where foreign
inuences and cosmopolitan tastes were appropriated and sampled (8). She calls
this the global production of American domesticity.
In ve topical chapters, Hoganson explores how American expansion overseas
was reected in patterns of consumption, fashion, and food in homes across
America. She nds paradox and curiosity everywhere. For example, in a chapter
on home decorating she notes Victorian prudery along with Orientalism, and such
inconsistencies as the following: The Ottoman Empire was the largest foreign
mission site for the United States. Yet, all the while middle-class housewives were
sewing cushions for sensuous Oriental niches (52). In a chapter on fashion, the
author illustrates how expanding global trade resulted in fashions that reected
astonishing global linkages such as the fact that in 1915 the U.S. imported more
than two million dollars worth of ostrich feathers (91). She observes that [t]he
American woman took whatever pleased her from around the world (95). Some
chapters prove more helpful in sustaining the authors thesis than others. Though
Hoganson exhaustively documents how American food writing evoked different
geographies and concludes that [m]iddle-class American kitchens had become
places of global encounter, the reader wonders whether the late nineteenth
century was unique in this regard (110). When in history did fashionable people
not import novelty or the exotic to their menus, or to give their dress distinction?
Two chapters that shift the focus away from consumption to public celebra-
tions of difference are those on travel clubs and Americanization, respectively. In
a fascinating analysis of the travel clubs that proliferated all over the country in
this period, Hoganson argues that middle- and upper-class women cultivated a
tourist mentality that displayed an interest in faraway places in a context of
unequal cultural and economic power. Americans did not have to go abroad to
express their fascination with foreign ways, of course, since immigrants were
visibly in their midst. In a chapter on Americanization, Hoganson offers a fresh
examination of howsettlement houses and international institutes brought foreign
differences into public view. Celebrations of immigrant gifts, incorporating
foreign folkways into public celebrations of the United States, were examples of
what she calls the joyful geography of globalization where immigrants were
presented as a cultural resource in pageants that overlooked discrimination and
intolerance (122).
In Consumers Imperium, Hoganson points to the benets of situating Ameri-
can history in a global context. Progressive Era Americans not only became more
aware of the rest of the world, but also they positioned themselves as users and
appropriators of foreign cultures. It will be hard for readers to venture into World
Market or Pier One Imports without recalling with pleasure this entertaining
book. Whether shopping there amounts to what the author calls an imperial
buy-in is less certain (11). What is now established, thanks to Hogansons
impressive work, is that spreading the American dream abroad (to use Emily
Rosenbergs phrase) involved a considerable amount of global dreaming on the
home front.
Auburn University Ruth Crocker
Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and
Democracy. By Richard D. Kahlenberg. (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University
Press, 2007. Pp. i, 524. $29.95.)
After suffering the indignity of being lampooned in the Woody Allen lm Sleeper
as the man who blew up the world, no less, before being posthumously awarded
the Medal of Freedom by President Clinton, teacher unionist and educational
reformer Albert Shanker clearly deserves a biographical study. In this work,
Shankers rst full-length biography is brought to readers by Richard D. Kahlen-
berg, who argues that Shanker is the single person most responsible for reshap-
ing and preserving public education in the last half of the twentieth century
(384385).
Shanker is easily the most important gure in the history of teacher unionism.
He led the New York City United Federation of Teachers (UFT) during the 1960s,
a pioneer union in public- sector collective bargaining. Later, for more than twenty
years, Shanker also served as president of the American Federation of Teachers
(AFT). Although second in size to the much larger National Education Associa-
tion (NEA), Shankers AFT was no less inuential, thanks to its leaders tireless
reform efforts. By the time he succumbed to cancer in 1997, Shanker had estab-
lished a reputation as the most inuential educational reformer in the nation.
As Kahlenberg makes clear by way of careful research in the AFT archives and
extensive oral interviews, the AFT chief was as controversial as he was inuential,
a trajectory that began with the Oceans Hill-Brownsville controversy of 1967
1968. The battle pitched Shankers mostly white teachers against the mostly black
Oceans Hill-Brownsville parents, who, once they took over their schools in a
community control experiment, dismissed dozens of white teachers in the name of
black power. Shanker led the New York City teachers on strike to protect those
red and the colorblind ideal of nondiscrimination. In this case the principles of
unionism were higher than those of community control, and although Shanker
proved that his colorblindness worked both ways when he organized mostly black
and Latino para-educators in 1970, he never outlived the stain of racism in some
liberal circles, which surely informed his unfavorable view of a liberalism increas-
ingly beholden to identity politics.
Although this book is a must-read for those interested in educational or labor
history, it suffers from hagiographic tendencies. For example, Kahlenberg idealizes
the tough Cold War liberalism that Shanker advocated. Although Cold War
liberalism was a political strain admirable in its social democratic elementsin its
consideration of organized labor as more than a mere special interestits belief
that American might was right is troubling. In an effort to revive such a liberal
worldview (which wrongly assumes it ever went away), Kahlenberg apologizes for
Shankers unyielding defense of the Vietnam War, which is labeled an excess of
tough liberalism, rather than, more properly, its logical conclusion. There are
other critiques to be made of Shanker and, by extension, Kahlenberg, including
their seemingly unqualied promotion of the educational standards movement,
which has been co-opted by the forces of business conservatism. That said,
this reviewer highly recommends this very readable book about a compelling
American.
Illinois State University Andrew Hartman
Andrew Jackson and the Constitution: The Rise and Fall of Generational Regimes. By
Gerald N. Magliocca. (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Pp. ix,
216. $29.95.)
This brief book by a law professor makes a signicant observation. The Supreme
Court often makes its decisions based not so much on law but on who happens to
be sitting on the bench. Presidents and Congresses decide the courts composition,
and these are political, not legal, judgements. Using relevant historical works
while quoting different cases and congressional debates, Gerald N. Magliocca
narrates the courts history from 1819 to Reconstruction. He states that every
generation redenes the court according to the political regime that wields power
in its era. Beginning with the Marshall court, specically the benchmark case of
McCulloch v. Maryland, the tribunal justied implied powers in approving a
second national bank. The author believes this decision prompted a rebellion,
which carried Andrew Jackson, the bte noir of this piece, to the presidency a
decade later. Chief Justice John Marshalls decisions in Cherokee Nation v. U.S.
[1831] and Worcester v. Georgia [1832] were undermined by Georgias deance
and Jacksons inaction. The victims were, of course, the Cherokees, who were
ousted from their lands by decades end. Upon Marshalls death in 1835, Jackson
had Congress expand the court from seven to nine justices by the end of his second
term in 1837 (68). Despite the hapless efforts of the Whigs, this Jacksonian court
held sway until the Civil War.
According to Magliocca, like rodents in the dinosaur age, the abolitionists
were the seemingly insignicant harbingers of the fall of the Jacksonian legal
regime (87). Maglioccas most signicant point is the impact the Cherokee
removal had on the antislavery movement. Earlier, activists had supported sending
freed slaves to Africa, yet they soon understood that each policy assumed that the
best way to resolve racial or cultural conict was by shipping the minority off to
another region. They were also both coercive policies that did not recognize the
autonomy of the affected individuals to stay where they were (88). Abolitionism
and a new antislavery Republican Party provoked a reaction from the Jackso-
nians, the Dred Scott decision in 1857. With the advent of Lincoln and a horren-
dous Civil War, a Republican establishment now controlled the court during
Reconstruction. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase restored implied powers in 1870 by
ruling in Hepburn v. Griswold that Congress could impose paper money upon
unwilling citizens (125).
Although well researched and ingenious in its arguments, there remains one
minor error and some important omissions. Clay did not nish third in the
electoral college in 1824, but fourth, which excluded him from the race according
to the Twelfth Amendment (17). Magliocca correctly states that the Dred Scott
case attacked the core views of the Republican Party, yet this infamous decision
undermined also the popular sovereignty position of Stephen Douglas and the
northern Democrats. The dust jacket asserts that the author offered parallels
between Jackson and George W. Bush, yet he never did in the text. The person
who most emulated Jackson during this era was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln used
Jacksons argument against South Carolina nullication in 1832 in his rst
inaugural address on March 4, 1861, denying that the union is a creation of the
states but the people. Moreover, just as Jackson ignored Marshalls Worcester
decision, in this same inaugural address, Lincoln declared, without mentioning
Dred Scott by name, that he would not obey decisions from an unelected body like
the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite such drawbacks, Magliocca connects abolitionism to Indian removal
while reminding readers that every generation fashions the Constitution according
to its own vision.
Georgia Southern University James M. Woods
Natures New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American
Environmental Movement. By Neil M. Maher. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2007. Pp. x, 316. $35.00.)
If you have ever hiked a trail in a state park, gazed down at a national forest or
contoured agricultural elds on a cross-country ight, or contemplated why most
Americans embraced the New Deal so enthusiastically in the middle of the 1930s,
you have experienced the legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The
book under review here is essentially an intellectual and political biography of the
CCC, one of the many alphabet soup agencies born during the First New Deal
but arguably the most important in terms of its popularity with the public and its
enduring impact on both the political and physical landscape of the United States.
More pointedly, Neil M. Maher argues that the work of the CCC and the politics
necessary for making that work possible facilitated the shift from the utilitarian
conservation ideology of the Progressive Era to the ideology of environmentalism
that emerged after World War II. This shift is visible, Maher argues, in both the
landscape itselfespecially state and national parksand in the way New Deal
liberalism came to dene American politics for more than thirty years.
Maher therefore presents an ambitious, important, and ultimately convincing
argument, helping historians better understand not only the CCC itself and the
evolution of environmental thought in the middle of the twentieth century but also
the success of the New Deal itself. Although many people over the years have tried
to take credit for the idea of the CCC, Maher makes clear that the early life and
work of Franklin Roosevelt himself embodied all of the key principles of the CCC.
Most importantly, FDR was personally invested in making sure that both the
conservation ethos of men like Gifford Pinchot and the commitment to developing
spaces for recreation in nature became part of the CCCs mission. The success of
that mission is remarkable. Although some biologists and their fellow travelers in
the preservation community eventually criticized the CCC for ignoring the laws of
ecology in its work, in general the CCC was the most popular of the New Deal
programs and even helped Roosevelt win political support in places where he had
lost the vote in 1932.
As Maher demonstrates through his prodigious research, the affection Ameri-
cans had for the CCC was understandable. Whether it was the effect CCC work
camps had on local economies, the transformation of beaten down, underweight
enrollees into strapping men who often gained thirty pounds or more, or the new
recreational opportunities CCC projects opened up, most Americans beneted
from the CCC in concrete ways. The CCC both democratized conservation and
redened it, planting the seeds for the environmental movement in the hearts and
minds of CCC veterans and the beneciaries of their efforts alike (225).
The books only shortcoming is the relative paucity of voices from these
constituencies. Natures New Deal is an important contribution to twentieth-
century environmental history. Mahers effort to reframe the political history of
the New Deal is also something with which historians will now have to reckon.
Ithaca College Michael B. Smith
Technology in Postwar America: A History. By Carroll Pursell. (New York, N.Y.:
Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. xvii, 320. $35.00.)
This book is written for students, general readers, and other nonspecialists.
Carroll Pursell, author of numerous works on the history of technology, here
synthesizes recent scholarship to explain how and why technology changed and
what it has meant to the country (ix). For Pursell, technology and its meanings
are socially constructed. It is a product of human choices, is always designed to
meet human needs and goals, and should not be given agency. Historians who
share this view contend that alternatives are always possible and that technology
is neither inherently good nor evil.
The book begins as Americans, relieved by the end of World War II, increased
consumption of consumer goods and confronted the long shadow of the atom
bomb. Most Americans of the immediate postwar years were optimistic about the
promise of technology. After two decades of economic growth and global domi-
nance, however, the nation stumbled from technology drunk to technology
sober. The negative consequences of pesticide use, suburbs and automobility,
unbridled growth, and the costs of energy choices from fossil fuels to nuclear
energy became apparent. By the 1970s, proponents of appropriate technology
questioned the application of certain technologies and attempted to institution-
alize their skepticism in government ofces dedicated to what was known as
appropriate technology. In 1980 Ronald Reagan encouraged Americans to stand
tall again and rejected the appropriate technology movement. He accelerated the
pace of military spending, embraced a new missile shield system, and simulta-
neously strove to limit the destructive power of technology through arms control
agreements with the Soviet Union.
Readers will gain valuable insights into technology and values that shaped
Americans choices about technology, including housing, autos, aviation, transis-
tors, energy, computers, and more. The context of the Cold War and the new
relationship between the Pentagon, defense contractors, and congressmen who
were determined to bring home the bacon meant that the taxpayers research
and development money was directed to military applications. Americans
accepted the fact that leaders of the military-industrial complex made choices on
their behalf while they internalized the technologies of consumption. Government
investment helped ensure American dominance and even contributed to a brain
drain from less developed areas to highly developed ones. The technology gap
between the United States and the rest of the world grew apace, even as Americans
feared that it was shrinking. By the late twentieth century, technology promoters
again promised to solve problems, as communications technology facilitated
globalization, which, in turn, created new problems. Technology in Postwar
America is a skillful treatment of the ways in which ideas about technology have
been contested in the postwar period that will serve as an excellent starting point
for students and generalists who wish to gain a quick overview of the subject.
University of West Georgia J. L. Anderson
Electing FDR: The New Deal Campaign of 1932. By Donald A. Ritchie. (Lawrence,
Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Pp. x, 274. $29.95.)
A casual reader of American political history may assume that Franklin D.
Roosevelts nomination and election as president in 1932 was inevitable. After all,
Roosevelt had already cultivated widespread, expected Democratic delegate
support from the South and West, and his unexpected victory in the 1928 New
York gubernatorial election had impressed Democrats nationally. Furthermore,
FDR shared the same surname as his legendary Republican cousin, the late
President Theodore Roosevelt, making FDR attractive to disaffected, anti-Hoover
Republicans and independents.
Donald A. Ritchie, an associate historian for the U.S. Senate, effectively chal-
lenges and questions this conventional wisdom. With hindsight, political analysts
have asserted that the Great Depression guaranteed that any Democrat could have
won in 1932, making Franklin Roosevelts election a foregone conclusion (3).
Using an impressive range and variety of primary sources, Ritchie also contends
that Roosevelts rhetoric, strategy, and major decisions as a candidate in 1932
served as a harbinger of his future leadership style and policy agenda as president.
As president, he confounded his political opponents by adopting a varied and
creative program of relief, recovery, and reform that appealed broadly to the
electorate (209210).
Ritchie explains how Roosevelts political opponents, especially Al Smith and
Herbert Hoover, underestimated Roosevelt. In 1932 the Democratic Party required
that a candidate must receive the votes of at least two-thirds of the delegates in order
to be nominated for president. Smith was condent that he could attract enough
delegates, especially from Catholic machine bosses, to prevent Roosevelts nomi-
nation and eventually emerge as a victorious compromise candidate. Smiths
strategy also beneted from the fact that the Democratic national convention was
held in Chicago, a city whose Democratic mayor and machine actively supported
Smith. Roosevelts candidacy at the convention was also jeopardized by the
proliferation of other Democratic presidential candidates, including Speaker of the
House John N. Garner. Garners delegate support extended beyond Texas because
of his endorsement from newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.
Roosevelt won the presidential nomination on the fourth ballot after Garner
accepted Roosevelts offer to be his running mate and Garner and Hearst switched
their delegate strength to FDR. Meanwhile, Hoover assumed that Roosevelt
would be the easiest Democrat to defeat in November. Hoover continued to
underestimate FDRs political skills and popular appeal, such as FDRs precedent-
breaking airplane trip to Chicago to accept the Democratic presidential nomina-
tion in person and his active campaigning throughout the nation while Hoover
rarely left the White House.
The remaining content of Ritchies book persuasively summarizes and analyzes
the long-term consequences of Roosevelts electoral success in 1932 for the
American presidency and the relationship between the American people and the
federal government. He even notes how Ronald Reagans 1980 presidential
campaign combined Hoovers economic ideas with FDRs style of rhetoric and
leadership. Although Hoovers warnings against big government continue to
resonate, Roosevelts vision of a responsive government has prevailed (210).
Saint Marys College Sean J. Savage
The Way of the Ship: Americas Maritime History Reenvisioned, 16002000. By Alex
Roland, W. Jeffrey Bolster, and Alexander Keyssar. (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley &
Sons, 2007. Pp. xiii, 539. $35.00.)
The authors of this work not only offer the academic world a long-overdue
maritime history textbook, but also they offer the more general reading public an
interesting and thorough history of Americas maritime trade. The book is divided
into ve major sections that closely fall in line with more traditional chronological
structures for United States history and thus could easily be utilized as the basis for
a maritime history syllabus. The authors thesis is twofold. First, they argue that
American maritime shipping was central to the development of the American
economy, and then they suggest that it continues to play an essential role in the
global marketplace.
The rst thesis is hardly a new argument. The second thesis, however, offers
the reader some new insights into the topic. The authors argue that, contrary to
popular interpretations of the downfall of American maritime trade after the Civil
War, American maritime shipping remained strong and active well into the twen-
tieth century. They justify this thesis by emphasizing American coastal and brown-
water trade, the integration of maritime commerce with land-based shipment such
as railroad and trucking, and the American capital ownership of foreign-registered
vessels. As such, they successfully argue that the American economy remained
closely tied to maritime trade. By arguing that maritime historians should pay
closer attention to domestic trade and nancing as opposed to their more tradi-
tional focus on oceanic commerce and labor, the authors present a newperspective
into Americas maritime history.
The authors argue that America is a brown-water nation, with a blue-water
consciousness, while emphasizing that it was this brown-water maritime domes-
tic trade that drove the American maritime economy, which was later reinvested
into a host of business enterprises, such as manufacturing and railroads, that
drove national economic development. Although this approach to maritime
history offers a new analytical structure to the eld, most of the book is really an
overview of more traditional perspectives of maritime trade that includes thought-
ful insights into the American sh trade; the rise and fall of Boston, New York,
and other Atlantic ports; steamships and canals; maritime labor unionization; the
merchant marine at war; and containerization, just to name a few.
The title, The Way of the Ship, is a bit misleading, as most of the book
considers the macrohistory of maritime trade while dealing only occasionally with
the work of maritime labor, either in oceanic or brown-water trading. The
subtitle, Americas Maritime History Reenvisioned, is also a bit misleading.
First, this book is hardly an all-encompassing maritime history. As the authors
point out in their introduction, this is a history of American maritime trade, both
foreign and domestic. This is not so much a critique of the book, more just of the
title. The term reenvisioned, however, is more seriously misleading. Although
the initial focus on brown-water domestic trade is interesting, it cannot be clas-
sied as reenvisioned as there are numerous histories on the importance of
coastal traders. Furthermore, much of the book deals with oceanic foreign trade
on an equal basis with domestic trade. Instead of reenvisioned, the book could
be better described as an excellent synthesis of the existing literature presented in
an imaginative and interesting way.
Old Dominion University Brian J. Payne
A Perfect War of Politics: Parties, Politicians, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1824
1861. By John M. Sacher. (Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press,
2003. Pp. xiv, 331. $41.95.)
Adding to the emerging literature examining the antebellum Gulf South, the
author strives to place Louisianas political scene squarely within the context of
national party politics. Beginning with an acknowledgement that state politics
mattered more than national contests, he goes on to insist that during the 1820s
and 1830s, Louisianians moved from a political system based on personality and
ethnicity to a distinct party system in which Democrats competed against Whigs
(xii). The author traces the emergence of the two-party system in Louisiana in a
way that almost uniformly parallels Michael F. Holts works on antebellum party
politics, arguing that Louisiana perfectly ts Holts model. John M. Sacher also
very carefully inserts Louisiana into William J. Coopers elucidation of the poli-
tics of slavery, clearly striving to t Louisiana into the larger Southern portrait
crafted by other scholars. Yet readers familiar with Bayou State politics will be
surprised by many of the authors conclusions.
In order to support his argument, Sacher relies on an array of antebellum
newspapers, legislative documents, and personal collections. Although the authors
primary sources will be familiar to most readers, he fails to address certain key
political studies of Gulf South states that contradict his own contentions.
