The Journal of Interdisciplinary History articles from September 2000

The Journal of Interdisciplinary History archives from September 2000

"Not for Ornament": Patenting Activity by Nineteenth-Century Women Inventors.
September 22, 2000... We obtain patents for protection, not for ornament. advertisement in Inventive Age (1892) Feminists have criticized neoclassical economists for not giving sufficient prominence to such gender issues as the sexual division of labor and the...

Cuba and the Latin American Terms of Trade: Old Theories, New Evidence.
September 22, 2000... Since the early 1950s, scholars from diverse regions and disciplines have analyzed the terms of trade of developing countries. The Latin American contribution to this discussion has been especially noteworthy. Raul Prebisch, a "pioneer" in...

Archaeology and Probate Inventories in the Study of Eighteenth-Century Life.
September 22, 2000... Historians have used many kinds of records to study the material world of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including paintings, letters, diaries, and wills. In recent years, however, they have concentrated on probate inventories--lists...

Social History: Problems, Strategies and Methods.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Social History: Problems, Strategies and Methods. By Miles Fairburn (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1999) 325 pp. $59.95 cloth $21.95 paper. New Zealand social historian Fairburn's textbook on research design and argumentation should be...

Culture: The Anthropologists' Account.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Culture: The Anthropologists' Account. By Adam Kuper (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 299 pp. $29.95 Elegant, learned, and persuasive, Kuper's account of how major anthropologists have treated the notion of culture in the...

Ancient Greek Love Magic.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Ancient Greek Love Magic. By Christopher A. Faraone (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 223 pp. $35.00 This exemplary book studies ancient Greek magical spells designed to attract or keep lovers, and it advances a clear and...

Suicide in the Middle Ages. I. The Violent Against Themselves.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Suicide in the Middle Ages. I. The Violent Against Themselves. By Alexander Murray (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 485 PP. $49.95 Murray has long been a gifted and original historian both of things suspected by many historians...

Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe 1650-1850.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe 1650-1850. Edited by Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (New York, Manchester University Press, 1999) 260 pp. $79.95 cloth $29.95 paper This collection of essays about consumption and luxury in...

The Pity of War: Explaining World War I.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The Pity of War: Explaining World War I. By Niall Ferguson (New York, Basic Books, 1999) 563 pp. $30.00 One would like to condemn The Pity of War, but that would not be fair; one would like to praise it, but standards cannot be forgotten....

Urban Patronage in Early Modern England: Corporate Boroughs, the Landed Elite, and the Crown, 1580-1640.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Urban Patronage in Early Modern England: Corporate Boroughs, the Landed Elite, and the Crown, 1580-1640. By Catherine F. Patterson (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 327 pp. $60 The instinct for social and political order in early...

Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers. By John Walter (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 357 pp. $64.95 Walter provides a detailed analysis of riots in the English counties of Essex...

Moral Economy and Popular Protest: Crowds, Conflict and Authority.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Moral Economy and Popular Protest: Crowds, Conflict and Authority. Edited by Adrian Randall and Andrew Charlesworth (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1999) 280 pp. $69.95 Given his outspoken opposition to Theory, it comes as a shock to...

Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth- Century British Painting.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth- Century British Painting. By Beth Fowkes Tobin (Durham, Duke University Press, 1999) 306 pp. $54.95 cloth $18.95 paper Picturing Imperial Potver offers both less and more than its...

Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain. By K. D. Reynolds (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 260 pp. $65.00 Reynolds develops her unsurprising findings that class rather than gender was the primary motivation...

Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World. By Barbara T. Gates (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1999) 395 pp. $55.00 cloth $20.00 paper In its conceptualization, Gates' book is history of a traditional...

The Keeper's Recital: Music and Cultural History in Ireland 1770-1970.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The Keeper's Recital: Music and Cultural History in Ireland 1770-1970. By Harry White (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1998) 227 pp. $24.00 Cultural history has taken a long time to come in from the proverbial cold in Irish...

Revolution and Environment in Southern France: Peasants, Lords, and Murder in the Corbieres, 1780-1830.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Revolution and Environment in Southern France: Peasants, Lords, and Murder in the Corbieres, 1780-1830. By Peter McPhee (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 272 pp. $75.00 Few regions of France remain to be dissected by historians of...

