History Theses and Dissertations

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"Pillaged and Robbed so Well": Captains in the Hundred Years War 1350-1380
(2024) Ament, Nathaniel; Baron, Sabrina; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Captains were among the most influential military figures of the Hundred Years War. Despite this, there is scant scholarship on captaincy as a position within medieval society. This thesis seeks to rectify this gap in the scholarship by exploring the careers of influential captains serving England and France during the period from 1350-80. Drawing primarily from chronicle sources, this thesis examines the careers of this group of captains chronologically. It examines how their careers progressed and how they interacted with key cultural systems such as territorial lordship, chivalric culture, and the economic mechanisms of war. The overall findings of this paper reveal that these three systems mutually reinforced each other through captaincy by justifying chivalric violence.
“Quite Young Limbs that Bled”: Accidents, Apathy, and the Failure of American Aviation During the First World War
(2024) Getka, Dana; Giovacchini, Saverio; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The advent of the First World War saw America’s first concerted attempt at building a world-class air service. Desperate to join the ranks of Britain, Germany, and France, it pushed poorly-built planes out of factories and poorly-trained cadets out of flying schools at an alarming rate. In this thesis, I argue that in blind pursuit of its goals, the United States air service ultimately doomed those whose efforts would bring the organization its prestige: the pilots. Aviators, especially non-combatants in roles such as training, testing, and ferrying, faced unavoidable death or harm every time they stepped into a plane, be it physically, emotionally, or psychologically. Despite their role as non-combatants, these pilots well understood that destruction would characterize their world, provoking emotional responses expected of those engaged in fighting on active fronts. Indeed, flying was a world of combat unto itself, and by war’s end, the Army Air Service had earned the dubious distinction of being the only arm of the United States military in which more men were violently killed in non-combat than in combat roles.
LOCAL RESISTANCE AND RECOVERY IN THE NEOLIBERAL ERA: A CASE STUDY OF THE 1993 NAVAL BASE CLOSURE IN CHARLESTON, SC
(2024) Verkouw, Clay Stephen; Chung, Patrick; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission transformed military base communities throughout the United States from 1988-2005. This work offers an account of military base closure from the local level, tracing the origins, resistance, impacts, and recovery in Charleston, South Carolina. A neoliberal turn in domestic politics resulted in the closure of hundreds of military bases, like the Charleston Naval Shipyard. Despite significant local resistance, the BRAC Commission shuttered the shipyard, ending decades of military investment and thousands of stable government jobs in the Charleston region. Yet, Charleston leaders took important steps in the post-closure years to maintain the traditions of military Keynesianism in Charleston, leading to a very successful economic recovery from the naval base closure crisis. This case study seeks to complicate existing narratives of U.S. military industry resilience, post-Cold War base closure, and military privatization benefits through a local history of a transformative period in Charleston.
CHAOS AND CONSPIRACY: THE HAGERSTOWN DRAFT RIOTS AND THE WHISKEY REBELLION
(2024) Lowery, Kourtney Renea; Brewer, Holly; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: CHAOS AND CONSPIRACY: THE HAGERSTOWN DRAFT RIOTS AND THE WHISKEY REBELLION Kourtney Renea Lowery, Master of Arts, 2024 Thesis Directed By: Professor Holly Brewer, Department of History This thesis explores the events of Washington County, MD in September 1794 to re-establish the significance of the Hagerstown Riots and their connection to the Whiskey Rebellion in Pittsburgh as well as to broader revolutionary ideals. The riots were a localized event in which the militia openly disobeyed orders. Citizens soldiers used militarized force to display their opposition to the excise tax and militia draft. Residents and many local leaders also opposed these measures and favored a progressive political and economic system. The Hagerstown Riots are an important microhistory and look at early American rebellion, protestors, and redress of grievances. The protestors at the Hagerstown Riots were angry with the excise tax and economic and political policies that the federal government created policies that were antiquated and unfairly administered. Hamilton’s taxation scheme was modeled on a British taxation system which colonials had fought against. They viewed these policies as created by elites in the federal government. State governments and officials, meanwhile were becoming more egalitarian in places like Maryland, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. Washington County, Maryland showcases these frustrations and changes by retracing the dynamics of the rioters, officials, and militia. It also seeks to resolve why this event has been forgotten. The riots decenter the Whiskey Rebellion from an isolated large uprising in Pennsylvania to a broad movement that includes local events such as the Hagerstown riots, and that started before the American Revolution.
