History Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2778

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 378

Abigail Adams
(2004-05-04) Lloyd, Erin Marie; Ridgway, Whitman; History
Abigail Adams was the key to the success of her husband's life and career. By studying the roles she played in her adult life, as a mother, a farm manager, a political advisor, a first lady, and a politician, one will see that Abigail Adams was more than a wife and mother. She was a multifaceted woman, who was the integral part of major success in President John Adams career.
ACCESSIBILITY IN CONTEXT: UNDERSTANDING THE TRULY MOBILE EXPERIENCE OF USERS WITH MOTOR IMPAIRMENTS
(2014) Naftali, Maia; Findlater, Leah; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Touchscreen smartphones are becoming broadly adopted by the US population. Ensuring that these devices are accessible for people with disabilities is critical for equal access. For people with motor impairments, the vast majority of studies on touchscreen mobile accessibility have taken place in the laboratory. These studies show that while touchscreen input offers advantages, such as requiring less strength than physical buttons, it also presents accessibility challenges, such as the difficulty of tapping on small targets or making multitouch gestures. However, because of the focus on controlled lab settings, past work does not provide an understanding of contextual factors that impact smartphone use in everyday life, and the activities these devices enable for people with motor impairments. To investigate these issues, this thesis research includes two studies, first, an in-person study with four participants with motor impairments that included diary entries and an observational session, and, secondarily, an online survey with nine respondents. Using case study analysis for the in-person participants, we found that mobile devices have the potential to help motor-impaired users reduce the physical effort required for everyday tasks (e.g., turning on a TV, checking transit accessibility in advance), that challenges in touchscreen input still exist, and that the impact of situational impairments to this population can be impeding. The online survey results confirm these findings, for example, highlighting the difficulty of text input, particularly when users are out and mobile rather than at home. Based on these findings, future research should focus on the enhancement of current touchscreen input, exploring the potential of wearable devices for mobile accessibility, and designing more applications and services to improve access to physical world.
Adapting to Innovation: The US Navy, High-Steam Destroyers, and the Second World War
(2013) Pitrof, Tyler; Sumida, Jon T; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The US Navy's move to high-pressure and -temperature steam propulsion, otherwise known as "high steam," has been viewed in the postwar period as a critical advance that made long-range operations possible during World War II. This position, which is almost entirely reliant on the autobiography of Rear Admiral Harold G. Bowen, has neglected to consider the complex and problematic nature of the supply chain required to produce high-steam turbines. Archival research has revealed that the US Navy's insensitivity to these changes after 1938 caused severe bottlenecks in wartime destroyer production. Also overlooked was the aggressive administrative action on the part of the Navy's Bureau of Ships and its turbine subcontractors required to mitigate this crisis. Together, these events formed an important example of the need to adapt administratively to match the advance of technology.
