History Theses and Dissertations

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

Browse

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 53

A DAVID AGAINST GOLIATH: THE AMERICAN VETERANS COMMITTEE'S CHALLENGE TO THE AMERICAN LEGION IN THE 1950s
(2010) Hoefer, Peter Darr; Gilbert, James B; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
ABSTRACT Title of Document: A DAVID AGAINST GOLIATH: THE AMERICAN VETERANS COMMITTEE'S CHALLENGE TO THE AMERICAN LEGION IN THE 1950s Peter D. Hoefer, Ph.D. 2010 Directed By: Professor James B. Gilbert, Department of History This study joins a nascent body of scholarship that seeks to enrich and complicate understanding of 1950s political culture. While this newer scholarship acknowledges conservative dominance, it has also uncovered considerable evidence that the period was far more politically diverse and contested. This study demonstrates that there was no single, unitary conservative Americanism or patriotism in the fifties decade. Instead, the American Veterans Committee, despite suffering heavy membership losses after purging the Communist Party from its ranks in the late 1940s, survived, regrouped and persistently challenged the hegemonic conservative American Legion, (the nation's largest veterans' organization) throughout the 1950s. Using a liberal version of what I term Cold War Americanism, the AVC attempted to defend and advance the New Deal legacy. The Legion, however, using a conservative version of anti-Communist discourse, joined with its counterparts in the postwar Right to oppose the interventionist liberal state. I explore the role of these contending languages in shaping 1950s political culture by analyzing how these two groups used Cold War Americanism to advance their respective interest concerning two of the period's most important domestic issues: the restriction on civil liberties, and the developing struggle for African-American civil rights. This study demonstrates that within the community of organized veterans, the American Legion was not the only voice heard in the 1950s. Any account of this period that fails to acknowledge the presence of the AVC would be incomplete and inaccurate.
The Tort Revolution: Product Liability and the Rule of Courts
(2010) Drake, Ian J.; Belz, Herman J; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation is a history of the changes in tort law, specifically in products liability law, from the fault-based negligence standard to the no-fault strict liability standard. It covers a period from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth century. The historical questions this dissertation seeks to answer are i) what caused the change from negligence to strict liability, ii) who were the historical actors responsible for this change, iii) what was the political character of this change, and iv) what were the political consequences of this change. This dissertation reveals that the revolutionary expansion in product liability law in the states in the 1960s was the product of the Progressive ideologies of state court judges. During the Progressive Era, American legal education responded and adapted to the political climate of the wider society by adopting a new philosophical disposition regarding how the courts should address civil wrongs. The political and ideological responses to the industrialization of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century resulted in legal academics and practitioners advocating new ideologically oriented theories about how law does and should affect citizens. These theories, known as sociological jurisprudence and legal realism, became popular in American law schools. The law students of the 1920s became the judges and legal academics of the 1950s and 1960s. In the latter decades, Progressive state court judges instituted dramatic, revolutionary changes in the area of law known as torts, particularly products liability law. Products liability law was changed from a fault-based system to an insurance or no-fault system. These politically motivated changes in the courts had the unintended consequence of making a theretofore non-political issue into an inherently political issue, subjecting tort law to the pluralism of the American political system at the state and federal levels. Accordingly, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of the process of legal change, and explores the methods by which social and political changes filter into court decisions.
"Let the People Have a Victory": The Politics of Transportation in Philadelphia, 1946-1984
(2010) Kobrick, Jacob Ian; Muncy, Robyn L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Urban transportation planning in the United States underwent important changes in the decades after World War II. In the immediate postwar period, federal highway engineers in the Bureau of Public Roads dominated the decision-making process, creating a planning regime that focused almost entirely on the building of modern expressways to relieve traffic congestion. In the 1960s, however, local opposition to expressway construction emerged in cities across the nation, reflecting growing discontent with what many citizens perceived to be a closed planning process that resulted in the destruction of urban neighborhoods, environmental degradation, and inadequate attention paid to alternative modes of transportation. Local freeway protestors found allies in the new U.S. Department of Transportation, which moved in the mid-1960s to absorb the Bureau of Public Roads and support legislation promoting a planning process more open to local input as well as a greater emphasis on federal aid for urban mass transportation. The changing culture of transportation planning produced a series of freeway revolts, resulting in the cancellation or modification of interstate highway projects, in major American cities. Changes in transportation planning played out differently in every city, however. This dissertation examines controversies over Philadelphia's major expressway projects - the Schuylkill Expressway, the Delaware Expressway, and the never-built Crosstown Expressway, in addition to major mass transit developments such as the city's subsidization of the commuter railroads, the creation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, and the building of a railroad tunnel known as the Center City Commuter Connection, in order to trace the evolution of the city's transportation politics between 1946 and 1984. Significantly, Philadelphia's own freeway revolt succeeded in eliminating the proposed Crosstown