The Lion and the Mouse

2020 ◽  
pp. 85-114
Author(s):  
Dominic D. P. Johnson

This chapter looks at a case study of the American Revolution to suggest that George Washington and the birth of the United States benefited in no small measure from a remarkable confidence. It highlights the overconfidence that inspired Washington to fight and sustain the revolution despite the formidable odds stacked against them and repeated setbacks along the way. It also highlights how ambition and boldness paid off in a long and grueling war in which Americans lost most of the battles and struggled to keep an army in the field. The chapter discusses the battle for North America, which was aimed to preserve global political and economic power at a time of intense competition with lethal enemies that threatened the British and their colonial territories. It investigates what led Washington to believe he could win, given the daunting circumstances.

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (02) ◽  
pp. 1450010
Author(s):  
BRIAN ARTHUR ZINSER

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a small remote Midwestern bank reformulated itself into a major marketer of retail Islamic financial services in the United States and influenced Islamic financial services marketing in North America. The paper is based on a review of existing literature and a case study of how University Bank, now based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has become the leading provider of Islamic financial services in the United States. University Bank whose principals are Roman Catholic identified the Muslim market in Southeast Michigan as measurable, differentiable, accessible and substantial. As part of the Bank's reformulation strategy it has successfully executed a strategic plan to capture this growing market in the United States and North America. The paper draws attention to the often ignored attractiveness of the Muslim market in North America as well as highlights how a small, nimble organization has been able to capitalize on using Muslims as a market segmentation variable.


2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-969
Author(s):  
SIMON WENDT

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.


2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Rachel B. Herrmann

This introductory chapter discusses the important role of hunger during the American Revolution. Enduring, ignoring, creating, and preventing hunger were all ways to exercise power during the American Revolution. Hunger prompted violence and forged ties; it was a weapon of war and a tool of diplomacy. In North America, Cherokee, Creek, Delaware, Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), Miami, and Shawnee Indians grew and destroyed foodstuffs during the Revolutionary War, which forced their British and American allies to hunger with them, and to furnish provisions that accommodated Native tastes. By the 1810s, the United States had learned how to prevent Indian hunger, to weaponize food aid, and to deny Indians the power gained by enduring and ignoring scarcity. Meanwhile, people of African descent gained some power by creating white hunger during the Revolutionary War, but more so as formerly enslaved communities, primarily after leaving the new United States and migrating to British colonies in Nova Scotia and then Sierra Leone. After white officials in Sierra Leone realized that colonists' hunger-prevention efforts gave them too much freedom, black colonists lost their hunger-preventing rights. Ultimately, three key behaviors changed and were, in turn, changed by evolving ideas about hunger: food diplomacy, victual warfare, and victual imperialism.


2021 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-267
Author(s):  
Eric Shiraev

Abstract The case of the false letters attributed to George Washington—the first president of the United States—serves as a classical example of character attacks conducted with the help of “fake news”. The fake letters attributed to Washington were allegedly intercepted in 1776. The seven letters were addressed to Washington’s relatives and to a friend. This alleged Washington’s correspondence revealed his serious character flaws, indecisiveness, remorse, his sympathies toward Britain, as well as his wavering commitment to the revolution. These attacks attempted not only to discredit a major public figure and hurt him emotionally but also, feasibly, generate a public scandal and thus achieve or further certain political goals such as winning a military conflict. This article demonstrates whether and how this case fits into the general theory of character assassination and ultimately suggests that many forms, methods, and responses to character attacks remain consistent throughout the ages.


2019 ◽  
pp. 195-288
Author(s):  
Ulrich Bindseil

The annex presents, with a common template, a catalogue of 25 pre-1800 central banks. While it benefits considerably from previous surveys, it has a narrower focus on central bank operations and balance sheets, and on the genealogy of central banking. It also includes some banks which are not contained in the previous surveys of Roberds and Velde (the Bank of Scotland, the Banco di Santo Spirito di Roma, the American settlers’ land bank projects, the central bank projects of Leipzig and Cologne, the Copenhagen bank, the Russian Assignation Banks, the Banco Nacional de San Carlo, the Bank of North America, and the Bank of the United States). Not all institutions completely fulfil the definition of a central bank, and particularly not for the entire lifetime of its existence. However, all banks included had, at least in the way they were conceived, important elements of central banking, and thereby at least illustrate the challenges that central bank design faced pre-1800.


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