‘Friction in the Archives’: Access and the Politics of Record-Keeping in Revolutionary England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Peters
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Court Records ◽  
English Revolution ◽  
The People ◽  
Parliamentary Sovereignty ◽  
Material Interests ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
Right Of Access

This chapter traces the legal and political frameworks that underpinned rights of access to archives in the decades preceding the outbreak of civil war in 1642, showing that there were two different cultures of access: one determined by the rights of subjects to consult legal court records; the other shaped by the culture of secrecy associated with the records of crown estates and royal prerogative. Over the course of the civil war, a new language of access emerged. The assertion of parliamentary sovereignty and the dislocating experiences of civil war mobilisation led to a radical, perhaps unprecedented, articulation of the rights of the people to control and access the information that defined their material rights and status. Ultimately this chapter argues that this new, if short lived, articulation of public right of access to records is important not only for the history of record-keeping, but also reveals much about the political and material interests that were at stake in the English revolution.

ABCs of the Revolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-291
Author(s):  
Egor A. Yesyunin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Development History ◽  
The People ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Revolution

The article is devoted to the satirical agitation ABCs that appeared during the Civil War, which have never previously been identified by researchers as a separate type of agitation art. The ABCs, which used to have the narrow purpose of teaching children to read and write before, became a form of agitation art in the hands of artists and writers. This was facilitated by the fact that ABCs, in contrast to primers, are less loaded with educational material and, accordingly, they have more space for illustrations. The article presents the development history of the agitation ABCs, focusing in detail on four of them: V.V. Mayakovsky’s “Soviet ABC”, D.S. Moor’s “Red Army Soldier’s ABC”, A.I. Strakhov’s “ABC of the Revolution”, and M.M. Cheremnykh’s “Anti-Religious ABC”. There is also briefly considered “Our ABC”: the “TASS Posters” created by various artists during the Second World War. The article highlights the special significance of V.V. Mayakovsky’s first agitation ABC, which later became a reference point for many artists. The authors of the first satirical ABCs of the Civil War period consciously used the traditional form of popular prints, as well as ditties and sayings, in order to create images close to the people. The article focuses on the iconographic connections between the ABCs and posters in the works of D.S. Moor and M.M. Cheremnykh, who transferred their solutions from the posters to the ABCs.

Education for Sovereign People

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-185
Author(s):  
Peggy Cooper Davis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Constitution ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
The People ◽  
Personal Rights ◽  
History Of

In chapter 6, Peggy Cooper Davis notes that in a democratic republic, the people are sovereign and must be free and educated to exercise that sovereignty. She contends that the history of chattel slavery’s denial of human sovereignty in the United States, slavery’s overthrow in the Civil War, and the Constitution’s reconstruction to restore human sovereignty provide a basis for recognizing that the personal rights protected by the United States Constitution, as amended on the demise of slavery, include a fundamental right to education that is adequate to enable every person to participate meaningfully as one among equal and sovereign people.

Thyra Edwards’s Spanish Civil War Scrapbook

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-122
Author(s):  
Anne Donlon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Black History ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Feminist History ◽  
History Of

This essay examines the life of African American social worker Thyra Edwards, who traveled to Spain during its civil war, and returned home to fund-raise and organize. She created a scrapbook, a public-facing record of African American women’s efforts on behalf of Republican Spain, made up of photographs prepared for publication and articles about her efforts circulated in newspapers. This feminist perspective of the “folks at home” is a crucial addendum to black history of the war in Spain. Edwards’s scrapbook is a multifaceted document: a kind of autobiography that is self-conscious in its historical record-keeping, an account of a very broad black Popular Front, and a black feminist history of the Spanish Civil War.

“Acting Directly on the People”

2019 ◽  
pp. 142-155
Author(s):  
David S. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Legal Tender ◽  
Interstate Commerce ◽  
Paper Money ◽  
Legislative Authority ◽  
The People ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
History Of

Post–Civil War nationalism meant a partial but significant reversion to prewar constitutionalism, recognizing federal legislative authority over “every foot of American soil” and implementing the antebellum Whig-nationalist economic agenda, but allowing states to retain, or regain control over race relations. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of internal improvements, but declined to embrace implied commerce powers, suggesting instead (as in Gibbons v. Ogden) that the question involved the definition of interstate commerce as an enumerated power. The Court seemed to want to confine McCulloch v. Maryland to taxation, banking, and currency matters. The Legal Tender Cases, which relied on McCulloch to uphold the federal power to issue paper money, were a watershed in the history of implied powers, and were recognized as such at the time by many commentators. Yet the Supreme Court over the ensuing decade and a half seemed unwilling to follow through on McCulloch’s full implications.

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