(PDF) Berlin—Washington, 1800— 2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representations, and National Identities

Callo, Joseph F.

John Paul Jones: America’s First

Sea Warrior

Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press

250 pp., $29.95, ISBN 1-59114-102-8

Publication Date: March 2006

Joseph Callo, a veteran of the U. S. Navy

and a skipper in the Caribbean, under-

stands the navy and the sea. As the author

of three books on Horatio Nelson, he

understands the period of the American

Revolution. And as Naval History’s au-

thor of the year, he knows how to write.

This is a superb book about John Paul

Jones, giving the life of the troubled hero,

showing both his enormous faults and his

incredible achievements.

Born in Scotland, John Paul went to

sea at the age of fourteen in a British

trading vessel. After killing a sailor in

Tobago, he became both “John Paul

Jones” and an American. Given the

task of refitting a merchant ship into

a warship as the American Revolution

erupted, Jones raised the first American

flag on its mast. Jones made the

transition from merchant captain to sea

warrior, but had a more difficult time

navigating the era’s political waters.

Callo is sensitive to the political

demands on a naval officer, and he

does a superb job recreating Jones’s

difficulties, many of them self-created.

Despite Jones’s political shortcomings,

he survived political battles between

his patron, Benjamin Franklin, and

rival American diplomats; French naval

officers and their supporters (not an

easy feat because Jones was based in

France during the Revolution); and

members of the political world of the

Russian court. Jones survived, but he

did not triumph.

Callo’s renderings of Jones’s most

significant naval battles—the Bonhomme

Richard against the Serapis in September

1779 and the two June 1788 battles

he fought in the Liman for Catherine

the Great against the Ottomans—are

exciting, lucid, and thorough. Callo’s

handling of Jones’s personal life is

also deft. Jones had a reputation for

Confederate nationalism. Many of the

essays covering the late-nineteenth and

early-twentieth century tackle the role

of women in combating racism—rang-

ing from well-known figures, such as

Ida B. Wells, to nameless grassroots

activists.

One strength of this collection is

that several pieces deal with African

American women rather than just white

women. That said, there could be more

attention to the role of white women

as oppressors. Obviously, some white

women connected their own feelings

of sex-based oppression to the racial

exploitation of African Americans and

therefore did what they could to help

blacks, but other white women actively

participated in the subjugation of black

women. This could be attended to more

clearly in some of the essays.

The breadth of this collection alone

makes it a wonderful asset to any

course on Southern history, but even

more important, this book demonstrates

the ways in which the experiences

of Southern women dovetailed with

national trends at times while often

reflecting a distinctly Southern flavor.

For instance, in “Gentry Women and

the Transformation of Daily Life in

Jeffersonian and Antebellum Virginia”

it is clear that some women found

their roles expanded to include greater

oversight of the family estate in light of

increased male absence due to a larger

shift in economic opportunities and

responsibilities. Yet basic assumptions

about gender role expectations stayed

very much the same.

On the whole, the essays are well

written and engaging. They fill an

important gap in the historiography

and, as the editors point out, they give

voice to a group of women who have so

often been silent backdrops to both the

national narrative and Southern history.

These women did indeed create and

confront change.

SARAH EPPLER JANDA

Cameron University

womanizing; his one real romance was

with a Scottish countess, which ended

when her husband died and she became

available. Jones was charged with rape

in Russia, which might have been part

of the greater scheme of his rival (and

the czarina’s sometimes lover, Grigori

Potemkin) to force Jones out of the

country. It worked. Jones was treated as

a pirate when he landed in England in a

Russian admiral’s uniform. In Paris the

reception was less hostile but no more

friendly. His liver and kidneys gave out

in Paris just a few days after his forty-

fifth birthday.

Callo’s fair and engaging account of

Jones’ life promises to be the new standard

biography of this fascinating hero.

ROBERT J. ALLISON

Suffolk University

Boswell, Angela, and Judith N.

McArthur, eds.

Women Shaping the South:

Creating and Confronting Change

Columbia: University of Missouri Press

280 pp., $44.95, ISBN 0-8262-1617-X

Publication Date: February 2006

Angela Boswell and Judith N. McAr-

thur—both of who are historians—have

compiled an impressive collection of

essays reflecting the dynamic role of

southern women, who so clearly de-

lineated themselves as historical ac-

tors. The ten essays in Women Shaping

the South: Creating and Confront-

ing Change are part of the Southern

Women series and grew out of the

Southern Conference on Women’s His-

tory. They range in period from Jef-

fersonian America to the modern civil

rights movement. Many of the essays

address the complexity of race and

gender constructions as they delve into

the ways in which black and white

women negotiated the particular his-

torical circumstances they confronted.

The essays are wide ranging in topic,

covering such issues as women will-

ing the manumission of slaves, Jane

Washington’s effort to make Mount

Vernon a public domain, and the role of

Southern female indignation in forging

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 57

NORTH AMERICA

Dal Lago, Enrico

Agrarian Elites: American

Slaveholders and Southern Italian

Landowners, 1815–1861

Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press

372 pp., $62.95, ISBN 0-8071-3087-7

Publication Date: November 2005

Enrico Dal Lago (history, National

University of Ireland), who coedited

a recent volume of collected papers on

a similar theme (The American South

and the Italian Mezzogiorno: Essays in

Comparative History [2002]), has here

single-handedly sought to compare the

culture, attitude, politics and history of

American Southern slaveholders with

that of large landowners in the for-

mer southern Italian Kingdom of the

Two Sicilies during the forty-five-year

period preceding the creation of the

American Confederacy and the newly

united Kingdom of Italy (both created,

coincidentally, in 1861). This is a high-

ly ambitious undertaking, complement-

ing similar studies by Peter Kolchin

(Unfree Labor: American Slavery and

Russian Serfdom [1987]) and Shearer

Bowman (Masters and Lords: Mid-

Century U.S. Planters and Prussian

Junkers [1993]), and Dal Lago has

handled it well.