The Administration of Ottoman Algeria (1517-1830)
(1962) Roughton, Richard Allen; Rivlin, Helen A.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
In the early sixteenth century Aruc and Hayru'd-Din Barbarossa established themselves as successful pirate captains in the western Mediterranean Sea. Aruc, the leader of their enterprises until his death in 1518, became aware of the political vacuum which existed in the Magrib and as a result worked to establish a personal kingdom. In 1517, he was invited to Algiers to drive out the Spanish and was killed fighting to maintain his position there. Hayru'd-Din then assumed control of Algiers and brought that city and all the territory he subsequently conquered into the Ottoman Empire. Barbarossa was unable to consolidate his position in North Africa and he withdrew to Cicelli because of the opposition of Spain and the rebellious tribes in the area around Algiers. By 1525 Hayru'd-Din was in a position to return to Algiers and fight successfully against his Spanish adversaries. In a series of military engagements the corsair reduced the Spanish Empire in North Africa to one enclave, Oran, and defeated the Spanish fleet. The Ottoman Sultan, Suleyman I, took notice of these accomplishments and made Barbarossa Kaptan Pasa (admiral) of the Turkish fleet. With Hayru'd-Din as admiral, the Ottoman navy dominated the Mediterranean Sea. Following Hayru'd-Din's death in 1546, control of Algiers passed quickly from the Barbarossa family to the Janissaries stationed in the Pasalik (province). While the province continued to recognize the Turkish Sultan as suzerain, political control remained in the hands of the Janissaries until the French conquest of Algeria in 1830. The fiction of direct Ottoman control was eventually abandoned when in 1710 the Sultan issued a firman (decree) that vested executive authority in a Dey elected by the Turkish soldiers stationed in Algeria. Despite the dominant role played by the Janissaries in Algeria, their economic dependence on the activities of the Ta'ifa ul-Ru'asa (corporation of corsair captains) forced them to share some political power with that body. The Ta'ifa ul-Ru'asa was ultimately responsible' for the institution of the Deylik in 1671 when the army failed to keep order in the Pasalik. The country did not suffer greatly from the political changes that occurred throughout this period, since the administration of the state remained in the hands of a bureaucracy which competently carried out the duties of government and maintained law and order. Indeed, though over half of the thirty elected Deys were assassinated, Algeria still functioned as a solvent, effective and generally well-ordered state. Eventually, however, the Pasalik's preoccupation with piracy and the designs of an Empire-conscious French minister l led Ottoman Algeria to the fatal conflict with France and to ultimate extinction.
THE ADMIRAL'S MASKS: THE STYLIZED REPRESENTATION OF THE SUPREME RULER OF ALL-RUSSA, ADMIRAL ALEKSANDR VASILIEVICH KOLCHAK
(2013) Irvin, Dakota; David-Fox, Michael; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The present thesis seeks to develop a better understanding of how political images and symbols of power were constructed during the Russian Civil War through a textual analysis of the presentation surrounding the leader of the anti-Bolshevik movement in Siberia, Aleksandr Kolchak. The research was based primarily on the collection of microfilmed "anti-Soviet" newspapers available at the Library of Congress, while also expanding on the theoretical contributions of Wortman, Kolonitskii, and Holquist to the study of power in revolutionary Russia. The thesis focuses on the construction of a stylized representation of Admiral Kolchak by Kadets in Omsk, and how his public image was transformed to reflect the ideological goals and beliefs of the White movement. The political mythmaking of the Whites reveal that they, contrary to previous assessments, were fully engaged in propaganda campaigns and that Kolchak himself must be viewed within the wider revolutionary dynamic of emerging "leader cults."
African American Women's Politics, Organizing, and Activism in 1920s-Washington, D.C.
(2012) Murphy, Mary-Elizabeth Bradley; Barkley Brown, Elsa; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation offers a social history of African American women's political activism and organizing in 1920s-Washington, D.C. Specifically, I examine the ways that black women worked to reform the school system, protested segregation in the offices of the federal government and neighborhoods, fought for the passage of an anti-lynching law, formed Republican organizations, upheld African American citizenship through commemoration, and recruited more than one thousand women and men to join a labor union, the National Association of Wage Earners. I argue that black women in 1920s-Washington, D.C., reached into the knowledge and skills they derived from black institutional culture, from their location in the city, from their work experiences, friendships, and family life to organize their campaigns and participate in politics. Black institutional culture formed a bridge to women's formal political activism. As churchgoers, dues-paying members of fraternal orders, fundraisers for the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), or participants in social clubs, African American women developed important skills, including fundraising, publicity, and public speaking, which they applied to their more overtly political campaigns. Locating the origins of African American women's political campaigns and organizations within black institutions helps to explain how black women were sometimes able to mobilize hundreds of foot soldiers in a short period of time. Personal experiences also mattered tremendously in women's political activism. Stories and memories passed along from family and friends inspired African American women to wage their wide-ranging campaigns for justice. During the 1920s, black women in ways both large and small, individual and collective--from walking through the streets to recruit members to a labor organization to raising money for a YWCA organizing drive, from marching through the streets in support of anti-lynching bill, to staging protests in front of the Board of Education building--organized to sustain their communities, reform their city, and enact democracy in Washington and throughout the nation. This dissertation relies on a range of sources, including organizational records, personal papers, black and white newspapers, social scientific studies, government documents, court cases, oral histories, Sanborn maps, city directories, and the manuscript census.
