The Journal of Interdisciplinary History articles from March 2001

The Journal of Interdisciplinary History archives from March 2001

Behavioral Contagion and the Rise of Convent Education in France.(Statistical Data Included)
March 22, 2001... Europe in the seventeenth century suffered doubly from terrible epidemics. Plague did not end in England and northern Europe until after the 1660s and in southern France until after 1720. Estimates vary as to how many people were killed in...

Political Culture in Seventeenth-Century Italian Villages.
March 22, 2001... A half-century of scholarship focused on peasant up-risings in early modern Europe has tended to characterize most of those movements as conservative or lacking in political ideology, since they did not demand the overthrow of the entire social...

Rise and Fall of a Nation of Joiners: The Knights of Labor Revisited.(Statistical Data Included)
March 22, 2001... The rise and fall of the Knights of Labor has frequently been portrayed as a crucial event in the history of American political development, especially as it relates to the United States' failure to create a full-fledged welfare state, replete...

Urban Demographic Stagnation in Early Modern Germany: A Simulation.(Statistical Data Included)
March 22, 2001... Although the demographic consequences of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) have received considerable scholarly attention, little is known about the population recovery that followed. This research note, with the aid of simple simulations,...

Dust, A History of the Small and Invisible.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Dust, A History of the Small and Invisible. By Joseph A. Amato (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000) 250 pp. $22.50 I finished reading Amato's well-crafted history of small and invisible particles while sitting in my alergist's...

Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Statistics an the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods. By Stephen M. Stigler (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 488 pp. $45.00 Stigler has collected a wonderful set of essays written over the past quarter...

Toleration in Enlightenment Europe.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Toleration in Enlightenment Europe. Edited by Ole Peter Grell and Roy Porter (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000) 270 pp. $59.95 The twelve contributions to this volume can be grouped in two categories. The first four chapters...

Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery. By Nabil Matar (New York, Columbia University Press, 1999) 268 pp. $32.50 Turks, Moors, and Englishmen proposes a new paradigm for envisioning Britons' encounter with the "Other" during...

Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Economy. By Kevin H. O'Rourke and Jeffery G. Williamson (Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1999) 343 pp. $45.00 In this detailed and systematic study of patterns of...

Elites, Minorities and Economic Growth.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Elites, Minorities and Economic Growth. Edited by Elise S. Brezis and Peter Temin (Amsterdam, Elsevier, Science, B. V., 1999) 255 pp. $95.00 NLG 195 euro 88.49 Sociologists commonly impute reality to social categories, whereas economists...

Freudian Analysts/Feminist Issues.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Freudian Analysts/Feminist Issues. By Judith M. Hughes (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999) 222 pp. $35.00 This book is divided into five sections, each with an introduction and conclusion. Each section reviews prominent psychoanalytic...

Restoration and Reform 1153-1165: Recovery from Civil War in England.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Restoration and Reform 1153-1165: Recovery from Civil War in England. By Graeme J. White (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000) 248 pp. $64.95 It is simple, if simplistic, to summarize the thesis of White's book: King Stephen's...

The Quiet Reformation: Magistrates and the Emergence of Protestantism in Tudor Norwich.(Review)
March 22, 2001... The Quiet Reformation: Magistrates and the Emergence of Protestantism in Tudor Norwich. By Muriel C. McClendon (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 340 pp. $55.00 The divisive, often bloody, nature of religious reform in early...

Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England. By David Cressy (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) 351 pp. $35.00 Cressy wishes to probe under the surface of a society that prided itself on discipline and decorum and thus...

The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country 1520-1770.(Review)
March 22, 2001... The Polities of Social Conflict: The Peak Country 1520-1770. By Andy Wood (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 374 pp. $74.95 This thoroughly researched and aptly titled work is a welcome addition to the social history of early...