Using an extraordinary number of

relevant secondary sources as well as

some archival materials in both English

and Italian, he argues forcefully and

convincingly, if perhaps unsurprisingly,

that both American slaveholders and

southern Italian large landowners

were motivated above all by seeking

to maintain highly exploitative labor

systems that guaranteed them regional

social and political dominance, and that

both revolted when they felt threatened

by increasingly centralized national

political systems that they feared

could jeopardize long traditions of

local hegemony. Along the way, Dal

Lago also points out some differences,

including the far more significant

market–commercial orientation among

American Southern agricultural elites

(based primarily, on cotton exports) and

above all the fact that southern Italian

agricultural workers were theoretically

free workers rather than slaves or

serfs (after the Napoleonic abolition

of serfdom, although in practice their

poverty left them heavily under the

control of large landowners). At least

partly due to the unique bond provided

by the “peculiar institution” and its clear

racial distinctions, Dal Lago also notes

that Southern American slaveholders

tended to be more united than their

Italian counterparts, especially due to

greater internal divisions among the

latter between old elites (the traditional

nobility) and new elites (emerging

bourgeois who snapped up disentailed

land after the abolition of serfdom).

The only serious flaw in this

generally well written and clearly

organized book is that the author tends

to repeat his major points ad infinitum;

more trivially, Dal Lago mistakenly

confuses the March 1865 agreement

by the Confederate Congress to allow

slaves to join the army with what

he terms a “decision to emancipate”

(345) the slaves. The book is well

footnoted but would benefit from a

bibliographical essay.

ROBERT JUSTIN GOLDSTEIN

University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

Graham, John Remington

Blood Money: The Civil War and

the Federal Reserve

Gretna, LA: Pelican

96 pp., $12.95, ISBN 1-5898-0398-1

Publication Date: August 2006

John Remington Graham points out

that students of the American Civil War,

sometimes referred to as the “War be-

tween the States,” seldom have an op-

portunity to discuss the role of money

in this momentous conflict. If one is

looking for an analysis of economic

factors that might have been involved

in the Civil War, this work is an inter-

esting source of information.

A number of us probably believe

that the causes of the American Civil

War are many, but that, certainly, two

of the more prominent causes were a

desire to save the union and the issue

of slavery. Yet, the author suggests

that saving the union was not a goal

shared by everyone in the North.

For example, he notes that “many

Northern newspapers editorialized

in 1860 and 1861 that the Southern

states should be allowed to withdraw

from the union in peace” (18). The

author also suggests that another

popularly accepted reason for the

Civil War—slavery—does not make

sense, commenting that there were

Southern abolitionists who opposed

slavery and that many black troops

fought for Southern Independence. In

this work, Graham argues, “The fatal

wound that robbed the Republic of its

life was neither slavery or tariffs, nor

even secession. It was money” (11).

The author attempts to relate economic

conditions and a few individuals’

desire to obtain financial gain as the

major factors bringing about the Civil

War.

Although his commentary and

information are interesting—especially

for those seeking a nontraditional

explanation of the conflict—Graham’s

views and conclusions may not be

accepted by many who read this work.

Obviously, most wars affect economic

interests, but to suggest that economic

interests were the primary cause of

the Civil War does not conform to

traditional analyses, which have been

tested for a long time.

The author also presents a dismal picture

of individuals tied to money and banking

before and after the Civil War, and he

suggests that the war was conceived so that

some of them would benefit financially in

an extraordinary manner. Interestingly,

he suggests that “the most important

consequence of the American Civil War

was loss of the monetary independence

of the U.S.” (17).

Although there probably will be

many who disagree with the theme of

this book, they might find interesting

its relatively unknown tidbits of

information, which make the book

interesting reading.

WILLIAM E. KELLY

Auburn University

58 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

Mulcahy, Matthew

Hurricanes and Society in the British

Greater Caribbean, 1624–1783

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press

257 pp., $45.00, ISBN 0-801-88223-0

Publication Date: October 2006

Matthew Mulcahy, who teaches his-

tory at Loyola College in Maryland,

has focused on how seventeenth- and

eighteenth-century hurricanes affected

trade, government, and life in general in

the British Caribbean islands. This book

is part of the Early America: History,

Context, Culture series, edited by Joyce

E. Chapman and Philip D. Morgan.

Mulcahy documents both indigenous

peoples’ and colonists’ efforts to

comprehend this phenomenon, to

prepare for it, and then to recover from

it. Based on the Taino Indians’ term

hurakán and first described by early

sixteenth-century Spanish explorers,

the word “hurricano” was part of

the English language by William

Shakespeare’s time. Hurricanes affected

everyone in the Caribbean islands to

some degree, with the major concern

being preserving essential crops, most

notably sugar and rum.

Plantation owners tried to determine

storm patterns and the most likely season

in which hurricanes would appear.

Mulcahy cites numerous accounts by

planters, merchants, and government

officials describing the terrifying nature of

the storms, the effort to protect buildings

and fortifications, and the effect on crops

and the slaves who produced them and

suffered the most. While some accounts

are dry, others describe in emotional

detail the effects of weather on Indians

and, later, on the poor.

The nature of public and private

charity is an important part of Mulcahy’s

narrative. For example, after a series of

hurricanes in 1780, advertisements to

raise money for Jamaica and Barbados

were placed in London papers. The

government authorized, and British

parishes implemented, charity briefs

that raised money effectively. Charities

also appealed to Parliament. The

issuance of funds and shipments of

food and clothing occasionally led to

controversies over how aid should be

distributed. Various island governors

Berry. Like Berry, the van Willigens

believe that labor-intensive agriculture

“settles” people into deep and meaningful

relationships with their ecosystems

and society. In early-twentieth-century

Kentucky, food production capitalized

on local experience, cooperation, flexible

distributions of labor, and a tenacious

abhorrence of waste. As a result, many

households enjoyed substantial self-

sufficiency and independence, all the

while building powerful ties of reciprocity

within communities. The van Willigens,

echoing Berry, contrast this arrangement

with a mechanized approach that severed

ties to the land, destroyed polycultural

farming, evacuated unique local

knowledge, and rendered agriculturalists

dependent on “de-localized” systems of

production.