Expressway, which would have created a daunting racial barrier while decimating several low-income African American neighborhoods. The Crosstown Expressway revolt, however, failed to change the overall trajectory of Philadelphia's transportation planning politics, which continued to be dominated by an exceptionally strong alliance between City Hall and large business interests. Philadelphia's turn to mass transit in the 1970s, in contrast to those of other cities, failed to redistribute transportation resources to its low-income residents, mainly because the city chose to devote a massive percentage of its federal funding to the Center City Commuter Connection, a downtown rail tunnel designed to serve approximately 8% of the region's commuters. The prioritization of a rail system serving predominantly affluent white suburbanites left Philadelphia's lower-income population saddled with a crumbling urban mass transit system, demonstrating that, despite a more open planning process and a greater emphasis on mass transportation, fundamental inequalities persisted.
Suitcase Diplomacy: The Role of Travel in Sino-American Relations, 1949-1968
(2010) Rubin, Daniel Aaron; Olson, Keith; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation examines U.S. travel in the context of Sino-American relations between 1949 and 1968. Building on recent scholarship on tourism and foreign relations, this dissertation argues that historians cannot develop a comprehensive understanding of the U.S. relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, and Hong Kong without establishing travel and travelers as significant agents of historical change. Using tourism as a centerpiece of historical inquiry, moreover, adds complexity to the traditional Cold War narrative and suggests that other forces, aside from East-West struggle, defined the international climate in the post-World War II period. The post-1945 boom in recreational tourism did not materialize uniformly around the world. On the mainland of China, swept up in civil war, travel was difficult and unappealing. The emergence of Cold War tensions in the region added a new obstacle to tourism as Washington imposed restrictions on American travel. Using the founding of the PRC as a starting point, this dissertation follows the course of American travel and travel policy in the region. As opposed to being marked by isolation and disengagement, the period from 1949 to 1968 saw incredible activity in the area of travel. In terms of U.S.-PRC relations, travel served as a medium of engagement and both sides showed a willingness to initiate travel exchanges and reforms to travel policy as a means of feeling out the opposing camp. Moving beyond the mainland of China, U.S. officials, private industry, and individual travelers perceived Taiwan and Hong Kong as "alternatives" to the PRC and both destinations experienced huge booms in tourism. In all these realms, travel developed both as a crucial element of U.S. containment policy and as a phenomenon that seemed disconnected from Cold War strategy. Using government archival material, travelogues, travel guides, records from international tourism associations, and popular advertisements, this dissertation demonstrates that tourism was not always the most efficient channel for foreign policy. The expectations and motivations of individual tourists, the overwhelming belief in a "right to travel," and the unpredictable impact of tourism on local economies, all worked to add complexity and nuance to the Sino-American post-World War II relationship.
Standing Tall: U.S. Efforts at Democratizing Rural Japanese Women During the Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952
(2010) Price, Emily Rebecca; Mayo, Marlene J; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
During the U.S. Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952, dismantling the political and cultural systems that were perceived to have led Japan to war was a primary goal. Democracy, a word that came to encompass much more than its standard definitions, was to be the replacement ideology and coupled with demilitarization. Through a survey of SCAP documents from Record Group 331 located in the National Archives, this paper examines the way in which varying concepts and meanings of democracy were promoted to rural Japanese women by U.S. Occupation forces. It also explores the ways in which Japanese farm women embraced, rejected, and/or modified the evolving ideas about democracy into their daily lives. While the impact of democracy - in all of its many guises - was not as powerful as Occupation members desired, it still had a definite effect on the way rural Japanese women thought about their society and on their daily lives.
Defending Giants: The Battle over Headwaters Forest and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics, 1850-1999
(2010) Speece, Darren Frederick; Sicilia, David B; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The redwoods have long been a source of inspiration and conflict. By the end of the twentieth century, disputes over logging Redwood Country had helped transform American environmental politics. Historians have largely neglected the redwood wars, but their impact on environmental politics was great. After 1945, the redwood wars ended official corporatist timber regulation in California, established a series of legal precedents governing private property management, and prompted the reordering of the federal environmental protection regime. This dissertation describes those transformations in detail, and helps situate the long history of conflicts over logging the redwoods in American history. The history of the redwood wars demonstrates the ways in which local activism influence the development of environmental politics, Northcoast activists complicate our understanding of radical environmentalism and wilderness ideals, and conservation methodologies persist in the priorities of modern environmentalism. The redwood wars were one of the longest and most violent environmental disputes in American history, beginning during the 1970s and lasting into the twenty-first century. Northcoast residents had grown increasingly concerned about the future of the ancient forest, timber jobs, and their rural culture as the rate of clear-cutting increased and as corporate giants swallowed up land. Some residents organized and challenged the industrial logging regime because of its threat to the health of their rural society. Eventually, the Northcoast was awash in daily direct actions, persistent litigation, and intense media scrutiny. After 1986, the citizen activists focused more and more on Pacific Lumber's plans to harvest its remaining old growth groves in Humboldt County. Pacific Lumber owned nearly all of the unprotected ancient redwood forest in the world, and the forest complex that contained those old-growth groves became known as Headwaters Forest. In 1999, after more than a decade of violent and protracted conflict, Pacific Lumber, California, and the federal government consummated an agreement to publicly acquire several old-growth groves and manage the rest of the company's land under a comprehensive land management plan. Even so, the wars continued because of the uncompromising nature of the local activists.
