Tocqueville versus Weber

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 235-240
Author(s):  
Michael A. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Organizational Change ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
Modern State ◽  
World War ◽  
Research Findings

Ajay Mehrotra has afforded us an opportunity to better appreciate and understand the development of state capacity in modern U.S. history. With detailed research findings and a well-organized narrative, he focuses on the elaboration of revenue generation and management systems appropriate and adequate to the growing responsibilities and commitments of the national government in the early twentieth century. It is the burden of Mehrotra's argument that “bureaucratic professionals” were as important a part of the “fiscal revolution” in modern U.S. politics as were changing governmental structures and evolving events and contingencies. Using World War I as his case study, Mehrotra seeks to refine and extend the narrative of organizational change and the rise of the modern state in the United States.

scholarly journals PLAYING ON UNCLE SAM'S TEAM: AMERICAN CHILDHOODS DURING WORLD WAR I

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 677-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mischa Honeck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
World War I ◽  
Children And Adolescents ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Childhood And Youth ◽  
Constructions Of Childhood

If World War I has interested historians of the United States considerably less than other major wars, it is also true that children rank among the most neglected actors in the literature that exists on the topic. This essay challenges this limited understanding of the roles children and adolescents played in this transformative period by highlighting their importance in three different realms. It shows how childhood emerged as a contested resource in prewar debates over militarist versus pacifist education; examines the affective power of images of children—American as well as foreign—in U.S. wartime propaganda; and maps various social arenas in which the young engaged with the war on their own account. While constructions of childhood and youth as universally valid physical and developmental categories gained greater currency in the early twentieth century, investigations of young people in wartime reveal how much the realities of childhood and youth differed according to gender, class, race, region, and age.

The Presidents of the United States in the Eyes of Austro-Hungarian Diplomats: 1901–1913

1966 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 153-171
Author(s):  
Margaret Sterne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Events

The interpretation of unpublished political documents in the light of known historical events resembles Penelope's efforts to convince her many suitors of the necessity of her avowed goal, namely to fabricate a new garment out of old material. The Austro-Hungarian diplomatic reports from Washington written in the first two decades of the twentieth century will not necessarily provoke a re-evaluation of the events leading to World War I. However, as in Penelope's case, their craftsmanship will arouse interest; they may well serve as a new source of study, and they certainly shed new light on old material.

“Steeped in Greek Mythology”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Murnaghan ◽  
Deborah H. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
World War ◽  
Classical Myth ◽  
Folklore Studies ◽  
American Children ◽  
The Impact

This chapter surveys myth retellings for children in the first half of the twentieth century, mostly in anthologies but also in other fictional forms in which modern children interact with figures from classical myth. Key developments include the impact of anthropology and folklore studies, the emergence of the United States as a center of children’s publishing after World War I, questions about the relevance of myth to American children, the assimilation of myths to fables and tall tales, innovative approaches to illustration, and mid-century nostalgia for earlier myth books. Among the authors discussed are Andrew Lang, Padraic Colum, James Daugherty, Robert McCloskey, Edith Hamilton, Roger Lancelyn Green, and Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire.

scholarly journals California and the 1918–1920 Influenza Pandemic

2020 ◽  
Vol 97 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-36
Author(s):  
Diane M. T. North
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Influenza Pandemic ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virus Spread ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Installations

The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic remains the deadliest influenza pandemic in recorded history. It started in the midst of World War I and killed an estimated 50–100 million people worldwide, many from complications of pneumonia. Approximately 500 million, or one-third of the world's population, became infected. In the United States, an estimated 850,000 died. The exceptionally contagious, unknown strain of influenza virus spread rapidly and attacked all ages, but it especially targeted young adults (ages twenty to forty-four). This essay examines the evolution of four waves of the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, emphasizes the role of the U.S. Navy and sea travel as the initial transmitters of the virus in the United States, and focuses on California communities and military installations as a case study in the response to the crisis. Although the world war, limited medical science, and the unknown nature of the virus made it extremely difficult to fight the disease, the responses of national, state, and community leaders to the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic can provide useful lessons in 2020, as the onslaught of COVID-19 forces people worldwide to confront a terrible illness and death.

