Journal of Social History articles from March 2000

Journal of Social History archives from March 2000

BANDITRY AND THE SUBVERSION OF STATE AUTHORITY IN CHINA: THE CAPITAL REGION DURING THE MIDDLE MING PERIOD (1450-1525).
March 22, 2000... By 1500 or so, the principal dynastic capital of the Ming, Beijing, [1] had a population of between 800,000 and one million [2] and oversaw a China that had largely overcome the political, economic, and social dislocations attendant upon both...

NERVOUS BREAKDOWN IN 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN CULTURE.
March 22, 2000... The rise, evolution and ambiguous decline of the nervous breakdown in the United States open an interesting window on pervasive anxieties. The concept raises several intriguing historical questions: Why did it originate in the first place,...

MORE SINFUL PLEASURES? LEISURE, RESPECTABILITY AND THE MALE MIDDLE CLASSES IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND.
March 22, 2000... How respectable was the Victorian middle class? In spite of the period's identification as 'marking the emergence of a recognisably modern culture' and a 'new leisure world', there has been little exploration of this question. [1] Focus has...

FEMALE SOCIABILITY, PHYSICALITY, AND AUTHORITY IN AN EARLY MODERN HAUNTING.
March 22, 2000... In April 1628 Huguette Roy lay bedridden and near death. Her husband, Antoine Roger, so feared for her life and the life of their unborn child that he had masses sung and hired doctors and midwives, all of which they could ill afford. One...

WOMEN AS VICTIMS OF SEXUAL AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HOLLAND: CRIMINAL CASES OF RAPE, INCEST, AND MALTREATMENT IN ROTTERDAM AND DELFT.
March 22, 2000... Historical research on criminality during the preindustrial period has shown significant differences between male and female criminal behaviour. Several historians have pointed out that women were disproportionately sentenced for sexual...

CONVENTS AS LITIGANTS: DOWRY AND INHERITANCE DISPUTES IN EARLY-MODERN SPAIN.
March 22, 2000... In 1631 Gomez de Mendoza Manrique appeared in court to oppose his sister, Ines de Velasco, a nun in the convent of Santa Maria de las Huelgas in Valladolid, Spain. Ines and the convent had filed a lawsuit to force Gomez to pay Ines' yearly...

"NO UNSUITABLE MATCH": DEFINING RANK IN EIGHTEENTH AND EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCOTLAND.
March 22, 2000... "Could seduction be expressed in more explicite terms, than by taking advantage of opportunities to use freedoms with a young female his own equal in order to induce her to comply with his wishes?," asked a lawyer in 1792. [1] But was the woman...

The Senses of Humor: Self and Laughter in Modern America.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Senses of Humor: Self and Laughter in Modern America. By Daniel Wickberg (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. x plus 267pp.). Unknown before the second half of the nineteenth century, the "sense of humor" fully emerged by the early...

Schertsen, schimpen en schateren. Geschiedenis van het lachen in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, zestiende en zeventiende eeuw.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Schertsen, schimpen en schateren. Geschiedenis van het lachen in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, zestiende en zeventiende eeuw. By Johan Verberckmoes (Nijmegen, the Netherlands: Uitgeverij Sun Memoria, 1998. 287pp.) and Lachen in de Gouden Eeuw. Een...

"This Rash Act": Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City.(Review)
March 22, 2000... "This Rash Act": Suicide Across the Life Cycle in the Victorian City. By Victor Bailey (Stanford University Press, 1998. xvi plus 349pp. $55.00). This is a splendid book: in many ways it is a model for how a sophisticated social history...

The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries 1870-1930.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries 1870-1930. By Angus McLaren (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1997. viii plus 307pp. $24.95/cloth). Another book about the "social construction" of gender--an interesting...

