War and Cliometrics: Adventures in Economic History

2006 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROGER L. RANSOM
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Economic History ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
The 1950S

The theme of the 2005 annual meetings of the Economic History Association has beenWar and Economic History: Causes, Costs and Consequences. In this essay I will address this theme by briefly examining the ways in which cliometricians have viewed one particular conflict—The American Civil War—over the past four decades. The first part of my essay deals with the attack, which began at the end of the 1950s, mounted by a group of “New Economic Historians” on the existing explanation of the war; the second part deals with my own adventures as I try to make sense of the economic and political factors that produced the conflict we call the Civil War.

scholarly journals Andersonville Revisited

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Pratley
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Motion Picture ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Audience Response ◽  
The South ◽  
The Past ◽  
Television Network ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Usa ◽  
First Time

JOHN FRANKENHEIMER'S LATERST FILM, ANDERSONVILLE, opened recently in the USA on the Turner Television Network to excellent reviews and a highly favourable audience response. His 31st motion picture, it takes place during the American Civil War and depicts for the first time on film the terrible suffering of Northern soldiers imprisoned in an overcrowded poorly managed camp run by the army of the South. An atrocity from the past, it also speaks graphically of the barbarities of the present war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and gives terrible meaning once again to the memories of the Holocaust. Implicit in Frankenheimer's treatment and graphic images of man's ever-present brutality towards mankind is the awareness of the powerful forces controlling the lives of certain individuals motivated by power and greed -- a theme underlining much of his work and informing the actions of so many of his characters. Andersonville In 1864, more than 32,000...

CONTEMPORARY LEBANESE FICTION: MODERNIZATION WITHOUT MODERNITY

2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-580
Author(s):  
Samira Aghacy
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Past ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Representative Work ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Self ◽  
The Impact

This study focuses on the nature of the Lebanese encounter with modernity in Lebanese fiction over the past forty years or so, a time of great ideological, political, and cultural upheavals. The first part traces the effect of modernity on works by Lebanese writers since the 1950s, a period of “revolutionary political and social change,” and of learning and cultural and social ferment. The second part of the study focuses on Rashid al-Daif's novel עAzizi al-Sayyed Kawabata. My choice of this particular novel is related to the fact that it is a representative work that underlines the impact of modernity on Lebanese individuals and society during and in the wake of the civil war. The novel raises questions about rationality, ideology, the individual self, and the relevance of these Western constructs to the local situation in Lebanon. The structure of the novel itself and the use of the epistolary and autobiographical modes of writing underscore the novel's obsession with modernity. Within this context, one could say that al-Daif's novel can be viewed as a complex work of fiction that encompasses different forms of modernity, the tensions between these modernities, and between modernity and authenticity.

Truth on the Cross

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Boldizzoni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Policy Recommendations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Neoliberal Economics ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The 1950S

This chapter begins with a discussion of the roots of economic history. It then turns to the identity crisis faced by economic history today, brought about by the development of a movement founded in the United States at the end of the 1950s known as “new economic history” or “cliometrics.” History is normally expected to improve our understanding of the past. It is probably agreed that what distinguishes good historical research is its capacity to throw light on the workings of societies that differ to varying degrees from our own. However, the aim of cliometrics is not to increase our knowledge of the past. It is to create narratives of the past compatible with neoliberal economics, and often it is a highly ideological exercise to endorse specific worldviews, theories, and policy recommendations.

Reading the Diary

Keep the Days ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Steven M. Stowe
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Family Members ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
The Past

This chapter takes up the challenges and pleasures of reading the American Civil War diaries of southern slave-owning women. The rewards include discovering the immediate, first-draft, small-scale qualities of diaries, each in its own way bringing the past to us like no other text. The challenges grow from discovering how a woman’s diary is forever a fragment even when it comes to us untouched from her hands. Most diaries come to us from other hands, those of protective family members and ambitious editors who over the years changed the diary text in one way or another to make it more “readable,” “relevant,” and, in the end, less diary-like. Playing with the tension between the woman’s unruly diary text and the neat “historical source” others have made of it is one of the satisfactions of exploring diaries. It is one of the conditions of knowing past worlds as far as we are able, and a way to find if there is room for empathy with lives mostly unlike our own.