After Empire: Ethnic Germans and Minority Nationalism in Interwar Yugoslavia
(2008-11-30) Lyon, Philip; Lampe, John R; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study traces the (ethnically German) Danube Swabians' embrace of national identity in interwar Yugoslavia with attention to the German national movement's antecedents in Croatia-Slavonia and Vojvodina under the Habsburgs. We examine the important role of German national activists in Yugoslavia and survey the institutions they built to stimulate, shape and mobilize Yugoslavia's German population as a specifically national minority based on the Swabians' history and collective memory as colonists in the region. Thereafter, we discuss the rift that emerged inside the German minority during the 1930s, when the German leadership and its conservative variety of German nationalism were confronted by brash, young challengers who sought to "renew" the German minority in a Nazi image. These young enthusiasts for National Socialism directed their extreme nationalism not at the repressive Yugoslav authorities, but rather at their older rivals in the Germans' main cultural and political organization, the Kulturbund. German culture and national authenticity became key criteria for German leadership in this struggle to control the Kulturbund. Meanwhile, German Catholic priests also resisted the Nazi-oriented Erneuerungsbewegung insurgency. Ultimately, we see in this clash of generations both support for and resistance to local manifestations of Nazism in Southeastern Europe. One of this study's major finds is the stubborn endurance of national indifference and local identity in Southeastern Europe throughout interwar period, when national identity was supposed to be dominant. Many Germans embraced national identity, but certainly not all of them. The persistence of this indifference confounded the logic of twentieth century nationalists, for whom national indeterminacy seemed unnatural, archaic, and inexplicable. Even after years of effort by German nationalist activists in the nationalized political atmosphere of interwar Yugoslavia, some ethnic Germans remained indifferent to national identity or else identified as Croats or Magyars. There were also those who pined for Habsburg Hungary, which had offered a dynastic alternative to national identity before 1918. Still others' identity remained shaped by confession as Catholic or Protestant. We conclude therefore by observing the paradoxical situation whereby Nazi-oriented extreme nationalism coexisted with instances of German national indifference in Yugoslavia until the eve of the Second World War.
"Against the Public": Teacher Strikes and the Decline of Liberalism, 1968-1981
(2013) Shelton, Jon K.; Greene, Julie; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In the 1930s, the Democratic Party became the party of working people largely through its support of legislation encouraging the formation of labor unions. As the nation moved leftward, a liberal consensus emerged that placed support--in the name of both economic growth and greater social equality--for labor unions at it center. Support for this labor-liberalism declined considerably during the 1970s, paving the way for the neoliberal conservatism that has emerged in the last quarter century of American politics. This dissertation explains this shift by looking at the intersection between culture and the public sector labor movement in the postwar era. As unionized teachers became increasingly visible in American political culture in the 1960s, lengthy strikes by teachers in major metropolitan areas in the 1970s caused many Americans to question their assumptions about the role of the state and the importance of labor unions. Because of teachers' long-time cultural importance as providers of economic opportunity as well as inculcators of moral values, their labor stoppages (which were often violations of the law) caused many white working- and middle-class Americans to blame the excesses of the liberal state for moral decline and to re-think their views about what had made America so prosperous in the years following World War II. Further, the state's failure to solve the thorny problem of teachers shutting down the school system also caused many of these future "Reagan Democrats" to question the efficacy of the liberal state. With labor-liberalism discredited, free-market conservatives began, by the end of the decade, to argue persuasively for a shift to a more austere state, less government regulation of business, and for the privatization of social goods like education. This dissertation charts these larger developments by putting close examinations of teacher strikes in Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and St. Louis in dialogue with the national trajectory of neoliberal conservatism.