Food and Everyday Life on Kentucky

Family Farms charts the development

of mechanization in Kentucky’s fields

and orchards, but its heart lies in its rich

descriptions of the farmers left behind.

Chapters on gardens and orchards,

field crops, livestock, country stores,

and foraging and hunting describe

the extraordinary bounty common to

Kentucky farms. Chapters on cooking,

housework, and fieldwork explain

the arduous, ingenious, and ultimately

fulfilling labors that brought the bounty

to the table. Often details are not specific

to Kentucky agriculture and will be

familiar to general scholars of agriculture.

The book is most fascinating when the

descriptions are uniquely Kentuckian. The

chapter dedicated to hunting and foraging,

for example, explains how mechanization

drastically altered Kentucky’s ecology

and eliminated a wide variety of food

sources from the landscape.

Rural sociologists, anthropologists,

and historians alike will find Food and

Everyday Life on Kentucky Family

Farms a useful illustration of Wendell

Berry’s theories. Nonspecialists may

enjoy the opportunity to explore the

complexity of farm life with the farm folk

themselves. Both academic and general

audiences will appreciate the clarity of

this account and its straightforward,

unpretentious presentation.

GABRIEL N. ROSENBERG

Brown University

quarreled with their assemblies while

foodstuffs rotted in warehouses.

Mulcahy uses tables that make loss

amounts and petitioner groups more

easily understood. Along with extensive

notes, he lists the dates and locations

of major hurricanes and contemporary

references to them between 1624 and

1786. As part of a growing interest

in natural disasters, this work is a

valuable contribution to early American

and British history and environmental

studies. Considering the destruction

major hurricanes still deliver, this

timely factual study will engage

scholars and general readers interested

in the Caribbean area, early American

history, or weather phenomena.

DOROTHY BUNDY POTTER

Lynchburg College

Van Willigen, John, and Anne van

Willigen

Food and Everyday Life on

Kentucky Farms, 1920–1950

Lexington: University Press of

Kentucky

260 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-8131-2387-9

Publication Date: June 2006

Food and Everyday Life on Kentucky

Family Farms, 1920–1950 documents

the symbolic and material significance

of food and food production in early-

twentieth-century rural Kentucky. John

van Willigen, a professor of anthropol-

ogy at the University of Kentucky and

a specialist on Kentucky rural life, co-

authors the volume with his daughter,

Anne van Willigen, a consultant for

the Kentucky Department for Librar-

ies and Archives. The result, based on

an impressive collection of narratives

gathered by the Kentucky Family Farm

Oral History Project at the Univer-

sity of Kentucky, concisely presents the

scores of interviews conducted for the

project and contributes to the growing

literature on the experience of farming

prior to mechanization and monocul-

tural cash cropping.

The van Willigens are only sparsely

analytic, but what analysis they provide is

grounded in the work of essayist Wendell

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 59

Wills, John

Conservation Fallout: Nuclear

Protest at Diablo Canyon

Reno: University of Nevada Press

256 pp., $34.95, ISBN 0-87417-680-8

Publication Date: September 2006

Over a two-week period in 1981, 1,900

activists were arrested at Diablo Can-

yon, California. It was the largest arrest

in the history of the U.S. antinuclear

movement. In Conservation Fallout:

Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon, his-

torian John Wills offers much more than

the first book-length study of Diablo’s

antinuclear activism. Following his co-

authored Invention of the Park: Recre-

ational Landscapes from the Garden

of Eden to Disney’s Magic Kingdom

(2005), Wills’s first single-authored

book compellingly blends the history

of conservation, environmental history,

and an analysis of the social construc-

tion of nature. He has three key themes:

the shifting constructions of nature dur-

ing the second half of the twentieth

century; California as an “escalating

energy landscape” (the production and

consumption of energy in nature, in-

cluding humans); and the “conserva-

tion fall-out,” whereby the nuclear age

and the responses it inspired reshaped

the environmental movement. Wills’s

most startlingly contention is that the

atomic age reflected a shift in human–

nature relations in the energy landscape

as much as a Cold War–inspired tech-

nology race.

Wills’s archival sources rely heavily

on the files of antinuclear organizations,

and he makes effective use of interviews

with Diablo Canyon activists. Although

Wills acknowledges a lack of industry

sources, this weakness is lessened by his

concentration on the shifting meanings

of nature and nuclear held by the Sierra

Club, the local women’s group Mothers

for Peace, and the Abalone Alliance

statewide network.

Only a handful of historical works

adeptly address the nuclear landscape

and antinuclear movements. Wills goes

beyond documentation of key players

and events to critically analyze the

changing ideologies of organizations.

Moreover, Wills contends that histories

of conservation ought to be more

grounded in the landscapes around which

the struggles take shape. It is a needed

insight from environmental history for

the history of environmentalism. Yet

Wills casts Diablo Canyon’s natural

specificity as largely irrelevant, as both

conservationists and Pacific Gas and

Electric raced to impose competing

images from their own worldviews

on top of an ultimately unknowable

landscape.

Wills’s interpretation of the atomic

age should be a welcome addition

to the undergraduate curriculum in

environmental history. By moving from

the Sierra Club’s early ambivalence

toward nuclear energy in the 1960s

to the nuclear normalcy of the 1980s,

Wills offers a longer history of the

modern environmental movement than

most. The conceptual framework of

his book is superb and will be useful

to graduate students and scholars of

environmental history, the history of

environmentalism, and those interested

in the social construction of nature. For

scholars focused on more traditional

readings of the atomic age and nuclear

energy through a Cold War lens,

Conservation Fallout should provide

compelling, if not entirely convincing,

food for thought.

