Canadian Journal of History articles from August 1995

Canadian Journal of History archives from August 1995

Mind of an assassin: Ravaillac and the murder of Henry IV of France. (Francois Ravaillac)
August 1, 1995... "I know very well he is dead: I saw the blood on my knife and the place where I hit him. But I have no regrets at all about dying, because I've done what I came to do."(1) So begins the confrontation between the authorities and Francois...

"Our position in the Far East would be stronger without this unsatisfactory commitment": Britain and the reinforcement of Hong Kong, 1941.
August 1, 1995... On 3 September 1941 Major General A.E. Grasett, the late general officer commanding at Hong Kong, outlined the state of his former command to the British Chiefs of Staff Committee (C.O.S.). Troop morale was high, the tactical plan "in a high...

"Help us to secure a strong, healthy, prosperous and peaceful Britain": the social arguments of the campaign for compulsory military service in Britain, 1899-1914.
August 1, 1995... Those who promoted compulsory military service in Britain between 1899-1914 were in a most uncomfortable position. Of all the major industrialized nations of Europe before 1914, only Britain steadfastly refused to embrace some system of...

The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence, 1933-1940.
August 1, 1995... During the seventy-five years before the end of the Second World War, French diplomacy in Europe was primarily concerned with security against Germany. The French preoccupation with Germany is not surprising: three times during these years,...

Churchill.
August 1, 1995... During the seventy-five years before the end of the Second World War, French diplomacy in Europe was primarily concerned with security against Germany. The French preoccupation with Germany is not surprising: three times during these years,...

Louis Loucheur and the Shaping of Modern France: 1916-1931.
August 1, 1995... During the seventy-five years before the end of the Second World War, French diplomacy in Europe was primarily concerned with security against Germany. The French preoccupation with Germany is not surprising: three times during these years,...

Churchill: The End of Glory, a Political Biography.
August 1, 1995... During the seventy-five years before the end of the Second World War, French diplomacy in Europe was primarily concerned with security against Germany. The French preoccupation with Germany is not surprising: three times during these years,...

The French Foreign Office and the Origins of the First World War: 1898-1914.
August 1, 1995... During the seventy-five years before the end of the Second World War, French diplomacy in Europe was primarily concerned with security against Germany. The French preoccupation with Germany is not surprising: three times during these years,...

When the Soviet Union Entered World Politics.
August 1, 1995... During the seventy-five years before the end of the Second World War, French diplomacy in Europe was primarily concerned with security against Germany. The French preoccupation with Germany is not surprising: three times during these years,...

Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War.
August 1, 1995... During the seventy-five years before the end of the Second World War, French diplomacy in Europe was primarily concerned with security against Germany. The French preoccupation with Germany is not surprising: three times during these years,...

Dilemmas of Appeasement: British Deterrence and Defense, 1934-1937.
August 1, 1995... During the seventy-five years before the end of the Second World War, French diplomacy in Europe was primarily concerned with security against Germany. The French preoccupation with Germany is not surprising: three times during these years,...

A South African Kingdom: The Pursuit of Security in Nineteenth Century Lesotho.
August 1, 1995... These are exciting times in southern Africa. Across a region roughly the size of the continental United States a dramatic process of negotiated peace and democratic elections is taking place which gives hope for an end to generations of...

Slavery in South Africa: Captive Labor on the Dutch Frontier.
August 1, 1995... These are exciting times in southern Africa. Across a region roughly the size of the continental United States a dramatic process of negotiated peace and democratic elections is taking place which gives hope for an end to generations of...

The Accession of Henry II in England: Royal Government Restored, 1149-1159.
August 1, 1995... Henry II fascinated and overawed his contemporaries - and has cast his spell over historians ever since. Highly intelligent, tireless, hot-tempered, this first Angevin king has often been called England's greatest. Yet he was a Frenchman who...

William Waynflete: Bishop and Educationalist.
August 1, 1995... William Waynflete was in some ways an unlikely bishop. A schoolmaster - he occupied the headmastership of William of Wykeham's foundation, Winchester College, for some eleven years, during which time he taught the rudiments of Latin grammar with...

Valois Guyenne: A Study of Politics, Government and Society in Late Medieval France.
August 1, 1995... Apres une longue eclipse causee par l'hegemonie de l'Ecole des Annales, l'histoire politique refait surface dans l'historiographie depuis environ une quinzaine d'annees et cela, a juste titre. Il faut cependant dire d'emblee qu'elle n'est plus...

An Economy of Violence in Early Modern France: Crime and Justice in the Haute-Auvergne, 1587-1664.
August 1, 1995... The upper Auvergne, a remote, mountainous region in south-central France, was for centuries a self-contained rural society known for its violence. The forces of law and order never penetrated deeply enough to suppress the violence, and...

