Troubled Times in Yorubaland

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Lindsay
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Southern Baptist ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Black American ◽  
Southwestern Nigeria

This chapter considers Vaughan’s first decade in southwestern Nigeria (1855-67) in the context of West Africa’s major developments: warfare, migration, slave trading, missionary Christianity, and colonialism. During the warfare that convulsed the region for much of the nineteenth century, thousands of captives were exported as slaves to the Americas. Others were rescued by the British Navy and landed at Sierra Leone; some of these, along with ex-slaves from Brazil and Cuba, later returned to Yorubaland. Meanwhile, missionaries from Britain and a few from the United States pushed inland. Though Vaughan had come to Yorubaland as a carpenter for American Southern Baptist missionaries, he was living separately from them when he was taken captive during the brutal Ibadan-Ijaye war. He escaped to Abeokuta, where the African American activist Martin Robeson Delany had recently tried to negotiate a settlement for black American immigrants. Vaughan and the other diasporic Africans in Yorubaland may have hoped to fulfill their dreams of freedom in the land of their ancestors, but they found something more complicated. As this chapter shows, freedom as autonomy meant vulnerability, while freedom as safety or prosperity was best achieved through subordination to strong, autocratic rulers, who profited from slavery themselves.

Teaching National Identity and Alterity

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-126
Author(s):  
Bahar Gürsel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Race Ethnicity

The swift and profound transformations in technology and industry that the United States began to experience in the late 1800s manifested themselves in school textbooks, which presented different patterns of race, ethnicity, and otherness. They also displayed concepts like national identity, exceptionalism, and the superiority of Euro-American civilization. This article aims to demonstrate, via an analysis of two textbooks, how world geography was taught to children in primary schools in nineteenth century America. It shows that the development of American identity coincided with the emergence of the realm of the “other,” that is, with the intensification of racial attitudes and prejudices, some of which were to persist well into the twentieth century.

Analysis of Black American Voters in Barack Obama’s Victory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kilson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black American ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
2008 Presidential Election ◽  
Black Voter ◽  
American President

This chapter probes the electoral attributes of a special political dynamic that contributed significantly to Barack Obama's victory in both the 2008 Democratic primary contests and in the national presidential election. That special political dynamic involved the unique contribution of African American voters (hereafter referred to as the Black Voter Bloc or BVB) in facilitating Obama's election as the first African American President of the United States. It argues that the BVB played a critical electoral role in the Obama campaign's delegate count victory in the Democratic primaries by early July 2008 and in the Obama–Biden Democratic ticket's victory over the McCain–Palin Republican ticket in the November 4, 2008, presidential election.

scholarly journals America in an Arab Mirror

2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-109
Author(s):  
Juliane Hammer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Us ◽  
Travel Accounts

How do Arab travelers view the US? Much has been written about how westerntravelers and scholars have seen and described the Orient, thereby not onlycreating an image but also transforming the reality of it. Looking at this anthologyone is reminded of Said's book Orienta/ism and inspired to ask whether asimilar process takes place in reverse. Not in terms of change but certainly increating an image of the unfamiliar as the other simultaneously admired andrejected.Kamal Abdel-Malek has collected and edited texts of twenty-seven Arab visitorsto the United States. Some came as students, others as accomplished scholars orcurious visitors. Each text is an excerpt of a longer text, usually a book, and allbooks were originally published in Arabic and have not been translated intoEnglish before. Also, as Abdel-Malek points out in his preface, the collectionrepresents most of the travel literature he was able to locate in Arabic and iscompleted by a list of all Arabic sources. Thus, this collection allows the readeraccess to a genre of Arabic literature otherwise not available.The travel accounts are organized in five sections and chronologically by year ofpublication within each section.The ftrst section is titled America in the Eyes of a Nineteenth-Century Amb andcontains one account of an Arab traveler to the US published in I 895. The authorpresents the reader with a comparison of what Arabs and Americans findimportant and how these preferences are diametrically opposed in most cases.In the second section Abdel-Malek has gathered a variety of accounts under thetitle The Making of an Image: America as the Unchanged Other, Ame1ica as theSeductive Female. The most interesting piece of this section is probably that ofSayyid Qutb, who studied in the US between 1948 and 1950 and published hisaccount under the title The America I have seen. Much of what he noted about theUS ln the first half of the 20th century, in my opinion, still holds true today. Qutbconcludes: "All that requires mind power and muscle are where American geniusshines, and all that requires spirit and emotion are where American naivete andprimitiveness become apparent .... All this does not mean that Americans are anation devoid of virtue, or else, what would have enabled them to live? Rather, itmeans that America's virtues are the virtues of production and organization, andnot those of human and social morals." (p. 26f.) ...

scholarly journals Black Cowboys In the American West: A Historiographical Review

1997 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
David Goldstein-Shirley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
American West ◽  
The United States ◽  
Half Century ◽  
History Texts ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Few subjects in the ethnic experience of the United States are as fraught with mythology and misinformation as black cowboys. Although absent from most classic history texts of the American West, black cowboys probably constituted about a quarter of the working cowboys in the nineteenth century, although q uantitative data to establish a number are lacking. This essay reviews the historiography of black cowboys published during the last half-century, noting how much of it is marred either by glossing over the presence of black cowboys or by credulously repeating estimates of their numbers established by earlier work. The essay speculates whether such problematic scholarship stems from unacknowledged prejudice among mainstream historians or from carelessness and calls for more and improved scholarly attention to the role of African American cowboys in the American West.