Alegria: The Rise of Brazil's "Carnival of Popular Participation," Salvador da Bahia, 1950-2000s
(2012) Metz, Jerry Dennis; Williams, Daryle; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In the second half of the twentieth century, the annual carnival in the economically depressed northeastern city of Salvador da Bahia underwent a series of transformations that brought it from relative anonymity in Brazil--where festivities in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Recife had long been given pride of place--to the status of (inter)national showpiece in terms of cultural and entrepreneurial innovation and touristic appeal. It became a dominant factor in year-round local music production. In an era of political constraint, it appeared to embody the collective performance of multiple democracies including race and free-market consumerism. New forms of popular participation were linked to innovations in carnival that, in other national carnival sites, would have been precluded by regulation and tradition. This dissertation draws from debates and analysis in Brazil's intellectual, policy, and media spheres regarding carnival, folklore, tourism, Bahian culture, mass culture, and national identity to argue that 1) the traits of creative spontaneity and popular participation in Salvador's carnival gained prominence as both national ambivalence over "folklore" increased, and dictatorial regimes constrained political democracy; 2) the state, rather than discursively and economically controlling Salvador's carnival, has more often reacted to artistic production and market forces, its hegemony configured through strategies of support and appropriation linked to tourism and an internally amplified social ethic of alegria; and 3) media and cultural commentators have made Salvador's modern carnival a new locus for longstanding national conversations over Brazilian identity, regionalism, race, and cultural imperialism, casting its innovation as simultaneously a promising engine of renovation and a threat to both local and national traditions. Salvador carnival's progressive implications of participation and inclusion have been blunted by a process of political redemocratization that was associated with neoliberal policies at the national and local levels; its internal contradictions and commercialism have challenged both its national and local symbolic power.
Alfred E. Smith and Transitional Progressivism: The Revolution before the New Deal
(2012) Chiles, Robert; Sicilia, David B.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In New York State in the 1910s and 1920s, two groups of political actors--largely female social work reformers from the settlement house tradition, and legislators from urban ethnic political machines--coalesced to develop a unique political amalgam: transitional progressivism. Transitional progressivism brought together the common interests of these two groups, forging an agenda that sought to expand the role of the state in protecting industrial laborers, ensuring social welfare, and promoting cultural pluralism. Through a complex process, this agenda became Democratic partisan dogma--first in New York and then nationally; and during both the implementation of this program and the articulation of the broader ideology of the transitional progressives in the context of state and national campaigns, transitional progressivism became the political platform of America's urban ethnic working-class voters. Through these voters and their political representatives, many priorities from the transitional progressive tradition became important facets of New Deal liberalism. Thus, by way of transitional progressivism, key elements of Progressive Era reform evolved into hallmarks of the New Deal. The foremost practitioner of this unique progressivism was Alfred E. Smith, a Democrat who served four terms as governor of New York and ran unsuccessfully for president in 1928. Part I explores the rise of transitional progressivism and its implementation during the Smith governorship. Part II presents a revisionist interpretation of the 1928 presidential contest. The conclusion follows the developments of 1928 into the 1930s, suggesting ways in which transitional progressivism exerted an important influence on the development of the New Deal.
All American Beauty: The Experiences of African American, European American, and Japanese American Women with Beauty Culture in the Mid-twentieth Century Untied States
(2008-04-22) McAndrew, Jennifer M; Moss, Alfred A; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study documents how shifting attitudes regarding female display were negotiated between the start of World War II in 1941 and the close of the 1950s. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, multiple players including women, men, employers, and the U. S. government, defined beauty, charm, poise, and grace as essential characteristics of womanhood, creating what I term an all-American beauty ideal. By examining this ideal as it functioned in the lives of African American, European American, and Japanese American women, I argue that each of these groups inscribed its own notions of gender, power, race, and nationalism into representations of the female form. Analyzing this ideal as it operated within and outside of American borders, my study demonstrates the many ways in which beauty culture functioned as a powerful mechanism to expand or diminish the cultural, economic, and political agency of various social groups in the middle decades of the twentieth century.