British Society, 1680-1880: Dynamism, Containment and Change.(Review)
March 22, 2001... British Society, 1680-1880: Dynamism, Containment and Change. By Richard Price (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 349 pp. $59.95 cloth $22.95 paper This is a distinctly interesting work--"not a textbook," but "a general...

Social Mobility in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Social Mobility in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England. By Andrew Miles (London, Macmillan, 1999) 262 pp. $65.00 The theme of social mobility has rarely been explored systematically in the historiography of modern Britain. The...

A Taste for Comfort and Status: A Bourgeois Family in Eighteenth-Century France.(Review)
March 22, 2001... A Taste for Comfort and Status: A Bourgeois Family in Eighteenth-Century France. By Christine Adams (University Park, Penn State University Press, 2000) 292 pp. $65.00 cloth paper The title of this well-crafted book summarizes its argument....

La Politique de la Terreur: Essai sur la violence revolutionnaire, 1789-1794.(Review)
March 22, 2001... La Politique de la Terreur: Essai sur la violence revolutionnaire, 1789-1794. By Patrice Gueniffey (Paris, Fayard, 2000) 376 pp., 165.00 FF paper Evoking the differing ways in which an observer "at the foot of a mountain" and one "at its...

Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt. By Anne Marie Claire Godlewska (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2000) 444 pp., $65.00 cloth, $27.50 paper This is less an interdisciplinary work than a work about...

The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture.(Review)
March 22, 2001... The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture. By Rebecca L. Spang (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000) 325 pp. $35.00 The word restaurant is derived from the French word, restaurer, and in this erudite and...

Constructing Paris Medicine.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Constructing Paris Medicine. Edited by Caroline Hannaway and Ann La Berge (Amsterdam, Editions Rodopi B.V., 1998) pp. 406. $100.00 cloth, $36.00 paper. This exceptionally coherent set of papers, by a distinguished group of historians of...

France and the Apres Guerre 1918-1924.(Review)
March 22, 2001... France and the Apres Guerre 1918-1924. By Benjamin F. Martin (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1999) 278 pp. $49.95 cloth $22.50 paper In Schuker's now classic phrase, the years immediately following World War I marked "the...

Le diable chez l'eveque. Chasse aux sorciers dans le diocese de Lausanne (vers 1460).(Review)
March 22, 2001... Le diable chez l'eveque. Chasse aux sorciers dans le diocese de Lausanne (vers 1460). By George Modestin (Lausanne, Cahiers lausannois d'histoire medievale, 1999) 403 pp. Lausanne's early-witchcraft school marches in the new century,...

The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile.(Review)
March 22, 2001... The Limits of Royal Authority: Resistance and Obedience in Seventeenth-Century Castile. By Ruth Mackay (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 193 pp., $59.95 This book is both a tightly focused study of military recruitment in...

Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness: The Eberbach Asylum and German Society, 1815-1849.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Sex, Religion, and the Making of Modern Madness: The Eberbach Asylum and German Society, 1815-1849. By Ann Goldberg (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 236 pp. $35.00 Two approaches are evident in the literature dealing with the...

The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany.(Review)
March 22, 2001... The Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany. By Jonathan Petropoulos (New York, Oxford University Press, 2000) 395 pp. $30.00 This book describes life in the art world of Nazi Germany under the Third Reich. It is a surprising...

Gender and the Politics of Office Work: the Netherlands 1860-1940.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Gender and the Politics of Office Work: the Netherlands 1860-1940. By Francisca de Haan (Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 1998) 243 pp. $47.50 In C. 1860, a debate began in the Netherlands concerning the need and appropriateness for...

To the Harbin Station: The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898-1914.(Review)
March 22, 2001... To the Harbin Station: The Liberal Alternative in Russian Manchuria, 1898- 1914. By David Wolff. (Stanford, Stanford University Press. 1999) 255 pp. $49.00 Harbin, Russia's only colonial city (1898-1917) and one with a distinctive history...

Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973-1996.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Condemned to Repetition? The Rise, Fall, and Reprise of Soviet-Russian Military Interventionism, 1973-1996. By Andrew Bennett (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1999) 387 pp. $35.00 cloth $17.50 paper This is a mixed book. The parts about...

Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak. By Jeanne Guillemin (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999) 321 pp. $27.50 Guillemin's Anthrax is an interesting document. Its subject is an apparent outbreak of anthrax at...

Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World. By Alison Games (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 322 pp. $45.00 In December 1634, the Commission for Foreign Plantations ordered clerks at the port of London to...

Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. By Joyce Appleby (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2000) 322 pp. $26.00 Using a fascinating perspective, the author asks what happened to the first age cohort in the...

Rituals of Race: American Public Culture and the Search for Racial Democracy.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Rituals of Race: American Public Culture and the Search for Racial Democracy. By Alessandra Lorini (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1999) 305 pp. $60.00 cloth $19.50 paper Lorini brings the transnational perspective of a...

Presidential Machismo: Executive Authority, Military Intervention, and Foreign Relations.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Presidential Machismo: Executive Authority, Military Intervention, and Foreign Relations. By Alexander DeConde (Boston, Northeastern University Press, 2000) 391 pp. $40.00 Presidential war making, both open and covert, along with related...

The Languages of Edison's Light.(Review)
March 22, 2001... The Languages of Edison's Light. By Charles Bazerman (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1999) 416 pp. $39.50 In this book, Bazerman applies the tools of rhetorical analysis to one of the best known innovations in the history of technology,...

Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875-1920. By David Vaught (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 280 pp., $38.00. Cultivating California veers from the conventional approach to labor studies by...

There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa.(Review)
March 22, 2001... There Goes the Neighborhood: Rural School Consolidation at the Grass Roots in Early Twentieth-Century Iowa. By David R. Reynolds (Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 1999) 306 pp., $39.95 cloth. A glance at the bibliography in...

Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed. By Gerald Gamm (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 384 pp. $39.95 Institutions, and the rules they live by, made the difference in why Jews left Boston and why...

American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century.(Review)
March 22, 2001... American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century. By Michael Kammen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) 320 pp. $30.00 If social historians have exercised the right to throw in everything including the kitchen sink,...

Power, Patronage, and Political Violence: State Building on a Brazilian Frontier, 1822-1889.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Power, Patronage, and Political Violence: State Building on a Brazilian Frontier, 1822-1889. By Judy Bieber (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1999) 253 pp. $45.00 Politico-institutional history of nineteenth-century Latin America is...

Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico: Men, Women, and War.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Everyday Life and Politics in Nineteenth Century Mexico; Men, Women, and War. By Mark Wasserman (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 2000) 248 pp. $39.95 cloth $19.95 paper Mexico's nineteenth--century history, long regarded as...

Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890-1939.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890-1939. By Sandra McGee Deutsch (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 491 pp. $60.00 In Las Derechas, Deutsch makes an important contribution to Latin American...

Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon. By Elizabeth Thompson (New York, Columbia University Press, 2000) 402 pp. $49.50 cloth $17.50 paper Syria and Lebanon were established as...

A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China.(Review)
March 22, 2001... A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. By Benjamin A. Elman (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000) 847 pp. $75.00 Elman argues that China's national civil-service examination system, as administered from...

One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities.(Review)
March 22, 2001... One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities. By James Z. Lee and Wang Feng. (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999.) Xv+248 pp. $47.50 The organizing principle of this highly structured volume is the work...

Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan. By Mark Ravina (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 278 pp., $45.00 One of the key controversies in studies of early modern Japan concerns the nature of the country's polity from 1600 to 1868...

Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India.(Review)
March 22, 2001... Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India. By Tirthankar Roy (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 252 pp. $64.95 Eighteenth-century manufacturing in India was as advanced, diverse, and productive as it was anywhere else...