Perhaps most surprising to students of Louisiana history will be the authors
assessment of the overwhelming democratic ethos in Louisiana, which contrasts
with other published studies on the state. He seems to base his argument on the
idea that between 1824 and 1861, the ideals of white mens democracy tri-
umphed solely on the democratic reforms instituted in the states constitution of
1845 (219). Yet it took wealthy Louisiana planters only seven years to roll back
these reforms, which they did in the 1852 state constitution. Although Sacher
discusses this more restrictive document, it does not inuence his argument that
during the antebellum period Louisianians discarded most of the aristocratic
ideas of the 1812 constitution and embraced the tenets of white mens democ-
racy (219). Considering the power that wealthy planters regained in 1852, most
astounding of which was the apportionment scheme that counted slaves on a
one-to-one ratio with the white population and therefore granted overwhelming
political power to the districts of large slaveholders, it is surprising that Sacher
does not rene his argument to address this retrenchment.
Furthermore, the author contends that the 1852 constitution, which he labels
denitively as a Whig document, included state aid to businesses and internal
improvement enterprises, more liberal banking laws, and increased expenditures
on public education (168). Yet one of the most disappointing results of the 1852
document was its crippling effect on the states public education system, which
was just then emerging as a success.
Attempting to t Louisiana into the larger antebellum South, Sacher miscon-
strues the politics of the state. Though such a formula worked well for J. Mills
Thornton in Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 18001860, the
model simply does not t Louisiana. Sachers contention that democratic reforms
in the state resulted from Louisiana politicians following the lead of the people
contradicts available evidence, ensuring that anyone working on the region will be
forced to contend with his conclusions in some manner (3).
Louisiana State University Sarah E. Lipscomb
Lincoln Legends: Myths, Hoaxes, and Confabulations Associated With Our Greatest
President. By Edward Steers Jr. (Lexington, Ky.: The University Press of Kentucky,
2007. Pp. xvii, 264. $24.50.)
In this book, one of Americas leading assassination experts turns his attention to
some of the major myths surrounding the sixteenth president. It is hardly surpris-
ing that an assassination scholar would be drawn to investigate Lincoln mythol-
ogy as the assassination itself has generated so many myths. Edward Steers Jr.
tackles not only this assassination mythology but also the more general myths that
have arisen about Lincoln.
The authors approach is appropriate because Lincoln mythology is not con-
ned to any one aspect of the presidents life or career and because it continued
after his death. The legends actually begin before his birth, since even his paternity
has been called into question. His father, Thomas, was not deemed heroic enough
to have sired such a famous son, producing stories that he was rendered sterile by
a case of the mumps. This created claims for a number of alleged biological
fathers, including Abraham Enloe, Patrick Henry, and John C. Calhoun. The
Henry paternity claim is the most absurd as he died in 1799, ten years before
Lincoln was born.
One major factor fueling Lincoln mythology is the desire to enlist him on
behalf of a particular cause. If one wants to believe Lincoln was a baptized
Christian, for example, one can rely on the words of housekeeper Mariah Vance,
who told of a minister visiting Springeld and secretly baptizing Lincoln. The only
problem with this tale is that, according to the railroad timetables, the minister
would have had to arrive on a train that did not run, and the two men would have
had to chop ice and then plunge into the frozen Sangamon River. Similarly, activist
C. A. Tripp claimed that Lincoln was gay, touching off a major debate, although
Steers nds the evidence less than convincing.
Sensational documents have also occasionally emerged to fuel Lincoln mythol-
ogy. The last thirty years have witnessed the discovery of missing pages from
Booths diary and detective records purporting to show that Booth was in league
with Northerners to capture or kill Lincoln and that he survived Garretts Barn.
From time to time, alleged new copies of documents such as the Gettysburg
Address have also surfaced. Steers concludes that the diary pages are an outright
forgery, not an uncommon problem in the Lincoln eld, while the famous speech
was a careful tracing that fooled even some experts.
Steers writes in an engaging style, and this book is highly recommended. It
reminds readers that sensational headlines appear on the front page of newspapers
while corrections and retractions are placed where few people will read them,
allowing the erroneous report to become ingrained in the public mind. Although
no single work can prevent Lincoln myths from ourishing, the author also urges
readers to remember that many sensational Lincoln stories are dubious and it is
not the readers obligation to accept these allegations uncritically, but rather for
those who make them to provide proof. He also reminds Lincoln historians to be
extremely careful in writing about him lest, by endless repetition, they convert
mythology into truth.
Bridgewater State College Thomas R. Turner
D. W. Grifths The Birth of a Nation: A History of The Most Controversial
Motion Picture of All Time. By Melvyn Stokes. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2007. Pp. viii, 413. $24.95.)
This authors study of director D. W. Grifths The Birth of a Nation [1915] is
an ambitious synthesis of existing literature and a revisitation of primary sources
in an attempt to offer new perspectives on one of Americas most controversial
lms. It is the rst monograph devoted exclusively to the lm and the author has
two objectivesrst to explore the productions genesis and second to assess its
impact. Lauded as a cinematic milestone, Grifths movie became the rst
feature-length American lm. Yet its sympathetic dramatization of the Confed-
erate cause and the Ku Klux Klans rise had nightmarish consequences for
African Americans.
Melvyn Stokes, a British Americanist, achieves his rst objective most effec-
tively. Opening with The Birth of a Nations remarkably successful premiere, he
subsequently scrutinizes the men responsible for the lm. First came Thomas
Dixon, a North Carolinian whose novel, The Clansman, alleged that vengeful
blacks and carpetbagging Republicans violated the white Souths rights. Dixon
later joined forces with Grifth, also a Southerner, to bring this glorication of the
KKK and lynching to the screen. Stokes then details the lming and distributing
process and Grifths creative attempts to patch together funding as his produc-
tion ran over budget. Agreeing that there was little true technical innovation in
Grifths picture, he argues the directors real achievement was in reshaping
moviegoing and the lm business. Grifth was gambling by charging two dollars
a ticket for a lm that ran over two hours. But borrowing tricks from the
theatrical trade, he hired professional publicists to plug the lm and sent it on tour
with elaborate road shows. This resulted in a shift of movie audiences expecta-
tions and a revolution in the industrys promotional practices.
In the last chapters, Stokes surveys the lms impact. He explores campaigns to
ban the lm, focusing on protests by the National Association for the Advance-
ment of Colored People. Additionally, he discusses how Grifths narrative and its
veneration of the Southern cause came to dominate white Americas historical
memory. This lm, Stokes also acknowledges, played a role in the KKKs resur-
gence and loss of black lives. His conclusion makes note of continuing debates
over the lm. Overall he contends that The Birth of a Nation was a pioneering
expression of cinematic art, but he maintains that the lm cannot be understood
in isolation from its racist content.
Stokess exploration of the lms impact is less satisfying. His approach privi-
leges the lmmaker in the telling of the story and thus unevenly interrogates
the lms disturbing racial impact. For example, he primarily attributes the
NAACPs failure to suppress the lm to the organizations own weaknesses. Yet
his own account demonstrates that agents of powerful white institutionalized
racismoverwhelmingly resistant white courts and politiciansled to the
NAACPs defeat. Additionally, the rare but uncontextualized use of colored,
which will give American readers pause, should have been removed. Stokes
alleges that trouble began with the NAACPs protests against The Birth of
a Nation (129). For the lmmaker, this might be true. But from the African
American perspective, trouble began when Grifth brought Dixons story to
the screen.
California State University San Marcos Jill Watts
Family Life in 19
th
-Century America. By James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo.
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007. Pp. vii, 415. $65.00.)
In the latest volume in their series on family history, the authors demonstrate how
the onset of the Market Revolution coupled with westward expansion and the
burgeoning reformist spirit initiated changes in national identity, ideals of equal-
ity, and social mobility. Yet, as James M. Volo and Dorothy Denneen Volo
contend, the family provided a source of normalcy in a sometimes unstable society
and served to transmit cultural ideals, societal standards, and political awareness
through succeeding generations (vii).
This study, intended as a reference, posits that the familys central purpose was
ideological. Similar to John Demoss study of colonial New England families, A
Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony [1970], the Volos offer a
nuanced examination of family roles, relationships, and material culture in the
household. They are careful, however, to show the unique nature of nineteenth-
century family life by situating their analysis in the context of the urbanization,
industrialization, immigration, and regionalism of the period. These changes
refashioned the home and created complex differences in the family experience
depending on class, race, and regional identity. Despite such disparities, the Volos
identify some commonalities, namely that family served crucial religious, eco-
nomic, educational, societal, and supportive functions.
After an overview of the nation in the era, the authors devote subsequent
chapters to members of the household. Families typically prescribed to nineteenth-
century gender ideals that lauded a patriarchal structure of the home. Fathers
served as protectors and providers who spent most of their time outside the home
engaged in a variety of activities from paid work to military leadership, all in an
effort to enhance their familys livelihood and reputation. Mothers performed
domestic labor and maternal care central to the daily functioning of the home. The
growth of reform movements and opportunities for wage work, nevertheless,
encouraged many women to step outside the connes of the domestic arena. The
role of children changed as nineteenth-century society recognized childhood as a
separate stage of development. Parents continued to expect obedience from their
offspring, but the rise of the middle-class lifestyle afforded youths with material
luxuries and educational opportunities lacking in previous centuries. The presence
of servants, free and enslaved, as well as extended kin depended on regional
location and class status. The Volos conclude with a chapter on the convergence
of family life and the frontier experience as the nation embraced the ideals of
Manifest Destiny.
The strength of this text lies in its synthesis of family history in the period. The
authors offer a variety of sources including prescriptive literature, census records,
and diaries that educators and students will nd useful. Their analytical focus is,
at times, lost in their survey of historical developments, such as labor disputes,
sectional antagonisms, and manufacturing technology. Connecting their
discussion of such events back to the household would reinforce their argument
concerning the centrality of family life. Still, readers will nd the authors meticu-
lous synthesis benecial to understanding the larger picture of family history and
will enjoy the entertaining and insightful anecdotal evidence.
Birmingham-Southern College Victoria E. Ott
Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller. By Steve
Weinberg. (New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008. Pp. 306. $25.95.)
The author offers an engaging, descriptive account of the parallel, and sometimes
intersecting, lives of Ida Tarbell, the muckraking journalist, and John D. Rock-
efeller, the founder of the Standard Oil Company. In often alternating narrative
chapters he traces their childhoods, adolescence, and maturation, culminating
with Tarbells attack on Standard Oil in a series of investigative reports published
in McClures Magazine in the early 1900s. He then concludes with several chap-
ters looking at the later lives of Tarbell and Rockefeller. Much of this story is well
known: Tarbells early life in Pennsylvanias oil country, not far from Cleveland,
where Rockefeller rst established Standards headquarters; the opposition of
Tarbells father to Standard; and the nature of Tarbells attack on Rockefeller and
his company. Less well known, and capably explained by Steve Weinberg, are
important elements of Tarbells development: her college days, her life in Paris
while conducting research on the French Revolution and Napoleon, and her
multifaceted work for McClures.
A faculty member in journalism at the University of Missouri, Weinberg has
prepared a fascinating history that, despite some signicant shortcomings, should
appeal to upper-division undergraduate students. Sprightly written and logically
organized, the work reveals much about social and economic changes in late-
nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century America. Weinberg, however, is
much more nuanced and complete in his accounts of Tarbells life and work than
he is in dealing with Rockefeller and the development of Standard Oil. He sides
with Tarbell and tends to present Rockefeller as simply a robber baron. Basing his
history on research in both primary and secondary sources, Weinberg is appar-
ently unfamiliar with many of the most signicant works about American business
history, including very important studies about the development of big business by
Alfred D. Chandler Jr. Taking on the Trust contains no footnotes (some sources
are acknowledged in the text), and the bibliography ignores major works in a
number of elds. Despite its problems, this study could be used to advantage by
instructors knowledgeable about modern American history and business history.
It is a good read.
The Ohio State University Mansel G. Blackford
ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt. By Joyce Tyldesley. (New York, N.Y.: Basic Books,
2008. Pp. xiii, 290. $27.50.)
Cleopatra VII, Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt from 51-30 BCE, remains a mythic gure
to both popular and academic historians. Accomplished Egyptologist Joyce
Tyldesley attempts to shed light on the complicated reign of Cleopatra in order to
put Cleopatra back into her own, predominately Egyptian context (4). Tyldesley
is clearly aware of the rich historical corpus that undergirds the life and times of
this Ptolemaic queen. In her retelling of Cleopatras story, she draws on estab-
lished archaeological and classical sources to advance a new reading of this largely
misunderstood gure. Tyldesley, for example, argues that she provides more of
the archaeological and historical detective work that underpins Cleopatras story
than is perhaps usual in a biography (4).
Although the author is clearly sympathetic to Cleopatra, her efforts to reinter-
pret the queens life for a popular audience fall short due to the uneven organi-
zation of her book. Tyldesley begins by arguing that an almost complete lack of
primary sources limits the ability of the historian to write a conventional
biography of Cleopatra (7). In chapters one and two, the author discusses
Cleopatras quick rise to power, followed in chapter three by a tangential discus-
sion of Alexandria. She then abruptly segues into Cleopatras infamous political
and sexual relationship with Julius Caesar in chapter four. In chapters ve through
seven, the author covers ground familiar to most Egyptologists. Tyldesley eluci-
dates Cleopatras attempts to reframe her religious identity as a new manifestation
of the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, her sexual and strategic partnership with
Marc Antony, and the murky political circumstances surrounding the queens
suicide. The concluding chapters of the book, which encompass the period after
Cleopatras death and the fate of her children, are interesting but brief. In the nal
chapter, History Becomes Legend, she raises a number of intriguing ideas and
observations about the historical inaccuracies surrounding Cleopatras historical
image. For example, Tyldesley notes that medieval Arab historians were able to
develop a parallel understanding of Egypts past, which included a very different
version of Cleopatra from that recognized in the West (212). This is an important
intervention and one that requires further elaboration, but Tyldesley does not
choose to explain why a distorted image of Cleopatra continues to exist in
Euro-American scholarship and popular culture.
That the author fails to do so is odd. She is obviously familiar with her source
material and is well versed in the various debates surrounding Cleopatra. As a
lecturer in Egyptology (specializing in Egyptian queens) at Manchester University,
a consultant for several television programs, and the critically acclaimed author of
numerous books in the eld, Tyldesley should be able to explain her subject matter
in a manner accessible to both academics and a general audience. However, the
biographical information covered in this book is already familiar to Egyptologists.
The books rambling prose also makes it off-putting to nonspecialists. Although
Tyldesley includes a helpful Who Was Who? chapter, a succinct chronology of
Ancient Egyptian dynasties, and suggestions for further reading, her opaque
writing style will intimidate all but the most dedicated reader.
Hofstra University Mario Ruiz
Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the Peoples Republic of China. Edited by
Jeremy Brown and Paulo G. Pickowicz. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 462. $45.00.)
The fteen papers in this volume represent the leading edge of contemporary
scholarship on Chinas New Democracy period [19491953]. From 1927 to
1948, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administrative experience was limited
to certain rural areas. How did the CCP manage to transform itself into a national
authority after it assumed power in 1949? The authors show how complex this
transformation proved to be and how exible the party was in responding to
diverse local and regional problems. They also explore how the intellectual and
business establishment responded to the CCP and came to support the new
government.
A multitude of competing local and regional interests made the transformation
complex. Central party agendas fought local agendas; Nationalist loyalists fought
party cadres; workers fought business owners; rural interests fought urban inter-
ests; and minorities fought the Han Chinese. In addition, the CCP had to contend
with its main ally, the Soviet Union, which had its own agenda in Asia, and its
adversary, the United States, which posed a particular threat on the Korean
peninsula.
In each chapter, the author describes the partys need to be exible in holding
things together. To gain support from multiple interests, the CCP carried out its
NewDemocracy policy, a strategy hatched a decade earlier in Yanan. The idea was
to bring everyone, regardless of ideological orientation or class background, into
the CCP-led reconstruction of China. Real socialism could come later. However,
with the onset of the Korean War, the CCP abruptly ended this politics of
inclusiveness and tolerance and replaced it with mass struggle campaigns to stir up
patriotism. The tyrannical crackdown also intended to replace autonomous civil
organizations with centrally controlled mass organizations. Accusations, confes-
sions, and arrests marked this systematic assault on local and regional power.
The book has four parts, each showing how these tensions played out. In the
rst part, they tell how the CCP took over Shanghai, a city ruled by elites and civil
organizations with questionable loyalties and rife with saboteurs, agents, and
counterrevolutionaries. In the second part, the authors take readers to Chinas
periphery: Liaoning in the northeast, Guizhou in the southwest, Tibet in the far
west, and Xinjiang in the northwest. Each region posed unique problems requir-
ing unique solutions. Party tactics there were sometimes conciliatory, sometimes
despotic, often innovative, and frequently cunning. In part three, the authors
portray writers, artists, scientists, educators, and lmmakers, most of whom stood
ready to please the new regime and who had no idea they were about to get their
teeth kicked in (208). The essays in part four explore how the regime affected
family life. In two articles the authors recount how the changing political winds
affected the lives of two wealthy capitalist families. In another article they show
how preliberation birthing practices evolved with the postliberation state initia-
tives to bring scientic knowledge and training to rural midwives.
The book is a superb collection that will inspire future scholars. This early
period is important because it helps historians to understand better the sincerity of
both the CCP and the intellectual and business establishment. Were these groups
sincere, or were they instead calculating opportunists when they rst encountered
each other? It also helps readers to understand why CCP policies changed so often
and so radically in the years thereafter. The book makes an excellent addition to
any syllabus for advanced courses on the history of modern China.
Purdue University Juan Wang
From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition. Edited by
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumdar, and Andrew Sartori. (New Delhi, India:
Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 369. $45.00.)
The editors aim with this volume to explore the meaning and signicance of
decolonization on the Indian subcontinent. The work is intended as a tribute to
the memory of Bernard S. Cohn [19282003], anthropologist and historian at the
University of Chicago.
As Dipesh Chakrabarty writes in the introduction, the topic is vast. The essays,
therefore, take up aspects of the transition. The transition began in some respects
in the 1920s and continued into the 1960s (3). Chakrabarty notes, Becoming
postcolonial is a process, and not a state of being ever achieved with any degree
of nality (4).
The editors divide the book into six sections: 1) Questions of Democracy; 2)
Minority Imaginings; 3) Caste, Class, and Nation; 4) Law, Capital, and Subject
Formation; 5) Regions; and 6) Wider Perspectives. Several essays (such as those of
Uday S. Mehta, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Faisal Devji, Anupama Rao, and Ritu Birla)
are intellectual ruminations. Other articles are more obviously empirically con-
structed, tracking issues and questions, pointing to areas for further research (Ian
Copland and coauthors John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan.)
Articles that constitute empirical analysis include two that address topics in
governance, highlighting elements of continuity in somewhat unexpected ways.
With a discussion of the development of election law in Britain and India, David
Gilmartin provides an original analysis of democratic conceptions and electoral
practices in India circa 19201980. A. H. Ahmed Kamals discussion of the
approach of the government of East Bengal to mid-century peasant rebellions
should be of interest to students of state responses to rural unrest. Barbara Metcalf
and Andrew Sartori explore political visions and careers of two mid-century
Muslim activists. Sartoris discussion of Abul Mansur Ahmad, a Bengali politi-
cian, provides a good companion piece to the article by Kamal. Gyanesh Kudaisya
writes on the selection of a postcolonial name for the Indian state known today as
Uttar Pradesh, giving in the process a glimpse of contemporary meanings, political
and cultural, of both the state and the new nation.
Articles of social history in the volume are less unied in theme. Boria Majum-
dar studies the changing social background of major cricketers in India to the
1980s. Nikhil Rao focuses on cooperative societies and space in the construction
of south Indian identity in late colonial Bombay. Rochona Majumdars discussion
of representations of women, property, and family in debates around the Hindu
Code Bill provides insights on gender and economy linkages in contemporary
visions for national development.
