Do Accidental Wars Happen? Evidence from America's Indian Wars

Author(s):  
Andrew A Szarejko

Abstract The question of whether war can ever truly be accidental has been the subject of much academic debate. To provide my own answer to this question, I use an oft-ignored part of US history—the so-called Indian Wars between Native nations and an expanding United States. Specifically, this research innovation makes use of three militarized conflicts of the nineteenth century—the Black Hawk War (1832), the Cayuse War (1847–1855), and the Hualapai War (1865–1870)—to provide evidence that war can indeed occur accidentally. I conclude that IR scholars should be less confident in asserting that accidental war does not happen and that this possibility counsels restraint for policy-makers, especially in emerging domains of conflict.

2015 ◽  
Vol 70 (01) ◽  
pp. 111-119
Author(s):  
Nicolas Barreyre

Abstract This essay proposes a reading of Capital in the Twenty-First Century from a perspective rooted in the nineteenth-century United States. It explores some of the ways that Piketty’s book and its American reception could lead to a reconceptualization of US history. In a feedback loop, this exploration in turn suggests elements that extend and qualify some of Piketty’s conclusions, especially regarding the role of politics in the processes responsible for the growth of inequality under modern capitalism.


2007 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Warbrick ◽  
Colin Warbrick

In July 2006, three bankers, all UK nationals, were extradited to the United States on charges of conspiracy to defraud their one-time employers, a British bank, a subsidiary of Natwest. The conduct took place under the shadow of the ‘Enron’ affair. The defendants were said to have conspired with senior officials of Enron. Enron was the subject of the largest corporate bankruptcy in US history. In comparison the sums involved in the Enron collapse, those at stake in what the papers called the ‘Natwest Three’ case were small, but the involvement of persons implicated in the Enron affair made the defendants of interest to US prosecutors. The cases enjoyed an unusual public profile, partly because the extraditions took place under the unique legal regime which governs US-UK extradition,1 partly because this case was simply one of several cases in which persons charged with what one might loosely call economic crimes were sought by US prosecutors2 and partly because the defendants argued that their offences (which they denied) were allegations of what were ‘really’ English crimes which should have been proceeded with here. Although the extradition aspects have loomed largest, this last matter, possible conflicts of criminal jurisdiction, is the most interesting.


1977 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Reinders

“ Tranquility is the first duty of every citizen ” has never been an American motto. “ What is impressive to one who begins to learn about American violence,” Richard Hofstadter once remarked, is its “ extraordinary frequency, its sheer commonplaceness in our history, its persistence into very recent and contemporary times, and its rather abrupt contrast with our pretensions to singular national virtue.” If, as Hofstadter complains, violence has been overlooked in American history, the maintenance of peace, particularly the significant role of the militia in public disorders — “ the most important single form of domestic violence in American history ” — has been almost totally ignored by historians. For example, Marcus Cunliffe's otherwise excellent study of the military mind in ante-bellum United States devotes two sentences to the subject, a rather surprising omission in view of the, quite correct, contemporary opinion that “the Militia are, after all … neither more nor less than an Auxiliary Police Force, and for the last forty-odd years that is the only duty they have ever been called on to perform.”


1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
James C. Albisetti

In the struggle for increased educational and employment opportunities for women that took place in Europe and America during the second half of the nineteenth century, no profession was the subject of more controversy than medicine.1 Although the issues involved in this controversy were similar in most countries, the paths by which women eventually succeeded in entering the medical profession displayed an intriguing variety. In Britain and the United States, resistance from much of the medical establishment forced women to found independent medical schools for the training of female physicians. Women in France and Switzerland, in contrast, gained access to existing medical faculties in the 1860s; yet for many years very few French or Swiss women took advantage of the opportunities available. In both countries, Russian women generally comprised the largest number of female medical students during the period, especially in the years before 1873 and again between 1882 and 1897, when no courses were available to them inside Russia.


1996 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Lucier

In the autumn of 1851, on the occasion of the American Institute of New York's annual fair, the Boston chemist and geologist Charles Jackson chose as the subject of his address the ‘Encouragement and Cultivation of the Sciences in the United States’. Playing on popular enthusiasm for science and technology, Jackson rehearsed the wondrous progress of the arts and the role of science in that progress. Science was the ‘Hand-maiden of the Arts’, and most assuredly the ‘maid of honor’, he declared, for science was the ‘progressive power’ which inspired new inventions. These were commonplace assumptions of the time, and surely no one in his audience would have disputed them.