Alumni Perspectives on their Membership in an Intergenerational Participatory Design Team
(2018) McNally, Brenna; Druin, Allison; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Participatory Design (PD) gives technology users an active role in the design of the technologies they are meant to use. PD methods have been adapted for research with children to facilitate the creation of technologies that better meet children’s desires and expectations. While the benefits HCI practitioners receive from working with children in PD can include developing more child-centric interfaces and finding surprising new innovations, research is less clear on the participants’ perceptions of their experience—such as how they perceive matters that affect them or what personal gains intergenerational PD team participants may receive from their participation. Investigating the retrospective perspectives of adult and child members of intergenerational PD teams may enable researchers to improve or develop practices that are better aligned with participant expectations. Recent work has begun to look into the gains adults perceive from their participation on traditional PD projects, and has begun to observe gains to children during their participation on PD teams. However, the retrospective perspectives of adult and child alumni who were members of intergenerational PD teams have yet to be investigated. To understand how alumni of intergenerational PD teams perceive matters that affected their membership, I conducted anonymous, online surveys and follow-up interviews with three distinct participant groups from an intergenerational PD team: child design partner alumni, parents of child alumni, and adult design partner alumni. Outcomes include new understandings of 1) the perspectives of child design partner alumni with regard to the ethics of their previous participation, 2) the gains child design partners experience and attribute to their PD team participation from the perspectives of both child alumni and their parents, and 3) the gains that adult design partners experience and attribute to their PD team participation and their perspectives on membership. Throughout these findings participants describe how participation in intergenerational PD impacted their desire and perceived ability to pursue new goals and activities throughout their lives through the development of new skills, competencies, and mindsets. From these findings, I then synthesize ten recommendations toward the goal of making intergenerational PD better support the people who are involved in it.
"America was Promises": The Ideology of Equal Opportunity, 1877-1905
(2009) Goldstene, Claire; Gerstle, Gary; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
"`America was Promises': The Ideology of Equal Opportunity, 1877-1905" seeks to untangle one of the enduring ideas in American history--equal economic opportunity--by exploring the varied discourses about its meaning during the upheavals caused by the corporate consolidation of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In so doing, a new framework is proposed through which to comprehend the social and political disruptions wrought by the transition from an entrepreneurial to a corporate society. This framework centers on a series of tensions that have permeated the idea of opportunity in the American context. As an expression of capitalism, the ideology of equal opportunity historically occupies conflicted terrain as it endeavors to promote upward mobility by permitting more people to participate in the economic sphere and emphasizing merit over inherited wealth, while it concurrently acts as a mechanism to maintain economic inequality. This tension allowed the rhetoric of opportunity to animate social dissent among rural and urban workers--the origins of Progressive reform--even as it simultaneously served efforts by business elites to temper this dissent. The dissertation examines the discourses about the ideology of equal opportunity of prominent figures and groups located along a spectrum of political belief. Some grounded opportunity in land ownership (Booker T. Washington); others defined it as control of one's own labor (Knights of Labor); while others connected opportunity to increased leisure and consumption (Samuel Gompers and business elites). As this occurred, the site of opportunity shifted away from entrepreneurship toward competition for advancement and investment within the corporation. Most social activists and reformers stressed the conditions necessary for equal opportunity to thrive. They thus reinforced assumptions about the benefits of economic competition and differentially rewarding individuals, even as they objected to the results of that system. And, certainly, some of these arguments led to progressive changes. But because the necessary outcome of equal opportunity was an inequality of economic result, to move beyond the boundaries of equal opportunity ideology demanded a rare willingness (Edward Bellamy) to question the system of economic competition itself.