The nal essay in the volume looks beyond mid-century transitions to suggest
broad trajectories. David Washbrook joins voices that call for considering the
precolonial in the postcolonial. He also notes that understandings of colonial
society often spring from research on north India and that paying attention to
south Indian experiences presents new possibilities in interpretation for both
colonial and postcolonial India.
University of Oslo Pamela Price
Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations
in Imperial China (11271279). By Hilde De Weerdt. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 495. $49.95.)
Civil service examinations and Confucian thought profoundly inuenced later
imperial Chinese history. A literate elite male hoped to pass the examinations,
become one of the stars in the heavens (an ofcial), and ensure the status and
fame of his family. Since most of the examination content was based on Confucian
texts, the rigorous preparation for the examinations steeped the candidates in
Confucian thought and specic styles of writing and argumentation. Many have
argued that the examinations promoted literacy, ensured the ideological unity of
the pool of ofcials, and, some argue, promoted a conservative neo-Confucian
philosophy that inhibited Chinas modernization.
Hilde De Weerdt provides a rich, complex look at the examination system in
the Southern Song. De Weerdt tackles two major themes in Song history: the shift
of neo-Confucianism from heterodoxy to orthodoxy and the shift from state
activism to elite activism in education and politics. Drawing on classical Chinese
texts, and modern scholarship in Chinese, English, and Japanese, De Weerdt
develops a multifaceted picture of what she terms the examination eld, which
included political ofcials, private teachers, examination candidates, and publish-
ers (1617). By exploring collections of model examination essays she delineates
multiple and competing uses of the examinations and the public and private
schools. De Weerdt establishes the link between these areas of the examination
eld and commercial presses, arguing the latter played a key role in promoting
competing ideologies.
The Southern Song court had adopted a strategy of great impartiality
retreating from the state activism of the Northern Song. Hence, the court did not
promote a single curricular interpretation of Confucian thought. Consequently,
the examination eld was open, and private education ourished. De Weerdt
focuses on two of the major Southern Song schools of thought: the Yongjia school,
known for its broad curriculum and utilitarian approach to problem-solving; and
the Learning of the Way school (often translated as neo-Confucianism), stressing
a rigid core curriculum and moral argumentation.
The contest between these approaches was fought through teachers writings
and commercial publications. Teachers whose students earned degrees were also
bestselling authors of examination preparation manuals, which also promoted
their ideologies. Ultimately, the Learning of the Way curriculum shaped by Zhu Xi
won the day. De Weerdt suggests that this school gained imperial support in the
thirteenth century because of its popular appeal amongst literate elites. The court
hoped adopting it as orthodoxy would work as a catalyst in healing and
reinvigorating the Song state (216). What is less clear is why it was popular. The
answer may be that the Learning of the Way promoted a clear ideology (all
sociopolitical problems are due to a lack of moral development) couched in a
limited core of texts (the Four Books) providing a clear means of interpreting the
massive amount of classical literature and history that examination candidates
were expected to master.
This densely detailed book merits close reading by those hoping to understand
the examinations, education, and the development of Zhu Xis brand of Confu-
cian thought in the Song dynasty.
Berea College Robert W. Foster
Santa Anna of Mexico. By Will Fowler. (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press,
2007. Pp. viii, 501. $45.00.)
In this compelling biography of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the author sets the
record straight about the man who served Mexico six times as president yet is
vilied today as a tyrant and traitor to his country. Will Fowler asks why, if Santa
Anna was such a monster, was he invited back to power by so many different
factions over four decades? His answer is surprisingSanta Anna was a liberal, a
republican, an army man, a hero, a revolutionary, a regional strongman, but never
a politician. He presented himself as a mediator who was both antiparty and
antipolitics in the decades when the new country of Mexico was wracked by
factional inghting. He was always more willing to lead an army than to lead his
country. In all but his last presidency, Santa Anna retired to his haciendas almost
immediately after taking power; he remained in Mexico City only a few months
each time, allowing another to assume the role of acting president.
Fowler also depicts Santa Anna as a trickster who persuaded the Texans to let
him go without giving up anything of substance and later tricked President Polk
into funding Mexicos defense in the Mexican-American War. Santa Anna lined
his own pockets at every turn, and bought enough haciendas near Veracruz to
become its greatest landowner, employer, protector, and benefactor. Yet, he spent
his own funds to arm and clothe the military when necessary.
Veracruz, Mexicos most important port, is the center around which Fowler
spins his story. Its archives are the core from which Fowlers narrative grows. He
argues that Santa Anna could not have gained like power had he come from any
other place in Mexico. Yellow fever was the scourge of the area; the veracruzanos,
Santa Anna, and the armies he raised among them were immune, giving them a
great advantage over invaders. The importance of that port city to the economy of
Mexico meant that whatever government served Mexico had to accommodate the
regional strongman, Santa Anna. He was a federalist in so far as the ideal of
federalism protected his friends and supporters in Veracruz. When necessary, he
became a centralist for the same reason. He saw the army of Mexico and his own
leadership as a force for peace and order. The people of Mexico and their political
class repeatedly called on Santa Anna for those very reasons. Santa Anna regarded
himself as a founder and liberator deserving of honors, parades, celebrations, and
estas. Yet at his death he was unsungthe scapegoat for all that had gone wrong
in Mexico since its independence from Spain.
University of Texas at San Antonio Patricia L. P. Thompson
Imperial Japans World War Two, 19311945. By Werner Gruhl. (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2007. Pp. 254. $39.95.)
The enormity of the losses suffered by the peoples of Asia in the Second World
War is little known except to regional specialists. Not surprisingly, people in the
West have looked rst to their own losses, but they have not overlooked the
impact of war on the enemy, most notably Japanese casualties of the atomic
bomb. Yet the lives lost or forever changed in East and Southeast Asia, especially
in China, dwarf anything experienced by the Western allies, or even by Germany
and Japan.
Werner Gruhl presents a wide range of statistics, indicating some twenty-seven
million deaths from all war-related causes in the East Asia-Pacic sector. Such a
calculation inevitably carries a degree of imprecision, but there is no doubt as to
the magnitude of the total, nor the signicance of the gures breakdown: Ameri-
can and other Western losses amounted to about three hundred thousandor 1
percent of the total; Japanese losses stood at about 12 percent; while Asian losses
in the Japanese-inicted war account for 87 percentalmost twenty-four million
deaths. Of the latter gure, at least fteen million were Chinese, four-fths of them
civilians.
The narrative runs from the Japanese seizure of Manchuria in 1931 through
1945 and the subsequent Tokyo war-crimes trials. The focus is on the Japanese
armys treatment of war prisoners and the civilian population, and on Japanese
administration and exploitation of the occupied areas. In presenting this record,
the author relies on a wide range of English-language sources, mostly secondary
and some of them dated. Given the centrality of China to his argument, it is
unfortunate that he did not engage an assistant for access to some of the vast
literature produced in China and Taiwan in recent years on the Sino-Japanese War.
Even with good source materials at hand, the structure of the book weakens
their impact. After reecting on the near lack of historical memory regarding
Asian victims, the author then chronicles the Japanese military record throughout
Asia. However, in attempting to cover so much, he often just broaches an impor-
tant topic before moving on to the next. There is also too much repetition of
nonspecic statements of the yet more dead, injured, brutalized, homeless
variety. He would make the case effectively by concentrating more on select topics
such as the devastation of the Lower Yangtze in 1937, the Nanjing massacre, the
destruction of Manila, and the medical perversions of the Unit 731 project.
The author is not a professional historian, but he has brought great dedication
to his task. His objective in bringing forward the magnitude of suffering in China
and other Asian nations is not only germane to a fuller comprehension of the war,
but also is vital to understanding the continuing tensions in East Asia between the
victims and a Japan that does not fully admit to the devastation meted out by it
in that war.
McMaster University David P. Barrett
Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 17651954. By Kama
Maclean. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xv, 344. $74.00.)
From this interesting history of a mammoth Hindu pilgrimage festival, three
surprising ndings should be underlined. First, Kama Maclean argues convinc-
ingly that, though Allahabad has been the scene of religious gatherings for more
than a millennium, these have only been called Kumbhs recently, since she could
nd no source using this label before 1868 (98). This books account of why and
how this innovation was effected, without being noticed by the British, who were
otherwise often sticklers for precedent, is compelling.
A second and not unrelated transformation concerns how the festival became
increasingly religious, as Indians sought to protect their autonomy by invoking
the queens 1858 proclamation prohibiting interference in religion (113). A
prominent and poignant symbol of this change is the nagas. Maclean cites the
work of William Pinch and others, who have described how these holy men
were often long-distance traders and mercenaries before they were pacied by the
British. She notes the irony that the British came to characterize these mendicants
as idle, lazy fellows, when it was they who had stripped the nagas of their
previous gainful employment (58).
A third nding concerns the role of party politics at the Kumbh. As Maclean
notes, news reports of recent festivals have featured Hindu nationalist groups
(212). Yet the history of what Maclean calls Congress Kumbhs goes back to the
rst quarter of the twentieth century (213). Peter van der Veer and many others
have noted how the Congress has not been above using appeals to Hinduism to
mobilize support, despite its rhetorical commitment to secularism, and Pilgrimage
and Power adds yet more evidence to that argument.
This review would be incomplete without commending Pilgramage and Power
for its style. The writing is admirably clear throughout, enlivened with an eye for
telling detail. The book also occasionally displays the authors ironic sense of
humor. Noting that inoculation requirements at the 1966 Kumbh were dropped
for the immersion of the ashes of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Maclean
adds: Clearly, the government did not think that mourners of the departed prime
minister had the same capacity to transmit disease as pilgrims (305, note 151).
Though she draws on a wide range of sources in the work, Maclean apologizes
for not including Indian representations of the mela (18). She does incorporate
travelers memoirs and newspaper accounts by Indians, especially beginning from
the late nineteenth century, but even these come from educated circles (16). At
one point, Maclean speculates that the festival of ordinary pilgrims might have left
little documentary trace as it was largely a personal experience (17). But the
overwhelming evidence in the book suggests that once the political aspects of the
Kumbh Mela have been exhaustively analyzed, there might be nothing left to
relegate to the realm of the personal or the religious.
Missouri State University J. E. Llewellyn
The Last Days of the Incas. By Kim MacQuarrie. (New York, N.Y.: Simon and
Schuster, 2007. Pp. xv, 522. $30.00.)
The Inca Empire was the largest empire to develop in the precontact Americas.
Last in a series of states to develop in the Andes of South America, the Inca
controlled a territory that stretched from modern-day Colombia to Chile. At their
height, the Inca oversawa population of at least six million persons. Initial contact
between the Spaniards and the Inca began in 1532 with Francisco Pizarros
surprise capture and subsequent execution of the Inca king, Atahualpa. By 1572,
the invading Europeans had come to control almost all parts of the former empire
and the last direct heir to the Inca crown, Tupac Amaru, had been executed.
The story of the Spanish invasion of Peru and the ensuing collapse of the Inca
Empire has been told many times. The most famous, but nowoutdated, account of
these events was written by William H. Prescott (The Conquest of Peru) in 1847.
The most widely read recent description of the fall of the Inca is John Hemmings
magnum opus (The Conquest of the Incas) written in 1970. Although Kim Mac-
Quarries historiography does not compete with that of Hemming, he does provide
a detailed, highly accurate and thoroughly engaging narrative of these events.
MacQuarrie begins with the arrival of Pizarro and the tragic events of Cajama-
rca. Focusing on the heirs to the Inca crown, and less on the complex series of civil
wars that occurred between the Spaniards, the major part of the text concludes
forty years later with the death of Tupac Amaru. In the nal chapters of the book,
MacQuarrie is concerned with the rediscovery of Machu Picchu by the American
explorer Hiram Bingham and more recent explorations in the Vilcabamba region
of Peru. MacQuarrie has an engaging writing style and brings a new eye to the
details that are contained in the sixteenth-century accounts. This is an excellent
book for those who are traveling to Peru or who are interested in learning about
the European-American contact period.
University of Illinois at Chicago Brian S. Bauer
Mao Zedong. By Maurice Meisner. (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 2007. Pp. 222.
$24.95.)
The author has written a relatively short, readable, and balanced biography of
Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party who transformed China
in the latter half of the twentieth century. Maurice Meisner details Maos early life
as the son of a rich peasant who made his way to the city in search of education.
There he encountered a variety of Western ideasliberalism, anarchism, social-
ism, and Marxism-Leninismsweeping Chinas urban areas in the early decades
of the twentieth century.
Although Meisner describes Maos response to these various ideas, he focuses
on how Mao was able to mold Marxist ideas to the realities of rural China that
helped make possible the establishment of the Peoples Republic in 1949 under the
leadership of the Communist Party. At the same time that Meisner shows that
Mao was a liberator and a nationalist, he also details how Mao became a despot
in the late 1950s. For specialists in the eld as well as for interested observers of
the events in Chinas twentieth-century history, this book is a stimulating assess-
ment of Maos life.
The reviewers criticism is that Meisner views Mao and his policies primarily
within a Marxist context. When Mao deviates from that context, Meisner depicts
Mao as a repressive leader and tyrant. Thus, in the late 1950s, when Mao began
to impose utopian visions onto China such as the Great Leap Forward, this led to
the death of thirty million Chinese peasants. Similarly, when Mao turned against
his party comrades, whom he felt were conspiring against him, he launched the
Cultural Revolution [19661976] that led not only to widespread violence and
bloodshed, but also brought China close to anarchy at the time of Maos death in
September 1976. Though Meisner gives great attention to the role of Marxism, he
makes only passing mention to the role of Leninism in Chinas revolution. From
the beginning, the Peoples Republic of China was established on Leninist dicta-
torial strictures and structures, as well as on Marxism that made it an authori-
tarian and, at times, a totalitarian state during Maos reign.
Meisner sees Maos greatest achievements during the early 1950s when China
was reunited after years of disunity and when the party carried out land reform,
which divided up the landlords land holdings relatively equally. There were also
impressive gains in literacy and healthcare and the doubling of life expectancy. He
describes these achievements, including the creation of a national market, as com-
parable to a bourgeois revolution, which previous Chinese regimes had failed to do.
But Meisner does not explain that just a fewyears later, in 1955, Mao launched the
collectivization of agriculture throughout the whole country that did away with the
relatively equal landholdings. At the same time, Chinas industries and businesses
were nationalized. Thus, whatever bourgeois revolution may have occurred quickly
faded away and did not produce a bourgeoisie or a broad middle class.
Nevertheless, despite these criticisms of Meisners ideological approach, this
biography is worth reading and provides an intriguing and fascinating view of
Chinas transformative leader, Mao Zedong.
Boston University Merle Goldman
Cross Currents and Community Networks: The History of the Indian Ocean World.
Edited by Himanshu Prabha Ray and Edward A. Alpers. (New Delhi, India: Oxford
University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 311. $45.00.)
Is there such a thing as an Indian Ocean World (15)? This series of essays, the
compilation of which was triggered by a 2003 conference entitled Narratives of
the Sea: Encapsulating the Indian Ocean World, does not provide a denitive and
comprehensive account of the historical and historiograhical contours and coher-
ence of the Indian Ocean world. Its own coherence, however, testies to the
usefulness of the Indian Ocean as a unitary focus of inquiry.
The editors divide the volume into two parts preceded by their useful intro-
duction. Part one, entitled Maritime Communities and Littoral Societies,
begins with three methodology pieces. Michael Pearson sets the stage provoca-
tively by noting that data and metadata on Indian Ocean interconnectedness
often sidestep the sea: land-born concerns dominate the emerging landscape of
the sea, ultimately necessitating what Pearson calls amphibious history. His
conception of littoral society, the notion of permeability as the dening char-
acteristic of the littoral zone, and the interpenetration of sea and land underlie
the argumentation of the rest of the papers of the volume. So does the focus on
maritime communities centered on and dispersed among ports, advanced by
another pioneer of Indian Ocean studies and contributor to this volume,
Kenneth McPherson. Also methodologically central is Himanshu Prabha Rays
application of Horden and Purcells conceptual repertoire to establish that
Indian Ocean diachronic connectivity resides in material, navigational, architec-
tural, and visual sources.
The next ve papers focus on specic subregions and polities to emphasize the
mix of trade, politics, and religion that shaped littoral societies into parts of a
common oceanic world. Thus, Mahesh Gopalan shows how Jesuits capitalized on
the political dynamic between the Coromandel coasts pearl shing Parava com-
munity and the ruling Nayakas, thereby naturalizing their inuence on local
society. Anthony Reid revises his earlier position on South-Asian historiographical
autonomy to examine how Aceh became the verandah of Mecca (113). Edward
A. Alpers exposes the layered impact of Indonesian migrations, Arab trade,
coastal Islamization, European insertion into local networks, transfer of slave
populations, Indian nanciering, and Hadhrami religious authority in the creation
of the complex littoral society around the Mozambique Channel. Nigel Wordens
study demonstrates that the new social history of Cape Town is much more
marked by Indian Ocean links than the ports geographical position and tradi-
tional historiographical emphasis on Dutch origins would allow. Finally, Erik
Gilbert shows how Zanzibars links with Oman created a cosmopolitan com-
munity that stretched across the western Indian Ocean to embrace Oman, the
Hadhramaut, East Africa, and western India (169).
Entitled Commercial Transactions and Currency Systems, part two shifts
the focus to economic instruments and modes of transaction that unify the
Indian Ocean world. Here the triad of articles on currency systems, patterns of
monetization, and metallic and nonmetallic currency ows by Najaf Haider,
Shailendra Bhandare, and Sanjay Garg makes a remarkable contribution
opening a new, numismatic path in mercantile network research. Lakshmi Sub-
ramanians piece on Asian mercantile networks coping mechanisms in the
changing world of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and Gwyn Camp-
bells outline of the structures of Indian Ocean slave trade and its role in the
constitution of Indian Ocean Africa expose globalizing phenomena of Indian
Ocean economy.
The concatenation of these papers dealing primarily with the period between
1500 and 1800 implicitly raises the issue of periodization, as different parts of
the Indian Ocean lend themselves to different chronologies; the application of
terms such as late medieval and early modern requires justication. More-
over, the question of the relationship of the broad period covered by these
papers with that preceding the sixteenth century remains to be fully articulated.
Rays brief but intriguing treatment of coastal forts and the increasing aggres-
sion on sea in that earlier era, for example, or Haiders allusion to Geniza
documents, which in fact do offer remarkable numismatic information for the
pre-1200 period, hint at the ways in which the growing knowledge of an earlier
Indian Ocean world could inect the readers understanding of later trajectories
(66, 188).
Having said that, this volume both exemplies and will further contribute to
the maturation and growing sophistication of Indian Ocean studies. All fourteen
essays (including the introduction by the editors) offer critical literature reviews
and excellent bibliographies, and will thus prove extremely useful to graduate
students, specialists in all subelds of Indian Ocean studies, and historians of
maritime worlds more generally.
Emory University Roxani Eleni Margariti
EUROPE
An Improbable War: The Outbreak of World War I and European Political Culture
before 1914. Edited with an introduction by Holger Aferbach and David Steven-
son. (New York, N.Y.: Berghahn Books, 2007. Pp. xiv, 365. $90.00.)
Led by Holger Aferbach and David Stevenson, eighteen historians from six
countries participated in a conference at Emory University in October 2004. The
goal of the conference was to reappraise how European political culture dealt in
1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. Seeking a fresh historical per-
spective, the participants investigated the degree of probability and inevitability
in the outbreak of the conict (xv). The organizers of the conference hoped to
provide a signicant change in historical perspective by undermining long-held
myths about the war, such as the existence of universal enthusiasm for war
throughout Europe in August 1914 (2). The papers presented at the conference
demonstrate a healthy diversity of methods and a wide range of opinions about
the inevitability of the conict. To use a phrase coined by the editors of the
volume, the contributions show a reality full of ambiguities (8). The editors
nonetheless conclude, after carefully qualifying their comment, that World War I
was not inevitable.
As in any conference, the quality of the contributions differs considerably. Of
the many notable essays in the book, those by Paul W. Schroeder and Samuel R.
