The Journal of Interdisciplinary History articles from June 2000

The Journal of Interdisciplinary History archives from June 2000

Morals and Moral Regulation in Protestant France.
June 22, 2000... In mid-July 1595, an anonymous informant left a note on a table in the temple of Montauban, a strongly Protestant southern French town situated on the Tarn river. The terse, unsigned missive, discovered during the Sunday morning worship,...

The Interdependence of Vital Events: Twentieth-Century Indian Kerala.
June 22, 2000... Studies that use short-run analyses of demographic variables to understand historical populations have gained predominance during the last two decades, particularly in the context of developed countries. Short-term analysis is often thought to...

One Step Forward: African-American Married Women in the South, 1950-1960.
June 22, 2000... Forty years ago, inner-city ghettos in the United States were characterized by unemployment, low wages, poverty, and other forms of social distress. Yet, these communities demonstrated significant positive aspects as well, including a degree of...

An Independent Means: The American Revolution and the Rise of a National Economy.(Review)
June 22, 2000... From Dependency to Independence: Economic Revolution in Colonial New England. By Margaret Ellen Newell (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998) 329 pp. $45.00 In Irons: Britain's Naval Supremacy and the American Revolutionary Economy. By...

The Atlantic Slave Trade.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Atlantic Slave Trade. By Herbert S. Klein (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 234 pp. $49.95 cloth $15.95 paper For studies of the Atlantic slave trade, there is a B.C. and an A.D. B.C. means "Before Curtin"--before Philip D....

Conquests and Cultures: An International History.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Conquests and Cultures: An International History. By Thomas Sowell (New York, Basic Books, 1998) 493 pp. $35.00 In this volume, Sowell presents the last of a series of three books about culture in history. The approaches taken in the first...

Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Challenging Authority: The Historical Study of Contentious Politics. Edited by Michael P. Hanagan, Leslie Page Moch, and Wayne Te Brake (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1998) 284 pp. $54.95 cloth $21.95 paper The school of...

Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Pnina G[acute{e}]raldine Abir-Am Inscribing Science: Scientific Texts and the Materiality of Communication. Edited by Timothy Lenoir (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998) 457 pp. $65.00 cloth $24.95 paper This collection of...

The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents. By Elisabeth Bronfen (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1998) 469 pp. $55.00 cloth $19.95 paper Bronfen's study brings the disciplinary perspective of a literature scholar with the...

Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End. By John Willinsky (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1998) 304 pp. $22.95 cloth $19.95 paper Echoing Martin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (New York, 1974)...

Measuring Sex, Age and Death in the Roman Empire: Explorations in Ancient Demography.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Measuring Sex, Age and Death in the Roman Empire: Explorations in Ancient Demography. By Walter Scheidel (Ann Arbor, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1996) 184 pp. $59.50 This book is a major contribution to ancient demography. Scheidel's...

Alternative Agriculture: A History: From the Black Death to the Present Day.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Alternative Agriculture: A History: From the Black Death to the Present Day. By Joan Thirsk (New York, Oxford University Press, 1997) 365 pp. $47.50 Anyone who drove the country roads of England during the late 1970s and 1980s and...

A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550.(Review)
June 22, 2000... A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200-1550. By Edwin S. Hunt and James M. Murray (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 277 pp. $49.95 cloth $17.95 paper Hunt and Murray have written a history of medieval business practice...

Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480-1750.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Death, Religion, and the Family in England, 1480-1750. By Ralph Haul-brooke (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 435 pp. $99.00 Houlbrooke's volume successfully narrates a social history of death in early modern England. He warns that...

British Identities Before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600-1800.(Review)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2000... British Identities Before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600-1800. By Colin Kidd (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 302 pp. $59.95 With impressive erudition, Kidd examines the origins of ethnic...

Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution. By John Gascoigne (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 247 pp. $64.95 Joseph Banks, the foremost British naturalist...

Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862. By Jamie L. Bronstein (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 372 pp. $55.00 As Bronstein writes, a large number of workers in both Britain and the...

Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837-1876.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837-1876. By Margaret Homans (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998) 299 pp. Cloth $44.00 paper $18.00. In this artfully crafted, highly original book, Homans situates...

Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain. By Alison Winter (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1998) 464 pp. $30.00 From the 1830s to the 1860s, "animal magnetism"--or "mesmerism," as it was pejoratively known--flourished in...

Friends of the Family: The English Home and Its Guardians, 1850-1940.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Friends of the Family: The English Home and Its Guardians, 1850-1940. By George K. Behlmer (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998) 455 pp. $55.00 Historians such as Donzelot and Lasch on the left and Himmelfarb on the right have...