Barmaids: A History of Women's Work in Pubs.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Barmaids: A History of Women's Work in Pubs. By Diane Kirkby (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xii plus 244pp. $64.95/cloth $24.95/paperback). Barmaids: A History of Women's Work in Pubs, fills an important gap in the economic...

The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1500.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1500. By Martha C. Howell (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. xv plus 278pp.). Historiographical debate in pre-modern...

Women in Early Modern England: 1550-1720.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Women in Early Modern England: 1550-1720. By Sara Mendelson arid Patricia Crawford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. xvi plus 480pp.). Fifteen years in the making and a fully collaborative venture of the co-authors, Women in Early Modern...

Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change, 1630-1800.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change, 1630-1800. By Elaine Forman Crane (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998. x plus 333pp.). Elaine Forman Crane opens her ambitious study of urban women's changing status in...

The Business of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Business of Benevolence: Industrial Paternalism in Progressive America. By Andrea Tone (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997. xii plus 264pp.). In the early l990s, George Bush pressed to replace state welfare with the...

The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society, 1900-1950.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society, 1900-1950. By D. S. Parker (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. xii plus 266pp. $49.50/cloth $19.95/paperback). The Idea of the...

Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Poisoning the Minds of the Lower Orders. By Don Herzog (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. xvi plus 559pp. $29.95). This is at times a deeply interesting book, but a damnably frustrating one to try to read from cover to cover. It...

Migration and Urbanization in the Ruhr Valley, 1821-1914.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Migration and Urbanization in the Ruhr Valley, 1821-1914. By James H. Jackson, Jr. (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997. xix plus 452pp. $85.00). This book investigates urbanization and the migration that expanded an industrial city at the...

Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 1889-1966.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Strikes and Solidarity: Coalfield Conflict in Britain, 1889-1966. By Roy Church and Quentin Outram (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xx plus 3l4pp. $69.95). The coal miner shoulders a heavy interpretive burden in British Labor...

Social Identity in Imperial Russia.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Social Identity in Imperial Russia. Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997. xi plus 260pp.). This is not a timid book. Social Identity in Imperial Russia attempts both to synthesize the...

Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Power and the Sacred in Revolutionary Russia: Religious Activists in the Village. By Glennys Young (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. xiv plus 307pp. $47.50/cloth). Influenced by pioneering and...

The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Peasantries of Europe: From the Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. Edited by Tom Scott (London and New York: Longman, 1998. xi plus 4l6pp.). In a few hundred years time, when the final word is written--or spoken--on the century...

Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Urban Protest in Seventeenth-Century France: The Culture of Retribution. By William Beik (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xiii plus 283pp. $59.95/hardcover $ 19.95/paperback). William Beik revisits rebellious seventeenth-century...

"The Tombs of the Living": Prisons and Prison Reform in Liberal Italy.(Review)
March 22, 2000... "The Tombs of the Living": Prisons and Prison Reform in Liberal Italy. By Susan B. Carrafiello (New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc., 1998. l38pp. $38.95). True to its title, this book focuses rather narrowly on the various attempts and...

From Calabar to Carter's Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community (Colonial Williamsburg Studies in Chesapeake History and Culture).(Review)
March 22, 2000... From Calabar to Carter's Grove: The History of a Virginia Slave Community (Colonial Williamsburg Studies in Chesapeake History and Culture). By Lorena S. Walsh (Charlottesville, Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1997. xxiv plus 336pp....

Society in Time and Space: A Geographical Perspective on Change.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Society in Time and Space: A Geographical Perspective on Change. By Robert A. Dodgshon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xii plus 230pp. $59.95/cloth $19.95/paperback). Robert A. Dodgshon is a historical geographer at the...

The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture. By Neil Foley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xv plus 326pp. $29.95). In his examination of the complex class and race relationships that...

Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State. By Robert C. Lieberman (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998. xiii plus 306pp. $45.00). At base this book, which explains the connection between American...

Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition, Sao Paulo and Salvador.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition, Sao Paulo and Salvador. By Kim D. Butler (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1998. xiv plus 285pp.) Brazil, with the largest number of people of African descent in this...