America's Commercial Cold War: Global Trade, National Security, and the Control of Markets
(2019) Haddad, Ryan Issa; Sicilia, David; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Previous works considering the history of American trade policy during the Cold War have tended to focus on either the United States’ export control policy in the unilateral and multilateral context or the Cold War’s influence on the formation and evolution on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. While useful, these studies are limited by their narrowness. To date, no single work has emerged accounting for trade’s place in American Cold War strategy or the reciprocal impact that economic globalization and the Cold War had on each other. I argue that American Cold War trade policy was an “economic containment” exercise. The United States’ “Commercial Cold War” was conceptualized by strategists as a struggle between two rival, yet interdependent networks—one liberal and capitalist, and led by the United States; the other communist and led at the outset by the Soviet Union. The United States used trade both positively and negatively to achieve a variety of ends. Its overarching goal was to use trade to develop its network at the expense of the Soviet Union’s. This strategy assumed centralized, flexible control over trade policy in order to capitalize on diplomatic openings. Successive American presidents aspired to such trade policy control. But the diffusion of power throughout the U.S. government and across the Western alliance rendered that impossible. It proved far easier to deny East-West trade than to expand it, and more assertive American initiatives were often stymied. But despite the limits on unilateral action, the multilateral trade architectures that were established during the Cold War proved adequate to their purposes and remain in renovated form in the 21st Century.
American Initiative in the Modern Catechetical Movement: From the Release of the Baltimore Catechism in 1885 to the Publication of the General Catechetical Directory in 1971
(2006-12-11) Ingold, Matt D; Gilbert, James; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The twentieth century has been a dynamic era for Catholic catechesis in the United States. Since the Protestant Reformation, catechesis had revolved around the Catechism as the primary text and memorization as the fundamental method for imparting Christian doctrine. In the late nineteenth century, progressive American catechists, both lay and religious, endeavored to introduce modern pedagogical standards to the realm of Catholic religious education. Traditional historiography credits this transition to European initiatives. Assessing the evolution of American catechesis through modern catechetical programs and textbooks developed between 1885 and 1971, however, demonstrates that American initiative in modernizing catechesis was ongoing during the twentieth century in the United States. Pedagogical advances in religious education were taking place mainly at the classroom level by the ingenuity of progressive catechists. This thesis endeavors to illustrate the American contribution to the modernization of Catholic religious education in the United States.
The Americanization of Immigrant Children by Public and Parochial Schools in Baltimore, 1897-1917
(1993) Ryan, Maura Margaret; Gilbert, James; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland
This is a study of the ways in which the school systems of the city of Baltimore received immigrant children and prepared them to live in the urban American community in the generation before World War I. It includes comparison of the public and parochial school systems in the areas of administration, attendance, curriculum and instruction, as well as an examination of the institutions within the ethnic communities used to become American. While there were remarkable parallels between the development of public and parochial school systems during the Progressive era, the evidence indicates that public schools were overwhelmed by the influx of immigrants and generally failed to accommodate the newcomers in a positive way. Because of their history of bilingual education and their cultural proximity to the immigrant communities, parochial schools were generally more successful in helping immigrants to make the transition to American life.
The Americanization of the Virgin Islands, 1917-1946: Politics and Class Struggle During the First Thirty Years of American Rule
(1992) La Motta, Gregory R.; Wright, Winthrop; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This study describes how the interaction between Virgin Islanders and their new American rulers shaped the political relationship between the Virgin Islands and the United States. Once control of the islands had passed from Denmark to the United states, Virgin Islanders forced American Officials to take sides in local political struggles. These struggles pitted a mostly white upper class of merchants and planters against a black middle and working class alliance that had just recently won some important victories. After 1917, both sides appealed to the American administrators for assistance. over the course of the next thirty years, the middle and working classes achieved greater success than the planter and merchant elite in obtaining American support. The middle and working classes gained this support by emphasizing their loyalty to the United States, and imploring the Americans to extend to Virgin Islanders the same rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens on the mainland. By same rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens on the mainland. By the end of the Second World War, black Virgin Islanders had not only gained control of the insular political system but also had convinced federal officials to extend substantial economic aid programs to the colony. Whatever success the elite enjoyed resulted largely from appealing to the Americans from the common ground of race. These appeals worked fairly well for the first fourteen years of American rule, when the Department of the Navy administered the islands. Cooperation between Navy officials and the local elite prevented political reforms that would have granted greater political power to middle and lower class islanders. However, numerous protests by black islanders, along with the Navy's inability to fashion an economic recovery, forced the federal government to transfer responsibility for the islands to the Department of the Interior. Less racially prejudiced than their Navy predecessors, the new civilian administrators realized that cooperation with black islanders was necessary to implement an economic recovery program. This cooperation formed the basis for the a lasting political relationship between the United States and the Virgin Islands.