"They're Bringing Home Japanese Wives": Japanese War Brides in the Postwar Era
(2009) Tudico, Angela; Muncy, Robyn; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
"'They're Bringing Home Japanese Wives': Japanese War Brides in the Postwar Era" explores the immigration of Japanese war brides to the U.S. following World War II and why the United States so swiftly and dramatically reversed its views toward immigration from Japan following the war; the degree to which Americans, both those of Japanese descent and those of other heritages, accepted this influx of newcomers; and the lived experiences of these immigrant women during their first decade in America. Drawing on sources that range from government documents to interviews with war brides conducted in the 1950s, I argue that postwar constructions of racialized gender eased the acceptance of these women into American society. However, sometimes the degree of acceptance was contingent on the race of the war bride's husband to such a degree that one might speak of racial or ethnic coverture in the mid-20th Century U.S.
"Dear Little Living Arguments": Orphans and Other Poor Children, Their Families and Orphanages, Baltimore and Liverpool, 1840-1910
(2009) Wilson, Marcy Kay; Gullickson, Gay; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Orphanages in the United States and England cared for thousands of children between the early decades of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. These institutions were central to local provisions for the poor during a time period in which state and government poor relief remained limited. Though a small group of studies have focused on American orphan asylums and even fewer works have evaluated English orphanages, no effort has of yet been made to engage in a comparative analysis of the institutions that cared for so many children in both countries. Through analysis of Protestant orphan asylum registers, correspondence, committee minutes, and annual reports, this dissertation investigates the local provisions made for poor children in Baltimore, Maryland and Liverpool, England, between 1840 and 1910, examines the socio-economic realities of the families these children came from, the ways in which poor children in both cities were affected by the needs of their families and the aid available to them, and the similarities and differences that existed between these orphanages and their residents. This dissertation argues that there were significant differences between orphanage inhabitants in both cities when it came to parental survival and to who children ended up with after their residence in these institutions, but that the orphanages were remarkably alike, providing the poor children in their care with similar educational, religious and vocational training that the middle-class reformers who ran these institutions understood as gender and class appropriate. This study reveals a prolonged commitment on the part of orphanage administrators in both cities to the use of indenture as a dismissal method, and suggests as well the existence of a shared trans-Atlantic understanding of poor children and their labor when it came to these asylum officials.
Second-Wave Feminism in the American South, 1965-1980
(2009) Keane, Katarina; Rowland, Leslie S.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In the late 1960s and 1970s, second-wave feminism transformed American society, creating new legal rights for women, remaking gender roles, and altering women's position in the economy. Although largely omitted from popular and scholarly accounts, Southern women played critical roles in the second wave. At the grassroots, they engaged in a wide array of feminist activism, from establishing credit unions to opening health clinics, from suing discriminatory employers to opening rape crisis centers, from challenging sterilization abuse to building lesbian community, and from setting up feminist businesses to organizing domestic workers. Their initiatives included efforts to place women in non-traditional jobs, campaigns for political office, and court cases that established reproductive freedom and mandated equal pay. In restoring Southern women to the history of second-wave feminism, the dissertation suggests that the movement was far more widespread than has previously been acknowledged. While drawing on evidence from throughout the South, the dissertation devotes particularly close attention to Atlanta, Georgia, Chapel Hill-Durham, North Carolina, and Austin and Dallas, Texas, all places where feminists were especially active and the sources are especially rich. It demonstrates that Southern women of widely varying backgrounds engaged in feminist activism, but only rarely in organizations that crossed lines of race and class. More commonly, they mobilized in coalitions that preserved separate identities and agendas while addressing common grievances. The women's movement in the South may thus be characterized as multiple movements that overlapped at times, if only in limited ways, and moved along parallel tracks at others. Southern feminists confronted daunting obstacles, including their region's long history of racial injustice, social and economic conditions that lagged behind those of the rest of the nation, a weak welfare state, and entrenched political conservatism. The need to circumvent hostile state and local authorities led some Southern feminists to turn to the federal courts as a more promising arena. In so doing, they launched a number of landmark legal cases that transformed the lives of all American women. Ironically, feminists in the most conservative region of the nation became the vanguard of the women's movement.
"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.

History Theses and Dissertations

Browse

Filters

Settings

Sort By

Results per page

Search Results