"Scandalous Conduct Tending to the Destruction of Good Morals": Dynamics and Tension in Sex Crime Courts-martial in the Interwar U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1919-1941
(2024) Forschler, Andrew Cavin; Lyons, Clare; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Interwar (1919-1941) U.S. Navy and Marine Corps sex crime courts-martial had complex dynamics and tension. Written policy criminalized most sex. When policy was enforced, it mostly targeted same-sex crimes. Enlisted men held different beliefs about sex than commissioned officers. Enlisted men’s lived experience was incongruent with policy. Leadership believed that men who had sex with other men should be expelled from the Navy and Marine Corps. Duty was a powerful and frequently used rhetorical tool by judge advocates to argue for conviction for sex crime. The Navy Medical Corps expressed the idea that same-sex sexual activity should not be criminalized as same-sex desire was a mental defect. The dynamics of written policy/policy in action, enlisted men/commissioned officers, and naval service/duty/sexology are explored.
THE “UNEQUAL WRONGS AMENDMENT”: STATE COURT INTERPRETATIONS OF THE MARYLAND EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT
(2024) Justement, Shelly; Muncy, Robyn; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis answers the question: How did Maryland state courts’ interpretations of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) affect the amendment’s meaning? This thesis explores state courts’ interpretations of the amendment in seven cases involving child support, spousal abandonment, abortion, rape, women’s access to exclusively male clubs, and gay marriage between the years of 1972 and 2006. The state courts’ decisions regarding the Maryland ERA promoted legal equality without providing equity between men and women or heterosexual and homosexual couples. The state courts often interpreted the ERA in narrow ways that did not always benefit women’s rights, and indeed, this thesis demonstrates that the courts’ rulings in ERA cases did not produce material equality between men and women or queer and straight couples. The courts’ narrow interpretations of the ERA were reflected by the fact that the judges interpreted the words of the amendment literally without consideration of Marylanders’ socioeconomic realities; the judges limited the reach of the ERA to state actions, not the actions of private individuals or organizations; and the judges limited the application of the ERA to cases in which men and women were treated as separate classes. In examining the consistently narrow nature of the judicial interpretations of the ERA, this thesis acknowledges the limitations of the ERA for women’s as well as gay and lesbian rights in Maryland. While benefits to men did not inherently mean that the courts took rights away from women, the courts’ interpretations of the ERA ended up limiting women’s equity with men more often than promoting it.
They 'Boast of Dressing Like Gentlemen': Cross-Dressing, Print Culture, and Nineteenth-Century Gender Ideology
(2024) Hemphill, Julia Kay; Lyons, Clare A; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Nineteenth-century gender roles were very strict but cross-dressing challenged these extremely binary roles, often being written about in different forms of print media. The press published stories about cross-dressing people in different ways depending on the actions they took in male attire. Soldier women cross-dressed and entered the military, but were not reprimanded for their decisions because their amount of time in male attire was perceived to be finite and because they were performing a service for their country. Women and male-presenting people who wore male attire and went into male workplaces, took wives, and became heads of household were highly reprimanded in the press in lengthy articles and short stories. Finally, women who wore the reform dress and liberated themselves from enslavement in male attire were spoken about in the press in two competing ways, with people supporting their transgressions and others not. Looking at the different ways that print media discussed these women and male-presenting people is important for looking at how gender roles were structured, and for understanding why powerful men were only threatened by certain cross-dressers.
THE FORMATION AND EVOLUTION OF BOOK CENSORSHIP IN THE QING DYNASTY: A STUDY OF THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY ON SIBAO
(2024) Wang, Liguan; Zhang, Ting; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis emphasizes the formation and evolution of book censorship in the Qing dynasty and the impact of censorship on the choice of publications made by publishers in different regions. Book censorship in the Qing dynasty emerged in the early 17th century and was institutionalized, reaching its peak in the mid-to-late 18th century. Along with the development of censorship, the publishing centers around the major cities declined, and publishing centers away from the major cities, represented by the Sibao, began to emerge. Legal cases on censorship and distinctions between publications in different regions reveal the close relationship between censorship and the publishing industry. By reconsidering the publishing history of Sibao within the censorship framework, this thesis reveals how Sibao grew and developed under the Qing Dynasty's strict censorship, especially during the Qianlong period. This thesis examines censorship and the publishing industry during the Qing dynasty and contributes insights into the causes of the changing trends that arose at the center of publishing during the Qing dynasty.