2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Z. Muller

AbstractSystematic trends in the general price level of goods and services are the subject of extensive measurement and significant interest among researchers, policy makers and the general public. Dynamic price measurement is also important in environmental accounting in that real measures of augmented output are required to draw inferences on sustainability. This paper computes price indices for emissions of five air pollutants in the United States. Using marginal damages, the paper computes Paasche, Laspeyres, Fisher and Tornquist index numbers for five air pollutants spanning the period 1999–2008 for use in computing real environmental accounts. Evidence of time series heterogeneity in the marginal damages is detected: marginal damages for nitrogen oxides increase by a factor of two and marginal damages for NH3 decrease by one-half. The analysis finds that nominal gross damages from air pollution in the United States decrease by 40 per cent between 1999 and 2008.


Slavic Review ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. B. Segel

Let Peary seek his Arctic goal;His countrymen prefer a PoleLess brumal and uncertain;And Roe and Howells the prolixMust bow to Henry Sienkiewicz,Democratized by Curtin.Anonymous, "Columbus Sienkiewicz,"The Outlook, New York,March 12, 1898The subject of Henryk Sienkiewicz and America is hardly exhausted with the acknowledgment of the enormous popularity of Quo Vadis in the United States. Sienkiewicz himself visited America in 1876, in fact traveled extensively through the country and recorded his impressions at some length in his Listy z Ameryki (Letters from America), a large part of which was translated into English and published in 1959. Sienkiewicz's relations with Helena Modrzejewska (Modjeska) and her debut in the American theater at the time of his visit add to the interest of his sojourn in the United States. Another phase of Sienkiewicz's relations with this country embraces the fascinating career of his American translator, Jeremiah Curtin, whose name remains as intimately linked with translations from Polish literature, particularly the works of Sienkiewicz, as Constance Garnett's has been with English renditions of the Russian masters of the nineteenth century.


2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIDI HERMAN

A unified Europe – the economic and political powerhouse of the world – looms just over the horizon. All that is lacking is a strong personality to galvanise and unify the various factions on the continent. And that person is coming!Charles Dyer, World News and Bible Prophecy (1993, 206)The subject of Europe, its history, politics, and integration, is an important area of study across a range of academic disciplines and professional spheres. Theorists and policy-makers alike have made European developments, particularly the elements of union, a key area of inquiry. This article seeks to explore a somewhat neglected field of analysis – the influence of religion in shaping understandings of Europe. In contrast to much work on Europe, my focus here is on the European perspective of a particular group of outsiders: conservative, premillennial Protestants in the United States.


2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 314-318
Author(s):  
Barbara Gates

INTEREST IN VICTORIAN natural history illustration has burgeoned in recent years. Along with handsome, informative shows at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (“Picturing Natural History”), at the American Philosophical Society (“Natural History in North America, 1730–1860”), and at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Melbourne (“Nature's Art Revealed”), the year 2003 saw an entire conference devoted to the subject in Florence, Italy. In 2004, the eastern United States was treated to two more fauna- and flora-inspired shows, both dealing specifically with nineteenth-century British science and illustration.


PMLA ◽  
1947 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1077-1094
Author(s):  
Sidney E. Lind

In three of his stories, “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “Mesmeric Revelation,” and “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” Edgar Allan Poe reflected the interest of his day in what was by all odds the most fascinating of the new “sciences.” Mesmerism, first as a somewhat frightening novelty in the hands of its “discoverer,” Anton Mesmer, during the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and then as the handmaiden of medicine in the first half of the nineteenth century, had achieved enormous popularity throughout Europe and the United States.1 To compare such popularity with the spread of the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler in the twentieth century is to make but a feeble analogy, considering the difference in time and the development of science between the two ages. In addition, the interest manifested in mesmerism contained far more sensationalism and mysticism, and therefore had a more direct and widespread appeal. The extent of interest becomes clear when it is realized that in 1815 a commission was appointed in Russia to investigate animal magnetism, with a “magnetical” clinic being subsequently established near Moscow; that by 1817 doctors in Prussia and in Denmark were the only ones authorized to practice mesmerism, and were compelled to submit their findings to royal commissions; and that by 1835 a clinic had been established in Holland, and in Sweden theses on the subject were accepted for the doctorate.2


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document