Williamson Jr. deserve special note. Schroeders Stealing Horses to Great
Applause is a remarkable synthesis lled with insight from a master historian.
Similarly, Williamsons work demonstrates his great experience and thorough
research on the subject of the Habsburg Monarchy and Austria-Hungary. Other
essays, such as those by Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht on arts and culture before
1914 and by Frederick R. Dickinson on Japans view of the war, offer fresh
insights into subjects not always associated with the outbreak of the war. On the
other side of the coin, the essay by Matthias Schulz raises as many questions as it
answers. His description, for example, of Russias general mobilization as not an
aggressive act and not by any standard a violation of norms suggests an
incomplete understanding of the complexities and dangers of a general mobiliza-
tion (55). Also, Ute Freverts explanation of the role of male honor in the July
crisis seems single-mindedly simplistic.
In the nal analysis, the essays remind the reader of the breadth and depth of
the historical literature and contribute to a more-rounded understanding of the
war. Most of them, however, do not blaze new paths for changes in perspective.
In a fewcases, the interpretations are based on an incomplete understanding of the
events themselves. Aferbachs assertion, for example, about the difculty of
measuring soldiers love of war for wars sake may rest more on a misunder-
standing of the challenges soldiers faced in 1914 than on an inability to glean
objective data (168). The volume thus adds fresh insights to historians under-
standing of World War I, but it does not mark the beginning of a new historical
perspective.
U.S. Military Academy Robert A. Doughty
Politics and the People in Revolutionary Russia: A Provincial History. By Sarah
Badcock. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xviii, 260.
$99.00.)
This authors book is an important addition to the literature on the revolutionary
year 1917 in Russia. Sarah Badcock analyzes power relations and social interac-
tions at the regional and local levels in Nizhegorod and Kazan provinces. Her
study offers new insights into the failure of the liberal and so-called moderate
socialist parties to consolidate the leading position they assumed in the spring and
summer of 1917. She argues that the desires and interests of ordinary people
confounded the expectations of the political elite, who failed to persuade the great
mass of Russias population to accept the elites understanding of the Revolution.
Even though Kazan and Nizhegorod were adjoining provinces in the middle
Volga River valley, Badcock has not written a comparative history of the Russian
Revolution in both jurisdictions. One of her principal points is that the differ-
ences within uezds of each province were often greater than differences between
the two provinces as a whole (3). Eschewing a narrative approach on the
grounds that it might obscure the diverse local contexts, Badcock presents a series
of interlocking studies on how ordinary people experienced the Revolution in
Kazan and Nizhegorod provinces. In successive chapters, she analyzes how revo-
lutionary elites attempted to control revolutionary discourse, the role of the
Socialist Revolutionary Party, the selection of local leaders, educational cam-
paigns designed to bring cultural enlightenment to the population, soldiers and
their wives, struggles over land issues, and disputes over grain supplies. In addi-
tion to local newspapers and memoirs, Badcock utilizes an array of archival
sources from both provinces, especially the records of town dumas and local
soviets and communications between local representative bodies and commissars
at the provincial, uezd, and volost levels. She brings out in rich detail the impor-
tance of local conditions and considerations in shaping power relationships in
1917, particularly in challenging the priorities and power of political elites at the
all-Russian and provincial levels.
Of particular signicance were local hostility to the grain monopoly and
provisions committees, and the way that moderate socialist political elites reacted
to this hostility. Badcock shows that local populations in both grain decit and
grain surplus localities refused to make the sacrices that elite policiesmost
notably Russias continued participation in World War Ientailed. They also
rejected efforts by the elite to educate them to embrace elite viewpoints. The
moderate socialist elites, unable to accept the notion that popular resistance to
their policies reected rational understanding of local interests, reverted to prer-
evolutionary stereotypes of the ignorant and uncultured dark people. Yet the
very decentralization and democratization that the Provisional Government and
the Soviets championed made it impossible for them to force obedience on
recalcitrant localities.
Badcocks book is a welcome addition to the still relatively small number of
studies that have focused on the Russian Revolution outside St. Petersburg and
Moscow. It also effectively challenges students to rethink the interpretations based
on the views of the political elites. It is essential reading for all specialists on the
Revolution, though its high price will probably discourage most of them from
purchasing it.
Ursinus College Richard D. King
Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. By Joan Breton Connelly.
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xv, 415. $39.50.)
Occupying the rich scholarly intersection of the elds of Greek religion and gender
studies, the author aims to reclaim the prominent role of the Greek priestess,
which has, until recently, been ignored by modern commentators (2). To do so
properly, according to Joan Breton Connelly, the full range of available evidence
must be exploited and archaeological material in particular must be considered
independently from the prejudices that privileged texts promote (275).
Connelly uses a selection of illustrative examples spanning the temporal and
spatial limits of the ancient Greek Mediterranean, on which basis she narrates the
full range of social, economic, and political possibilities available to female cult
ofcialsa description of the books subject matter that is more accurate, but
less rhetorically effective, than the priestess of the title. What emerges from the
fragments of adolescent and adult womens lives assembled here (over 150 of
whomcan be named and are usefully listed in an index) is that service within a cult
conveyed considerable prestige, which could allow the female ofcial to become
inuential in a variety of environments outside of the sanctuary, including the
highly visible, public realm of politics. Such an interpretation contrasts strongly
with traditional historiographies, which have tended to recognize agency for
Greek women in domestic and religious contexts alone. In individual chapters,
Connelly considers the many conspicuous roles of women in Greek cults between
youth and old age, what these cult ofcials did within the sanctuary and during
public festivals, and, ultimately, how these actions translated into broader social
and political agency. In the concluding chapter, Connelly discusses the different
status of women within the Christian church. Along the way, she weighs in on a
number of thorny problems that have vexed earlier generations of scholars,
including, for example, whether or not women could handle sacricial meat or
attend the theater (211213).
The prose is crisp throughout the work; the authors discussions are thorough
and persuasive in the main, although she occasionally generalizes from evidence
that need not be especially representativea risk run by all synchronic, thematic
studies of Greek religion. And, for all of the many inspired readings of archaeo-
logical evidence on display throughout, it is frustrating to see Connellys argu-
ments so often weighted down by uncertainty about what is actually depicted in
any given image. Connellys argument is weakest in its treatments of literary texts
as they are often indifferent to genre and simply assume that the texts mean what
they say.
The work is equipped with an outstanding collection of images. It is well edited
on the whole, although there are errors in nearly every passage of Greek that is
quoted. Most of these are benign, some less so; the Menophila inscription in
particular as presented is a mess, and one may wonder about the wisdom of
printing so much Greek when the author has so little to say about it (252).
Connellys book can be recommended to a wide range of potential audiences,
especially those teaching on the subject of Greek religion or gender in antiquity,
and their students. Scholars of the classical world more broadly will also take
much from it.
University of Tennessee Denver Graninger
Churchill and His Generals. By Raymond Callahan. (Lawrence, Kans.: University
Press of Kansas, 2007. Pp. x, 310. $34.95.)
Tensions between political and military leaders are almost inevitable in wartime,
but Churchills appointment as prime minister in 1940 marked the beginning of a
period of exceptional stress and strain. Churchill believed that his long experience
of warfare gave him a special insight into military affairs and the right to direct
both strategy and operations. Churchills minutes, cables and conversations,
writes Raymond Callahan, were full of criticism of British generalship. That
criticism . . . was repeated in his memoirs, a work that still shapes the popular
history of the war in the English-speaking world (3). The generals and their
defenders retorted that Churchills military leadership was awed by ignorance
of military realities, an overaggressive temperament, and dangerously erratic
judgments.
These arguments have been in circulation for half a century, but Callahan is the
rst historian to attempt a comprehensive and scholarly account of the relations
between Churchill and his generals. He modestly describes it as a work of synthesis.
It is indeed based mainly on printed sources, and the author acknowledges the debt
he owes to the groundbreaking work of historians like David French and Timothy
Harrison Place on the institutional development of the army. This is, nevertheless,
a deeply thoughtful and original work and a landmark in Churchill studies.
Callahan is no partisan for Churchill or the generals. His primary aim is to
understand the views and actions of all the leading gures and the contexts in
which they were operating. This is a complex exercise, involving biographical,
political, and strategic considerations; narratives of battles and campaigns; and
questions of equipment, training, and doctrine. No short review can do justice to
a many-sided analysis, but some conclusions stand out. One is the overwhelming
importance of the political pressures on Churchill between 1940 and 1942.
Almost from the start, he had staked his premiership and the prestige of British
arms on the outcome of the war in the desert. Hence his restless prodding of the
generals and his attempts to direct operations from Whitehall. As Callahan
explains, however, he failed to appreciate that the army in North Africa was too
poorly trained and equipped to serve his purpose. First Wavell then Auchinleck
were dismissed for alleged shortcomings of which they were largely, though not
wholly, innocent: they too had their limitations. In the end it was not so much the
generalship of Montgomery as the reorganization and reequipment of the army
that gave Churchill the victory he so badly needed.
After this, Churchills relations with the soldiers changed. With ultimate
victory in sight, he was happy to give them a freer rein and spent much of the
second half of the war championing the interests of the British generals against the
Americans. As Callahan shows, the war in the Far East was a very different story
characterized by Churchills almost continuous neglect. He took no interest in the
reconquest of Burma and knew little of the extraordinary achievements of William
Slim, the commander of the Fourteenth Army. For this Callahan is inclined to
censure Churchill, but would it have beneted Slim to have the prime minister
peering over his shoulder? Churchill, furthermore, regarded the Burma campaign
as strategically irrelevant to the war against Japan. Was he mistaken? Although it
is not a conclusion that Callahan himself draws, his account suggests that
although Churchill was often wrong about the nuts and bolts, he was usually right
about the big picture.
University of Edinburgh Paul Addison
Conspiracy in the French Revolution. Edited by Peter R. Campbell, Thomas E. Kaiser,
and Marisa Linton. (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2007. Pp.
xi, 222. $74.95.)
This collection of nine essays examines the fear of conspiracy that prevailed
throughout the French Revolution. The authors (six from the U.K. and three from
the U.S.) represent a solid body of recent scholarly work, mainly since 2000. The
authors short chapters focus tightly on different chronological stages of con-
spiracy fears, beginning with prerevolutionary perceptions of the factions at court
and culminating with a chapter on Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals. In the
essays, the authors include theoretical discussion and historical examples, with the
latter being particularly rich and useful.
The obsession with secret activities directed against the public good offered a
way for revolutionary thinking to explain the unexplainable. Food shortages
meant a famine plot; military setbacks meant an Austrian plot; counterrevolu-
tionary activities meant a foreign plot. This psychological perception often rested
on concrete experience, as in the genuine public fear of royal troops in the July
crisis of 1789. Barry Shapiro argues that the memory of the July experience
produced a lasting suspicion of royal conspiracy that inuenced the constitutional
decision for complete separation of executive and legislative powers and foiled the
ministerial role that Mirabeau hoped to play. In his essay, John Hardman builds
on the same July experience to argue for a persistent suspicion of royal conspiracy
despite the possibility that the troops may have been intended for defensive
purposes and despite the evidence that the later ight to Varennes may not have
been an effort to ee the country but rather to occupy a safe location (Montmdy)
from which to negotiate a modication of the constitution. Conspiracy fears
overrode any such interpretation of events. Jill Walshaw examines the conspiracy
explanation as applied to peasants brought to trial on charges of subversive
language. Such language could not reect the genuine attitudes of good French
peasants but instead must indicate the inuence of clerical or noble conspirators.
With this interpretation, revolutionary leaders refused to acknowledge that the
countryside might harbor the presence of a critical public opinion (122).
Marisa Linton argues that such denial was not possible within the ranks of
Republican politicians, where the assassination of Marat provided the concrete
act that fed the fear; and Girondins, Hbertists, and Dantonists each in turn faced
the fatal charge of conspiracy.
The introductory essay by Peter Campbell and the concluding essay by
Thomas Kaiser frame the entire collection well. Campbell looks closely at
eighteenth-century denitions of conspiracy, and Kaiser looks broadly at the
ironic moments when the revolutionaries themselves justied conspiratorial
tactics as necessary for revolutionary progress, whether in the early Society of
Thirty or in the later coup of Brumaire. In the case of the Terror and the aftermath
of Brumaire, Kaiser suggests that the revolutionaries came to realize that con-
spiracy was an inescapable and ongoing consequence of the Revolution itself,
precluding the possibility of stability. In that sense, the Revolution might never be
over, a fact that justied the continuing revolutionary exercise of power.
Armstrong Atlantic State University Janet D. Stone
Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942. By Robert M. Citino.
(Lawrence, Kans.: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Pp. xiv, 431. $34.95.)
This book is a winner across the board. It completes the authors four-volume
oeuvre on modern mobile warfare, and is the best of them in terms of scholarship,
conceptualization, and presentation. Foremost among the works many positive
qualities is its success in laying to rest the long-standing Blitzkrieg question.
Robert M. Citinos concept of Bewegungskrieg (mobile war), elegantly dened
and convincingly demonstrated, should become the new benchmark for analysis.
Citinos thesis that Germanys traditional way of war was systemically over-
strained by the invasion of Russia is best argued from the military side. Frederick
the Greats strategic approach involved decisively defeating an enemy, and then
negotiating a permanent settlement. The nineteenth-century Moltke/Bismarck
synergy reected a similar paradigm. The problem in World War II was that no
negotiating element at policy levels existed. The Wehrmacht was thereby com-
pelled to wage the kind of forever war its own history and doctrine considered
unwinnable.
The only chance of victory was at the operational level, and Death of the
Wehrmacht conrms Citinos place among the masters of operational history.
Citinos clarity and perception, his understanding of the operational level of war,
informs this work from rst page to last. Even good treatments of operational
history too often become recitals of troop movements in the fashion of a staff
document. Not this one. Citinos synergy of the desert war and the Russian
campaign of 1942 is a masterful exercise in cross-fertilization. His specic
accounts of the Crimean and Caucasus operations ll two signicant gaps in
English-language literature. His overall treatment of the years operations in
Russia is fully level with the best of David Glantzs work from the Soviet
perspective.
Citino integrates the mid-World War II experience with the German armys
institutional and personal history in a way few authors bother to attempt. Most
conceptual work in German military history concentrates on intellectuals, staff
ofcers like Clausewitz and Schlieffen. Citino establishes the importance of com-
manders: Rommel, Hoth, Kleist, and less familiar midlevel gures like Panzer
Commander Eberhard von Mackensen. His perspective is especially signicant
because the synergy between German generals and their chiefs of staff, developed
between 1806 and 1918, did not really exist in World War II. The general staff
system had not been comprehensively restored in the contexts of expansion and
Nazication. Wartime staff ofcers, especially at unit levels, functioned more on
the French or American model, emphasizing operational planning and adminis-
trative housekeeping. That in turn signicantly enhanced commanders positions
and authority, reinforcing the operational emphasis the Third Reichs policy and
strategy demanded.
Citino establishes El Alamein and Stalingrad as turning points of World War II
not in the context of battle, but by demonstrating that they marked the upper
limits of operational art. They marked the end of a way of war as an art form
based on movement, encirclement, and independent command. The Wehrmacht
came close but fell short. Management, broadly dened, would become the new
mode of war making and continuous battle wars new format, at least through the
Cold War.
Colorado College Dennis Showalter
Looking at Laughter: Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100
B.C.A.D. 250. By John R. Clarke. (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
2007. Pp. xi, 321. $55.00.)
The author of this study takes on a big, intractable, and difcult subject in his
latest book. What makes people laugh does not translate easily, and the subject of
the humor of ancient civilizations requires sensitivity, tact, and caution from
scholars. John R. Clarke is surely correct to point out that previous generations of
scholars tended to take the Romans too seriously, no matter how provocative or
irreverent the grafto or wall carving under scrutiny. The temptation to overana-
lyze, to draw on the artillery of classical knowledge in mythology or literature is
an academic handicap, given the traditional emphasis of the eld of classical
archaeology on textual sources and the achievements of elites. Images of frisky
pygmies, disembodied phalluses, and lampooned heroes, once considered mar-
ginal in Roman art, are now brought center-stage. One of the delights of this book
is the sheer amount of attention to these works that have not t into the more
conventional histories of Roman art. Another is the illustrative materialthe
color plates, line drawings, and house plansthat enhances the text. Clearly
written and carefully explicated, the book is suitable for students and nonspecial-
ists, as well as for art historians and classicists.
This book proceeds from the authors interest in the art of Romans of the lower
social orders and, in particular, his study of the painted interiors of Pompeian
houses, inns, and shops. In other words, the social lens is focused on matters of
everyday life rather than on the view from the top. Visual representations of
humor are the subject of this book, and images most often without captions or
verbal cures are tricky to interpret. Clarkes method (and he is explicit about
method) relies on reconstructing a context for the image that is both site-specic
and social in terms of considering the viewers and their responses to it. Archae-
ology is crucial in giving a sense of the physical setting of the image and indicating
who would have seen it. Clarke is nimble in providing multiple readings of images
that have deed interpretation from more polite (or repressed) commentators.
With this he reanimates the barren ruins with their appropriate social set but risks
atomizing the works meanings according to the various subjects social positions
(elite male, working freedwoman, slave, etc.) in line with our notions of identity
politics.
The subtitle reveals how humor is delineated in the book. If some of the images
appear erce or threatening (and, therefore, not so funny to some readers), it is
because the humor of the double-take and the put-down are the preferred forms
here. A quick ip through the book indicates that the sexual or scatological body
is prominent, and the humor is pointed at targeting aws or deating pretensions.
Clarke prefaces the volume with a look at theories of humor and its role in
maintaining the social order. It is to his credit that he allows the tensions and
complexities of the images to emerge in the discussions that follow.
Vassar College Eve DAmbra
The Limits of Loyalty: Imperial Symbolism, Popular Allegiances and State Patriotism
in the Late Habsburg Monarchy. Edited by Laurence Cole and Daniel Unowsky.
(New York, N.Y.: Berghahn Books, 2007. Pp. x, 246. $90.00.)
The Habsburg monarchy, according to the old textbook standard, was a political
archaism too brittle to withstand the centrifugal power of ethnic nationalism. The
repressions of 1849 and the empires reconstitution as Austria-Hungary in 1867
were only able to extend the monarchy by little more than one reign, Franz
Josephs [18481916]. In 1929 Oscar Jszi upended this account by emphasizing
centripetal effects of the church, the imperial bureaucracy, and the army. These
essays analyze the monarchy as a cultural institution, the object of memory and
symbolic contestation. If there is a unifying thesis, it is that imperial and ethnic
loyalties were not always opposed; rather, the empire survived by fusing particu-
laristic loyalties with a cult of the house of Habsburg.
This was, in part, by design. As Ernst Bruckmller shows, history textbooks
remembered and forgot the past selectively, the better to encourage ethnic iden-
tication with the imperial dynasty: schoolchildren learned their respective
national myths, but stories that disrupted narratives of Austrian state formation
were avoided studiously. Thus Italian pupils learned nothing about the Risorgi-
mento. Similarly, Laurence Coles study of state-sponsored veterans associations
in Trentino/Tirol shows how their involvement in rituals and festivities that
celebrated the imperial house blunted the edge of philo-Italian irredentism.
None of this meant that imperial patriotism was a top-down imposition,
however. This emerges from six essays that analyze the politics surrounding the
imperial cult. Nancy Wingeld and Daniel Unowsky, for example, show how
different groups appropriated the memory of Emperor Joseph II from below.
Czech liberals emphasized his efforts at economic modernization, but ignored
what their neighbors recalled as his efforts to promote the empires German-
ness. Jews and Uniate Ruthenians celebrated his edicts of religious toleration, to
the frustration of Polish democrats. Living royalty, too, had to contend with such
contested appropriation. Hugh Agnew shows how, on his visits to Bohemia, Franz
Joseph tried to balance the symbols of Czech and German imperial patriotism. In
Prague and, as Sarah Kent shows, in Zagreb, conict centered on ags: during
Franz Josephs visit to Croatia in 1895, students showed their patriotism by
burning the Hungarian colors. In Hungary itself, Alice Freifeld shows, Empress
Elizabeth (Sissi) became the focus of identication with the house of
Habsburgand not, pointedly, her husband. Contradictory identications even
plagued individuals, as Alon Rachamimov shows in his study of the Hebrew-
language poet Avigdor Hamieri.