The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Ghosts of Berlin: Confronting German History in the Urban Landscape. By Brian Ladd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. ix plus 271pp. $29.95.). Writing about Berlin is in vogue this season as readers have occasion to ponder at...

Burgundy to Champagne: The Wine Trade in Early Modern France.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Burgundy to Champagne: The Wine Trade in Early Modern France. By Thomas Brennan (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. xxi plus 350pp. $39.95). Historians have neglected the wine trade in France for a long time because...

American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century.(Review)
March 22, 2000... American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century. By Nancy Shoemaker (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999. xiii plus l56pp. $39.95). In this slim volume author Shoemaker discusses the demographic recovery of the...

Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social, and Cultural History.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Christianity in South Africa: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. Edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. xiv plus 480pp.). A decade ago the study of religion was at the...

Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856-1914. By Stephen P. Frank (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. xxii plus 252pp. $55.00/cloth). None of the innovations during Russia's era of great reforms has been so...

Transformations of Patriarchy in the West, 1500-1900.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Transformations of Patriarchy in the West, 1500-1900. By Pavia Miller (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998. xviii plus 397pp. $35.00). In a conversation several years ago about axes of difference within...

A Cursing Brain? The Histories of Tourette Syndrome.(Review)
March 22, 2000... A Cursing Brain? The Histories of Tourette Syndrome. By Howard I. Kushner (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. xii plus 3O3pp. $29.95). How are diseases identified and defined? Although seemingly simple and...

Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight. By Eli Faber (New York and London: New York University Press, 1998. xvii plus 366pp.) There are some audiences in North America today who find it difficult to understand past...

From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England.(Review)
March 22, 2000... From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England. By Anna Bryson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 3llpp. $75.00). Anna Bryson makes an important contribution in this intelligent and careful study of...

New and Improved: The Transformation of American Women's Emotional Culture.(Review)
March 22, 2000... New and Improved: The Transformation of American Women's Emotional Culture. By John C. Spurlock and Cynthia A. Magistro (New York and London: New York University Press, 1993. xiii plus 213pp. $35.00) By closely examining the diaries,...

Destined for Equality: The Inevitable Rise of Women's Status.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Destined for Equality: The Inevitable Rise of Women's Status. By Robert Max Jackson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. 316pp.). No one can contest the conclusion that women have gained more equality in American society since the...

Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers. By Julia Grant (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. ix plus 309pp. $32.50). With the rise of cultural studies, the approach known in literary criticism as "reader...

Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History. Edited by Martha Hodes (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999. xvi plus 542 pp.). In his 1995 presidential address to the Organization of American Historians,...

The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction. By Rachel P. Maines (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. xviii plus 181pp. $22.00). Even before Johns Hopkins University Press...

Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America. By Ann Twinam (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. xviii plus 447pp. $60.00). One of the greatest challenges for scholars who...

American Mobbing 1828-1861: Toward Civil War.(Review)
March 22, 2000... American Mobbing 1828-1861: Toward Civil War. By David Grimsted (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. xx plus 372pp. $65.00). David Grimsted's groundbreaking tome, the product of over twenty-five years of work, is a deeply considered...

The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Rise and Fall of Class in Britain. By David Cannadine (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xv plus 274pp. $29.95). This is an engaging, provocative and ambitious book that in less than two hundred pages of text seeks to survey...

The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700-1949.(Review)
March 22, 2000... The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700-1949. By Lynn Hollen Lees (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. xii plus 373pp. $64.95). Once a community has decided to collectively support the needy or to...

Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame Football Team.(Review)
March 22, 2000... Catholics and American Culture: Fulton Sheen, Dorothy Day, and the Notre Dame Football Team. By Mark S. Massa (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1999. x plus 278pp.). Until very recently, historians of American Catholicism in the post...