Urban Mortality Change in England and Germany, 1870-1913.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Urban Mortality Change in England and Germany, 1870-1913. By J[ddot{o}]rg V[ddot{o}]gele (Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1999) 299 pp. [pounds]32.50 cloth [pounds]16.95 paper In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western...

The Car in British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring, 1896-1939.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Car in British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring, 1896-1939. By Sean O'Connell (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1999) 240 pp. $79.95 cloth $29.95 paper This study makes good use of the sociological and social-historical...

Ecrire pour gerer. Les comptes de la commune de Villeneuve autour de 1300.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Ecrire pour gerer. Les comptes de la commune de Villeneuve autour de 1300. By Cl[acute{e}]mence Th[acute{e}]venaz (Lausanne, Facult[acute{e}] des Lettres, Universit[acute{e}] de Lausanne, 1999) 425 pp. N.P. This scholarly tome presents an...

Community and Clientele in Twelfth-Century Tuscany: The Origins of the Rural Commune in the Plain of Lucca.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Community and Clientele in Twelfth-Century Tuscany: The Origins of the Rural Commune in the Plain of Lucca. By Chris Wickham (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 276 pp. $69.00 This stimulating and provocative book about the origins of...

Medicine and Religion c. l300: The Case of Amau de Vilanova.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Medicine and Religion c. l300: The Case of Amau de Vilanova. By Joseph Ziegler (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 342 pp. $80.00 An important corpus of texts--medical, theological, and alchemical--is attached to the name of the...

Padua under the Carrara, 1318--1405.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Padua under the Carrara, 1318--1405. By Benjamin G. Kohl (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) 466 pp. $45.00 This book is, in some sense, a continuation of J. K. Hyde's admirable Padua in the Age of Dante (Manchester, 1966),...

Medieval and Renaissance Venice.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Medieval and Renaissance Venice. Edited By Ellen E. Kittel and Thomas F. Madden (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1999) 326 pp. $45.00 This Festschrift for the late Donald Queller reflects the trajectory of the honoree's own studies...

A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany.(Review)
June 22, 2000... A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany. By H. C. Erik Midelfort (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 438 pp. $55.00 This book explores how early modern Germans understood and experienced mental illness and disease....

Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe: Der Dreissigjahrige Krieg aus der Nahe.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Zwischen Alltag und Katastrophe: Der Dreissigjahrige Krieg aus der Nahe. Edited by Benigna von Krusenstjern and Hans Medick (G[ddot{o}]ttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999) 625 pp. 98 DM The 350th anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in...

What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany.(Review)
June 22, 2000... What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Nazi and Postwar Germany. By Elizabeth D. Heineman (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999) 374 pp. $45.00 In 1900, Germany's female population, like its male...

The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572-1620.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Reformation of Community: Social Welfare and Calvinist Charity in Holland, 1572-1620. By Charles H. Parker (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 221 pp. $59.95 The Reformed Church enjoyed a number of privileges in the Dutch...

The Knife Fighters: Violent Crime in Southern Ostrohothnia 1790-1825.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Knife Fighters: Violent Crime in Southern Ostrohothnia 1790-1825. By Heikki Ylikangas (Jyv[ddot{a}]skyl[ddot{a}], Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1998) 296 pp. N.P. This study first appeared in Finnish in 1976; a slightly shortened...

The Economy and Material Culture of Russia: 1600-1725.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Economy and Material Culture of Russia: 1600-1725. By Richard Hellie (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999) 671 pp. $42.00 Hellie's latest volume is one of the most substantial and important contributions on early modern Russian...

The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. By Katherine Verdery (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999) 185 pp. $22.50 The demise of the socialist party-states of eastern Europe and the frantic pace of...

American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories.(Review)
June 22, 2000... American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories. By Daniel H. Usner, Jr. (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1998) 189 pp. $45.00 American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley is a collection of...

The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, & the Triumph of Anglo-America.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, & the Triumph of Anglo-America. By Kevin Phillips (New York, Basic Books, 1999) 707 pp. $32.50 This large, sprawling volume offers an extended comparison of three events--the English Civil War (and...

Family: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Family: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture. By Betty G. Farrell (Boulder, Westview Press, 1999) 199 pp. $59.00 cloth $20.00 paper The history of the family has been interdisciplinary from its...

Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts. By James F. Cooper, Jr. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 282 Pp. $55.00 The purpose of this study of New England Congregationalism, from its founding...

Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Trade in Strangers: The Beginnings of Mass Migration to North America. By Marianne S. Wokeck (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999) 319 pp. $60.00 cloth $21.50 paper Trade in Strangers has two intertwined but distinct...

Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Young America: The Flowering of Democracy in New York City. By Edward L. Widmer (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 290 pp. $29.95 Widmer argues that what is known as the Young America movement of the mid-nineteenth century should be...

A School for Politics: Commercial Lobbying and Political Culture in Early South Carolina.(Review)
June 22, 2000... A School for Politics: Commercial Lobbying and Political Culture in Early South Carolina. By Rebecca Starr (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) 218 pp. $45.00 The "problem" of South Carolina has long fascinated students of...

Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861--1865.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Virginia's Private War: Feeding Body and Soul in the Confederacy, 1861--1865. By William Blair (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 205 pp. $32.50 Virginia's Private War is one of the best books about the Confederate homefront to...

Freedpeople in the Tobacco South: Virginia, 1860-1900.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Freedpeople in the Tobacco South: Virginia, 1860-1900. By Jeffrey R. Kerr- Ritchie (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1999) 345 pp. $49.95 cloth $18.95 paper Kerr-Ritchie's Freedpeople in the Tobacco South analyzes the...

True Gardens of the Gods: Californian--Australian Environmental Reform, 1860-1930.(Review)
June 22, 2000... True Gardens of the Gods: Californian--Australian Environmental Reform, 1860-1930. By Jan Tyrrell (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999) 313 Pp. $48.00 During the late nineteenth century, reformers in California and Australia...

Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis. By Carl Abbott (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1999) 252 pp. $39.95 cloth $19.95 paper Washington, D.C., does not fit into any of the...

Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry, 1899-1939.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Making the Amalgamated: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Baltimore Clothing Industry, 1899-1939. By Jo Ann E. Argersinger (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 229 pp. $39.95 Making the Amalgamated is a rich case study of the...

The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston 1900-1925.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston 1900-1925. By James J. Connolly (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1998) 304 pp. $45.00 For students of urban political history, Connolly has retrieved the...

Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century. By Bruce Cumings (Durham, Duke University Press, 1999) 280 pp. $27.95 The central concern of this volume--eight essays, most of which previously...

Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru. By Kathryn Burns (Durham, Duke University Press, 1999) 290 pp. $49.95 cloth $17.95 paper This carefully researched, well-written study examines the important role of...

The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom. By Grant D. Jones (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998) 568 pp. $65.00 cloth $25.95 paper In 1697, Spanish troops from Yucat[acute{a}]n attacked and occupied the small island capital of the...

The World of Tupac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru.(Review)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2000... The World of Tupac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru. By Ward Stavig (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1999) 348 pp. $60.00 cloth $25.00 paper In South America, the figure of T[acute{u}]pac Amaru has always...

Brazil: Five Centuries of Change.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. By Thomas Skidmore (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 254 pp. $30.00 In the preface to his fine new survey of Brazilian history, Skidmore writes, "Brazilians see themselves as very different from...

Montpelier, Jamaica: A Plantation Community in Slavery and Freedom, 1739-1912.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Montpelier, Jamaica: A Plantation Community in Slavery and Freedom, 1739-1912. By B. W. Highman (Kingston, The Press-University of the West Indies, 1998) 384 pp. $35.00 Higman's latest book on Caribbean slavery, which has been long in the...

Once upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Identity.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Once upon a Kingdom: Myth, Hegemony, and Identity. By Isidore Okpewho (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1998) 252 pp. $39.95 cloth $19.95 paper Historians of African states have largely used the oral traditions generated by those in...

The Cambridge History of Egypt. I. Islamic Egypt, 640-1517.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Cambridge History of Egypt. I. Islamic Egypt, 640-1517. Edited by Carl F. Petry (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998) 645 pp. $120.00 Any medievalist interested in experiencing at firsthand what it is like to be a weak king...

The Cambridge History of Egypt. II. Modern Egypt from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Cambridge History of Egypt. II. Modern Egypt from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century. Edited by M. W. Daly (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 463 pp. $100.00 New countries seeking to demonstrate their emergence as...

Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire. By James L. Gelvin (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998) 290 pp. $50.00 cloth $19.95 paper Divided Loyalties is a sociohistorical and political...

Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China.(Review)
June 22, 2000... Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China. By Melissa Macauley (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 416 pp. $55.00 Most aficionados of Chinese court dramas as enacted in theaters and films have...

The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions.(Review)
June 22, 2000... The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions. By Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998) 481 pp. $45.00 Before the 1980s, studies of China from the seventeenth through the early twentieth...

The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History.(Review)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2000... The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. By Peter Jackson (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 367 pp. $64.95 Meticulously analyzing the few surviving Literary histories produced by officials of the Delhi Sultanate...