The parallels to other European monarchies are striking. In neighboring
Germany, too, imperial patriotism functioned most effectively as a metaphor for
particularlistic, local identities. Also common to both countries and Britain, as
Christiane Wolf shows in her concluding essay, was the novelty of imperial
pageantry, which propounded a symbolic link between state and monarch that
enhanced the prestige of Franz Joseph no less than that of Queen Victoria or the
Kaiser. The cumulative effect of these essays, however, is to highlight difference: in
no other European society was the legitimacy of monarchy so heavily contingent
on so much local, ethnic contestation. The editors are right to stress the limits of
loyalty.
University of Oregon David M. Luebke
Never Will We Forget: Oral Histories of World War II. By Marilyn Mayer Culpepper.
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security International, 2008. Pp. xi, 318. $44.95.)
At the outset of this book, the reader understands immediately that the author is
hoping to ll in the gaps left by other histories of World War II, most notably what
she calls the personal side of war (ix). After sifting through oral histories of over
four hundred Americans who lived through the war years, the author seeks to
provide a more intimate account of the war and the experiences of those who lived
through those difcult times. Never Will We Forget is an anecdotal look at the
war, and one that gives a general sense of the myriad facets of the conict through
reminiscences, rather than a blow-by-blow account of World War II.
At rst look, the title of the book brings to mind Studs Terkels Pulitzer
Prize-winning bestseller, The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, but
Marilyn Mayer Culpepper utilizes a much different approach with her sources.
Where Terkel let his interviewees do most of the talking in his book, Culpepper
looks to integrate oral histories into her own narrative, preferring to provide the
majority of the explanation herself instead of offering longer excerpts from
interviews. In doing so, readers will not get the same depth of description and
personality of Terkels book, but Culpepper does cover a wide variety of topics in
a relatively short space. Few of the major events of World War II pass without
intriguing personal accounts, and the author is as interested in experiences on the
home front or in POW camps as she is in the storming of the beaches at
Normandy or the battle for Iwo Jima.
It is this diversity of topics that is the strength of Never Will We Forget.
Culpepper dedicates entire chapters to interesting subjects such as Luck, Fate,
Providence, and Guardian Angels, which contains story upon story of unlikely
survival, and The Softer Side of War, which includes anecdotes that remind the
reader that even in the midst of tragedy there were many moments of camaraderie
and joy. In addition, the book has three chapters on experiences after the cessation
of hostilities, often ignored in histories of the war, but crucial to understanding the
wartime era. Added to the chapters that the author devotes to ghting in Europe
and Asia, readers get a broad overview of the war as told by those who experi-
enced it.
Occasionally, Culpeppers desire to narrate her interviewees stories leads her
to make dramatic comments (often times punctuated with exclamation points),
such as Ah, sweet revenge! after relating a fascinating story of a POW dentists
efforts to extract some payback from his Japanese patients/captors (133). Culpep-
pers material is powerful enough that these additions seem forced and unneces-
sary. Still, if readers enjoy learning their history from personal stories and
interesting vignettes, Never Will We Forget provides a nice introduction to the
American experience during World War II.
Rhodes College Robert Francis Saxe
Cataclysms: A History of the Twentieth Century from Europes Edge. By Dan Diner.
Translated by William Templer with Joel Golb. (Madison, Wis.: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2008. Pp. 323. $35.00.)
The author of this study offers another in a growing list of postmortem analyses
of the late, little lamented, twentieth century. The book is an extended reection
on the course and nature of twentieth-century European history, interspersed with
narratives of signicant events that illustrate the authors assertions. In the some-
what dense introductory chapter, Dan Diner develops a theoretical framework for
understanding the previous century. According to Diner, twentieth-century history
unfolded as a complex intermeshing of long-term and short-term contingencies
(6).
These contingencies are symbolized by double interpretive axes, with the
vertical axis representing universal values and overarching ideologies, intersected
by a horizontal axis representing particular circumstances, especially issues of
traditional geopolitics and nationalism. This interpretive scheme allows Diner to
consider questions of how and why the events of the century occurred. In simple
terms, his analyses question whether such cataclysms as the revolutions and
wars of the period occurred as responses to traditional circumstancesthe kind of
factors (like balance of power and national interests) that occasioned earlier
conicts in previous centuriesor represented a new force in world politics, a
universal civil war of values that featured a struggle between the twin Enlight-
enment values of freedom (Britain and the U.S.) and equality (the Soviet Union).
In the course of his meditations, Diner proposes to consider these issues in the
context of Europes edges, especially eastern Europe (Poland) and the Balkans.
For Diner, the interplay of events is best reected on this geographical periphery.
Diners theoretical musings are interspersed with historical narratives, focusing
on four major developments between 1917 and 1989the Russian Revolution,
the rise of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes in Europe between the wars, the
Holocaust, and the Cold War. Though his insights are thought-provoking, his
interpretive framework breaks down in the course of the narratives. Diner is
forced to admit that, with the major exception of the Cold War, most of the events
of the twentieth century were not the result of a universal civil war of values but
the product of traditional political circumstances, especially the inuence of
nationalism. Even so, he insists on a structural approach to understanding world
history, suggesting that individuals (like Hitler and Stalin) had less inuence than
social, political, and economic conditions. The result is an interesting but awed
book. Diners theoretical constructs, which he spends so much time explaining in
the rst chapter, by his own admission do not hold as explanations for events. He
would have been better served by extending his narrative analyses (including a
fascinating comparison between Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism, which posits a
qualitative and intentional difference to the detriment of the German regime) and
letting the events of the century speak for themselves.
The dense prose style of the English translation also detracts from the acces-
sibility of the work. Established scholars and graduate students of the twentieth
century might prot from some of the insights of this book, which is not recom-
mended for general audiences or undergraduates.
Rockhurst University Richard J. Janet
Terra Australis Incognita: The Spanish Quest for the Mysterious Great South Land. By
Miriam Estensen. (Crows Nest, New South Wales, Australia: Allen & Unwin,
2006. Pp. xiv, 274. $24.95.)
In her new book, the author recounts the Pacic expeditions undertaken by the
Spanish navigators Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa and Alvaro de Mendaa [1567
1569], Mendaa and Pedro Fernandez de Quirs [15951596], and Quirs and
Luis Vez de Torres [16051616]. The descriptive summary on the books dust
jacket states that this work focuses new light on the Spanish voyages of discovery
that sailed from South America into the unknown southwestern Pacic in the late
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, while telling a story of passionate
beliefs, of high hopes and catastrophic failures, of violent confrontations and
tentative friendships with indigenous people, of a erce clash of cultures, and
relentless ambition . . . Romantic hyperbole aside, the book is simply a historical
narrative of the three expeditions, written clearly and in detail, that bring into
focus for a popular audience the expeditions in a way that has rarely been done
before.
In that capacity, the author offers a good introduction to the subject for
students of the Age of Discovery and maritime exploration, as well as an inter-
esting account of the experiences of some of those men that [went] down to the
sea in ships in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. But the book
only whets the appetite. Miriam Estensen offers little by way of historical context,
noting only Spains controversy with Portugal over the demarcation of the globe
into separate spheres awarded to the rival kingdoms and the possible implications
of Francis Drakes famous circumnavigation as a stimulus for Mendaas second
voyage. Neither does the author provide much by way of real analysis or inter-
pretation. To be sure, she describes at some length the relations, often hostile,
between the Spanish voyagers and the island peoples they encountered, but apart
from some speculation about the source of the cultural clashes between them, it
never crosses the authors mind to explore why it was that the Spanish newcomers
thought nothing of claiming islands as their own that were already inhabited by
relatively sophisticated peoples, what they actually understood about the cultures
described in the surviving accounts of the three voyages, and what evidence can be
derived from these written records to give insight from the native perspective on
the reasons for their frequent hostility to the strange white men from across the
seas.
Even as a historical narrative, however, the book has value because it examines
a series of voyages too often overlooked in the literature of the Age of Discovery.
For various reasons, most historians of Pacic exploration tend to skip directly
from the circumnavigations of Magellan and Drake to the professional expedi-
tions of Cook, Bougainville, and Malaspina in the late eighteenth century. Con-
sequently, any bookpopular or academicabout the neglected voyages of
Spain into the Pacic is welcome.
University of West Georgia Ronald S. Love
The Socialist Response to Antisemitism in Imperial Germany. By Lars Fischer. (New
York, N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xix, 252. $80.00.)
In Imperial Germany, anti-Semitism crossed social and political boundaries and
became a pervasive cultural code. Self-avowed political anti-Semites and their
opponents often subscribed to the same anti-Semitic stereotypes. Anti-Semitic
and anti-anti-Semitic positions, Lars Fischer argues, were . . . largely identical
both in terms of what they actually identied as Jewish and even in their
evaluation of many phenomena they assumed under this label (13). Socialists
believed that the Jewish Question would inevitably be solved by a social
revolution. Succumbing to the ideal of a world without Jews, however, made them
share the responsibility for rendering German society susceptible to Nazi anti-
Semitism and preparing the ideological seedbed from which the Shoah could
grow as the author concludes in his deftly documented study (228).
This bleak assessment is evinced by Fischers erudite and detailed study of key
socialist intellectuals, who are placed within the wider cultural currency of anti-
Semitic politics and culture in Imperial Germany. His dense interpretation of
canonical texts, like Karl Marxs Zur Judenfrage, and his probing investigation
of leading Social Democrats, like Franz Mehring, Eduard Bernstein, August
Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Karl Kautsky, and Rosa Luxemburg, aptly illumi-
nate the discursive patterns and tropes socialists shared with many of their
political opponents. The antimodern and anticapitalist core of modern anti-
Semitism often easily conjoined with the socialist critique of the modern capi-
talist society. To be sure, socialists disapproved of anti-Semitic political parties
and several party leaders indeed attacked anti-Semitism. Yet whatever individual
socialists opposition to anti-Semitism, Fischer argues, it had less to do with a
genuine opposition and more with wider political concerns. Socialist opposition
to anti-Semitism therefore appears as little more than a barely discernable
trickle (17).
Many socialist leaders in Germany believed that those who were unwilling to
acknowledge the importance of Jews in the capitalist economy were as guilty of
distortion as those who blamed societys ills on Jews. Critiquing Jews often
appeared as only dissecting philo-Semitism, not as attacking Jews themselves,
Fischer repeatedly notes. Established stereotypes easily spilled into the assessment
of anti-Semitism and into debates about the collaboration with nonsocialist
papers. This is clearly the case in the sometime strange and deranged attack on the
Dreyfusards by Wilhelm Liebknecht and the erce frontal attack by August Bebel
on the publisher Maximilian Harden.
Along with Sulamith Volkov, Fischer therefore believes that notwithstanding
the critical opposition to political anti-Semitism, socialists employment of cul-
tural anti-Semitism contributed greatly to the transmission of anti-Semitism from
Imperial Germany to the Weimar period. Socialism helped more often to consoli-
date than subvert widely shared assumptions about the Jews. Dismayed with
this record, Fischer takes them to task and leaves the reader with Rosa Luxem-
berg, who stands out as an exception with her penetrating analysis of anti-
Semitism that breaks through the conceptual confusion of the kernel-of-truth
approach employed by many socialists. Fischers slightly taxing and confusingly
arranged elaboration provides a perceptive and fresh view on socialists and their
responses to anti-Semitism. It is a very welcome contribution to the vital, still
haunting, and unresolved legacy within socialism.
University of Texas at Dallas Nils Roemer
Mussolini and his Generals: The Armed Forces and Fascist Foreign Policy, 19221940.
By John Gooch. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. ix,
651. $35.00.)
Some leaders bluff their way through the diplomatic thicket and, through gull-
ibility, stupidity, or a desire to believe, other nations accept their exaggerated
estimates. When they do, bad things eventually happen. Leaving aside Saddam
Hussein and the bizarre American effort at state building in Iraq, Benito Mussolini
was a perfect example of the statesman as supreme con artist. He projected an
image of Italy as a rst-rate power that would eventually displace France and
Britain from their control of the Mediterranean Sea, when, in fact, he had a
military force that could defeat Ethiopia and grab Albania but performed badly in
Spain, was thrashed by Greece in late 1940, and was soundly defeated by Britain
in North Africa in 19401941. In his masterful and highly detailed study of Italian
diplomacy and military power under fascism, John Gooch examines year by year
and in great detail the interaction between Il Duces foreign policy goalsfrom
1922 to Italys entry into the Second World War in 1940and the response of the
army, navy, and air force as they sought to accommodate Mussolinis ever evolv-
ing ambitions. Gooch makes it clear that Fascist Italy was bent on war and was,
for most of this period, fundamentally opposed to France, Great Britain, and
Yugoslavia, although Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the chief of the general staff and
the man in charge of coordinating military strategy, was far more comfortable
with France than with Nazi Germany.
Gooch makes it clear that Italy lagged in almost every category when compared
to its designated rivals, England and France. When Fascist Italy reached the late
1930s, the British naval rearmament program dwarfed all Italian efforts. In fact,
the riskier Italian policy became, the wider the gap between Italian objectives and
the means at hand to achieve them, and this covered all three services: land, sea,
and air. Mussolini, who held the three military ministries from 19321933 to the
end of the regime, seemed on paper to have more control than Adolf Hitler, but,
in fact, this was far from the case. The Italian army never modernized; its values
remained those of the First World War. Gooch shows that Il Duce missed his great
opportunity to break the hold of traditionalism around 19241925, but he was
bogged down by the crisis that ensued after the murder of the Socialist deputy
Giacomo Matteotti and failed to back his own War minister Antonino Di Giorgio
when the latter met resistance from the military hierarchy. Compromise with the
old establishment was a hallmark of the regime but it proved to be quite costly
when dealing with the military leadership. Military inferiority in terms of planning
and equipment was disastrous for a regime that was determined to engage in
endless warfare.
Mussolini and his Generals is at once a history of Italian foreign policy and its
military strategy. It is the denitive work in English on this subject.
North Carolina State University Alexander De Grand
The Notables and the Nation: The Political Schooling of the French, 17871788. By
Vivian R. Gruder. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. x, 495.
$59.95.)
This study takes its place in a long historiography, in both English and French, on
the subject of the origins of the French Revolution. As its title indicates, the scope
of the work is the two years prior to the summoning of the Estates-General, which
precipitated the French Revolution of 1789. This narrow focus is evidence of the
highly specialized state of research in the eld of Revolutionary France. The main
inspiration for the work, as stated in the introductory chapter and referred to
several times throughout the book, is Jean Egrets La Pr-Rvolution franaise
(17871788) [1962]. Vivian R. Gruder builds on Egrets thesis that the way to the
Revolution was paved in the two years prior to 1789 but departs from the
interpretation of Egret and others that what took place during that time was
merely the nobilitys efforts to preserve its privileges, or an aristocratic revolt
against the Crown.
The main thrust of Gruders book is to show that during those two fateful
years, the political consciousness of ordinary people in the ancien rgime was
awakened. This awakening was brought about by the nobility itself in the First
and Second Assemblies of Notables summoned by Louis XIV, which met from
February to May 1787 and from November to December 1788, respectively.
Whereas the general reader is more likely to be familiar with the Second Assembly,
summoned by the Crown to deliberate on matters of voting and representation in
the Estates-General, which was set to open in May 1789, Gruder instead places
greater emphasis on the First Assembly in part one of the book. She draws the
readers attention to the fact that in the First Assembly, the Notables were willing
to give up their tax exemptions as they put forth their own tax proposals in
response to those of the Crown. She argues that what the Notables sought was the
protection of property and political participation, not the perpetuation of their
traditional privilege, and that under cover of nancial objectives . . . their efforts
added up to a program whose effect would be to transform the structure of
government and transfer power in the state (36, 44). These demands garnered
public sympathy for the Notables in opposition to the Crown until the Second
Assembly, when the Notables inadvertently shifted the issue from the relationship
between the Crown and the nation to the relations of power among the nations
social groups by insisting on voting by order as opposed to voting by head in the
upcoming Estates-General (73).
Parts two and three, the bulk of the monograph, are a detailed and well-
documented discussion of the various means by which political ideas were trans-
mitted in pre-Revolutionary France. Seven out of the ten chapters in these two
sections are devoted to various print and manuscript media, their political posi-
tions, and their possible readership. One chapter mentions the role of ftes in the
making of political statements, and one chapter addresses the issue of how
peasants might have been part of the political discourse despite their illiteracy or
semiliteracy and geographical isolation. In effect, these chapters show that the
careful distinction the author makes between the First and the Second Assemblies
of Notables matters, that the political revolution of the Notables did translate
into the political schooling of the French nation. The nal chapter on the
deliberations of local judges and community assemblies both clinches the argu-
ment of the book that ordinary Frenchmen were becoming politicized and shows
its limitations. On the one hand, it illustrates political awakening outside the
capital; on the other hand, the author admits, among the grass roots we nd a
local elite considered notable in the late ancien rgime (326).
Hope College Gloria S. Tseng
The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London. By
Barbara A. Hanawalt. (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv,
317. $19.95.)
The author of this study demonstrates what a good historical monograph can be.
Scrupulously researched, carefully argued, and deftly written, The Wealth of
Wives will be of value to a wide range of students. As well as those interested in
late medieval England generally, urban, gender, and economic historians will
benet from it. This reviewer would particularly recommend it to students curious
about the rise of capitalism. The book includes a very helpful introduction and
conclusion in which Barbara A. Hanawalt clearly articulates and recapitulates her
nuanced thesis. Her commendable endnotes, which provide a rich conversation
with recent researchers, should also be noted.
Hanawalt examines womens impact on the changing economy and society of
late medieval London, not as laborers and entrepreneurs, but, as she deems them,
conduits of capital (208). Women transmitted wealth, particularly through
marriage and remarriage. She argues that the circulation of wealth, talent, and
service through women contributed to capital formation in late medieval
London . . . (4). In rich discussions about inheritance, dower, and dowry,
Hanawalt shows that London law gave women the custodianship and sometimes
the control over large amounts of wealth in terms of real property and cash, and
that despite obvious cultural misogyny, London law tried to treat the daughters
and sons of their citizens equally in terms of inheritance and legal protections
(51, 34).
In featuring this line of inquiry, Hanawalt historicizes medieval women. Con-
spicuously not seeking out early feminists in medieval London, she contextu-
alizes their activity within patriarchal structures (vii). Rather than a narrative of
males constraining women, Hanawalt indicates womens agency by looking at
the ways in which women learned either to manipulate male dominance or
became pliant in accommodating the prevalent social mores (12). Of course her
history includes and indicates class considerations.
An insightful thematic correlative to this argument centers on what Hanawalt
terms a constrained or self-limiting patriarchy (12). London men rationalized
this patriarchal tradition during these years. They chose to keep capital and real
estate liquid . . . rather than emphasizing the establishment of patrilineal, vertical
descent (209). And they institutionalized this modication by using women, by
passing wealth through women to men of their own social status (209).
Complementarily, laws constrained mens power by protecting mens women
from other mens predations. This resulted in a horizontal social structure that
privileged the value of the conjugal family and increased the importance of the
London guild system as members worked to circulate their wealth among them-
selves by fostering internal remarriages.
In another nuanced discussion, Hanawalt argues against those who describe a
golden-age of opportunity for women in postplague England. Rather, she sees
at best a continuity of opportunities, and probably a decline by the end of the
fteenth century as the rationalizing patriarchy closed whatever benets may have
accrued to women as a result of demographic phenomena. In two rewarding
chapters (seven and eight) on womens standard of living and on women as
entrepreneurs, she convincingly makes these arguments and concludes by
asserting that by the sixteenth century women played little part in business, trade,
or estate markets, and very few women acted as femmes soles in crafts or trade.