SARAH WALD

Brown University

Morley, Judy Mattivi

Historic Preservation and the

Imagined West

Lawrence: University Press of Kansas

204 pp., $29.95, ISBN 0-7006-1477-X

Publication Date: September 2006

Although there are a number of studies of

modern western cities, few of them have

analyzed the manner in which many of

these cities have selected a deteriorating

section and transformed it into an old,

historic segment of the city. Preserva-

tionists like to claim that they have saved

part of the city because it serves as a link

to the city’s origins. It separates their

city from other cities, and in so doing it

becomes a profitable attraction.

Judy Mattivi Morley, whose

qualifications are excellent, has chosen

as her examples Albuquerque’s Old

Town, Denver’s Larimer Square and

LoDo (Lower Downtown), and Seattle’s

Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market.

Although each one has a history of its

own, they all share similarities. They

were all old and had deteriorated with

time. The Pike Street Market was busy,

but old; Albuquerque’s Old Town had

been a native Hispanic community

but was becoming an anomaly as

Albuquerque grew after World War II;

Seattle’s Skid Row (Pioneer Square),

and Denver’s Larimer Square and

Lower Downtown were depressed

areas of warehouses, flophouses,

cheap cafes, and missions; they were

hangouts for down-and-outers, winos,

and panhandlers. Each area was within

the city. The “establishment” usually

wanted to take a wrecking ball to the

structures, renewing the area with high-

rise office buildings and apartments. The

cultural preservationists wanted to retain

the old buildings, strengthening them to

meet building codes but retaining the

charm of their earlier origins.

Morley’s book narrates the conflicts

between the modernists, usually the

downtown business community, and the

culturists and preservationists—their

bitter battles, their victories, and their

defeats. She admits that the restoration

often amounts to urban renewal, and

she ends by pointing out that again and

again, changes in the city, such as the

construction of nearby baseball and

football stadiums, have changed the

nature of the revived “old towns” from

the charm of Victorian times to the

reality of sections with modern bars,

restaurants, and boutiques.

This is a fascinating study on a

subject seldom discussed in scholarly

fashion. Photographs and maps of the

renewal areas add interest to the book.

RICHARD A. BARTLETT

The Florida State University

60 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

Von Eschen, Penny M.

Satchmo Blows up the World: Jazz

Ambassadors Play the Cold War

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press

329 pp., $18.95, ISBN 0-674-02260-7

Publication Date: September 2006

The Dwight D. Eisenhower adminis-

tration sent out American jazz groups,

beginning with the Dizzy Gillespie big

band’s Near East tour in 1956, to repre-

sent the American way of life in a more

positive light than the widely criticized

embarrassments of the era’s racial up-

heavals. The jazz ambassadors program

continued through 1978. As Von Eschen

concludes, one of the few certainties

was that “audiences never confused or

conflated their love of jazz and Ameri-

can popular culture with an acceptance

of American foreign policy” (257).

Even as she points up musicians’

agency and the jazz tours’ tendency

to take on meanings different from

what Washington intended, the author

approaches the often uneasy, sometimes

comic interaction among musicians,

their U.S. diplomatic minders, and

audiences around the world, from the

U.S. State Department’s side. Von

Eschen uses interviews with musicians

and articles in the jazz press, thanking

the Institute for Jazz Studies for

introducing her to the music, but the

core of her impressive documentation

is in State Department papers.

As she plays to her strengths in

diplomatic and cultural history, Von

Eschen explains political crises deftly,

but the complexities of her project

result in shortcuts that may leave

uninitiated readers hanging. The general

malevolence of U.S. foreign policy

is assumed rather than demonstrated,

and important, contested terms such as

“imperialism” and “militarism” are not

defined. Her stances are defensible, but

not really defended.

On the musicians’ side, Von Eschen

presents the first three big tours

(Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and

the contentious Benny Goodman

expedition to the USSR) in enough

detail to convey something of

their flavor. It becomes harder,

understandably, to follow her through

the very many subsequent tours as the

only, center of potential artifact re-

covery and interpretation. Clarence

R. Geier, David G. Orr, and Matthew

B. Reeves show in their assemblage

of edited essays, Huts and History:

The Historical Archaeology of Mili-

tary Encampment during the American

Civil War, that Civil War archaeologi-

cal study need not be only on hereto-

fore commonly accepted fields of set

battles. Rather, an astonishing amount

of important historical interpretation

based on archaeological recovery is

to be found where Civil War soldiers

spent most of their time: encampments.

Indeed, as the editors show, Civil War

encampments reveal “in their nature

the greatest insight into the lifeways of

soldiers of all ranks” (1). Although the

overwhelming majority of Civil War

literature focuses on brief moments of

open conflict in the form of military

engagement, few deal with actions out-

side the realm of battle, and fewer still

focus on camps. Geier, Orr, and Reeves

have created an excellent foundation

from which future archaeological and

historical work can emerge.

With the help of some of the most

prominent historical archaeologists and

anthropologists in the field, the editors

illuminate historical archaeology’s

potential when geared toward Civil War

encampments; the difficulties inherent

in finding and studying them; and, most

helpful for historians, the anatomy and

use of camps during the Civil War. In

an intriguing analysis of nineteenth-

century encampments, Joseph W. A.

Whitehorne’s chapter provides an

excellent description of camp dynamics

and soldier life therein. Whitehorne’s

useful and clear discussion of the

tremendously complicated and

multifaceted nature of camp life,

supply, and logistics helps to clarify a

heretofore little-known (or, at the very

least, underappreciated) dynamic of the

Civil War. In an intriguing if politicized

section on encampment survey and

management, Bryan L. Corle and Joesph

F. Balicki’s essay offers an important

discussion of the ongoing struggle to

find, interpret, and preserve Civil War

encampments. Even as they take a

firm stance toward relic hunters who

operate with the “overriding emphasis

on material culture, owning objects,

subject itself becomes more fragmented

and challenging to organize.

