WHITENESS, MISCEGENATION, AND ANTI-COLONIAL REBELLION IN RUDYARD KIPLING’S THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 733-751
Author(s):  
Sharleen Mondal
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Brute Force ◽  
Military Experience ◽  
Chester County ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Holy Man ◽  
The U.S

In 1827, Josiah Harlan, a Quaker from Chester County, Pennsylvania, set up camp just south of the border of the Punjab region of India. He rummaged up a ragtag army of Muslim, Hindu, Afghan, and Akali Sikh mercenaries, and with Old Glory flying above him, he and his army started their journey, along with a caravan of saddle horses, camels, carriage cattle, and a royal mace bearer to announce the coming of the would-be American king. With Alexander the Great's march through the same lands twenty-one centuries earlier very much on his mind (Macintyre 40), Harlan set out – under the auspices of restoring the exiled Afghan monarch Shah Shujah to the throne – determined to win power and fame for himself. Disguising himself as a Muslim holy man and at times using brute force, he crossed the Afghan border and ultimately became the Prince of Ghor under secret treaty (227). By 1839, loyal not to Shah Shujah but to his enemy, Dost Mohammed Khan, Harlan returned to his Kabul home to find that the British had seized his property “by right of conquest” (252). Harlan left Kabul, fully intending to return and reclaim his princely title. Once back in the United States, Harlan proposed various schemes to the U.S. government (for which he would be the emissary, of course), including an Afghanistan-U.S. camel trade and grape trade, neither of which succeeded. Harlan penned a memoir that the British lambasted – unsurprisingly, for it sharply criticized the British presence in Afghanistan. In 1862, at the age of sixty-two, with no formal rank or U.S. military experience, Harlan became the colonel of Harlan's Light Cavalry, fighting on the side of the Union in the Civil War (Macintyre 275). Too weak to perform his duties, he left the army the same year, wandered the U.S. aimlessly, and died in 1871, buried “after a funeral without mourners” (286).

Gunboat Diplomacy of a Different Kind: Robert H. Pruyn and Japan’s Purchase of U.S. Warships, 1862–1865

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-57
Author(s):  
Susanna Fessler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Currency Markets ◽  
Personal Gain ◽  
Original Order ◽  
Private Citizens ◽  
Investment Capital ◽  
The U.S

This article examines the handling of a contract between the Shogunate of Japan and private agents in the United States for the construction of three ships of war in 1862. Robert H. Pruyn, the U.S. minister, received the original order and down payment from the Japanese government and assigned the contract to two private citizens in Albany, New York. Over the course of the next three years, complications from the U.S. Civil War and fluctuations in the currency markets made it impossible for the U.S. builders to fulfill the order in full; the Japanese received only one ship. Historians consistently have accused Pruyn of mishandling the contract and of using the funds as investment capital for his own personal gain, but evidence shows that Pruyn was scrupulously careful with the contract and the payment, and that he averted a disastrous result which could have soured U.S.-Japan relations.

Mandates and Policy Outputs: U.S. Party Platforms and Federal Expenditures

1990 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Budge ◽  
Richard I. Hofferbert
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
Subject Categories ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Federal Expenditure ◽  
The U.S

Political parties in the United States are usually regarded as too weak and decentralized, too much the prey of office-seeking politicians and special interests, to function effectively as programmatic., policy-effecting agents within the separation of powers. This has been taken as a serious flaw in the U.S. version of representative democracy, prompting cycles of proposed reform; criticisms of the existing set-up as a capitalistic sham; or alternative justifications of the system as pluralist rather than strictly party democracy. Our research challenges these assumptions by demonstrating the existence of strong links between postwar (1948–1985) election platforms and governmental outputs. Platforms' sentences, coded into one of 54 subject categories, are used as indicators of programmatic emphases and are related to corresponding federal expenditure shares. Resulting regression models demonstrate the full applicability of party mandate theory to the United States, and they operationalize its U.S. variants concretely.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Gregory P. Downs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
The U.S

What is a revolution and why should we think of the U.S. Civil War Era as part of a revolutionary wave? The introduction lays out theories of revolutions and revolutionary changes and explores why the United States’ domestic transformation fits categories of a revolution because of its reliance on bloody constitutionalism, as well as its relation to a broader international revolutionary wave connecting Spain and Cuba and Mexico to the United States.

6. The Doldrums and The New Navy (1865–1900)

2018 ◽  
pp. 57-67
Author(s):  
Craig L. Symonds
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
The U.S

‘The doldrums and the new navy (1865–1900)’ describes the period after the end of the Civil War: an era of swift retrenchment with little forward progress. When the Civil War ended, the U.S. Navy boasted 671 warships, yet within a decade, all but a few dozen had been sold off, scrapped, or placed in ordinary—mothballed for a future crisis. The concept of a peacetime standing navy was finally embraced with Congressional approval for new battleships in 1890. The war with Spain in 1898 also resulted in the United States assuming significant authority on Cuba and gaining control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and Wake Island.

scholarly journals USAPI USDM: Operational Drought Monitoring in the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 495
Author(s):  
Richard R. Heim ◽  
Charles Guard ◽  
Mark A. Lander ◽  
Brandon Bukunt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Data Processing ◽  
Pacific Islands ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drought Monitoring ◽  
Unique Challenge ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Precipitation Thresholds