Soaked in Blue: Indigo, Enslavement, and Value in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina
(2024) Frangoulis, Kelli Marie; Lyons, Clare; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Indigo was the most exported product from South Carolina in the mid-eighteenth century, but little scholarship has been devoted to the enslaved laborers that manufactured indigo dye through gruesome conditions. This thesis highlights their experience and argues that they created value out of indigo through identity creation, spiritual significance, and connections with their West African homeland. By wearing indigo-dyed blue clothing, enslaved people could intentionally associate their identity with the color through repeated wear and trade to create specific blue looks. By painting their living quarters with leftover indigo residue, known today as “haint blue,” enslaved communities received spiritual value from the protective quality culturally associated with indigo blue. By engaging with West African-inspired craftwork traditions that centered indigo, they furthered their heritage and created new significance for indigo within a new enslaved context. This research contributes new understandings of both the indigo industry and how enslaved individuals in South Carolina expressed humanity and choice.
Hollow Ground: Industry, Extraction, and Ecology in the Floodplains of Early Maryland
(2024) Hess, Sophie; Bell, Richard; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Hollow Ground: Industry, Extraction, and Ecology in the Floodplains of Early Maryland,” investigates histories of natural resource commodification, environment, and culture in the Patapsco River Valley, or “The Hollow” as it was called by its first European settlers. Beginning in the seventeenth century, English colonists seized the powerful currents of the Patapsco and the forests surrounding it, the ancestral floodplains of Piscataway and Susquehannock peoples, to build large-scale agricultural projects and industrial factories. These operations altered the environment, and as the valley grew into a center of extractive production, its communities experienced more frequent and severe floods which have continued into the present. This dissertation examines these entwined consequences of environmental capitalism and settler colonialism through a site-specific, multi-century lens, studying how humans, plants, and animals within various spaces of production—iron furnaces, wheat fields, grist and cotton mills, schools, prisons, local governments, and family units —experienced industrialization. It traces trace labor ecologies within communities of enslaved, convict, and low-wage workers, and the ways that soil exhaustion, flooding, and other environmental forces both threatened these enclaves and created opportunities for freedom. This work uses a microhistorical methodology to intervene in histories of energy transition, labor, and the Anthropocene. “Hollow Ground” argues that early American industrialism can help us to better understand how local desires for capital growth have accumulated into global processes of toxic emissions, and how the frontline issues faced by post-industrial communities today relate not only to global production but to local histories of extraction and the culture that perpetuates it. These same communities also hold critical histories of commoning, stewardship, labor resistance, and environmentalism that can help create a blueprint for survival in the face of the climate crisis.
"Foreboding Circumstances": U.S. Labor Intervention and the Chilean Labor Movement during the Cold War, 1964-1973
(2024) Gutmann Fuentes, Andrea Nicole; Rosemblatt, Karin A.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Recent scholarship in Cold War and transnational labor history has examined the role played by U.S. organized labor in neutralizing left-wing labor movements around the world, contributing to U.S. State Department goals of anti-communist containment in the Third World. Research from both within and outside the academy has examined how the AFL-CIO, operating primary through the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), acted to undermine the socialist Unidad Popular government in Chile, helping to set the stage for the U.S.-backed coup d’etat on September 11, 1973. However, this scholarship has suffered from a relative lack of Chilean primary source material and a failure to ground historical analyses in the local Chilean context. This has impeded a full view of how the AFL-CIO’s labor intervention project unfolded in Chile, how it was perceived and responded to by Chileans, and the extent to which it was ultimately successful. This thesis makes use of Chilean national press, books, and trade union and left-wing media, in addition to new source material pulled from the U.S. State Department and the AFL-CIO archives, to assess the successes and failures of the AFL-CIO’s labor intervention project in Chile. The thesis demonstrates that while the AFL-CIO failed to accomplish many of its concrete goals in Chile due to overwhelming opposition to its project among Chilean labor, the AFL-CIO’s relationship with particular sectors of the Chilean labor movement effectively advanced a more general political goal of fomenting labor opposition from labor in strategic sectors of the economy to undermine the Unidad Popular government, thereby contributing to the success of the 1973 coup. By examining AFL-CIO’s complicated and paradoxical relationship with the centrist Christian Democratic Party, this thesis argues that the vast majority of Chilean workers from a broad array of ideological tendencies rejected the AFL-CIO’s promotion of “free trade unionism,” an explicitly anti-communist ideology advocating that workers reject a politics of class struggle in favor of class harmony between labor and management. This thesis then demonstrates that the AFL-CIO encouraged and validated the decision of some conservative labor leaders in the stevedore labor movement to ultimately join the anti-Allende opposition. Under the intensely polarized political context of early 1970s Chile, in which conservative labor leaders faced social and political pressures to move leftward with the majority of the labor movement and to support the Unidad Popular, the decision of these labor leaders to join the right-wing opposition with support from the AFL-CIO was a significant event contributing to the 1973 coup.