Unlike some works on the

encounters between jazz and politics,

such as Frederick S. Starr’s Red and

Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet

Union, 1917–1980 (1983) and Michael

H. Kater’s Different Drummers:

Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany

(1992), Satchmo Blows up the World

is not really grounded in the music.

Von Eschen never offers an opinion

on how the music sounded. There is

no discography to connect the reader

to recorded traces of the music. For

Von Eschen, as for the diplomats, the

music is a commodity, interesting in its

reception rather than its essence.

If—as Kurt Vonnegut suggests in

Mother Night (1961)—we become

what we pretend to be, perhaps the

presentation of jazz as the quintessential

American symbol might have nudged

the country in more open, less bigoted

directions. Satchmo Blows up the

World is a useful book. Although “it

ain’t got that swing,” it does mean

some things about Cold War politics.

Recommended for readers and libraries

interested in Cold War diplomatic and

cultural policy.

Penny Von Eschen is a professor of

history at the University of Michigan

and author of Race against Empire:

Black Americans and Colonialism

(1997). Satchmo Blows up the World

appeared in hardcover in 2004.

MARTIN BERGER, emeritus

Youngstown State University

Geier, Clarence R., David G. Orr, and

Matthew B. Reeves, eds.

Huts and History: The Historical

Archaeology of Military Encampment

during the American Civil War

Gainesville: University Press of

Florida

279 pp., $65.00, ISBN 0-81302-941-4

Publication Date: June 2006

When historians, anthropologists, and

archaeologists think of Civil War–era

archaeology, most, understandably,

look to battlefields as the primary, or

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 61

and not recording context,” Corle

and Balicki also blame professional

archaeologists’ hesitancy to study the

Civil War and, especially, encampments

(70). In the end, they urge relic hunters

to be more fastidious in their approach

and more careful in their documentation;

at the same time they urge historical

archaeologists to focus more

attention on historical archeological

interpretation of Civil War sites. Finding

a middle ground, relic hunters and

professionals should come together in

collaboration, if not in understanding.

Furthering Corle and Balicki’s call for

more Civil War–oriented professional

archaeology, Brandon S. Bies’s case

study of the Fourteenth New Jersey

Volunteer Infantry’s encampment

provides a useful example of what

Civil War encampment archaeology is

and how it should be pursued. Bies

gives useful historical information

and adds to the debate of relic hunting

and looting dangers on historical

sites. In a section titled “Encampment

Plan and Layout,” Joseph F. Balicki

provides an extensive archaeological

discussion of Confederate Fort French

during the winter months of 1861–62.

Balicki blends history with archaeology

in midst of an ever-tightening battle

against relic hunters, looters, and

urbanization along the Potomac River.

While Balciki’s essay focuses on an

extensive but short-term camp, W.

Stephen McBride and Kim A. McBride

turn their attention to extensive, long-

term encampments, specifically Camp

Nelson, Kentucky. Serving as a U.S.

Army depot and housing area for

diverse and often-changing inhabitants,

Camp Nelson, as the McBrides

explain, serves as an ideal case study

for understanding and interpreting the

archaeological contours of a relatively

few large, permanent camps among

thousands of smaller, temporary

encampments. In the book’s final

section, four succinct and informative

essays delve into architectural designs

and material culture found within Civil

War camps. Resplendent with helpful

diagrams, graphs, and pictures, these

final essays—fleshed out with evidence

gathered in exhaustive fieldwork—

rediscover the cultural atmosphere of

large and small encampments.

Although occasionally offering

questionable statistics backed by less

than academic sources (e.g., “while

more than 60,000 men died of wounds

received in the conflict, perhaps six

times that number [360,000] died in

camp from diseases” [13-14]), Huts

and History is a welcome addition to

the scant literature in this field. The

editors and essayists succeed in filling

a glaring void in the historiography

of Civil War archaeology. Tirelessly

documented with both archaeological

and historical sources, the collection

of essays will be a valuable addition to

the libraries of Civil War historians and

historical archaeologists alike.

MATTHEW M. STITH

University of Arkansas

Higginbotham, Don

Revolution in America:

Considerations and Comparisons

Charlottesville: University of Virginia

Press

240 pp., $49.50, ISBN 0-8139-2383-2

Publication Date: December 2005

Many of us have been confronted with

the question, “What would the found-

ers think of American society today?”

and “How do you think the founders

would react to our current political

system?” Don Higginbotham seem-

ingly addresses such questions with the

patient amusement consistent with his

self-professed penchant for counterfac-

tual speculation. He belongs, in fact, to

that group of scholars who conscien-

tiously demonstrate that the founders

fell into different camps on a broad

range of issues, often finding them-

selves not only engaged in intellectual

disagreements, but also embroiled in

bitter personal conflicts.

War—events leading to war,

transpiring in wartime, or affected by

war’s aftermath—loosely unites this

collection of essays. Because wars

are times of crisis, they often reveal

the importance of individual human

behavior. Thus, Higginbotham argues,

“Nothing does more to refute the notion

that history is shaped by irreversible

currents than the examination of wars

and revolutions.” Conflicts, regardless

of how presumably irrepressible, are

shaped by the energies of the actors

at center stage. One may legitimately

ask, as Higginbotham does, how the

American Revolution might have

gone had it not been for Mary Ball

Washington’s positive contributions to

George Washington’s aspirations.

In addressing the complicated

relationships between George

Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas

Jefferson, Higginbotham reminds the

reader of tendencies present in recent

treatments of our Great White Fathers to

stress antagonisms among the founders.

I am reminded of works in that genre

by Stuart Leibiger and John Ferling.

