The Journal of Interdisciplinary History articles from January 2001

The Journal of Interdisciplinary History archives from January 2001

Slave Naming Patterns: Onomastics and the Taxonomy of Race in Eighteenth-Century.
January 1, 2001... Jamaica Every year, slave owners responsible for managing estates were required by Jamaican law to submit to the local vestry an account of the whites, slaves, and livestock on their properties. Whites were listed by first name and surname;...

Does Decline Make Sense? The West Indian Economy and the Abolition of the British Slave.
January 1, 2001... Trade One of the most lively and long-lived historical controversies centers on the causes of British anti-slavery policies during the first years of the nineteenth century. Participants in this debate dispute whether the health of the West...

The Cultural Worlds of Marco Polo.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World. By John Larner (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999) 250 pp. $29.95 Polo is one of the few historical figures of medieval Europe to achieve worldwide fame. His status and visibility are such...

The Prudent Professionalism of George Herbert Walker Bush.(Review)
January 1, 2001... The Presidency of George Bush. By John Robert Greene (Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 2000) 245 pp. $35.00 All the Best: My Life in Letters and Other Writings. By George Bush (New York, Scribner, 1999) 640 pp. $30.00 A World...

The Concept of Political Culture.
January 1, 2001... "'Political culture': the expression has of late gained general currency," said Hughes in 1988. That same year, at a session of the American Historical Association that turned into a discussion of political culture, Baker observed that despite...

War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, the Mediterranean, and Mesoamerica.(Review)
January 1, 2001... War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, the Mediterranean, and Mesoamerica. Edited by Kurt Raalflaub and Nathan Rosenstein (Cambridge, Mass., Center for Hellenic Studies, 1999) 484 pp. $50.00 The process that resulted in...

Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. Edited by Niall Ferguson (New York, Basic Books, 1999) 548 pp. $30.00 Ferguson begins his introductory essay to this thought-provoking volume with the phrase, "what if?" The words are not...

The Paths of History.(Review)
January 1, 2001... The Paths of History. By Igor M. Diakonoff (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 355 pp. $54.95 cloth $19.95 paper Diakonoff, a distinguished scholar of ancient Mesopotamia and south-west Asia, has published numerous studies on...

People of the City: Jews and the Urban Challenge.(Review)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... People of the City: Jews and the Urban Challenge. Edited by Ezra Mendelsohn (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) 268 pp. $45.00 The six leading essays dealing with the Jewish urban experience are, by far, the most important...

Meritocracy and Economic Inequality.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Meritocracy and Economic Inequality. Edited by Kenneth Arrow, Samuel Bowles, and Steven Durlauf (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2000) 348 pp. $59.95 cloth $19.95 paper A meritocracy is an economy and society that rewards effort and...

Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens. By James P. Sickinger (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1999) 288 pp. $49.95 Since the last comprehensive study of Athenian archives in 1868, archaeology and epigraphy, the...

Contagion and the State in Europe 1830-1930.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Contagion and the State in Europe 1830-1930. By Peter Baldwin (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 563 pp. $69.95 More than fifty years ago, Ackerknecht, the medical historian, argued in a seminal article that the adherence of...

The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe 1589-1715.(Review)
January 1, 2001... The Power of Kings: Monarchy and Religion in Europe 1589-1715. By Paul Kleber Monad (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999) 417 pp. $35.00 This book is a wide-ranging account of European kingship in the early modern period. It discusses...

Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. By Brad S. Gregory (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 528 pp. $49.95 This exceptionally important and ambitious first book traces the experience and remembrance of...

The Monastic Order in Yorkshire.(Review)
January 1, 2001... The Monastic Order in Yorkshire: 1069-1215. By Janet Burton (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 352 pp. $69.95 From The Yorkshire Nunneries in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (York, 1979) to Monastic and Religious Orders in...

From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England.(Review)
January 1, 2001... From Reformation to Improvement: Public Welfare in Early Modern England. By Paul Slack (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 179 pp. $45.00 Early modern England gave birth to some spectacular designs for a reformed mankind, from Sir...

The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution.(Review)
January 1, 2001... The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution. By Eliga H. Gould (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2000) 262 pp. $49.95 cloth $18.95 paper "The Age of the American Revolution," as...

Bodies of Evidence: Medicine and the Politics of the English Inquest, 1830-1926.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Bodies of Evidence: Medicine and the Politics of the English Inquest, 1830-1926. By Ian A. Burney (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000) 245 pp. $39.95 The study of coroners' inquests in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century...

Inside the Citadel: Men and the Emancipation of Women, 1850-1921.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Inside the Citadel: Men and the Emancipation of Women, 1850-1921. By Richard Symonds (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1999) 208 pp. $59.95 Well-known for his books on British imperial history, this time Symonds has written a brief account of...

Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England. By Susan Thorne (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 247 pp. $49.50 Students of the British empire routinely focus upon the colonies and...

London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis.(Review)
January 1, 2001... London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis. By Jonathan Schneer (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999) 336 pp. $29.95 London has often been called a "world city," but scholars have had mixed success in translating this image into a compelling...

Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Sixteenth-Century Parlements.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Judging the French Reformation: Heresy Trials by Sixteenth- Century Parlements. By William Monter (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 324 pp. $49.95 Monter knows more about the past than those who lived it; this book is...

Revolutionary Demands: A Content Analysis of the "Cahiers de Doleances" of 1789.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Revolutionary Demands: A Content Analysis of the "Cahiers de Doleances" of 1789. By Gilbert Shapiro and John Markoff (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998) 684 pp. $75.00 Shapiro and Markoff have made an important, and explicitly...

L'Invention du syndicat (1791-1884): Itineraire d'une categorie juridique.(Review)
January 1, 2001... L'Invention du syndicat (1791-1884): Itineraire d'une categorie juridique. By Francine Soubiran-Paillet (Paris, Reseau Europeen Droit et Societe, 1999) 189 Pp. 120 FF For Soubiran-Paillet, the right of French workers to associate is a case...

The Modernist Enterprise: French Elites and the Threat of Modernity 1900-1940.(Review)
January 1, 2001... The Modernist Enterprise: French Elites and the Threat of Modernity 1900-1940. By Marjorie A. Beale (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000) 231 pp. $49.50 This important and innovative study approaches the intellectual and cultural...

Giovanni Battista Moroni: Renaissance Portraitist.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Giovanni Battista Moroni: Renaissance Portraitist. Edited by Peter Humfrey (Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 2000) 80 pp. $21.95 This catalog for a small, but important, exhibition--just ten ravishing portraits by Moroni, the...

Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice. By Jutta Gisela Sperling (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000) 231 pp. $70.00 cloth $24.00 paper At the heart of this complex and many-layered book is a simple observation....

European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey.(Review)
January 1, 2001... European and Islamic Trade in the Early Ottoman State: The Merchants of Genoa and Turkey. By Kate Fleet (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 204 pp. $59.95 This book makes a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the material...

Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840-1865.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840--1865. By Mark Bassin (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 329 pp. $69.95 This is an unusually interesting study of the rise and...

Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Searching for the Bright Path: The Mississippi Choctaws from Prehistory to Removal. By James Taylor Carson (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1999) 183 pp. $40.00 The history of the Choctaw Indians has received only sporadic attention...

Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans. By Anthony F. C. Wallace (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 394 pp. $29.95 Wallace's Thomas Jefferson was involved in a mighty struggle to maintain mutually...

The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas.(Review)
January 1, 2001... The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. By David Eltis (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 353 pp. $59.95 cloth paper In this intelligent and tightly structured contribution to Atlantic history, Eltis explores the paradox of...

Inequality in Early America.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Inequality in Early America. Edited by Carla Gardina Pestana and Sharon V. Salinger (Hanover, University Press of New England, 1999) 329 pp. $40.00 cloth $19.95 paper This collection of essays honoring the scholarship of Gary B. Nash was...

Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market. By Walter Johnson (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 283 pp. $26.00 This study considers the market for slaves as a multidimensional human experience, focusing...

American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998.(Review)
January 1, 2001... American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998. By Ted Ownby (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1999) 228 pp. $45.00 cloth $18.98 paper There is a bit of irony writing a book about consumer culture...

The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America.(Review)
January 1, 2001... The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America. By Philip A. Klinker, with Rogers M. Smith (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999) 417 pp. $32.50 Acknowledging that there have been major changes in race...

Loose Connections: Joining Together in America's Fragmented Communities.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Loose Connections: Joining Together in America's Fragmented Communities. By Robert Wuthnow (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998) 276 pp. $35.00 Half full or half empty? The growing debate about the state of public life in the...

Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Judging Jehovah's Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution. By Shawn Francis (Lawrence, University of Kansas Press, 2000) 342 pp. $34.95 Free Speech in the Good War. By Richard W. Steele (New York, St....

Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Nature and the English Diaspora: Environment and History in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. By Thomas R. Dunlap (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 350 pp. $59.95 cloth $19.95 paper "The land was ours before...

Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars. By Susan Milbrath (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1999) 348 pp. $55.00 cloth $24.95 paper Though apparently of antiquarian interest, the star gods of Maya are today,...

Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War. By Joe Lunn (Portsmouth, N.H., Heinemann Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999) 264 pp. $65.00 cloth $25.95 paper During World War I, France increased the size of its...

One Industry, Two Chinas: Silk Filatures and Peasant-Family Production in Wuxi County, 1865-1937.(Review)
January 1, 2001... One Industry, Two Chinas: Silk Filatures and Peasant-Family Production in Wuxi County, 1865-1937. By Lynda S. Bell (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 290 pp. $49.50 The phrase "Two Chinas" in the title of this work indicates the...

Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, l600-1850.(Review)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2001... Climates and Constitutions: Health, Race, Environment and British Imperialism in India, l600-1850. By Mark Harrison (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) 280 pp. $29.95 British cultural constructions of "race" and beliefs about the...

Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar, 1854-1996.(Review)
January 1, 2001... Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar, 1854-1996. By Nandini Sundar (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 296 pp. This book focuses on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century history of Bastar, a region in...