“GOD RATHER THAN MEN”: AUSTRIAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL PARTY, 1848-1893
(2024) Messersmith, Thomas Martin; Rozenblit, Marsha L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation examines the changes in Austrian Catholic theology from 1848 to 1893 and the role these changes played in the foundation of the Christian Social Party. Due to a series of crises after 1848, the theology of the Austrian Catholic Church underwent several shifts, ultimately settling on the belief that, in a modern world, direct political action from the Church was not only permissible, but imperative to defend the Church against those who would destroy it. This shift in political theology, which allowed for informal and unofficial theological participation in the realm of politics, was necessary to allow for the development of the Christian Social Party. This dissertation focuses primarily on the German-speaking areas of the Habsburg Monarchy, drawing on a variety of sources, including letters, diaries, meeting notes, legal records, newspapers, theological treatises, and contemporary academic journals to track the theological and political discussions that took place in this portion of the monarchy. The first chapter defines “political theology” as it is used in this dissertation (i.e., as a broader concept, positioned in opposition to the more limited and problematic definition of Carl Schmitt) as “the study of the divine as it relates to politics,” and provides an overview of the state of political theology in both Austria and the Catholic Church as a whole before 1848. Chapter two focuses on the shifts in political theology that occurred as a result of the Revolutions of 1848, with the paradigm of political theology ultimately coalescing around the leadership of Joseph Othmar Rauscher and the notion of a negotiated legalistic political compromise. Chapter three examines the Habsburg Concordat with Rome of 1855 and its subsequent undoing through the May Laws of 1868, which tested the new paradigm of political theology. Chapter four follows the arrest, trial, and conviction of Bishop Rudigier of Linz for “disturbing the peace,” following his attempted publication of a pastoral letter that called for Catholics to disobey laws that went against the Concordat and Church teachings. This proved to be a pivot point in the development of political theology of the Habsburg Monarchy, leading now-Cardinal Rauscher to reassess the political theological paradigm. Chapter five follows the proceedings of the First Ecumenical Council of the Vatican and the Kulturkampf in Germany, both of which resulted in the development of a more aggressive political theological paradigm in Austria. Finally, chapter six examines the completion of the shift from the Vormärz political theological paradigm to the paradigm of popular public political theology employed by Karl von Vogelsang in the ideological creation of the Christian Social Party. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that while other factors, such as antisemitism and the dissatisfaction of the lower clergy, as argued by John Boyer, helped to create the Christian Social Party in Austria, a shift in political theology in the Austrian Church and in the Catholic Church as a whole was necessary before the various ideologies of the Christian Social Party could coalesce.
Decolonizing Museums and Imagining the Future of Postcolonial Culture in Francophone North & West Africa
(2024) Maguire, Caroline Angle; Landau, Paul; Wien, Peter; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation is a history of the processes of decolonizing and democratizing museums in Francophone Africa between 1950 and 1980. As early as the 1850s, French scholars and imperial authorities founded ethnographic, archaeological, and fine arts museums in their African colonies, which kept artifacts in valorized spaces reserved for elite European audiences while presenting typified representations of African populations. During and after decolonization, a generation of African curators, scholars, artists, and government officials were left to grapple with the colonial legacies of these museums, and to recontextualize them to better reflect postcolonial cultural politics. Contemporary museum professionals – particularly in Western museums whose collections were assembled through colonial violence – have been engaged in debates about tactics to “decolonize the museum” for the past 10 years. This dissertation argues that strategies leveraged by African museographers half a century ago to transform colonial museums should be considered early, progressive attempts to decolonize the museum. While in some circumstances, these strategies are clearly earlier iterations of contemporary efforts to decolonize collections and exhibitions, other practices highlighted in this dissertation in fact challenge the twenty-first century understanding of what it means to “decolonize the museum.” This dissertation also challenges the perception of the museum as a solely Western institution by highlighting African contributions to museographical programming and exhibition. Finally, this dissertation demonstrates that despite their colonial legacies, these museums played a critical role in the elucidation of post-independence national culture in Senegal, Tunisia, and Algeria. To make these arguments, I focus on several specific examples: the Musée Théodore Monod d’Art Africain de l’IFAN in Dakar, the Musée du Bardo in Tunis, and the Musée National des Beaux-Arts in Algiers. Through research in institutional, ministerial, and national archives, site visits and oral history interviews, I analyze how each museum created and represented colonial knowledge during the imperial period. Later, I outline how African curators and museum administrators renovated exhibition spaces to counteract ethnographic narratives, designed education programs to democratize elite spaces, and shared knowledge with other African museum practitioners to decrease reliance on European museological concepts and standards.