He discusses Jefferson’s increasing

dissatisfaction with Washington’s

presidency and cites Washington’s

well-known letter to Jefferson saying,

in effect, “I’m on to you and your

machinations.” Jefferson’s less familiar

letter suggesting that James Madison

pray for Henry’s demise provides

a darkly amusing anecdote, and

Higginbotham is certain that Jefferson

secretly entertained such attitudes

toward Washington himself. The feud

between Alexander Hamilton and

Aaron Burr was the most celebrated

and aggravated conflict among the

founders, but historians have long

known that it differed in degree, not in

kind, from those experienced by other

shapers of the national myth.

The chapters comparing South Caro-

lina and Massachusetts as “fomenters

of revolution” are among the more

interesting in this work, and the cognates

and analogues Higginbotham reveals

in 1770s royalist and 1860s unionist

rhetoric are particularly interesting. In

Massachusetts, manners and customs

were linked to Cromwellian traditions

presumably embodied in the influential

Congregational clergy. In South Carolina,

the presence of Calhoun and memories

of the Nullification Crisis were at the

root of a revolutionary tradition.

A short memoir of the author

introduces each essay, placing it in its

setting and revealing Higgenbotham’s

obvious appreciation for conflict

and consensus in American history.

This work demonstrates the capacity

62 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

of a ripe scholar, endowed with wit,

imagination, and complete mastery of

his craft, to effortlessly overcome the

supposed dichotomy between the two.

WILSON J. MOSES

The Pennsylvania State University

Summers, Gregory

Consuming Nature:

Environmentalism in the Fox River

Valley, 1850–1950

Lawrence: University Press of Kansas

256 pp., $29.95, ISBN 0-700-61486-9

Publication Date: July 2006

Near the beginning of his work, Con-

suming Nature: Environmentalism in

the Fox River Valley, 1850–1950, Greg-

ory Summers quotes the 1948 Green

Bay Press–Gazette, which, in the wake

of a growing public outcry over pollu-

tion from paper mills along Wiscon-

sin’s lower Fox River, asked, “Shall

the mills or the streams be sacrificed?”

Summers’s purpose is not to answer

that question, but rather to explain why

in the years following World War II it

was even asked. Like other historians

who have explored the origins of en-

vironmentalism, Summers understands

the movement as an outgrowth of a

consumer society that allowed Ameri-

cans to see the natural world not as a

collection of resources needed for pro-

duction, but as a location to be enjoyed

for its aesthetic, recreational, or ecolog-

ical value. Summers’s unique contribu-

tion is that he details those changes in

the region’s systems of production that

made consumer society possible and

paved the way for the development of

environmentalism.

Building on William Cronon’s work

on the commoditization of natural

resources, Summers argues that

consumer society can be understood as a

system in which methods of production

and distribution separate the act of

consumption from the natural world out

of which consumables originate. Using

both regional newspapers and extensive

bureaucratic records, Summers details

the decades-long process by which

progressive- and production-oriented

Green, Judith A.

Henry I: King of England and Duke

of Normandy

New York: Cambridge University

Press

392 pp., $85.00, ISBN 0-521-59131-7

Publication Date: April 2006

Judith Green is the author of sev-

eral important studies on the Anglo-

Norman period in general and of

Henry I in particular, and she is cur-

rently engaged in producing a new

edition of the pipe roll of 1130. She is

therefore well suited to attempt a bi-

ography of Henry I and to pursue what

she declares to be the central question

of this study—to discover “What can

be learned of the man behind the re-

corded actions and achievements?”

In Henry I: King of England and Duke

of Normandy Green begins with a useful

historiographic essay on the available

sources and earlier writing on the reign of

Henry I, at the end of which she directly

faces the necessary question of how her

book differs from the recently published

(2001) English Monarchs series volume

on Henry I by the late C. Warren Hollister.

The greatest divergences, she says, are

in more emphasis on the complexity of

Henry’s dealings with the magnates in

Normandy (and England), a de-emphasis

on administrative practice as opposed to

the exercise of power, and closer attention

to Henry’s court and court culture.

Following the introductory chapter,

Green turns to a chronological account

of the reign. Not surprisingly, she covers

familiar ground here, although she does

take into account the considerable recent

work that has been done on local history,

particularly on Normandy, which gives

her interpretation a nuanced quality

lacking in other accounts of the reign.

The bibliographic information in her

footnotes is up-to-date and informative.

Her chronological survey is followed

by a series of thematic explorations of

Henry as ruler and as guardian of the

church, as well an examination of his

court. Here again Green challenges the

Hollister thesis that Henry healed a rift

organizations achieved increasing

control over the natural world. Carefully

chronicling the development of water

resources, the paper industry, electric

utilities, the highway network, and the

dairy industry, Summers guides the

reader through the creation of consumer

society’s material bases.

It is this consumer society that allowed

for a growth in outdoor recreation and

the birth of environmentalism. No

longer seeing the natural world as a

place of production, and equipped by

new systems of production with leisure

time and the infrastructure required for

outdoor recreation, Americans were

free to experience the natural world

through the lens of personal enjoyment.

That the consumer society making

environmentalism possible depended

on systems of production involving

increased control of the natural world,

and consumers both alienated from the

unpleasant processes of that control

and unaware of their own alienation,

is for Summers the great paradox of

environmentalism.

Influenced by the work of Richard

White, Summers does an admirable

job of detailing the labor involved in

creating the system of production that

managed the valley’s environment.

However, this study could have

benefited from greater consideration

of how consumer society is not only

a system that increases control over

nature even as it obscures that control,

but also a system that similarly controls

and obscures human labor. Regardless,

Summers’s well written and thought-

provoking examination of the material

bases of consumer society makes

this an important work, not only

for those interested in the origins of

environmentalism, but also for anyone

interested in the nature of consumer

society.