Babson College Stephen L. Collins
Constantinople: Capital of Byzantium. By Jonathan Harris. (London, England: Con-
tinuum, 2007. Pp. xvii, 289. $27.95.)
It is a difcult and ungrateful task to compress 1,100 years of history into a short,
comprehensive account destined for the general reader with little knowledge of the
Byzantine empire. Jonathan Harriss take on this is to concentrate on this elusive
empires capital and more specically on its monuments and the myths that
developed around them during their long existence. These myths and legends,
according to the author, were clearly extremely important to the minds not only
of medieval visitors to Constantinople but also of the Byzantines themselves
whose leaders assiduously cultivated them (2). For convenience, as he states, the
chronological focus is the year 1200; no further explanation is given as to why this
year was chosen, nor does this turn out to be particularly signicant for the books
overall outcome (3).
In two hundred pages, Jonathan Harris delivers an eclectic overview of the
history of the city structured around thematic chapters on the key gures of the
urban development of Constantinople; the citys defenses, palaces, churches, and
monasteries; its sources of wealth; and the social condition of its inhabitants. Here
the text is composed around associations that suggest lectures or a guided visit by
a very learned and eloquent guide. When describing the chapel of the Virgin of
Pharos, the imperial chapel in which a number of the most important relics in the
city were housed, for example, the author discusses two sections of the True Cross
of Christ held there and takes readers from Helena, the mother of Constantine the
Great, who brought the rst fragment to the city in the early fourth century, to
Heraclius, who restored the True Cross taken by the Persians in 614 from
Jerusalem to Ctesiphon back to Jerusalem in 630 and then had another fragment
removed to Constantinople some years later (65).
In the penultimate chapter, Harris breaks with this narratives trait and offers
a more detailed, chronological account of the turbulent closing years of the
twelfth century leading up to the trauma of the sack of Constantinople by the
armies of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. This is a gripping read and a vastly
enjoyable section that will appeal to all those interested in these events. In the last
chapter, he deals with the period after 1200 and becomes again more detailed
when describing the fall of Constantinople in May 1453 and the end of the
empire. A very useful epilogue provides information on the latest archaeological
nds in the city (for example the spectacular nd of a harbor discovered during
works for a new metro station at Yenikapi) and offers a quick guide as to where
to nd most of the important monuments discussed in the book (193205).
This work does justice to the long and often turbulent history of Constanti-
nople. Harris has drawn material from a wide variety of sources (passages of
which are found throughout the text) to produce a readable, informed, and
informative account that will appeal to those wishing to learn more about the city
and the empire whose heart it had been.
Kings College London Dionysios Stathakopoulos
Growing Up in France: From the Ancien Rgime to the Third Republic. By Colin
Heywood. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xi, 313.
$99.00.)
Most histories of childhood and youth use a top-down approach to their subjects.
Their sources focus on adult conceptions of young people, on educational theories
and philosophical trends, rather than the experiences of young people themselves.
The authors study of childhood in France between 1760 and 1930 uses an alter-
native and refreshing method. He juxtaposes traditional sources for the history of
childhood with personal diaries, letters, and autobiographies, sources he calls ego-
documents. Colin Heywoods study reveals that the modern concept of childhood
one based on the understanding of the child as an innocent creature that needed
to be protected, nurtured, and isolated from adult culturewas slow to develop,
and that it was experienced differently according to gender and social class.
Historians of childhood have often shied away from autobiographies because
they are formulated in later years and thus reect adult conceptions of the child.
Relying on the insights of Richard Coe and Philippe Lejeune, Heywood embraces
such documents and asserts that ego-documents relate real, core issues and trends
that lie at the heart of growing up in the past. When used comparatively, he
argues, the documents allow historians to put esh on the bare bones of statis-
tics, and [give] the idea of the diversity of experience among different sections of
the population (34).
Heywoods study is divided into four parts that examine the representations of
age and life stage, the experiences of growing up, childrens relationships as they
aged, and the gradual movement toward independence in the contexts of school-
ing and peer groups. In each of the sections, Heywood summarizes our current
knowledge about trends and dynamics in the development of modern childhood
illustrated with examples from contemporary philosophy, science, medicine, and
law. Heywoods analysis of biographical material, however, reveals that the shifts
occurred in different times according to social class. Heywoods best examples lie
at the end of his study. In the section on education, the analysis of biographies
shows that the idea of a prolonged childhood typied by extended schooling was
rst embraced by the wealthier classes, and then only for boys, while the families
of poorer classes and young females slowly embraced the concept by the beginning
of the twentieth century.
Heywoods work combines the best, most current understanding of the social
and cultural history of childhood with a renewed focus on biography and indi-
vidual experience. In its emphasis on the literary and the personal, this study
reconsiders the ways in which a history of childhood can be accomplished.
Though Heywoods ndings will not change the ways historians have understood
the emergence of modern childhood in the Western world, they will allow a better,
more nuanced explanation of the processes through which the change occurred.
The book will serve as an excellent introduction to important aspects of growing
up between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, while specialists will nd
it an interesting model for how to examine broad processes of social and cultural
change at the individual level.
Minnesota State University, Mankato Christopher R. Corley
From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris: Gender, Economy, and Law. By Janine
M. Lanza. (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007. Pp. x, 252. $99.95.)
The author of this study observes that exploration of gender practices changes
the basic structure of history . . . [including] periodization, class structures, and
ideas about power in the state and the family . . . (12). Her meticulously
researched and carefully reasoned study of the widows of Parisian master crafts-
men, drawing from marriage contracts, guild records, probate inventories, church
records, a variety of municipal documents, contemporary literary sources, and a
wide survey of secondary sources, challenges established assumptions about wid-
owhood, guild economy, and law.
Janine M. Lanza explores how contemporaries represented widows and how
church and state contended with widows unsettling lack of male control. Her
research reveals, however, that the realities of widowhood for wives of master
craftsmen diverged from these expectations, as they did from the experiences of
widows socially and economically above and below them. Using practice theory,
she traces the interplay between social structures and their members to reveal the
ways women could avoid being determined by patriarchy while still acknowl-
edging its considerable power (15). Widows, for example, had advantages over
married and single women as honorary men with control of family, workshop,
wealth, marriage choices (including their own remarriage), and mastership in the
guild. This allowed them to defy societys desires and expectations by remaining
single and successfully running the family business. Societys additional wish that
widows support their families allowed them to surpass the usual bounds of
patriarchy in surprising ways, often abetted by the civil law itself.
Lanzas scholarship nds the standard history of widows too quick to accept
early modern perceptions of widowhood as the reality for all widows. Masters
widows, in occupying liminal space, deed gender norms even as they redened
them for purposes of getting on with life, and yet they did so with the sufferance
and even blessing of the very forces that otherwise restricted females. Guilds that
normally excluded women nevertheless accommodated widows of masters;
although not accorded full participation in guild governance, the same applied to
many male masters. The nancial success of widows challenges the family
economy paradigm where the loss of male labor is judged fatal to the surviving
family members. Instead, the inherited shopits inventory, tools, and
customerswas probably economically more signicant than the more easily
replaced labor of the master. Finally, Lanza illustrates how the law, usually
misogynist in the letter, was nonetheless complex, offering a strategic eld
where users could shape it to their ends (11). Though legal reform under the
early modern state ostensibly extended patriarchal power, the reality was that
widows maintained their traditional legal rights.
In clear and engaging prose, Lanza probes the accepted gloomy assessment of
Old Regime widowhood; she also contrasts this with the grim prospects facing
widows after 1789. The abolition of guilds and the Napoleonic Code left artisans
widows with fewer protections and rights as they entered an increasingly atomistic
economy in which men, but not women, had gained citizenship rights. The
perhaps well-intentioned pedestal of domesticity only further marginalized
females in the economy.
Ohio State University Ben S. Trotter
Dr. Joe Bell: Model for Sherlock Holmes. By Ely M. Liebow. (Madison, Wis.: Popular
Press/University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 269. $26.95.)
In mid-nineteenth-century Edinburgh, a surgeons greatness was largely judged by
his speed. Dr. Joe Bell, for example, could perform a double amputation and have
the patient bandaged and on the ward twenty-four and one-half minutes after
entering the hospital gate. But this engaging biography of the famous Scottish
doctor, rst published in 1982 and now reprinted, locates his lasting importance
in other notable talents. Equally respectful of new scientic ndings and patient
psychology, Bell developed a distinctively holistic and technological approach to
his discipline, appreciating early on, for example, the importance of Listers new
antiseptic spray in the operating room and even speculating on the way the
equipment could be used to sterilize surgical instruments. Additionally, Bells
passion for cleanliness, his insistence on compassionate nursing, and his interest in
preventative medicine signify a particularly modern outlook. These qualities
underpinned his rapid rise to prominence as an expert surgeon and his many
career achievements, including posts as Surgeon of the Royal Inrmary, Examiner
to the Royal College of Surgeons, and President of the Royal College of Surgeons
of Edinburgh. Although he did not make any sensational medical discoveries
himself, Bell inuenced a new generation of doctors and nurses through his
inspirational lecturing and his popular textbooks.
For Ely M. Liebow, Bells real interest lies in one special tutor-student relation-
ship. Arthur Conan Doyle enrolled in Bells class in Clinical Surgery in 1878 and,
Liebow argues, was quickly mesmerized by his lecturers diagnostic skill: an
impressive mix of natural curiosity, common-sense observation, and an
application of rational, deductive logic to the minutest detail (48). As Liebow
reminds readers, the resemblance between this technique and the detective method
of Sherlock Holmes is well known. Doyle explicitly acknowledged his debt to Bell
in creating his famous detective. His friend and fellow medical student, Robert
Louis Stevenson, spotted the parallels. Reporters of the day knewand pursued
the link. Indeed, Bell himself wrote the introduction to the 1892 edition of A Study
in Scarlet.
However, Liebows extensive archival research provides a more rounded
picture of this outstanding doctor, ably contextualized through lively digressions
into social history. Inter alia, the narrative includes sideways glances at the
development of the Royal Inrmary, the habits of Victorian university students,
the ghastly living conditions of the Edinburgh poor, the struggle of women to be
admitted to medical degrees, and the recreational life of an upper-middle-class
doctor and Elder of the Free Church. The author persuasively highlights points
that reinforce the BellHolmes relationship, such as the surgeons forensic work in
a number of high prole murder cases, his love of the word elementary, and his
favored gesture, that of pressing his long ngers together (103). Literary students
will certainly welcome the adept concluding overview of the controversies
surrounding the BellHolmes identication. But overall, it is the general reader
and avid Sherlockian who will most appreciate this work of love, with its
breezy style, its delight in fascinating anecdotes, and its Holmesian relish for the
tiny, telling detail (ix).
Brunel University Maureen Moran
Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914. By Jeff Lipkes. (Leuven,
Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2007. Pp. 815. $55.95.)
In the rst days of the Great War, the Prussian army invading Belgium executed
over six thousand civilians, burned entire villages, and culminated this campaign
against noncombatants by destroying much of the city of Leuven. The author
provides a graphic, detailed account of events that, until recently, were often
dismissed as atrocity propaganda. His vivid descriptions from the victims per-
spective illustrates his position that the German terror of 1914 was a deliberate,
top-down policy intended to break a conquered people, and in that sense was a
rehearsal for the greater crimes of World War II.
Doctrinally the Prussian army had been committed even before the Franco-
German War to the principle that any irregular resistance must be ruthlessly
suppressed because it enhanced wars suffering and increased its duration without
altering the outcome. In that context it was kind to be cruel: a few condign
examples made early would save lives in the long run.
Those principles were applied by a completely inexperienced army, in the
context of a war whose duration was expected to be too short to rectify mistakes.
From freshly mobilized reservists to colonels and generals shaking off the rust of
years in garrison, tension levels were correspondingly high. That the Germans
never formally charged any civilians with partisan activity does not exclude the
possibility of retreating soldiers ring a few parting rounds. As Jeff Lipkes dem-
onstrates, the inexperienced Germans re discipline was in any case execrable.
High-velocity rie bullets from any source can penetrate walls and ricochet almost
at random; not every shout of sniper! camouaged malevolent intentions.
Events on the ground were all too likely to follow the pattern Lipkes so
eloquently describesexacerbated by a variant of the ricochet effect. A company
ofcer who reported that he was possibly taking re from civiliansitself not easy
in 1914 conditionswas likely to be asked why he had not begun taking hostages.
His superiors in turn were likely to remind subordinates sharply of their duty in
such cases.
Implementation was arguably shaped as well by the Prussian armys institu-
tional culture of hardness, an exaggerated masculinity that inhibited questions or
protests because no one (generals included) wished to look like a mamas boy
especially to himself. The brutal behavior that so shocked its victims, the number
of executions relative to the imsiness of the evidence were proof of the right
stuff. And when soldiers ran amok, as seems to have been the case at Tamines on
August 22, who in the chain of command was willing to admit it?
This explanation is not complete, nor is it exculpatory. It ts the pattern of
events, however, more closely than models tracing German behavior to policies
applied in Africa of which the mass of the army was ignorant; to anti-Catholic
sentiment in Protestant regiments or general hostility towards religion; or to
unsupported front-line rumors of franc-tireurs, much less to wider negative fea-
tures of German culture. The atrocities of August are a rm and undeniable part
of the historyand the accountof the German army.
Colorado College D. E. Showalter
Empire and After: Englishness in Postcolonial Perspective. Edited by Graham
MacPhee and Prem Poddar. (New York, N.Y.: Berghahn Books, 2007. Pp. vi, 211.
$60.00.)
The problem that this collection of essays confronts is the contemporary one of
the meaning of Englishness in the context of past imperial experience, in which
Englishness was largely subsumed in Britishness. The discussion is complicated
by the fact that, although devolution is now a threat to the idea of Britain itself,
the latter has simultaneously been shored up by the increasingly inuential black
and Asian population who identify themselves with Britain rather than England.
The introduction by the editors serves as a guide to the books main arguments,
offering as its central theme a short but incisive outline of Hannah Arendts
theorizing about imperialism that has become of increasing interest to postcolo-
nial theorists in recent years, especially those with backgrounds in English depart-
ments. Of the nine essays that follow, ve authors look at various aspects of the
imperial experience and four are concerned with postempire themes. In the rst
part, Enda Duffy wittily dissects Irelands tendency to subvert the British attempts
at colonial othering, and the legacy of contempt and hatred for the English that
imperialism has left behind. Vivian Bickford-Smith discusses the evolution of
Englishness in an Afrikaner context and Prem Poddar sees the early traces of
British Overseas Subject status in post-Mutiny India. Geoffrey Nash writes about
those British travellers and commentators on the Middle East before 1914 that did
not have an assured sense of British superiority. In one of the most thought-
provoking pieces, Graham MacPhee then charges Joseph Conrad with draining
terrorism of its political aspect in The Secret Agent and of thus occluding the role
of imperialism (115). In the second part, Sheila Ghose analyzes Hanif Kureishis
ction to illuminate some of the difculties inherent in liberal discourse when
confronting the Muslim presence; Bridget Byrne comments on the view of varied
kinds of Englishness expressed by a number of contemporary London women;
Colin Wright very imaginatively compares and contrasts Enoch Powells infamous
rivers of blood speech with Robin Cooks celebration of multiculturalism; and
Matthew Hart probes the meanings expressed by the garden created in New York
to commemorate the British who died on 9/11.
The essays are all penetrating in analysis: but, as with many postcolonial
writings, there is an ever-present danger of theoretical overload effacing readabil-
ity at times. Globalization is often discussed as though it succeeded imperialism,
though it could be argued that empire itself was the residue of a long globalizing
experience and that the tension between the two is a marked feature of British
history. Also, insofar as Arendts Origins of Totalitarianism gives a framework for
these essays, some of its key concepts need a closer look. To take one example:
Arendt presents an undifferentiated bourgeoisie, though much work on the social
and economic history of Britain in recent years has argued for a divide between an
industrial/Northern and service/Southern middle class. What has been called the
Southern Metaphor is discussed here as relevant to present imaginings of
Englishness, but its Northern counterpart is absent, weakening the analysis at
some crucial moments.
Shefeld Hallam University Peter Cain
Garibaldi: Citizen of the World. By Alfonso Scirocco. Translated by Allan Cameron.
(Princeton: N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 442. $35.00.)
Certain historical gures grab the imagination of their generation. Whatever they
do seems larger than life. Giuseppe Garibaldi was one such person. He burst on
the scene just as modern communications were making news available ever more
rapidly. His exploits in South America during the 1830s and 1840s and then back
in Italy in 1849 and again in 1859 and 1860 made him the hero of two worlds.
Alfonso Sciroccos solid, but somewhat traditional, biography of Garibaldi traces
his career from ship captain to general in the new Italian state. Scirocco rightly
views Garibaldi primarily as a man of action, not an ideologue. During the early
1830s, he was drawn to the cause of Giuseppe Mazzini, the great republican
nationalist. His involvement in Mazzinis Young Italy movement and in the
abortive uprising in Genoa in 1834 drove the young Garibaldi into exile in South
America where he supported the independence movement of the republic of Rio
Grande do Sul. There he met his wife, Anita, who fought by his side until her
death in 1849. During the 1840s, Garibaldi fought for Uruguay in its war with
Argentina. His South American experience showed him to be a daring and
resourceful tactician.
The outbreak of revolution in Italy in 1848 drew Garibaldi back to his
homeland. He fought for the Milanese and Sicilians before becoming the military
chief of the Roman Republic in 1849. When the French retook Rome and handed
control back to Pope Pius IX, Garibaldi returned to exile in the United States and
then on the trade routes of the Pacic Ocean. By the mid-1850s, however, he was
back home in Nice, which was still part of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia.
About this time, he seems to have become convinced that the best chance for
Italian unication would be under the leadership of Victor Emmanuel, the King
of Piedmont-Sardinia. When the war between Piedmont, backed by France, and
the Austrian Empire broke out in 1859, Garibaldi served as a general in the
Piedmontese army.
Discontented with the outcome of the war, which left Rome under the rule of
the papacy, Garibaldi resigned his commission. Garibaldi took command of a
small group of volunteers that set off on 6 May to take Sicily. Scirocco is unclear
about the overall strategy, but it seems that the politicians behind Garibaldi hoped
to use southern Italy as a negotiating position for a new, more democratic,
constitutional alternative to Count Cavours simple annexation of the entire
peninsula to the Piedmontese state. At no point, however, did Garibaldi waver in
his loyalty to the king. Garibaldi managed with considerable tactical skill to defeat
the armies of the Bourbon rulers of Sicily and Naples. By October, he was in
possession of the entire South, which he handed over to Victor Emmanuel for
annexation to the northern kingdom. Despite Garibaldis successes on the battle-
eld, the real victor was Count Cavour, who outmaneuvered Garibaldi, the
Democrats, and the European Great Powers to achieve his version of a united
Italy.
Garibaldi became a national hero, but it was a bitter and short-lived triumph.
He was rapidly marginalized in the new Italian state and was blocked in his
attempts to seize Rome in 1862 and 1867. But in a larger sense Garibaldis victory
was a costly one. The South and the new Italian state might well have been better
off if the Bourbons had repelled Garibaldis invasion. Rather than a humiliating
annexation of one of the oldest states in Europe, some negotiated federation of
Naples and northern Italy might have been possible. The bitterness and alienation
caused by the virtual conquest of the South might have been avoided. The neglect
of broader issues is a serious defect in what is a useful and competent biography.
North Carolina State University Alexander De Grand
Hitlers Central European Empire, 19381945. By Jean W. Sedlar. (Bangor, Maine:
Booklocker.com, 2007. Pp. xv, 472. $19.95.)
This is the sort of book that earns the author little glamour but does valuable
service. In her acknowledgments, Jean W. Sedlar thanks a friend for pointing out
the need for such a book, and, as the cover description says, it offers the rst
comprehensive overview of World War II in a part of Europe that usually receives
little attention in the histories of the warPoland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the
Baltic States, and Finland. Sedlar is quite right about the need for such a book.