The New Old Deal: Colonial Social Welfare and Puerto Rican Poverty During the Great Depression, 1928-1941
(2024) Brahms, Darien P.; Woods, Colleen; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The New Old Deal: Colonial Social Welfare and Puerto Rican Poverty During the Great Depression, 1928-1941 Abstract In 1941, at the end of the Great Depression, continental observers noted that Puerto Rico's urban shantytowns were expanding despite the US government's efforts to alleviate poverty through New Deal programs such as low-income housing and slum eradication initiatives. Their consensus was that working-class Puerto Ricans had it far worse than many poor Americans—including African Americans in the Jim Crow South. And yet, over the course of the 1930s, policymakers in Washington, D.C. came to conclude that a large portion of the Puerto Rican population were deserving, “white” American citizens. One would expect that, as they became increasingly categorized as “white” in the national census, federal aid to Puerto Rico would have followed the same patterns of racialized welfare that historians have associated with the New Deal. Why then were so many islanders moving to city squatters’ settlements while the white, continental working class benefitted from New Deal housing and employment initiatives? This conundrum prompted the following exploration of how Puerto Ricans' access to New Deal labor legislation, jobs creation and housing programs influenced the reinforcement of the island’s class structure, entrenched poverty, and the dramatic growth of its urban shantytowns. This dissertation considers how an analysis of island squatters’ settlements and housing programs for the island’s homeless can contribute to our understanding of how the Great Depression unfolded in a U.S. colonial territory as well as the race and class-based exclusions of New Deal aid programs. It also reveals that some U.S. officials did attempt to increase federal aid to the island during the 1930s. However, in addition to a relative lack of funding from D.C., local resistance to the New Deal fomented by insular politicians sympathetic to the colonial sugar industry prevented any meaningful aid from reaching the pockets of the island’s working classes for the bulk of the decade. And finally, this dissertation explores how exclusion from federal programs led to popular unrest that threatened to destabilize colonial rule and eventually caused a political sea change in Puerto Rico beginning in the late 1930s. This work will add to a growing body of transnational literature addressing New Deal scholarship which overlooks Puerto Rico as a topic of analysis. Including the colony in discussions about the discriminatory policies that reinforced the spatial isolation and poverty of mainland minorities will provide a new perspective on the ways power was maintained in America during an era of socioeconomic crisis. The following research also responds to works that privilege Puerto Rico's rural class struggles and agricultural capitalism while obscuring their effects on the island’s urban areas. Rural unemployment fueled migrations that swelled Puerto Rico's shantytowns, which became key sites for policy implementation battles between local and federal authorities. Such factors call for an analytical focus that includes the island's cities more fully. This approach will provide a holistic look at the interplay between the island's rural and urban regions and the mainland during the 1930s while broadening our understanding of class and racial dynamics during the American depression.