A Place for Imagery in Composing Histories

2018 ◽  
pp. 110-124
Author(s):  
Megan Brenneman
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Tools ◽  
Proper Context

This chapter discusses the affordances and constraints for the visual modes of meaning making at the Gettysburg Museum of the American Civil War. The past is remembered in terms of available memory tools, which effectively shape an understanding of history when carefully presented with context to an audience. Visual imagery at the museum presents material in ways that other modes cannot; however, it is dependent on other modes to set proper context during the audience's meaning making process. The museum at Gettysburg relies heavily upon visual modes to compose Civil War histories. The multimodalities (visuals, objects, texts) work synchronously as fragmented pieces of history to create a more whole understanding for the audience.

scholarly journals The Southernization of American Politics (Research Note)

1988 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 62-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
The 1950S

When I was growing up in South Arkansas in the 1950s the Civil War was very much still with us. I had a great-grandfather who fought in the war and his Civil War musket was an heirloom in our home. My friends drove pick-up trucks with Confederate flags and signs that showed a mean looking Confederate soldier saying “Forget Hell” or “The South’s going to rise again!” My thesis here tonight is that the old slogan “The South’s going to rise again” has proved prophetic in American politics. That is, in the words of the title of my lecture, we have seen over the past two decades the “Southemization” of American politics.

scholarly journals An introduction to three papers on human migration by Coleman, Laczko and Myers

2002 ◽  
Vol 357 (1420) ◽  
pp. 581-581
Author(s):  
Crispin Tickell ◽  
Semir Zeki
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Sea Level Rise ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Human Migration ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

Human migration is an activity that is as old as humanity itself. Yet it remains a sensitive and politically charged subject, creating tensions in societies that experience it. It is closely linked to economic, environmental, demographic and political factors. It has become a conspicuous feature of the world political and demographic scene, with an estimated number of 22 million migrants in the past year. It shows every sign of accelerating in the future, not only because of poverty, civil war and politics, but also from environmental reasons that, in the future, may cause still larger–scale migration. Migration will be influenced by a host of such factors as climate change, sea–level rise, desertification, and environmental degradation generally.

‘Bound by the Wrongs We Have Done in the Past’: English Catholics and the Anti-Slavery Movement in Victorian Britain

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
Eric G. Tenbus
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Northern Africa ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
The Past ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
The Subject

This article examines the growing involvement of English Catholicism in the antislave trade and anti-slavery campaigns of the nineteenth century. Early in the century, Catholics in England were conspicuously absent from the Wilberforce-inspired crusade to eradicate the slave trade. By the end of the century, Catholics in England played a leading role in that continuing crusade. The article examines several events that led to growing Catholic participation as the century progressed, including the restoration of the hierarchy, the American Civil War, Herbert Vaughan’s missionary endeavours, the death of Charles Gordon in Khartoum, and the celebrated efforts of French Cardinal Charles Lavigerie to end the slave trade in northern Africa. This argument is placed within the greater context of papal encyclicals on the subject of slavery from the nineteenth century and earlier. The article surveys the work and words of Cardinals Wiseman, Manning and Vaughan, as well as the Catholic press, including theTablet, theDublin Review, and theMonth.

scholarly journals Authentic recreation: living history and leisure

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lain Hart
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Living History ◽  
Commercial Activity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Issues

This essay considers a postmodern interpretation of the concept of authenticity and a criticism of that interpretation advanced from an ethnographic perspective. The author shows how these theoretical issues arise at American Civil War re-enactments by describing the ways by which the re-enactment community establishes authentic appearances at Civil War performances. The essay then considers the commercial activity conducted at Civil War events, and concludes by speaking to the question, posed by the postmodernists, as to whether it is possible to represent the past authentically.

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