General histories of World War II focus perforce on the conduct of the war by the
great powers, and secondary powers or occupied territories well behind the front
receive cursory attention. This book (and its companion volume, The Axis Empire
in Southeastern Europe) seeks to ll that gap, and the author provides a crisp,
cogent narrative of the grim process by which Nazi Germany eventually occupied
all of those nations save for Finland, exploited them for its war economy,
rewarded collaborators and crushed resistance, murdered millions of their Jews,
and forced them to share in the devastation of its defeat.
Given the absence of competing accounts (shortly to be remedied by the U.S.
publication of Mark Mazowers Hitlers Empire), readers might wonder why
Sedlar had to self-publish her book. Its strengths are by no means below the level
of narrative histories published by commercial and academic presses, and its
printing by Booklocker.com rivals the work of prestigious publishers. The answers
may be found in her approach to her topic and her organization of the narrative.
A review of Mazowers book commented that the complex multiple topics
included in a history of the Nazi empire presented organizational challenges that
must make an author reach for the aspirin (Laurence Rees in the Sunday Times,
June 8, 2008). Sedlar has cut that organizational Gordian knot with ruthless
efciency, but, on rst inspection of her book, the readers heart is likely to sink.
Sedlar writes that she eschewed a country-by-country approach and instead opted
for a continuous chronological narrative that reects the reality that the entire
region was linked during the war by the simple fact of belonging directly or
indirectly to Hitlers empire (10). In practice, Sedlars design means that the
reader gets a nothing-but-the-facts narrative divided into chronological
chapters that include no section headings. There is no practical approach to the
book (despite a helpful and well-organized index) except to read it from beginning
to end.
But readers who do that will be rewarded with a wealth of information
contained in a narrative that does justice to the drama of the story. This book is
essentially a textbook: it is not based on archival research or primary sources, but
rather synthesizes a wide range of classic and recent scholarship in English.
Sedlars goal is not to advance a striking new thesis but rather to introduce a
neglected part of the history of World War II to interested readers. That goal may
sound modest, but it required very hard work, and nonspecialists will be grateful
for Sedlars concise and thorough overview.
Illinois College Robert C. Kunath
Nature and the Godly Empire: Science and Evangelical Mission in the Pacic, 1795
1850. By Sujit Sivasundaram. (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press,
2005. Pp. xi, 244. $80.00.)
The author of this study generously acknowledges that his is neither the rst
history of missions in the South Pacic nor the rst to pay attention to missionary
rhetoric. What is distinctive about Nature and the Godly Empire is its focus on the
rhetoric of science among missionaries of the London Missionary Society (LMS).
Sujit Sivasundaram argues that science and religion were fused into a coherent
view of the world among missionaries, one in which Christian rhetoric, modern
scientic ideas, and imperialism all t into a providential march of history toward
the global triumph of both Christianity and civilization. By science Sivasundaram
means for the most part the theological contemplation of nature and the economic
exploitation of natural resources. The most fascinating part of the bookof
interest to historians of religion, science, and imperialism alikeis his taxonomy
of nature metaphors employed in the service of Christianization and economic
development.
This work would be even more useful if Sivasundaram had paid more attention
to the distinction between metaphors of nature taken from the Christian tradition
and newer gures of speech drawn from more recent scientic knowledge. Chris-
tian rhetoric is steeped in nature analogies. It is not surprising to nd evangelical
rhetoricians invoking analogies between the spirit Christ and a seed. Were tradi-
tional analogies changed as a result of modern science?
Sivasundaram lumps all of the LMS missionaries together under the term
evangelical. Many of their metaphors, though, were found in the Bible and
predate modern evangelicalism. Furthermore, the term evangelical cannot carry
the full weight put upon it here, for there were signicant differences among the
Congregationalist missionaries of the LMS, some of whom were more liberal than
others, and between Congregationalist missionaries and those of other denomi-
nations, especially Anglicans such as Samuel Marsden.
Marsden in particular raises the issue of the conict in missionary circles
between the tasks of Christianization and civilization. Sivasundaram acknowl-
edges the existence of that conict, but never really focuses on its implications for
his own argument, which ultimately stresses the unity of Christianity and civili-
zation, especially in matters of housing and clothing. Fromreading Nature and the
Godly Empire one would never know how deeply controversial the question of
clothing was in the LMS, or that the very rst LMS missionary to South Africa, Dr.
Van der Kemp, caused an unresolved crisis in mission circles by going native.
The overwhelming majority of missionaries in the South Pacic introduced
what they thought of as Western styles of housing, clothing, and food, even while
modifying them under local conditions, but not all of them did. Missionaries of all
denominations faced the problem of how to deal with colleagues who went
native, rejecting Western lifestyles. One of the most durable of the many mis-
leading popular beliefs about missionaries is the assumption that they behaved
everywhere in the same manner and always confused Christianity with the intro-
duction of Western styles of living. Nature and the Godly Empire does little to
correct that impression.
University of Iowa Jeffrey Cox
Nazis and the Cinema. By Susan Tegel. (London, England: Hambledon Continuum,
2007. Pp. x, 324. $36.95.)
In this comprehensive and informative survey of cinema under the Third Reich,
the author tells an often surprising story. When the Nazis took power, the German
lm industry was the second largest in the world. Hitler, convinced of the political
efcacy of propaganda, gave his brilliant Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels a
free hand (4). Goebbelss favorite medium was lm, and he quickly established
control over the industry. Paradoxically, the vast majority of lms produced were
not overt propaganda. Goebbels believed the most effective propaganda came in
the guise of entertainment (133). He also understood the morale-boosting func-
tion of pure entertainment, which the lm industry, coordinated rather than
nationalized, saw in terms of the bottom line (111).
The rst propaganda lms were in the Kampfzeit genre, depicting young men
(usually SA storm troopers) struggling nobly for the cause. Hitlers slaughter of
the SA leadership in the Night of the Long Knives aborted this type of lm. More
famous, enduring idealizations of Nazism are Leni Riefenstahls documentaries,
which provided the positive stock images of the Third Reich until World War
II (75). Susan Tegel refutes Riefenstahls postwar rationalization that her lms
merely recorded events rather than functioned as propaganda (76, 98). Curiously,
Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will would be the only Nazi lm with Hitler in the
leading role (75).
In the second half of her book, Tegels focus shifts to Nazi lm and the Jewish
Question. Until World War II, Jews were mostly absent from the screen, despite
the Nazi regimes intensifying anti-Semitism. Where they did appear, as in two
comedic farces, they personied stereotypical vices, but they were more rogues
than villains. This situation changed in the wake of the Propaganda Ministrys
late-1938 directive that each lm company produce an anti-Semitic lm. Jud Suss,
a sex and crime melodrama, was the most commercially successful of the three
major anti-Semitic lms to appear (146). Its main messagethat Jews were
arch-corrupters who had to be expelled from societyfaithfully reected current
government policy. Tegel nds nothing distinctively Nazi or German in the lms
anti-Semitism (142). However, the Propaganda Ministrys The Wandering Jew, as
a purported historical overview, offered a racist interpretation of Jews as rootless
parasites that was characteristically Nazi. Often described as the most evil lm
ever made, Hitler and Goebbels were extremely pleased with it, despite its com-
mercial failure (154).
With the outbreak of World War II, Goebbels demanded more patriotic,
military lms. He also took a much greater interest in high-quality newsreel
production. As the war worsened, escapist fare predominated. By 1942, with the
Final Solution decided upon, Jews had completely disappeared from the screen,
even though the regime had recast World War II as a crusade against Jewish-
Bolshevism (196). Tegels explanation is two-fold: the Final Solution meant the
need for Jewish characters [in lm] had disappeared; and the lm industry shied
away from depressing, commercially suspect subject matter (208). The one genre
in which the regime did return to focus on the Jews was in two Potemkin
village-type documentaries made by the SS (214). These were designed to deny
Holocaust rumors and demonstrate how well the Jews lived in their concen-
tration campssurely the moral nadir in lm history. Tegel completes her story by
discussing the lms of the Western Allies as they liberated German concentration
camps, made in part to justify the costs of their war efforts and for use in
prosecution of Nazi war criminals. Tegel thus characterizes them as belonging to
a propaganda offensive (227).
Tegels book is solidly researched, well documented, and clearly written. Nazi
cinema is placed within multiple contexts: lm history in general and German lm
specically, Nazisms ideological outlook and (shifting) political needs, the
regimes institutional structures, and the roles of key individuals (especially Goeb-
bels). The lms are extensively described, as are the histories of their production
and those involved in producing and acting in them. Tegel is well versed in the
relevant historiography, and she pays meticulous attention to detail. Where pos-
sible, she discusses the gap between propaganda lm and historical reality. She
resists the temptation to inate the importance of her subject, concluding that lm
was slightly less useful to the [Nazi] state than has hitherto been believed (x).
Tegel might have discussed more systematically the tension between the lm
industrys focus on the bottom line versus the regimes political objectives. And
her description of the Allies concentration camp lms as a propaganda offensive
stretches the denition of propaganda past breaking point. Nevertheless, her book
is a major contribution to lm history and the history of Nazi Germany.
Arcadia University Geoff Haywood
Spain: From Dictatorship to Democracy, 1939 to the Present. By Javier Tusell.
(Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Pp. 494. $89.95.)
The history of Spain from 1939 to the present begins with what this author calls
a crucial break in historical continuity and passes through yet another break
point, in the early 1980s, when the new democracy consolidates. Explaining the
transition from a dictatorship modeled after a medieval warrior society to a
postmodern democracy at the end of the century is one of the most fascinating
topics in twentieth-century European history (1). Although the tragedy of the
failed Republic and Civil War dominated historical scholarship for many decades,
the triumphal narrative of successful democratization raised a newset of questions
about what went right instead of wrong in Spanish history. Since the late 1970s,
these questions have been largely the preserve of social scientists, but in recent
years historians like Javier Tusell, one of the most prolic historians of modern
Spain before his recent death, have turned their attention to the transformations
of the latter half of the century.
What makes the transformation even more remarkable is the nature of the
early Franco regime that took shape after the Civil War, which both explicitly
turned its back on liberal modernity and sought to eradicate any vestiges of that
defeated Spain, including its defenders. Though he rejects the term genocide to
dene the repression, because there is no single category like Jews or kulaks,
Tusell rightly emphasizes the distinct harshness of the internal repression and the
resulting social fragmentation that maintained the victor/vanquished dichotomy
for decades.
At the same time, as the author notes, the regime was also unique in its
evolution from one form of dictatorship to another, while retaining Franco at the
head. Thus, over the course of the four decades, the regime evolved from pseudo-
fascist during World War II to National Catholic after the war and eventually to
a modernizing secular dictatorship in the 1960s, in which consensus had
replaced repression as the primary stabilizing strategy (12). This evolution was
made possible by the exibility of the regimes ideology; the personalistic nature
of the dictatorship, which resisted institutionalization; and the unintended con-
sequences of economic policies that opened up Spain to the world capitalist
market. Tusell emphasizes the unintended consequences of these changes, in
particular of the economic miracle that completed Spains transformation from
an agrarian and rural economy to an industrialized and urban economy within a
decade or so. Instead of crediting the regime with this transformation, Tusell
argues that the regimes early autarchic policies actually delayed the economic
take-off.
This social and economic transformation was then key to setting the context
for the democratic transition, in conjunction with the political skill of individuals
like King Juan Carlos, who Tusell ranks highest in terms of impact, followed by
Adolfo Suarez, the rst prime minister, and Santiago Carrillo, the leader of the
Communist Party. Tusells narrative balances the impact of individuals with
insightful biographical sketches of important gures and the role of broader
structural factors such as the economic transformation and changing cultural and
social values. Thus, the author emphasizes that the Churchs transition preceded
and made easier the political transition a decade later. Although Tusell does not
introduce any surprising new explanations for the successful transition and con-
solidation of democracy, he includes a balanced discussion of all the contributing
factors rather than trying to support a particular transition model that privileges
one factor, like elite actors, over others.
The breadth of his knowledgereected both in the details of the narrative,
including apt quotes and anecdotes, and in his comparative references to other
national case studiesmakes this book a rich resource for contemporary histo-
rians of Spain. At the same time, this reviewer would have liked a clearer
explanatory framework that summarized the reasons for Spains extraordinary
transformations, especially for the reader less familiar with the existing debates
about the period. The implicit framework driving the narrative relies on a kind of
teleological vision of liberal modernity, in which Francos outmoded Baroque
ideals give way to a recovery of liberal ideals and an opening up to the western
world (160). By declaring that Spain, by the end of the dictatorship, had in
many senses become a European country, Tusell reproduces a simplistic version
of Europe and modernity that undercuts his books explanatory power
(197).
University of California, San Diego Pamela Radcliff
Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy. By Eric D. Weitz. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2007. Pp. xi, 425. $29.95.)
At the 1934 Nuremburg Party Rally, Rudolf Hess famously barked that Hitler is
Germany; Germany is Hitler. From the time that these words were spewed from
Hesss sweaty lips until the 1980s, historians did little to alter Hesss statement.
The psychohistorians of the 1970s believed that the history of the Third Reich
could be discerned from Hitlers mothers cancer, the plot of Lohengrin, and even
quantitative analysis of the Fhrers genitalia. Interestingly, when it comes to the
Weimar Republic, the focus tends to invert. History from the right becomes
history from the left; Hitlers racist horrors make way for Berlins intellectual
promise; Hitler is Germany; Germany is Hitler becomes Berlin is Weimar;
Weimar is Berlin.
Apologies to Eric D. Weitz for this outlandish comparison to Herr Hess. This
is not fair. Weitz has penned an outstanding book. He gives the message of Berlin
is Weimar; Weimar is Berlin its most stimulating, colorful, and elegant voicing.
Weitzs Weimar is visually stunning. With inviting, even friendly, prose he guides
the reader through the sights and sounds of Berlin. Starting from Potsdamer Platz
and radiating outward to the suburban lakes, he lingers at the base of modern
architectural wonders (particularly those of the architect Erich Mendelsohn) and
captures the energy of that metropolis. Reecting Mendelsohn buildings, Weitzs
structure is clean yet rounded; functional yet playful; revolutionary yet organic.
Taking his cue from Bauhaus design, Weitz keeps the footnotes to a minimum and
strips his text of historiographic in-ghting. His bibliographic essay is a model of
concision. And thankfully, Weitz does not look to the Bauhaus for his sense of
humor! Weitzs wit often zings; see, for example, his comparison of Kurt Weills
abby post-Brecht years to that of the wayward, Lennon-less McCartney, refresh-
ingly funny and sadly true (289).
Hitler plays a part in Weitzs work (one ignores the Fhrer at ones peril), but
Weitz very self-consciously prevents the lance corporal from dominating the scene.
The Weimar Republic had its aws: the notorious Article 48, a polarized popu-
lace, and conservative naysayers, to name a few. But even with such blemishes,
the Republic was not inherently doomed to fail. Weitz argues that Weimar had
genuine promise; ultimately, however, this promise turned to tragedy as the
Republic strained under the pressure of a failed peace, postwar psychosis, hyper-
ination, and depression and then was deliberately destroyed by Germanys
antidemocratic, antisocialist, anti-Semitic right wing (364).
Neither Weimars genesis nor its demise was predetermined. Weitzs Weimar is
thoroughly modern and by no means an extension of some Bismarckian mistake.
Even though many of the movements in Weimar started before the war, war and
revolution transformed everything, often beyond recognition. Although Weitz
does not engage in historiographical sparring, his stance on the Sonderweg debate
is clear. He opens not with In the Beginning there was Bismarck, but rather a
portrait of German troops returning from the Great War. Weimars promise
was not foiled by a failure of 18481849, the passage of an Indemnity Bill, or a
feudalized bourgeoisie.
Weitz predicates Weimars promise on artistic and intellectual innovations.
His discussions of leading artists and intellectuals (i.e., Weill, Brecht, Gropius,
Mendelsohn, etc.) are excellent on their own terms. One wonders, however, if
these gures truly represent Weimar Germany. The pitfall of such extensive
coverage of the liberal movements of Berlin and its outposts is the temptation
to make them normative (361). As a result, Weitz does not seem to know what to
do with those who opposed Weimars alleged promise. Weitz relegates this
opposition to the periphery. He squeezes the conservative, Protestant, and Catho-
lic leaders; the Conservative Party establishment; and the growing radical right
wing into a nal chapter that ultimately feels tacked on.
By focusing on Berlins innovators, Weitz imposes the structure of Greek
tragedy on a history that may not have been so tragic after all (361). When one
moves from one innovator to another only to hear that the innovations were for
naught, one is tempted to conclude that it must have been a tragedy. But as Weitz
informs the reader in his conclusion, the oppositional gures were there all along;
the innovations were bitterly contested every step of the way (331). However,
in Weitzs tragedy the opponents appear all at once after one giant leap.
The reality is more humdrum than that. The (silent) majority of Germans did
not live in Berlin, did not like Mendelsohns architecture, and did not listen to
Brecht/Weills Three Penny Opera. It is unfortunate that they did not. It is even
more unfortunate that Germans (37 percent of them) voted for Hitler . . . but they
did. Weimar needs to be taken on its own terms, but in a way that does not
overestimate Berlins relationship to the whole. Weitz has provided readers with
the point of departure. Now they must leave Potsdamer Platz and the rest of Berlin
behind and explore the rest of Weimar Germany. As we do so, one dares say that
the exclamation point of tragedy will blunt to the everyday plainness of a comma.
Valparaiso University Kevin Ostoyich
Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War. By Patrick Wright. (Oxford, England: Oxford
University Press, 2007. Pp. xvi, 488. $18.99.)
At rst glance, the subtitle of this book puzzled the reviewer. How is a stage
related to this post-World War II conict? The rst pages of the book, however,
cleared up the apparent enigma. The author examines the origins of the mesmer-
izing Iron Curtain metaphor, and the events connected with it from very
unusual social, cultural, and historical perspectives. In his analysis, the Iron
Curtain emerges as a metaphorical agency that embodied political rivalry, divi-
sions, and warfare well beyond the customary Cold War ones.
Patrick Wright disassembles conventional assumptions that dene the Iron
Curtain as a conict between the West and the Soviet bloc. Tracing the origins of
the metaphor, Wright found that it had existed well before Winston Churchill
uttered it in 1946. Iron Curtains had been long used as re prevention devices in
English and European theatres. For English-speaking people, the phrase had a
certain symbolic power in its meaning of a fence against what was bad or evil. The
Iron Curtain received its rst political connotation during World War I, when it
was used to delineate a barrier between England and Germany. For politicians
who viewed the world divided along vertical lines, the Iron Curtain was the only
mode of protection and security. In this volume, Wright also explores alternative
viewsthat is, the outlooks of those who urged against vertical divisions and who
perceived the world in cosmopolitan dimensions. A prime example was Vernon
Lee, who, according to the author, rst gave the phrase Iron Curtain its political
connotation.
With reference to the USSR, the metaphor already gained prominence after the
October Revolution. Wright views the Cold War as a prolonged conict, broken
off by a short-lived Soviet-Western marriage during World War II. Although the
postwar Iron Curtain descended in 1946 or thereabouts, its substance consisted
of easily recognizable historical fabric. Whatever Churchills recollections were of
the phrases earlier utterances in 1946, he clearly renewed the old metaphor and
reinforced its new connotationa re-curtain against the USSR and ultimately
against Communism.
Wright argues that, just as in theaters where the re-protection device failed
to prevent or contain res, political iron curtains fell short in their goals and
often only exacerbated problems. The curtains succeeded only in inicting
casualties that need not have occurred and in making trouble for civilians on
both sides. That they were easily dismantled even before ofcial decisions were
made to do so indicates their articial nature. This is perhaps the strongest
point of Wrights book. He warns politicians against curtains and walls that
split people.
Wright claims that the metaphor and related phenomena involved a good
deal of theatricality and play-acting. The author tells his story in an anecdotal
form and makes good, indeed innovative, use of contemporary periodicals,
stories, and even gossip. Expressions such as it was said or some believed
are frequent throughout the narrative. The weakest part of the book is that it
sometimes lacks historical analysis and argument. The author sometimes does
not explain the signicance of developments he narrates, leaving this reader
unsure about their worth for his general hypothesis. Despite these shortcomings,
this book offers a broad and revealing look at the Iron Curtain and the Cold
War.