"Empire of the Everglades": Industrial Agriculture, Migrant Workers, and the Nature of the Modern food System
(2023) Fanning, Eugene Charles; Greene, Julie; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Taking a longue durée view over the 20th century, “Empire of the Everglades” examines how the consolidation and contestation of the corporate food system and industrial agriculture in South Florida transformed the region from a “river of grass” into an expansive commodity-production hub and moved the region’s farmworkers to build community and organize for change. It bridges the local and global to show how South Florida’s sugar and vegetable growers generated profits by anchoring the region to corporate food supply chains through economic and political organization, the deployment of environmental management technologies that remade the vast Everglades ecosystem, and the construction of new systems of migrant labor recruitment that spanned the Americas. In uplifting the region’s farmworkers’ experiences and organizing, this dissertation also illuminates the resilience of migrant farmworkers and their communities and powerful moments of solidarity amid poverty, exploitation, and social and legal exclusion. Over time, farmworkers built organizations and civil society networks to counter the sector’s means of labor control and forged new community resources and movements for corporate accountability and environmental justice. Examining class formation and conflict in the Everglade’s agricultural sector as it unfolded in a changing environment and amid shifting agribusiness practices and immigration patterns, this work reveals how the corporate food system worked to externalize the costs of low-priced food on the environment, workers, and rural communities, as well as the dynamism and impact of the state’s under-examined farmworkers’ movement.
Riots and Revolution: Food Riots in the Department of the Seine-et-Oise, 1789-1795
(1994) Sanyal, Sukla; Cockburn, James; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
This dissertation is a diachronic study of the food riots that broke out in the department of the Seine-et-Oise from 1789 through 1795. The purpose of the dissertation is to study one of the most common forms of popular protest in France in all its complexity. This study traces the riots downs the years and situates them within a specific political and economic context. It argues that as the Political and economic circumstances changed, the riots changed in form and content from market riots to stoppages of convoys to invasions into the homes of farmers. The dissertation also examines how the Revolution affected the rioters, not only in their material lives, but in their thinking and ideology as well. Chapter II traces the breadth and scope of the riots. Chapter III is a study of the connections between the policies of the revolutionary governments towards the commerce of foodstuff and the outbreak of the riots. It is shown that the riots changed in form over the years as the rioters sought to deal with the consequences of governmental legislation at different periods. Chapter IV examines the causes of the riots. It studies the long term and short term causes of the riots as well as the immediate causes. In this context, the chapter examines the social structure of the Seine-et-Oise , the effects of the policy of liberalization of the commerce of foodstuff and the effects of war. Chapter V studies the motivations, the organization and the composition of the riot groups. It argues that the Revolution had a direct impact on the mentalities of the rioters. As the years progressed the outlook of the rioters became steadily more radical, and they came to believe that political rights, and a Constitution which protected their interests, would alone solve the problem of subsistence in France. The sources for this study are the administrative records, police records, judicial records, legislative edicts, price lists and propaganda pamphlets found in the Archives Nationales at Paris, the Departmental Archives at Yvelines and Corbeil-Essonnes and the Bibliotheque de la Ville de Paris.
Inter-Ethnic Relations on New England's Frontier: A Survey of the Formative Period
(1969) Cole, Robert A.; Van Ness, James S.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
In many respects, the form and progression of the New England frontier reflects a collision, of sorts, between two disparate peoples and their two divergent cultures. As the European confronted the native American in the wilderness setting, it soon became apparent that the demise of the Indian culture was inevitable, the only salient question being as to the nature of its decline. A close examination of early Seventeenth Century relations shows the English as ambitious and militant expansionists who not only rejected the idea of cultural coexistence, but, in regarding the Indian solely from a European frame of reference, failed to make any substantial progress toward a theory of toleration. The English were highly organized, strongly motivated, and eminently successful in their pursuit of the long range goals of settlement; and it is the very cohesiveness of the Puritan frontier which best illuminates the fateful dilemma of the indigenous population. While fragmented by tribal particularism and internecine warfare, the native New Englanders were beset on all sides by enemies, European and Indian. Though willing, at first, to contest a permanent European colonial effort, their cultural resiliency was undermined by disease, and a multiplicity of negative factors which developed as their relationships with the English settlements moved toward interdependency. As the confrontation moved into the climactic period following the Pequot War, the weight of the English presence had already brought about irreversible trends in the Indian way of life. With his lands diminishing under the pressure of two converging lines of frontier settlement, he was finally left, with two impractical options, acculturation or resistance. Both charted a course to futility.
