UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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2010 - 20162

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    The Boom and the Bust: The Jewish Community of Portsmouth, VA, 1910-1930
    (2016) Gunn, Allison R.; Rozenblit, Marsha L; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In 1917, Jews came in large numbers to Portsmouth, VA, for the economic opportunity offered by a booming World War I economy and the new market the war workers offered. Between 1907 and 1918 alone, the Jewish population grew by an astonishing 1,042%. The community declined rapidly, however, immediately after the war. The primary reason for the decline of the community was economic. Jews came to Portsmouth, not as laborers, but as retailers and business owners. They therefore relied upon a large, stable, local market which dissipated in the Interwar period. Studying Portsmouth reveals the foundational dynamics between Jewish communities and the local economy. In the period, American Jews relied on specific economic niches such as retail to prosper. When an economy was unfavorable for such businesses, Jewish communities did not thrive.
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    FROM SELLING RAGS TO WEARING RICHES: GERMAN JEWS' ECONOMIC PROGRESS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
    (2010) Revzin, Naomi Tischler; Rozenblit, Marsha L.; Jewish Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This study investigates how mainstream German Jews in the first half of the nineteenth century moved from the edges of society into the German economic middle class, as their marginal occupations, especially petty commerce and peddling, inadvertently positioned them to be at the forefront of German industrialization. The narratives of Jewish businessmen, combined with articles in two Jewish newspapers, indicate that Jewish entrepreneurs of that period continued to focus on commerce and were well positioned to take advantage of niche opportunities that the German gentile population overlooked. The study also showed how these Jewish businessmen publicly supported artisanry and the German guild system, as they simultaneously used their master certifications to start their own businesses. It reveals how Jewish businessmen's thinking changed, as they moved from marginal to mainstream and impacted the way they conducted business, as they moved from selling rags to wearing riches.