E Pluribus Unum

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
Matthijs Tieleman

Abstract Polarization is a critical problem confronting American politics and society today. The history of the Netherlands serves as both a warning and an opportunity for the United States in its quest to solve pernicious partisanship. The eighteenth-century Dutch Republic demonstrates how continued division without compromise can easily lead to revolution and civil war. In contrast, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of the Netherlands show how a pluralist political culture created a society of compromise and tolerance. This article suggests several ways in which the United States can start to create a similar society of E pluribus unum and mitigate some of the effects of polarization in contemporary American politics.

Author(s):  
Edward González-Tennant

Chapter 2 presents a history of Rosewood beginning with a brief overview of previous research into the town’s past. Most of the research takes place in response to a statewide conversation in the early and mid-1990s. Growing media attention encouraged Floridians to grapple with the meaning of Rosewood’s destruction in the past and present. The attention encouraged the state legislature to compensate the survivors and descendants of the massacre; that compensation represents the primary example of reparations granted to African Americans in the United States. To better understand the events of 1923, Florida’s state legislature commissioned a group of historians to investigate and write a concise history of the town and its destruction. The resulting report, based on four months of research, remains the authoritative treatment of the 1923 riot. The report, a few articles, a popular book, and a Hollywood movie all contribute to public knowledge and representations of Rosewood. González-Tennant’s overview of Rosewood’s history adds to previous research by offering a comprehensive look at similar events in American history. González-Tennant contextualizes Rosewood within broader social trends beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing until today.


Author(s):  
Stephen Lovell

The introduction considers the place of the spoken word in Russian history, presenting a pre-history of rhetoric and oratory in Russia before the 1860s. Examples are drawn from sermons, literature, theatre, and the universities, as well as from the political practice of Russia’s rulers. The introduction goes on to explain the significance of public speaking in Russia’s ‘stenographic age’, highlighting the challenges of modern mass politics and communications. It further offers comparisons between Russian political culture and the political culture of Britain, Germany, and the United States, paying particular attention to the place of oratory in the political imagination. It concludes by outlining the structure and rationale of the book.


2005 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Wilkins

The story of Dutch business in America began in the colonial period and continues into the present. The early Dutch trading companies of the seventeenth century, including the Dutch West India Company, were followed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by such firms as the Holland-America Line, Unilever, Royal Dutch Shell, and NV Philips. The historical pattern of these Dutch businesses contributes to the growing literature on multinational enterprises (MNEs) and is relevant to recent debates on the historical convergence and/or divergence of living standards and productivity in national economies. An examination of the history of Dutch MNEs operating in the United States reveals some of the ways that these firms fit into the larger framework of Dutch business overall and provides a way to compare the strategies of Dutch MNEs with those of MNEs from other countries.


Author(s):  
Josep Simon

This article focuses on physics textbooks and textbook physics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular emphasis on developments in France, Germany, Britain, and the United States. It first examines the role that physics textbooks played in the early stages of the professionalization of the history of science before presenting a general overview of the genesis of textbook physics in the nineteenth century. It also looks at major textbooks produced in France and the German states while making some reference to British and American textbooks. Finally, it considers recent scholarship dealing with textbooks in the history of physics. The article shows how our views on textbooks have been shaped by events that have established particular hierarchies between scientific research and science education, and between universities and schools. It argues that the study of textbooks would benefit from greater reflexivity.


Itinerario ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
A. G. Hopkins

Globalisation is now a fashionable topic of historical research. Books and articles routinely use the term, though often in a loose manner that has yet to realise the full potential of the subject. The question arises as to whether globalisation, as currently applied by historians, is sufficiently robust to resist inevitable changes in historiographical fashion. The fact that globalisation is a process and not a single theory opens the way, not only to over-general applications of the term, but also to rich research possibilities derived in particular from other social sciences. One such prospect, which ought to be at the centre of all historians’ interests, is how to categorise the evolution of the process. This question, which has yet to stimulate the lively debate it needs, is explored here by identifying three successive phases or sequences between the eighteenth century and the present, and joining them to the history of the empires that were their principal agents. These phases, termed proto-globalisation, modern globalisation, and postcolonial globalisation provide the context for reviewing the history of the West, including the United States, and in principle of the wider world too.


2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 307
Author(s):  
Amanda Sprochi

Vaccines and vaccination in the United States have become topics of dispute in some circles in the last two decades, since Andrew Wakefield published a high-profile and now thoroughly discredited study in Lancet linking vaccines to autism disorder. Tish Davidson’s book, Vaccines: History, Science, and Issues, takes a look at the history of vaccines and vaccinations, their mechanism of action, potential side effects, and development and use. She also documents the anti-vaccine (anti-vaxxer) movement, which began in the eighteenth century and has found renewed adherents in the present day. Davidson’s research is scientific, meticulous, and dispassionate in its coverage of both vaccine proponents and detractors. 


Author(s):  
Cristian A. Harris

Lands of recent settlement refers to countries settled predominantly by European migration during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, Australia, and New Zealand. Current scholarship on the lands of recent settlement reveals a very active agenda of comparative studies covering a broad range of areas and issues: culture, institutions, gender, ethnicity, labor, national identity, geography, ecology, environment, noneconomic factors of growth, and transnationalization and globalization. In explaining the different levels of development between lands of recent settlement and the rest of the world, traditional explanations pointed to propitious external factors and factor endowments. These explanations include the analysis of the history of the United States based on the notion of “frontier development” and the staple theory of growth. Meanwhile, recent works debate whether institutions, culture, or geography plays a crucial role. These works focus on the social, domestic, geographic, and biological elements of development, the cultural and institutional legacy of colonialism, as well as questions on gender, ethnic, and national identity. Although they do not reject the importance of foreign demand, capital, and labor in explaining the development of the lands of recent settlement, they question the adequacy of interpretations based solely on economic factors. Ultimately, the most important contribution of the study of development of lands of recent settlement is in the area of an analysis of transnational networks and globalization.


Author(s):  
Natan Gross

This chapter details how Mordechai Gebirtig engraved his name on the history of Jewish cabaret in Poland between the wars. Every singer had his songs in his or her repertoire. These songs spread from the cabaret stages (kleynkunstbine) of Łódź and Warsaw to all of Poland and to the entire Jewish world. Even today they are alive on the stage and in Jewish homes; they are an indispensable part of the repertoire of Jewish singers. They are also arousing increasing interest among non-Jewish audiences in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and the United States. Since the destruction of European Jewry, these songs have become a crucial means of learning about Jewish folklore and the life of the Jewish poor, matters inadequately recorded in Yiddish literature and other sources.


Author(s):  
James A. Morone

This chapter examines the role of culture in American politics. It begins by asking, is there a distinctive American political culture? and exploring three answers: Yes, the traditional American culture (known as the American creed) is still going strong; no, the American creed has faded; and, finally, traditional accounts of American political culture were myths conconted by the powerful. It then discusses four major, overlapping cultural traditions: individualism/liberalism, community, the ascriptive tradition, and morality. The article argues that the United States had, and still has, a vibrant political culture, courtesy of generations of immigrants who bring new perspectives and marginal groups striving for legitimacy. As a result, the American political culture is a perpetual work in progress, constantly contested and continuously evolving.


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