Geneva, Zurich, Basel: History, Culture and National Identity.
August 1, 1995... In 1991 the seven hundredth anniversary of the earliest recorded Swiss Confederation occurred. In the U.S.A. it generated a flurry of interest for the little European country, its peculiar form of democracy and its way of co-opting diverse...

The Disturbed State of the Russian Realm.
August 1, 1995... The so-called Time of Troubles in the Russian state (1598-1613) was a chaotic period of political collapse, social disorder, foreign invasion, famine, and naked class warfare that set its mark on later Russian historical development and did much...

Business and Religion in the Age of New France, 1600-1760: Twenty-Two Studies.
August 1, 1995... It is good to have these essays in one easily available collection. All but two have been published during the last twenty-seven years in widely scattered historical journals in France, Great Britain, the United States, and Canada; some have been...

Neither Kingdom nor Nation: The Irish Quest for Constitutional Rights, 1698-1800.
August 1, 1995... This volume is an excellent introduction to the politics of eighteenth-century Ireland and on those grounds alone is worth reading. In one sense it updates W.E.H. Lecky and J.A. Froude, whose exhaustive studies have tended to discourage the...

Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations.
August 1, 1995... With the possible exception of AIDS, no disease in the last twenty-five years has generated as much scholarly interest as hysteria. At first glance it is not easy to see why. Psychiatrists and psychologists no longer use the term in clinical...

Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siecle Europe.
August 1, 1995... Impressionism was for many of us our entree to the world of visual art. We love the Impressionists. Their works consistently fetch the highest prices in the art market. A visit to the Musee d'Orsay, which houses the world's largest collection of...

The Sorcerer as Apprentice: Stalin as Commissar of Nationalities, 1917-1924.
August 1, 1995... As the first Soviet Commissar of Nationalities (Narkomnats), J.V. Stalin showed early signs of an undervalued capacity for innovation and foresight. Before anyone else in Lenin's inner circle, he understood the necessity indeed urgency - of...

Ukraine and Ukrainians Throughout the World: A Demographic and Sociological Guide to the Homeland and Its Diaspora.
August 1, 1995... There is much to praise in this weighty reference work on Ukrainians and their organizations around the world. The global scope of the volume, which encompasses information on the Ukrainian-diaspora on all continents, is to be commended....

Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness - A Soviet Spymaster.
August 1, 1995... Among the boons of the collapse of communism to historians have been the appearance of a rash of books illuminating the inner workings of the Soviet secret police during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods (the works of Genrikh Borovik, Yuri...

Beria: Stalin's First Lieutenant.
August 1, 1995... Among the boons of the collapse of communism to historians have been the appearance of a rash of books illuminating the inner workings of the Soviet secret police during the Stalinist and post-Stalinist periods (the works of Genrikh Borovik, Yuri...

Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States.
August 1, 1995... One of the difficult tasks facing leaders of the former Soviet Union was to convince its citizens of the rationality and legitimacy of the socialist system. During the Stalinist period (1928-53), the Communist party instituted tight control over...

Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity.
August 1, 1995... The essence of social science is the examination of people as objects of knowledge and social control (or social engineering). In this brief monograph, David Horn, an anthropologist and an Assistant Professor of Comparative Studies at Ohio State...

British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolution: 1783-1793.
August 1, 1995... For the longest time a neglected subject, diplomatic history has experienced a notable resurgence in recent years with studies reflecting increasing growth in both scope and sophistication (cf. K.W. Schweizer. "British Foreign Policy in the...

Cricket and the Victorians.
August 1, 1995... The quintessential "English" game, cricket is probably an enigma not just to the majority of the English-speaking world but also to a substantial proportion of the country's natives. Yet it is still identified as one of the key indices of...

The Irish Diaspora: A Primer.
August 1, 1995... The title notwithstanding, this book abounds in subtle arguments and is brimming with that most undervalued of academic commodities - commonsense. The significance of emigration in Irish history, and the large impact of the Irish upon societies...

Joseph Chamberlain: Entrepreneur in Politics.
August 1, 1995... With the exception of Winston Churchill and Gladstone, no British politician of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has had so many biographies and monograph studies of aspects of his career devoted to him as has Joseph Chamberlain. There is,...

Labour Women: Women in British Working-Class Politics, 1918-1939.
August 1, 1995... This book begins with an intriguing question: evoking the well-known query "What did you do in the war, Daddy?", it asks "What did you do when you got the vote, Mummy?" According to Pamela Graves, thousands of working class women could have...

Forming American Politics: Ideals, Interests, and Institutions in Colonial New York and Pennsylvania.
August 1, 1995... Writing about the post-War of 1812 resurgence and reshaping of American political parties, Richard Hofstadter found it was "natural" that New York should be foremost in "party revival" because "along with Pennsylvania, [it] had long been a...

The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750-1990.
August 1, 1995... Adult education in America has traditionally attracted little interest among scholars and except for the works of Herbert B. Adams and Charles R. Mann, written nearly a century ago, no historian until now has provided a comprehensive history of...