Abortion Laws: Comparative and Feminist Perspectives in Australia, England and the United States

1996 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Petersen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Gradual Change ◽  
Reproductive Freedom ◽  
Stepping Stone ◽  
Abortion Laws ◽  
Feminist Perspectives ◽  
Moral Questions

In this article I examine the paradoxical nature of abortion developments in three jurisdictions and find that reproductive freedom is a more elusive goal in the United States where abortion has been elevated to a qualified right, than in England or Victoria where nineteenth century criminal statutes have been modified but not repealed. Abortion is now a moral scapegoat in the United States and it is difficult to predict if it will ever be resolved. Changes to law in the other two jurisdictions were less extreme and were shaped by a gradual change in attitudes towards abortion. Nevertheless, the laws in all three jurisdictions deny women full reproductive freedom and are founded on the assumption that women are not responsible moral beings. The repeal of all laws concerning abortion would be a stepping stone to re-framing moral questions about abortion and developing a distinctive feminine morality which attends to the needs of women.

“In the Midst of Sorrow and Death”

2020 ◽  
pp. 43-64
Author(s):  
Margaret M. McGuinness
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Yellow Fever ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subsequent Work ◽  
Religious Women ◽  
Dominican Sisters

This essay focuses on the work of Dominican Sisters in Memphis and Nashville during the second half of the nineteenth century. To a certain extent, their work often followed the trajectory of other congregations of religious women. They were sought after by priests and bishops, for example, who were anxious to establish schools and orphanages but needed religious women to staff and minister these institutions. On the other hand, the circumstances surrounding the arrival and subsequent work of the Dominicans in Memphis and Nashville differed dramatically from many of their counterparts in other parts of the United States. The sisters’ early years in Tennessee were marked by the devastation resulting from Civil War battles being fought on or perilously close to their properties. Following the war, Memphis and Nashville Dominicans experienced three outbreaks of yellow fever within a decade, as well as financial struggles that placed them in danger of being forced to abandon their schools and orphanages. Today, the Dominicans remain an active presence in both cities.

The Diversion of Waters Affecting the United States and Canada

1938 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 488-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Simsarian
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Power Resources ◽  
The Government ◽  
Government Of Canada

The submission by the Government of the United States to the Government of Canada on May 28, 1938, of a rewritten draft of a Great Lakes-St. Lawrence waterway treaty brings to the forefront again the desirability of concluding a comprehensive agreement between the two Governments for a mutually advantageous utilization of the available navigation and power resources along the boundary basin. In view of the heightened interest in both the United States and Canada, a reexamination of the diplomatic correspondence between the United States and Great Britain and Canada since the end of the nineteenth century regarding the diversion of waters in the United States or in Canada which affected interests in the other country is opportune. It is of significance to note the positions taken by the United States and Great Britain and, later, Canada, in diplomatic negotiations and by significant municipal acts, as to the legal rights of the United States and Canada to the use or diversion of (1) boundary waters, (2) waters which are tributary (and entirely within the territory of one country) to boundary waters, and (3) waters of rivers flowing across the boundary. The distinction between the first situation and the second and third is an important one to observe.

Administrative Psychiatry 1942–1962

1963 ◽  
Vol 109 (459) ◽  
pp. 178-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. H. Clark
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Marked Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other

The last twenty years have seen great changes in British administrative psychiatry. Jones (1955, 1960) has described how the mentally ill began to be assembled into special institutions for their own good (and society's protection) some 150 years ago. The humanitarian revolution associated with the names of Pinel and Tuke and the philanthropic enthusiasm of Shaftesbury and the other early Commissioners in Lunacy led to the widespread building of asylums, especially after the Acts of 1845 and 1853. This was a period of great interest in administrative psychiatry, or asylum management, as the writings of Conolly (1847, 1856) and others show. During the latter half of the nineteenth century the enthusiasm was lost and the asylums became custodial. The consolidated Lunacy Acts of 1890 and 1891 fixed a pattern of humane custody scrutinized by Lunacy Commissioners which persisted little changed for 50 years. Custodial decline was also seen in the United States and some causes of it have been discussed by Bockoven (1956) and Ozarin (1954). In the last 20 years, however, and especially since the end of the 1939–45 War, there has been a marked change in the conditions of the mentally ill.

Calhoun's Idea of “Concurrent Majority” and the Constitutional Theory of Hegel

1939 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 585-590
Author(s):  
Gunnar Heckscher
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Constitutional Theory ◽  
Federal System ◽  
German Empire ◽  
Valuable Source ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The Government

It is a well-known fact that the writings of John C. Calhoun were read and admired by German political theorists in the latter part of the nineteenth century. When the problems of federalism became predominant in the German Empire, it was found natural to turn to American experience and to study the works of the leaders of contending factions in the United States before the Civil War.There may, however, be another reason why Calhoun, in particular, proved such a valuable source for the German authors. His theory of the concurrent majority, in many parts, presents a striking resemblance to the arguments advanced on the continent of Europe in defense of legislatures built on representation, not of individuals, but of groups, interests, or estates. It can be assumed that Calhoun, when speaking of the safeguards necessary against the despotism of the numerical majority, was thinking primarily of the federal system and states' rights. On the other hand, he can hardly have regarded this arrangement as the only possible solution to his problem. He defines the government of the concurrent majority as one “where the organism is perfect, excludes the possibility of oppression, by giving to each interest, or portion, or order,—where there are established classes,—the means of protecting itself, by its negative, against all measures calculated to advance the peculiar interests of others at its expense.” Especially in view of the expression “where there are established classes,” it seems safe to say that Calhoun probably knew of the existence of representation by estates of the realm in European countries, and regarded such systems with favor.

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