Auburn University Boris B. Gorshkov
GENERAL, COMPARATIVE, HISTORIOGRAPHICAL
Plotting the Globe: Stories of Meridians, Parallels, and the International Date Line. By
Avraham Ariel and Nora Ariel Berger. (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2006. Pp. xii,
236. $49.95.)
A history of neither exploration nor cartography, this book is a unique explora-
tion of the abstract great circles that run around the earth and how humans have
created and given meaning to them. More specically, the authors are interested
in meridians and the one great circle that is also a parallel of latitude, the Equator
(in this respect, the reference to parallels in the subtitle is misleading). The authors
are a former deckhand, who rose to be a ships master before becoming an
engineer and educator, and his journalist daughter. They do not pretend to be
historians, but seek only to present a collection of stories that combine marine
history with the history of science, and the ancient world with medieval China and
modern Europe. Their tone is at once didactic and popular.
The book has four unequal parts. The rst and longest considers the measure-
ment of portions of meridians to determine the size and shape of the earth; this
permits the authors not only to explain the basic geometry of the earth but also to
review the history of geodesy since the late seventeenth century. A further chapter
on the remeasurement by the French of the meridian through Paris after 1790, to
dene the length of the meter, is the occasion for a broader discussion of units of
measurement. The second part deals with denitions of prime meridians, from
Hipparchuss use of the meridian of Rhodes (ca. 130 BC) to the international
acceptance of the Greenwich meridian in 1884. In the process, the authors give a
potted history of time measurement; they also make special note of the often-
overlooked attempts by the French to avoid using an English prime meridian. The
third part focuses on the difcult concept of The International Date Line, the
meridian opposite Greenwichs, and its implementation. Finally, part four con-
siders the Equator, the traditions of crossing the Line, and who might have been
the rst mariners to do so. In their account of early sea explorations, Avraham
Ariel and Nora Ariel Berger reject the nonsensical claims by Gavin Menzies
concerning the Chinese admiral Zheng He but miss the fact that Zheng He
probably did reach Zanzibar, south of the Line.
Though perhaps motivated by the recent spate of popular histories concerning
maps, initiated by Dava Sobols Longitude, this book lacks the coherence and
tone of the genre. It suffers from an idiosyncratic and anecdotal approach. On the
plus side, the authors do explain well the several concepts involved without any
complex mathematics. It is thus unclear to whom Plotting the Globe will appeal.
Certainly, it is too episodic and partial to be of use in a course on the history of
science or cartography, or even world history, and its idiosyncracies will perhaps
not appeal to a general readership.
University of Southern Maine Matthew H. Edney
Possessing the Pacic: Land, Settlers, and Indigenous People from Australia to Alaska.
By Stuart Banner. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. vi, 388.
$35.00.)
In this comparative study of native land alienation within the Pacic Basin and
around its Anglo-American rim, the author demonstrates the importance of when
and how cultural contact was made. Today, . . . Tongans own all the land in
Tonga, Fijians own much of Fiji, and the Maori own signicant parts of New
Zealand, but Hawaiians own little of Hawaii, aboriginal Australians own very
little of Australia, and aboriginal Oregonians own scarcely any of Oregon, as can
also be said of Alaska, California, and British Columbia (3). The key was the
perception of land use.
Australia was terra nullius, land owned by no one. British policy of compen-
sating local inhabitants for their land did not apply in a place where people did
not practice agriculture, made no recognizable improvements to the land, and
lacked the structural organization necessary to respond politically or militarily to
colonizers. Contemporary observers found Aborigines still in a state of nature.
First impressions proved to be incorrect, but land, once taken, could not easily be
returned. The Crown took title to the land and sold it fee simple to colonists. The
colonial government eventually allocated Aboriginal reserves, but terra nullius
proved irreversible.
New Zealand Maori practiced agriculture and a specic system of heritable
property rights. Land was not a saleable commodity. In the Treaty of Waitangi
[1840] the Maori ceded sovereignty of the land to Britain in exchange for pro-
tection. From 18401865, the Crown acquired land through purchases and resold
it to colonists. The Crown bought land; the Maori sold the use of land, or of a
portion of land. The British were a single unit; the Maori, divided into tribes. The
Native Lands Act of 1865 created a Land Court to decide which Maori owned
what part of the land. Private purchasers bought land from Maori who owed
debts in the market system that came with colonization. Initially, the Maori lost
vast quantities of land. Ultimately, the Treaty of Waitangi became the basis of
contemporary Maori activism for legal and social rights.
In the Kingdom of Hawaii, people practiced agriculture and commerce; the
king retained land ownership. In 1848, King Kamehameha III divided the land
between the king and the high chiefs, and then between the king and the govern-
ment. In 1850, the legislature approved the sale of land to foreigners and also the
Kuleana Act, allowing commoners to gain title to property they used. Land could
be bought and sold freely, and, in case of foreign annexation, fee simple titles
would be recognized. Overall, the strategy worked, but much native land was
alienated. Hawaiian rights to land and its revenue remain unresolved legal issues.
Polity and land use, terra nullius or agricultural improvement. In addition to
the cases above, Anglo-Americans applied these criteria to evaluate indigenous
land rights in Fiji, Tonga, and the North American West Coast. Unless government
policy dictated otherwise, documented land use resulted in enforceable treaties or
legislation that now is used to reclaim indigenous land and cultural rights.
Without such documentation, legal recourse is almost impossible.
University of Hawaii at Hilo Sandra Wagner-Wright
Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium. By
Ronald Findlay and Kevin ORourke. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2007. Pp. xxvi, 619. $39.50.)
The authors preface this book by explaining that it was written:
in the belief that . . . contemporary globalization, and its economic and
political consequences, have not arisen out of a vacuum, but from a world-
wide process of uneven economic development that has been centuries, if
not millennia, in the making. In turn, this process has been critically shaped
by the changing ways in which the various world regions have interacted
with each other, not only through trade, migration, and investment, but also
politically and culturally, over time. Understanding this two-way interaction
between the pattern and evolution of interregional trade . . . and long-term
global economic and political developments . . . is the main purpose of this
volume. (xvi)
Ronald Findlay and Kevin ORourke judge regions to be more reliable units
than nations for such long-term global analysis because they are separated not
solely on [more stable] geographic lines, but more importantly on social, political
and cultural lines that give each of them a modicum of coherence and unity
distinguishing it from the others (3). They group these interactions over the
second millennium in nine successive eras separated by major shifts of technol-
ogy, ideology, and relative military and political power affecting trade policies.
The regional set of the pre-1500 eras contains Western Europe, Eastern Europe,
North Africa, Southwest Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East
Asia. For the post-1500 eras, sub-Saharan Africa and the Western Hemisphere are
added. Each era has a chapter in which its central features alleged to have altered
global trade patterns are presented with supportive historical detail, including
recent revisions of data and judgments in the scholarly literature.
Notwithstanding the ambitious scope of their analytic structure, the authors
make no claim to have uncovered many sweeping new insights about globaliza-
tion and drench most of their judgments with qualications. The main exception
is the claim that they have produced the rst detailed survey of the evolution of
global trade free of Eurocentric bias, and thus an especially valuable source for
history-challenged economists and economics-challenged historians. The avoid-
ance of regional bias does uncover new insights; e.g., it invalidates the formerly
widely accepted Pirenne Thesis that the seventh- and eighth-century Muslim
takeover of the Mediterranean cut off West Europes trade with Asia,
deurbanizing the Carolingian economy and bringing on Europes Dark Age.
The new evidence instead shows the Islamic region prospered as it expanded,
shared the gains with Europe by open trade policies, and that Pirenne had
overblackened Europes Dark Age economy.
Other biases, however, lessen the books reliability. Notwithstanding support-
ive demographic, trade, and price data in chapter four, Hobsbawms thesis of a
General Crisis of the European Economy in the Seventeenth Century is atly
dismissed, seemingly victim of the authors anti-Marxist animus. Their addiction
to the Heckscher-Ohlin model may explain but does not justify excluding Brinley
Thomass alternative push-pull modeling of nineteenth-century factor migration.
Moreover, the H-O model is notoriously ill-equipped to account for the recurrent
asset mispricing, overleveraging, debt crises, and credit crunches aficting nan-
cial markets. The defense has been to attribute super-rational error-correcting
capability to these markets and blame adjustment failures on government inter-
ference. But the post-1914 eras have been short and unusually nancially
turbulent, causing economists to defect in increasing numbers to analyses that
deny the possibility that laissez-faire capital markets could attain super error-
correcting capability. The authors mention little of this in the book; instead they
present nonnancial explanations of the post-1914 turbulence. In the last chapter,
they offer tentative predictions for the twenty-rst century guided by their analysis
of the past. This was obviously written before the subprime mortgage crisis and
the mutual agreement of the major central banks, Wall Street, and the City that
bailouts of overleveraged, too big to fail nancial institutions were essential to
prevent the nancial crisis from globalizing into a 19301932 depression. Unfor-
tunately, the authors fail to prepare the reader for such possibilities in the past or
future.
Washington University in St. Louis David Felix
A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible
Changed the Course of Western Civilization. By Jonathan Kirsch. (New York, N.Y.:
HarperOne, 2007. Pp. 352. $15.95.)
Preaching in the Last Days has been a characteristic of Christian thinking since
the earliest days of the church. Los Angeles columnist, attorney, and author
Jonathan Kirsch catches the irony of this in his survey of Western history through
the lens of the use of the book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse. Through such
chapters as Something Rich and Strange (chapter one) and Spooky Knowledge
and Last Things (chapter two) to The Godless Apocalypse (chapter seven),
Kirsch offers a rich array of the use and abuse of the text in Western social and
cultural history.
By emphasizing the ironic, Kirsch catches a glimpse of that strain of apoca-
lyptic thinking, originating in later Jewish (fourth and second centuries BC)
cultural and political conict, that would come to dominate views of history in
much of Western Latin and Byzantine Civilization. What seems diminished
through this sense of irony is the value of the interpretative tradition spawned by
the intricacies of apocalyptic symbolism, and the way in which such interpretation
stands as a summary of the later Jewish canonical prophets. Again, though helpful
in drawing attention to religious ambiguity, the use of irony can undermine the
Christology implicit in the text, drawing as it does from elsewhere in the New
Testament in deeply symbolic fashion.
By viewing the Apocalypse through an ironic lens, readers end with the feeling
that much of the ecclesiology that nds itself embedded in or arising out of the
book of Revelation is more derivative of political and social controversy than
theological intent. Perhaps this is the case, but it should be recognized for what it
is. The irony of the text is that just as it has led, as in modern times, to the likes
of Waco cult leader David Koresh or to forms of Zionism that seem oblivious of
social justice in the Middle East, the Apocalypse has also been the visionary engine
that has promoted abolitionism and civil rights, the nonviolence of the peaceable
kingdom, and has been a solace for those burdened by the weight of history.
Kirsch is a delightful author. Whether reveling readers with stories of the
medieval Richard the Lionhearted and his appeal to Christian mystic and apoca-
lypticist Joachimof Fiore for insight on the fate of the Third Crusade [11901191]
or by entertaining readers with stories of the different identities of Gog and
Magog and other end-time characters through history, Kirsch is able to deal with
the ironic without losing sight of historical detailas he did so well in his earlier
The Harlot by the Side of the Road [1998]. Through his use of image and prose,
Kirsch makes the journey through A History of the End of the World a lesson and
a delight.
But it is a journey that is as sobering as it is captivating. It is a journey that
compels the reader to read more and to go beyond what Kirsch has provided, or
failed to provide, in terms of the intersections of theology and history. His healthy
sense for the ironic should be an encouragement to read more; it fails if it becomes
an impediment that fosters historical cynicism. Apocalyptic thinking is coursing
through contemporary Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faith communities, and
often engenders direct or indirect violence. This is reason enough to take the
journey on which Kirsch invites readers to go. The book is clearly written for a
general audience and deserves wide readership.
Boston Theological Institute Rodney L. Petersen
Comrades!: A History of World Communism. By Robert Service. (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. xviii, 571. $35.00.)
The author of this study describes a world communism that was born of the
bright hopes of Marxism and tried to become totalitarian but could not due to
the strength of preexisting social and cultural phenomena (7). Nonetheless, it
produced basically similar characteristics wherever it . . . lasted any length of
time (9). For Robert Service, the root of these similar characteristics is Leninism,
which lasted unreformed under [Lenins] successors through to the late 1980s
(8). These similar characteristics included violence against political rivals, religion,
culture, and civil society; centralization of state power; an intensely intrusive
security state; insularity; and the treatment of people as resources, which together
make it sensible to speak of a communist order (9). This is a recognizable
approach that will satisfy many, but not those who look for a book that will cast
communist regimes or their achievements in a positive light.
Comrades!, like world communism itself, positions Russia and the Soviet
Union as the hub of a great communist wheel, with other movements, parties, and
regimes as the spokes. Service approaches the topic as a political one, with
relations between the Soviet party and its subordinates presented as a question of
power. In this sort of expos, there is little room for examination of the appeals of
communism or the motivations of those who embraced it. The nal third of the
book (consisting of two parts entitled Mutation and Endings) does address
a time when world communism diversied, from the mid-1950s to its end in the
late 1980s.
Service has tackled the difcult task of synthesizing the history of world
communism in one volume. He does so concisely, with verve but not much
sympathy. Service writes aggressively and is given to conclusions that will most
often please the ear of those who are fundamentally hostile to the communist
project. Given the enormity of its topic, the books coverage is understandably
broader than it is deep. It rarely offers original interpretations. When Service is
original, it is most often with his characterizations of individuals and of episodes
rather than of larger processes and interpretation. People who will appreciate this
book include teachers of courses on world communismas it does about as well
as one can hope with a topic so enormous, and it is organized to suit a class
scheduleand lay readers, who will nd the style engaging and the conclusions
nonthreatening. Scholars will not get much that is new from reading Comrades!,
and any reader looking for an examination of why communism might have
appealed to anyone other than the leaders of the movement will be dissatised.
Services bibliography and notes include archival sources, but he relies most of all
on secondary sources. This reviewer is no expert on all aspects of the topic the
book addresses, but in areas where he is an expert, there were occasional nagging
but not terribly consequential errors; for example, Aleksandar Rankovic was
sacked in 1996, and Edvard Kardelj was not his friend (257).
Boise State University Nick Miller
Hunger: A Modern History. By James Vernon. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2007. Pp. xiii, 369. $29.95.)
This author opens his book on hunger with some dispiriting facts: twenty-four
thousand people die of hunger or hunger-related diseases every day (one every 3.6
seconds); eight hundred twenty thousand lack adequate food (one in eight world-
wide); and on September 11, 2001, there were twelve dead from hunger for every
victim in New York (1). But this fascinating study is not so much about the hungry
as about how hunger has been understood historically, why questions about the
causes of hunger arose, and how solutions to the problem developed from the
Victorian period to World War II. Drawing on a wide range of sources, James
Vernon offers a cultural and material history of hunger that demonstrates its
importance as a boundary between the market and the state, the subject and the
citizen, the individual and the collective, the nation and the empire (273).
The author begins with an account of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus,
showing how each wanted to free the market from outdated obstacles like moral
economy. Vernon sees the Malthusian view of hunger as the best way to teach the
poor the merits of industry as a key disciplinary tool. In the words of one ardent
disciple, hunger taught decency and civility, obedience and subjection to the most
brutish (11). In other words, hunger was not a product of problems with the
political or economic system, but a solution to them. By exposing the lazy to the
moral discipline of labor, hunger appeared as a good and necessary thing.
Next, Vernon traces the changes in the way hunger was viewed, beginning with
the humanitarian discovery of hunger. From Oliver Twist exposing the inhuman-
ity of ofcials to reporters and photographers establishing the hungry as people
lacking food, not moral ber, the depiction of individual suffering helped to
explode Malthusian assumptions and render the hungry as sympathetic gures
deserving action. Indeed, twenty million deaths in colonial India and Ireland
before 1900 opened the door for a political critique of hunger. No longer were the
hungry simply humanitarian victims, they became subjects or citizens in need of
political emancipation from states that failed to redress their hunger (79).
Following World War I, hunger marches lled with veterans transformed the
face of the hungry from women and children to war veterans, victims of a system
that failed to ensure their welfare. Ofcials sought to solve the problem through
science and nutrition, discovering that rats on a British diet were stunted and
nervous and apt to bite the attendants and began to kill and eat the weaker
ones (108). Not surprisingly, during both world wars the government recognized
that well-fed workers in munitions plants were more productive, leading to the
rise of canteens and food provision for employees.
Vernon provides disheartening evidence that the attitudes towards the hungry
remain maddeningly persistent: famine relief must not make the starving depen-
dent, Jamie Oliver and others continue to tell the poor how to eat, and the causes
of hunger are all too often gendered, with maternal inefciency seen as aggravat-
ing if not causing hunger. Some of the most fascinating material in the book
appears in Vernons chapters on the ideal home, domestic economy classes, and
magazines like Good Housekeeping. The commodication of nutrition and
government-inspired domestic training (for girls) are all revealing about the con-
tinuing tensions between statist solutions and the reliance on the private sector.
In the end, the absence of a tidy progressive history from Malthus to humani-
tarian approaches to politics to science is clearly demonstrated in Hunger.
Although Vernon has interesting sections on hunger in the Empire, more on the
issue of nutrition in the Empire as well as the question of hunger and race in
Britain would have been welcome. Nevertheless, Vernon offers an original work
that shows how the politicization of hunger contributed to the welfare state, one
of several reasons that the topic deserves a history of its own.
University of Delaware John Patrick Montao
Transport Design: A Travel History. By Gregory Votolato. (London, England: Reak-
tion Books, Ltd., 2007. Pp. 239. $35.00.)
The author of this book, a professor of design at Buckinghamshire Chilterns
University College in England, has written a different kind of transportation
work. What he has created is a thoughtful, careful examination of how design,
mostly fashioned during the past two centuries, has affected travelers on land and
water, and more recently in the air. Although Gregory Votolato shows how
patterns of design have evolved, he points out striking linkages between old and
new experiences. As he indicates, George M. Pullman, who perfected and popu-
larized the railway sleeping car, helped to dene modern concepts of luxury travel.
For example, Pullman-like innovations, popular with the public for extended
trips, would later be incorporated in aircraft designed for long-distance ights.
Similarly, reclining chairs, found in a range of historic railroad rolling stock,
would eventually be employed by automobile and airplane makers, albeit with
important modications that reected advancements in materials and ergonomics.
In the process of discussing continuity and change in transport design, Votolato
contends that an important difference exists between transportation and
travel. The former involves getting to destinations in the most efcient and
economical way, and the latter has more to do with the overall quality of the
experience. Both factors have inuenced transport design, whether for common
urban trams or elegant ocean-going passenger liners.
Votolato shows imagination in his research. In addition to predictable sources,
including travel accounts, trade publications, and scholarly works, he has tapped
lms, television programs, and novels. Votolato complements his narrative with a
wide range of illustrations, essential for showing change in transportation design.
Often the illustrations selected leave no doubt about what Votolato means.
It must be noted that Votolato is a design specialist and not a trained historian.
There are a few historical errors; for example, Ulysses S. Grant did not immedi-
ately follow Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States and the limited
passenger train did not earn that distinction because it contained Pullman cars,
but rather the moniker meant a limited number of stops en route (31, 41).
Although Votolato covers impressively a wide range of transport forms, including
motor homes and speedboats, he might have commented protably on the sleeper-
bus craze that infected the American bus industry during the late 1920s and early
1930s, a transport type that remains in Europe.
Admittedly, a work on transport design could take on encyclopedic qualities,
and Votolato has distilled the topic to produce a thoughtful overview study. No
reader will likely ever look at the artifacts of transportation, either past or present,
in the same way. This book is to transport design what John R. Stilgos Metro-
politan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene [1983] is to the impact of the
built-railroad environment on the cultural history of the America. Transport
Design: A Travel History deserves a large reading audience.
Clemson University H. Roger Grant

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