The Privileges of Independence: Neomercantilism and the American Revolution.
August 1, 1995... It is always a pleasure to encounter an original and persuasive reinterpretation of an important historical passage, and Professor Crowley of Dalhousie University has presented us with just such a pleasure in The Privileges of Independence. The...

Congressional Dynamics: Structure, Coordination and Choice in the First American Congress, 1774-1789.
August 1, 1995... The Confederation era has long been a period of keen interest to American historians. For years, John Fiske's negative assessment of the era held sway. Then, beginning with the publication of Merrill Jensen's Articles of Confederation in 1940,...

Loyalists and Community in North America.
August 1, 1995... Just over twenty years ago George A. Billias wrote that the loyalists had yet to be integrated into American history, that many scholars were reluctant to face the American Revolution as a civil war. And Bernard Bailyn, analysing Thomas...

Going Abroad: European Travel in Nineteenth-Century American Culture.
August 1, 1995... My reading of Going Abroad was interrupted one Sunday morning by a telephone call from my father. He was calling with news of his recent two week trip to Cuba, news I was awaiting with some trepidation. My sister and I had encouraged this trip,...

Harrisburg Industrializes: The Coming of Factories to an American Community.
August 1, 1995... America's transition from an agrarian and rural society to an industrial and urban one has always ranked as among the most important themes in U.S. history. Gerald Eggert presents Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as a case study of a medium sized city...

New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935.
August 1, 1995... In New Deals, Colin Gordon argues for "the primacy of business interests in the formulation of U.S. public policy and the essential conservatism of the New Deal" (p. 4). He asserts that after a variety of unsuccessful private stabilization...

Oldest Allies, Guarded Friends: The United States and France Since 1940.
August 1, 1995... Dans la preface de l'ouvrage, Stanley Hoffmann souligne avec raison que le grand merite de Cogan est d'avoir presente non seulement les affrontements et les frictions entre la France et les Etats-Unis mais aussi leur cause sous-jacente, a savoir...

Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America.
August 1, 1995... Richard Vietor has put all students of U.S. economic regulation in his debt with this penetrating study of four firms, (American Airlines, El Paso Natural Gas, AT&T, Bank America), in four industries, (transportation, energy, telecommunications,...

Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru.
August 1, 1995... This book is a benchmark in Latin American studies, which presents the right blend of discourse analysis with a sophisticated examination of the political economy of the agrarian sector. Mallon's comparative study focuses on four regions in two...

Frontier Development: Land, Labour, and Capital on the Wheatlands of Argentina and Canada, 1890-1914.
August 1, 1995... This contribution to Oxford Historical Monographs is a bold attempt to revise our understanding of how two important frontier regions developed in the heyday of liberalism based around the production of a common staple yet under very different...

Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China.
August 1, 1995... It was but five years ago that the condition of Chinese women into the twentieth century was described in a major scholarly journal as one of "virtual complete illiteracy" (Lavely, et al, "The Rise of Female Education in China," China Quarterly...

The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse.
August 1, 1995... This book is a survey of much of the most important Chinese elite thought of the 1600s, 1700s, and early 1800s - the "late imperial China" of the two and a half centuries before the outbreak of the Opium War - in terms of what its author sees as...

Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier: 1600-1800.
August 1, 1995... John Shepherd's impressive book is an important addition to the growing corpus of studies on Chinese local history in English, but it is also significantly more than that. The circumstances of its subject, Taiwan, make the book perhaps the most...

Central Authority and Local Autonomy in the Formation of Early Modern Japan: The Case of Kaga Domain.
August 1, 1995... The early modern period (1600-1868) was a time of remarkable political stability in Japan. The regime rounded by Tokugawa Ieyasu attained hegemony in 1600, bringing to a close a century and a haft of almost continuous warfare. The Tokugawa...

Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual Choices in Occupied Shanghai, 1937-1945.
August 1, 1995... Poshek Fu has written a well-crafted, evocative study of the moral choices facing Chinese intellectuals in occupied Shanghai (1937-45). Fu's stated purpose is to correct what he regards as a major deficiency in existing historiography on Japan's...

Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism.
August 1, 1995... As the world prepares to enter a new calendrical and technological millennium, the Chinese find themselves contemplating a crisis of civilization unprecedented in depth and extent. To the swelling tide of books on the Cultural Revolution, that...

Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt.
August 1, 1995... Huda Sha'rawi unveiled in 1923. This constituted a radical break from the norms of respectable Muslim society. Up to the 1930s, urban women of all classes and women of the rural gentry had veiled their faces when they went outside their homes....

The Women Founders of the Social Sciences.
August 1, 1995... This is an important, useful, and readable work of historical recovery. It profiles twenty-one women ranging from Harriet Martineau and Beatrice Webb, who are sometimes recognized as important figures in the social sciences, to Marie de Gournay...