Defenders of Patriotism or Mothers of Fascism? The Daughters of the American Revolution, Antiradicalism, and Un-Americanism in the Interwar Period

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-969
Author(s):  
SIMON WENDT
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Women's Organizations ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Women’S Organizations

Focussing on the nationalist women's organization Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), this article seeks to make an important contribution to the historiography of un-Americanism by exploring its gendered dimensions as well as its ambiguities in the interwar period. By the early 1920s, the DAR boasted a membership of 140,000. It was during this period that the organization became the vanguard of a post-World War I antiradical movement that sought to protect the United States from the dangers of “un-American” ideologies, chief among them socialism and communism. Given the DAR's visibility and prominence during the interwar period, the organization constitutes a useful case study to analyze notions of un-Americanism between World War I and World War II. A thorough analysis of the Daughters' rhetoric and activities in the 1920s and 1930s reveals three things: (1) the importance of gender in understanding what patriotic women's organizations such as the DAR feared when they warned of “un-Americanism”; (2) the antimodern impulse of nationalist women's efforts to combat un-American activities, which is closely related to its gender dimension; and (3) the ambiguity of the term “un-American,” since it was used by the DAR and its liberal detractors alike to criticize each other.

4. The US rise to world power, 1776–1945

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter LaFeber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
World Power ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
British Colonies

This chapter focuses on the emergence of the United States as a ‘superpower’ in 1945. It begins with a discussion of how America rose from being a group of British colonies to a continental empire containing human slavery during the period 1776–1865. It then examines how the reunification of the country after the Civil War, and the industrial revolution which followed, turned America into the world’s leading economic power by the early twentieth century. It also considers Woodrow Wilson’s empire of ideology and how the United States got involved in World War I, how the American economic system sank into depression between 1929 and 1933, and US role in the Cold War between 1933 and 1945.

Fudging the Boundaries between Concept(s) of Race, Class, and Religion

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 121-140
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Haddad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Past Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Similar Nature ◽  
The Past

For some time in the past century, the issue of racism emphasized color or race. However, it included religion in many cases. This attitude, which has subsided for some time, is making a strong comeback in many countries, foremost among them the United States, the world’s principal superpower. This study comments on the current racial ideas and compares them with ideas of a similar nature that were prevalent in the early twentieth century. It focuses on comparing the thinking of US President Donald Trump today with that of Lothrop Stoddard, known for his interest in the Muslim world, around the time of World War I and immediately after it.

A Theory of Early Twentieth-Century Agrarian Politics

1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Kane ◽  
Michael Mann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
World War I ◽  
Population Group ◽  
The United States ◽  
Class Relations ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Twentieth Century

The pre-world war I period decisively structured modern class relations in Europe and the United States. Farmers, the largest population group, greatly influenced the development of capitalism and states. Scholars have demonstrated farmers’ significance in particular areas (e.g., Blackbourn in Germany and Esping-Andersen in Scandinavia), but there has been little comparative analysis. Farmer politics, and thus modern class relations in general, have been inadequately theorized. Most existing work on agrarian classes has also been economistic, neglecting politics. We fill the gaps by analyzing agrarian politics in the United States, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.

scholarly journals Why Pandemics Matter to the History of U.S. State Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-333
Author(s):  
Stephen Colbrook
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Governments ◽  
World War ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
History Of

When a new strain of influenza circled the globe in the fall and winter of 1918, it swept through the United States at terrifying speed, infecting at least 25 million Americans—roughly one-quarter of the population—over the next two years. Based on any metric, the pandemic was the country's largest mass-mortality episode of the twentieth century, killing approximately 675,000 Americans and surpassing the death toll of World War I. Even as the virus struck the United States with unprecedented ferocity, however, the federal government left most public health decisions to the states, producing a disjointed and hyper-localized approach to a crisis that was national and global in scope. In the absence of a strong federal role, state governments carved out their own policy paths, adopting widely divergent strategies to stem the spread of the disease. This preventive playing field was wildly uneven. Some states were well-equipped with robust public health infrastructures; others lacked the tools to manage the disease's rampant spread.

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