The U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) has been the de facto operational drought monitoring product for the United States for the last two decades. For most of this time, its coverage included the 50 States and Puerto Rico. In 2019, coverage was expanded to include the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI). The geography, geomorphology, and climatology of the USAPI significantly differ from those of the mainland U.S. (CONUS) and they posed a unique challenge for the USDM authors. Following National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) priorities for development of products in collaboration with users in what is termed “use-inspired science”, NOAA agencies conducted several workshops to identify data and impacts relevant for, and develop drought monitoring criteria appropriate for, the USAPI. Once the criteria were identified and data processing systems were set up, the USAPI were included as part of the operational USDM drought monitoring beginning in March 2019. The drought monitoring criteria consist of weekly and monthly minimum precipitation thresholds for triggering drought, and they follow the USDM “convergence of evidence” methodology for determining the severity level (Dx) of the drought spell.

“Peeled” Bodies, Pillaged Homes

2018 ◽  
pp. 111-138
Author(s):  
Sarah Jones Weicksel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Work ◽  
Material World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The U.S

This chapter describes civilians' efforts to protect themselves against looting, burying their possessions or, in the case of women in the U.S. South, going so far as to hide them under their hoop skirts in specially designed pockets. The threat of looting had profound effects on the material world, resulting in not only the movement of thousands of people and their possessions but also the creation—and creative reuse—of objects that were designed to prevent the loss of one's monetary and emotional valuables. In addition, human property and movable property were linked because the looting of houses by Northern troops and enslaved people's self-emancipation often occurred in tandem. Ultimately, acts of theft, fear of looting, and the stolen objects themselves performed powerful cultural work in the United States during and after the Civil War.

scholarly journals Influencing Clients in Counterinsurgency: U.S. Involvement in El Salvador's Civil War, 1979–92

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter C. Ladwig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The U.S

After a decade and a half of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. policymakers want to change their approach to COIN by providing aid and advice to local governments rather than directly intervening with U.S. forces. Both this strategy and U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine in general, however, do not acknowledge the difficulty of convincing clients to follow U.S. COIN prescriptions. The historical record suggests that, despite a shared aim of defeating an insurgency, the United States and its local partners have had significantly different goals, priorities, and interests with respect to the conduct of their counterinsurgency campaigns. Consequently, a key focus of attention in any future counterinsurgency assistance effort should be on shaping the client state's strategy and behavior. Although it is tempting to think that providing significant amounts of aid will generate the leverage necessary to affect a client's behavior and policies, the U.S. experience in assisting the government of El Salvador in that country's twelve-year civil war demonstrates that influence is more likely to flow from tight conditions on aid than from boundless generosity.

Baby Robbers, Mad Bombers, and Other Assorted Criminals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Eisenbrandt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
The United States ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Commission Report ◽  
To Come ◽  
The U.S

As the chapter describes the legal team’s continuing search for Alvaro Saravia, it provides the background on Saravia’s criminal past in El Salvador that led him to come to the United States. Salvadoran authorities finally launched a serious investigation into the Romero assassination leading to the testimony of the getaway driver, Amado Garay, and the arrest of Saravia in Miami. Roberto D’Aubuisson and others infuriated the U.S. government by undermining a case to have Saravia extradited to stand trial in El Salvador. With Saravia still facing immigration problems, a U.S. embassy official took advantage of Saravia’s predicament to get information from him about Romero’s murder. Those details largely matched the findings of a Truth Commission report issued a few years later, after the end of El Salvador’s civil war.

“A Bed to Drop Dead In”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Eisenbrandt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
The United States ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
Death Squad ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
The U.S

This chapter describes the filing of the legal case against Alvaro Saravia as well as several unnamed “Doe” defendants, designations intended to be filled with the identities of death squad financiers with connections to the United States. The chapter presents the documentation and evidence that describes the alleged funding of the death squads, including the Saravia Diary and a U.S. embassy cable about a group called the “Miami Six”. It transitions to a discussion of how, as a full-scale civil war raged, many of the Salvadoran oligarchs teamed up with Roberto D’Aubuisson to create the ARENA political party while the U.S. administration of Ronald Reagan greatly increased economic assistance to the Salvadoran military responsible for so much of the repression.

scholarly journals U.S. Withdraws from Afghanistan as the Taliban Take Control

2021 ◽  
Vol 115 (4) ◽  
pp. 745-753
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Humanitarian Crisis ◽  
Member States ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Trump Administration

Nearly twenty years after the U.S. military began operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan, President Joseph R. Biden reported on August 31, 2021, that the last U.S. combat troops had departed the country. Biden announced on April 14, 2021, that the United States would withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan before the twenty-year anniversary of September 11, 2001, and NATO member states decided to depart the country simultaneously. The withdrawal followed an early 2020 deal between the Taliban and the Trump administration, which conditioned the pullout on Taliban agreement not to harbor terrorists that target the United States and its allies. Over the course of a week and a half in mid-August, the Taliban captured most of Afghanistan's provincial capitals, entering Kabul on August 15. The Afghan government collapsed, and President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Through the end of August, the United States and other countries conducted a major airlift operation to evacuate their nationals and Afghans considered at risk of Taliban reprisals, though many were left behind amid risks of renewed civil war and humanitarian crisis.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document