"And They Were Bedmates!": Travel and the Development of Privacy in Colonial America.
(2023) Labor, Joanna; Brewer, Holly; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation is a study of how travelers, particularly white, elite travelers, thought about their lodgings over the course of the long eighteenth century, and how their lodging options changed as a result. Their writings about how they ate and where they slept reveal shifting cultural attitudes from both travelers and their hosts. Genteel travelers began to expect greater personal privacy, and private householders who formerly provided accommodations began to refuse to do so. The material culture of gentility spread quickly through the Atlantic world; elite homes became more compartmentalized places that allowed for people to develop new senses of personal privacy. While many Americans could partake in the trappings of gentility, they could not participate equally. Such differences in a standard of living created tensions between travelers and their hosts. Taverns, inns, and private homes were the main sources of lodging; however, most hosts were unable and increasingly unwilling to provide the individualized spaces that genteel travelers increasingly expected for their bodily privacy. Chapter one describes travelers and boarding in urban areas, and the role that boardinghouses played in affording travelers a measure of privacy. Chapter two discusses rural America during the colonial period, looking at why so many travelers ended up lodging in private homes despite their discomfort. Chapter three illustrates the standards of genteel travelers, and why they were often in opposition with the families who lived in the homes and taverns that they stayed in. Finally, chapter four discusses the reasons why householders and tavernkeepers began to deny travelers a berth overnight. If the first three chapters are about the power of elite travelers, the fourth chapter is about the power of householders to refuse entry in their homes, and the tools they used to reclaim their space from intrusive travelers. The conclusion discusses the emergence of the modern hotel, purpose-built buildings that both allowed travelers’ personal privacy as well as taking them out of domestic spaces. The rise of a tourist economy, coupled with changing ideas about who was allowed in domestic spaces, ensured both that travelers no longer sought respite in private homes, and that householders would not willingly allow strangers into their homes. However, the practice did not die out entirely, persisting in the backcountry frontier and in less settled areas where there was less travel infrastructure, into the nineteenth century.
Anglo-American Relations, 1789-1794
(1976) Mezzullo, Louis A.; Gordon, Donald C.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
The thesis is a study of certain internal and external events that affected the development of Anglo-American relations during the period from 1789 to 1794. It examines the international situation b efore and after the adoption of the Constitution in 1789, aspects of British policy toward the United States during this period, the diplomatic mission of Gouverneur Morris, the struggle in Congress over the resolutions introduced by James Madison designed to discriminate against British shipping, and finally, the events leading up to the appointment of John Jay as envoy extraordinary to Great Britain. The narrative and analysis is based on printed secondary and primary sources. The central theme is that the policy advocated by Alexander Hamilton, and supported by most of the Federalists, was on the whole the one best suited to the strengths and weaknesses, internal and external, of the United States during this early stage in its development. Viewed in a contemporary setting, a policy that sought to avoid war and retain commercial intercourse with Great Britain was not only essential to the success of the financial system erected by Hamilton but also necessary to prevent internal disunity and loss of territory as a result of a disastrous war. The Hamiltonian system rested on credit, and that credit was supported by import duties. By far the largest amount of imports came from Great Britain. Internal disunity, exemplified by separatist movements in the west and in Vermont, was an ever present consideration. The United States was not strong militarily. By remaining at peace, America gained time to reduce the national debt, develop internally, and improve the administration of the national government.