Contagion: Disease, Government, and the "Social Question" in Nineteenth-Century France.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Contagion: Disease, Government, and the "Social Question" in Nineteenth-Century France. By Andrew R. Aisenberg (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 238 pp. $45.00 Aisenberg offers another perspective on the well-established field of...

French Cultural Politics and Music: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War.(Review)
September 22, 2000... French Cultural Politics and Music: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War. By Jane F. Fulcher (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 291 pp. $60.00 In recent years, leading musicologists have allied themselves with cultural...

Tocqueville's Revenge: State, Society, and Economy in Contemporary France.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Tocqueville's Revenge: State, Society, and Economy in Contemporary France. By Jonah D. Levy (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 386 pp. $55.00 Levy's fine study of the continuities and discontinuities in state--society...

Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Metissage.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Metissage. By Francoise Verges (Durham, Duke University Press, 1999) 395 pp. $64.95 cloth $21.95 paper The power of "discourses" to shape reality is a recurrent theme in modern...

The Local Merchants of Prato: Small Entrepreneurs in the Late Medieval Economy.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The Local Merchants of Prato: Small Entrepreneurs in the Late Medieval Economy. By Richard K. Marshall (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 191 pp. $42.50 Drawing on forty-five unpublished ledgers kept by retailers in...

The Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence, 1300-1600.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The Renaissance Man and His Children: Childbirth and Early Childhood in Florence, 1300-1600. By Louis Haas (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1998) 319 pp. $49.95 Resting on literary sources, ricordi and ricordanze, this book promises an...

Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Bellini, Durer, and Titian & The Triumph of the Barique: Architecture in Europe 1600-1750.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Renaissance Venice and the North: Crosscurrents in the Time of Bellini, Durer, and Titian. Edited by Bernard Aikema and Beverly Louise Brown (Milan, Bompiani, 1999) 703 pp. $75.00 The Triumph of the Barique: Architecture in Europe...

The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modem Culture.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The Social History of Skepticism: Experience and Doubt in Early Modem Culture. By Brendan Dooley (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 213 pp. $39.95 The social history of knowledge is la mode. After Shapin's controversial...

Mobility and Modernity: Migration in Germany, 1820-1989.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Mobility and Modernity: Migration in Germany, 1820-1989. By Steve Hochstadt (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1999) 331 pp. $52.50 Guests and Aliens. By Saskia Sassen (New York, New Press, 1999) 202 pp. $25.00 As its title...

The Nazi War on Cancer.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The Nazi War on Cancer. By Robert N. Proctor (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1999) 380 pp. $29.95 Proctor "addresses the complicity of science under fascism but also the complicity of science within fascism" and the disturbing fact...

From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery.(Review)
September 22, 2000... From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery. By Seymour Drescher (New York, New York University Press, 1999) 454 pp. $45.00 This volume contains fourteen previously published essays by one of the...

A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816.(Review)
September 22, 2000... A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians, 1733-1816. By Claudio Saunt (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 298 pp. $49.95 cloth $17.95 paper The Creek Indians, who lived in what is today...

New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada.(Review)
September 22, 2000... New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada. By Marc Egnal (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998) 236 pp. $49.95 This book represents a brief but ambitious attempt to summarize the growth of British and...

Origins of the Bill of Rights & Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Origins of the Bill of Rights. By Leonard W. Levy (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999) 306 pp. $30.00 Constitutional Construction: Divided Powers and Constitutional Meaning. By Keith E. Whittington (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University...

Yankeys Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum U.S., 1840-1860.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Yankeys Now: Immigrants in the Antebellum U.S., 1840-1860. By Joseph P. Ferrie (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 223 pp. $49.95 As one critic of the erstwhile New Urban History noted, scholars "started out by asking, 'Was it easier...

Constructing Townscapes: Space and Society in Antebellum Tennessee.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Constructing Townscapes: Space and Society in Antebellum Tennessee. By Lisa C. Tolbert (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1999) 294 pp. $49.95 cloth $19.95 paper In this examination of town planning and architecture in four...