ERIK ANDERSON

Brown University

THE BRITISH ISLES

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 63

that had previously existed between a

court circle and the great Anglo-Norman

magnates, although she may dismiss

the utility of charter witness evidence

too lightly. She is also unconvinced of

the uniqueness of the “administrative

kingship” as practiced in the reign of

Henry I, seeing instead continuity and

incremental change enhanced by a long

and powerful reign.

In the final chapter of the book, Green

attempts to achieve her announced goal

of finding the man behind the recorded

actions. Henry I, she says, had three

great loves: “wealth, hunting, and

sex (not necessarily in that order).”

These observations should not prove

controversial, but they do not advance

our understanding of Henry I as a man

very far. Perhaps this is an impossible

task. Nevertheless, Judith Green has

crafted a thoroughly researched and

insightful account of the reign of Henry

I that should now stand as the standard.

J. S. HAMILTON

Baylor University

Condren, Conal

Argument and Authority in

Early Modern England: The

Presupposition of Oaths and Offices

New York: Cambridge University

Press

399 pp., $95.00, ISBN 0-521-85908-5

Publication Date: April 2006

This new volume from Conal Con-

dren, Scientia Professor in politics and

international relations at the Univer-

sity of New South Wales, represents a

clarification of arguments explored in

his earlier work. In The Language of

Politics in Seventeenth-Century Eng-

land (1994) Condren employed broad

brushstrokes to analyze word-use pat-

terns in early-modern politics. His

new work hones in on what Condren

believes to be the most important ex-

ample of this phenomenon.

According to Condren, the

vocabulary and concepts of office

were all-pervasive in Tudor and Stuart

social discourse. They encapsulated

and articulated notions of duty,

responsibility, and correct behaviour

that, in effect, made every social role

into a variety of office. Insistence on

a strict division between the private

and public realms is, Condren avers,

often mistaken. The presuppositions of

office permeated not only the world

of elite politics, but also the worlds of

family, literature and the arts, and even

religion, where the soul itself enjoyed

an “official” relationship with God.

Condren explores how the “semantic

economy” of office played out in a

variety of arenas, from the world of

the poet and the philosopher to the

world of the patriotic subject and the

official political counselor. Condren

aims to show that the language of

office (and the debates the use and

abuse of such language inspired)

played a preeminent role in early-

modern political discourse and the

processes of modern state formation.

In a final section, Condren explores

the issue of oath taking, the moments in

which the tensions and responsibilities

of office came into sharpest relief.

Condren suggests that more variety

and controversy existed in oath taking

than some historians have supposed.

He provides a useful taxonomy of the

various kinds of oath taking, analyzes

the contemporary concern that the

sanctity of oaths was being eroded, and

applies his general ideas to three famous

examples: the Oath of Allegiance of

1606, the Engagement that was required

of ministers under the Commonwealth,

and the Oath of Allegiance to William

and Mary after 1689.

To bolster his case, Condren is

obliged to snipe at several fashionable

avenues of historical investigation,

notably efforts to trace the early-modern

origins of liberalism and the public

sphere. Advocates of such approaches

will doubtless offer their rebuttals, but

they will be unable to deny that this is

a significant contribution (as valuable

as recent work by Michael Braddick,

Steve Hindle, and others) to the study

of early-modern office holding and state

formation. This book will be of most use

for experts in that burgeoning field.

JONATHAN WRIGHT

Hartlepool, United Kingdom

Melman, Billie

The Culture of History: English

Uses of the Past, 1800–1953

New York: Oxford University Press

363 pp., $99.00, ISBN 0-1992-9688-X

Publication Date: August 2006

The Culture of History: English Uses

of the Past, 1800–1953 seeks to re-

fine some commonly held assumptions

about the production and consump-

tion of popular history in nineteenth-

and twentieth-century England. At the

outset, Billie Melman, professor of

modern history at Tel Aviv University,

provides a tidy summary of recent his-

toriographical trends. The English, by

many accounts, perceived their past as

a well-ordered, harmonious place: they

also gained most cultural sustenance

from pastoral images of their history.

Melman does not dispute any of this,

but she argues for a competing use of

history that emerged between 1800

and 1953. In this scheme, the past was

seen as a place of horror, and its imag-

es and metaphors began to chime with

modern urban life. Melman also argues

that, in constructing their images of the

past, the consumers of popular history

demonstrated considerable initiative

and independence of thought. In other

words, we should not follow Michel

Foucault and Antonio Gramsci too far

in their vision of the production of

popular history as a means of asserting

specific political and economic values

and imposing indirect cultural and so-

cial control.

Melman next proceeds in a broadly

chronological fashion, highlighting

examples of popular historical

production that lend support to her

thesis. We move from the portrayal

of a bloody French Revolution at

Madame Tussaud’s to its depictions

of in the works of Charles Dickens

and Thomas Carlyle. Next, the vision

of Tudor history as a time of crisis

and danger is approached by an

analysis of the archetypal great urban

historical monument, the Tower of

London. Throughout, Melman seeks

to demonstrate how new genres and

technologies (e.g., guide books, urban

novels, dioramas, a mass popular press)

drove the production of popular history

forward. This trend came to a head

64 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

with the advent of film, and her third

section surveys Hollywood’s portrayal

of Tudor England. After revisiting

depictions of the French Revolution

at the outset of her final section,

Melman concludes with an analysis

of the Elizabethan Revival at the time

of the 1953 coronation, with the opera

of Benjamin Britten and the work of

historians such as A. L. Rowse taking

center stage.

This book is an original contribution

to the burgeoning scholarly literature

on how the English have made

use of their history. It argues, very

convincingly and from an impressive

range of sources, that the English had

many different ways of exploiting their

history. It adds significantly to work

by John Burrow (A Liberal Descent:

Victorian Historians and the English

Past [1981]) and Stefan Collini (English

Pasts: Essays in History and Culture

[1999]) and will be of great interest

to both a specialist audience and a

broader general readership.