Anthony Benezet: Eighteenth Century Social Critic, Educator and Abolitionist
(1974) Hornick, Nancy Slocum; Bradbury, Miles L.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
The career of Anthony Benezet (1713-1784), humanitarian leader, social critic, and educator of the revolutionary period, had roots in his French Huguenot background and English education. In 1731, Benezet emigrated from London to Philadelphia, where he worked for several years in an import-export business with his father and brothers. But he dropped his commercial pursuits and began teaching school, a vocation he found more satisfying. By 1743 he had taken the position of English School Master at the Quaker sponsored "Publick School" of Philadelphia, later known as the William Penn Charter School. For the next four decades, Benezet led the school through its greatest period o:f development. He was responsible for establishing the first permanent secondary level school for girls in the colonies, as well a.s the first full time school for black students , during his tenure. In addition he wrote school books, introduced numerous innovative teaching methods, modernized curricula, and ruled out harsh disciplinary measures in his classrooms, as part of a long campaign to humanize education and make it serve more effectively the needs of growing children and a changing society. Benezet became the leading humanitarian reformer and social critic of late eighteenth century America, as well. In response to real needs created by the Seven Years' War and the Revolution, he tested his theories and bourgeois ideals in the laboratory of daily life. His utopian vision of community rested on values drawn eclectically from many sources in Western civilization. These sources included his radical Protestant heritage, his rising middle-class economic background, the Whig political tradition, and contemporary Enlightenment thought. The result was a social vision of essentially traditional patterns in which every person contributed voluntary and happily to the good of the whole community. On the basis of the Christian brotherhood ideal and his Quaker principle of peace in the family of mankind, Benezet pressed for the transformation of certain social institutions in order to preserve all that he saw as valuable from the past. His goal was never to overturn the established social structure, but to change it drastically by gradual and peaceful methods. This called for a revolution of sentiments, in which rational people would become convinced of the need to correct various evils that threatened their collective happiness. Benezet wrote prolifically on the subjects of slavery, war, ignorance, and poverty, attacking what he believed to be the causes of these social cancers. Invariably, as he analyzed the problems, he concluded that they had roots in a spreading economic greed. He condemned the selfish acquisitiveness that threatened to overwhelm sociability and. lead to inexcusable oppression of less aggressive groups-the children, black people, and poverty-ridden immigrants who comprised a growing segment of the city's population. Failure to correct these evils, he warned, meant ever worse chaos and social disorder. Benezet's most significant campaign was that directed against slavery and the slave trade. His sustained attack on the institution was founded on an unequivocal assertion of the full intellectual and moral equality of the races. It was a concept he first proved to his own satisfaction in his teaching of black students, beginning about 1750, and one that became the cornerstone of his antislavery campaign. From 1759 onward, Benezet's published research in African history, his exposes of the inhumanity of slavery, his synthesis of Christian and Enlightenment arguments, and his sustained political campaign against the institution, established his leadership in a growing libertarian movement in the colonies. In 1766, amid repercussions from the Stamp Act, Benezet published his widely reprinted Caution and Warning to Great Britain and Her Colonies. The book attacked English hypocrisy for condoning the slave trade while loudly proclaiming ''British ideas of liberty." The American antislavery crusade, which peaked in 1774, became one important catalyst for inter-colonial cooperation and. resistance to Great Britain, a powerful popular movement which patriot leaders found useful in their drive for independence. During and after the Revolution, however, antislavery sentiment became politically embarrassing--a divisive force in a nation struggling for survival. But in England and France, beginning in the mid-1780's, Benezet's books in the hands of his antislavery converts and colleagues, served as the basis for a sustained campaign to outlaw the slave trade and the institution of slavery throughout the world.