The Concepts of Luxury and Waste in American Radicalism, 1880-1929.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The Concepts of Luxury and Waste in American Radicalism, 1880-1929. By Sulevi Riukulehto (Helsinki, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 1998) 239 pp. N.P. This book explores the conceptions of luxury, waste, and--to a lesser...

Media Technology and Society--A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Media Technology and Society--A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet. By Brian Winston (London, Routledge, 1998) 374 pp. $85.00 cloth $24.95 paper The disruptive potential of each new media technology is invariably thwarted by...

American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century.(Review)
September 22, 2000... American Indian Population Recovery in the Twentieth Century. By Nancy Shoemaker (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1999) 156 pp. $39.95 As Shoemaker points out, historians and demographers have been far more interested in...

Childhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Childhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880-1930. By Evelynn Maxine Hammonds (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) 312 pp. $39.95 As infectious diseases have returned to the forefront of...

Children's Interests/Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Children's Interests/Mothers' Rights: The Shaping of America's Child Care Policy. By Sonya Michel (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999) 410 pp. $35.00 There has been a great deal of recent literature about mothers' pensions, maternalist...

Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC. By Amy B. Zegart (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 317 pp. $45.00 Although Zegart believes in using history to explain the birth and life of national security institutions,...

The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post--World War II South.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post--World War II South. By Gail Williams O'Brien (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1999) 334 pp. $45.00 cloth $18.95 paper As World War II came to an end, many...

The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury.(Review)
September 22, 2000... The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury. By Mary F. Corey (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1999) 252 pp. $25.95 With the end of the Cold War, scholars and popular writers have increasingly turned their attention to a...

This Side of Heaven: Determining the Donnelly Murders, 1880.(Review)
September 22, 2000... This Side of Heaven: Determining the Donnelly Murders, 1880. By Norman N. Feltes (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1999) 208 pp. $40.00 Early on February 4, 1880, a vigilante group invaded the farmhouse of James Donnelly, on the 6th...

Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America. By Ann Twinam (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 447 pp. $60.00 Many years ago, engaged in dissertation research in Medellin,...

Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World. By Jeremy Adelman (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 376 pp. $55.00 This is a work of analysis and synthesis, rather than an instrument for...

Peasants on Plantations: Subaltern Strategies of Labor and Resistance in the Pisco Valley, Peru.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Peasants on Plantations: Subaltern Strategies of Labor and Resistance in the Pisco Valley, Peru. By Vincent C. Peloso (Durham, Duke University Press, 1999) 252 pp. $49.95 cloth $17.95 paper Peloso demonstrates the value of examining one...

Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954. By Nick Cullather (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 142 pp. $39.50 This book is the officially declassified account of the role and...

Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Precolonial Senegambia. By Robert M. Baum (New York, Oxford University Press, 1999) 287 pp. $55.00 Baum's superb study of the history of Diola religion is based on a thesis...

Writing West Indian Histories.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Writing West Indian Histories. By B. W. Higman (London, Macmillan Heinemann, 1999) 289 pp. $14.95 Higman is best known for his Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834 (Baltimore, 1984), a massive demographic, environmental,...

Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era. Edited by Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1999) 330 pp. $69.95 Merchants, Companies and Trade is divided into four parts...

Chinese Modernity and the Peasant Path: Semicolonialism in the Northern Yangzi Delta.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Chinese Modernity and the Peasant Path: Semicolonialism in the Northern Yangzi Delta. By Kathy Le Mons Walker (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999) 330 pp. $55.00 Chinese Modernity and the Peasant Path is an ambitious work. It...

War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914-1919.(Review)
September 22, 2000... War and National Reinvention: Japan in the Great War, 1914-1919. By Frederick R. Dickinson (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1999) 325 pp. $40.00 This is an expert, well-crafted study of politics and diplomacy during a critical...

Imperial Bedlam: Institutions of Madness in Colonial Southwest Nigeria.(Review)
September 22, 2000... Imperial Bedlam: Institutions of Madness in Colonial Southwest Nigeria. By Jonathan Sadowsky (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999) 169 pp. $45.00 cloth $16.95 paper This important book offers illuminating insights into the...