The Clash between Race and Politics: Marion Barry, the District of Columbia Financial Control Board, and the Fight for Home Rule
(2023) Horn, Dennis Marshall; Freund, David M.P.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
ABSTRACTTHE CLASH BETWEEN RACE AND POLITICS: MARION BARRY, THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA FINANCIAL CONTROL BOARD, AND THE FIGHT FOR HOME RULE Dennis Marshall Horn, Master of Arts 2023 Thesis Directed By: Associate Professor, David M. P. Freund, Department of History In 1995, the District of Columbia (DC) was insolvent. Marion Barry, who had just been elected mayor of Washington, DC for the fourth time was advised that D.C. faced a $722 million deficit which DC was unable to finance. In addition, DC residents were not getting adequate public services like police, schools, trash pick-up and street repair. In response, Congress suspended “Home Rule”, the law which granted DC citizens the right to be governed by a mayor and a thirteen-member citizen-elected council. Instead, Congress empaneled the District of Columbia (DC) Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority (Control Board), a five-member board appointed by the President to take control of the District’s governance. The Control Board stayed in place and Home Rule was suspended from 1995-2001. The Control Board rather than the elected officials had the authority to run the District’s government while leaving in place the mayor and the DC Council to implement the Control Board’s directives. The division between the authority to set policy and the executive function to implement that policy created a conflict of governing objectives between Marion Barry and the Control Board. In accordance with his Civil Rights background, Barry believed that the main purpose of DC government should be economic empowerment for DC’s Black citizens. The Control Board’s main objectives were to gain control of DC finances, cut unnecessary municipal costs and improve city services with the ultimate goal of attracting middle class residents to stabilize DC’s tax base. The resulting housing boom and population growth led to gentrification which priced the less affluent residents, including many Black residents, out of DC. These dueling policy objectives benefitted some to the detriment of others, and vestiges of these competing policies survive today. This thesis, which is largely based upon interviews with key officials in Congress, the Control Board, the Clinton Administration and the DC government, contributes to the scholarly literature by viewing Barry, the Control Board and the fight for Home Rule through the lens of social and racial politics. The thesis concludes that while the Control Board saved Home Rule by putting the DC government back on a sustainable course, it is at best a temporary solution to a broken government. An unelected Control Board does not have either the capacity or the public support to resolve problems that cannot be separated from group identity politics. On the other hand, when Congress determines to intervene in DC governance, DC’s citizens have little defense without voting representatives in Congress.
“But Hold Me Fast and Fear Me Not” Comparing Gender Roles in the Ballad Tam Lin and Medieval and Renaissance Scotland.
(2023) Conant, Charlotte; Bianchini, \Janna; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Tam Lin, a medieval Scottish Ballad tells the story of an unusually forceful young Lady Janet. Janet does many of the feats of strength in her story, defies her father, refuses to behave as a ‘good Christian woman’ might and suffers no consequences for her actions. She ends her story successfully married to a noble Christian man, having saved him from the evil pagan Fairy Queen. This ballad has been popular for centuries, and has been cited as a ballad unique to Scotland that represents Scottish culture. The ballad contains ideas that one might think contradictory to the ideas of a medieval Christian society, yet the ballad was so popular it had a ballet (now lost) and has survived for at least four hundred years. This dissertation examines the differences and similarities between the lack of consequences Janet suffers and what real women in Scotland from the Medieval Ages to the Early Modern period would have experienced. It also will delve into the various cultural groups that contributed to the ‘Scottish Nature’ of the ballad. Stories are told by humans all across the world, a ballad, likely sung in a group, in order to continue being told, must not go against the inherent social rules of the people performing it, or else act as a cautionary tale. However, since Janet does not end her story suffering, Tam Lin is not meant to be a cautionary tale. Why then, was this ballad, that might appear to be so contradictory to the society that was telling it, have managed to survive (and be so popular) to the current day and age.
“WHAT PERSONS, MASCULINE OR FEMININE”: EXAMINATIONS OF IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION AND QUEER POTENTIALITIES IN WESTERN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
(2023) Taylor, Erin; Bianchini, Janna; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this thesis, I argue that medieval people in Latin Europe had complex, overlapping identities and experiences of gender and sexuality that developed in their specific temporal and geographical contexts. The internal understandings of identities and the external expressions and interpretations of such identities are sites of historical possibility—and sources of potential inter-and intra-personal conflicts Medieval writings like Le Roman de Silence demonstrate how these identities could be constructed and expressed for literary and rhetorical purposes. Extant court cases, including those of John/Eleanor Rykener, Vitoria of Lisbon, and Katherina Hetzeldorfer, demonstrate the complexity of lived experiences of identity, and how deviation from accepted community and cultural norms could prove dangerous. It is impossible to assert such identities of gender and sexuality for historical figures of the medieval era with complete certainty, but the exploration of these identities is necessary for a fuller understanding and representation of the period and the people who lived throughout it.

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