JONATHAN WRIGHT

Hartlepool, United Kingdom

Clarke, Howard J. B., and J. R. S.

Phillips, eds.

Ireland, England and the Continent

in the Middle Ages and beyond:

Essays in Memory of a Turbulent

Friar, F. X. Martin, O.S.A.

Dublin: University College Dublin

Press

424 pp., $89.95, ISBN 1-904558-54-2

Publication Date: November 2006

Howard J. B. Clarke and J. R. S. Phil-

lips, emeriti historians at University

College Dublin, have gathered a di-

verse collection of articles to honor

the memory of F. X. Martin, one of

the foremost twentieth-century Irish

historians. The range of subjects re-

flects Martin’s scholarly interests and

pathbreaking contributions. Martin was

coeditor of The Course of Irish History,

served as a general editor for A New

History of Ireland, and worked tire-

lessly to protect archaeological remains

from Medieval Dublin. He was an Au-

the international orientation of Irish

Catholicism (Declan Downey). Finally,

Demot Fenlon chronicles Edward

Caswall’s nineteenth-century journey

to Catholicism, and Michael Laffan

celebrates Martin’s pioneer contribution

to understanding 1916.

The book’s content and cost indicate

a scholarly audience, and many will

select those articles touching on their

own special interest. Those who read

the entire collection will be rewarded

by its quality—a tribute to Martin’s

work and a symbol of his legacy.

D. GREGORY VAN DUSSEN

Springville, New York

Ruiz Medrano, Ethelia

Reshaping New Spain: Government

and Private Interests in the Colonial

Bureaucracy, 1531–1550

Boulder: University Press of Colorado

320 pp., $65.00, ISBN 0-8708-1814-7

Publication Date: January 2006

Corruption has resurfaced, as the me-

dia’s limelight has shone on the disas-

trous burst of the dot-com bubble, the

many examples of crony capitalism,

such as Enron, and, of course, continu-

ing governmental scandal of all kinds.

However, it is notoriously much more

difficult for historians to engage in a

similar uncovering of corruption in the

distant past: if those who rule write

history (and such is usually the case),

they tend to hide the traces of their

unethical behavior fairly well. Ethe-

lia Ruiz Medrano’s book Reshaping

New Spain: Government and Private

Interests in the Colonial Bureaucracy,

1531–1550, originally written as a doc-

toral dissertation in Mexico under the

direction of Antonio Acosta, a doyen of

Latin American colonial history, con-

stitutes one of those rare examples of

a historian who managed to prove her

case through an adroit, reasoned use

gustinian friar, a professor of medieval

history at University College Dublin,

and very much at home in a broad

panorama of Irish and related studies.

Each contributor advances an area of

Martin’s interest.

Michael Richter compares the early

organization of learning in Ireland

with the Continent. Patrick Wallace

demonstrates visual presentations of

archaeological research on Hiberno-

Norse Dublin, recalling Martin’s

heroic preservation efforts. Adrian

Empey looks at evidence for parish

organization in Ireland prior to the

Normans, and John Bradley analyzes

shifting economic and political power

between Dublin, Bristol, and Chester in

the early Norman era. Evelyn Mullally

studies images of Ireland in two

Arthurian romances, and Marie Therese

Flanagan describes uses of symbol and

ritual in twelfth-century Dublin’s Holy

Trinity Cathedral.

Studies of medieval society and

government focus on principles for

educating rulers (Jeremiah Hackett),

the identity and social connections of

English Royal Justices in Ireland (Paul

Brand), and Howard Clarke’s depiction

of day-to-day life in Dublin.

Michael Haren examines Richard

FitzRalph’s arguments against

intrusions into parish prerogatives by

mendicant orders, and T. P. Dolan

analyzes FitzRalph’s Defensio

Curatorum and its exploitation by

early reformers. Joseph Bergin looks

at the politics and practicalities of

regulars and seculars appointed to

govern each other’s institutions in

early-modern France.

Peter Gallagher explains the roles of

Luigi Marsili and his mentor, Petrarch,

in shaping a Renaissance humanist

tradition that was both classical and

Christian. Anngret Simms relates the

changing structure of medieval towns

to growth in trade and local self-

government. Kevin Down studies the

character and situation of parish clergy

in one region in England just prior to

the Reformation.

Others describe the influence

of Reformation and Humanist

thinking on one continental monarch

(Katherine Walsh), and the influence

of Spain and its Irish colleges on

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 65

EUROPE

of archival materials. Ruiz Medrano’s

argument is not just that colonial in-

stitutions fueled corruption, but also

that they encouraged “the search for

alternative ways to accumulate wealth

on the part of the Spanish population”

(234). In the long run, their tightly knit

patronage-clientage systems and privi-

leged legal instruments overwhelmed

the legal resources of the non-Spanish

population.

Ruiz Medrano’s book, originally

published in Spanish in 1991, is

composed of two parts. The first

sets up the context for the second by

mapping out the evolving nature of

“the rationalization of the colonial

system” (15) under the governance of

New Spain’s Audiencia, or Supreme

Court, a “benevolent” system whose

exploitative potential nevertheless

reached fruition by the middle of

sixteenth century (259). Ruiz Medrano

argues neither that the processes of

“centralization” were consciously

nefarious from the outset nor that

Spanish dominion cynically proposed

the exploitation of Indian subjects;

rather, she argues that conflicting goals

among the judges, missionaries, and

entrepreneurs dominating the new

colonial society created conditions that

effectively diminished, both consciously

and unconsciously, native populations’

control over their own lives and

properties. Some of the opportunities for

the colonialist wealthy to exploit legal

loopholes arose from cultural clashes,

as evidenced in the famous “pictorial

records” of Indian entitlement to land

that failed to convince courts they were

as legally binding as “deeds drawn up

before a royal scribe or the testimony

given by” crown officials (corregidores;

165). Often, the slow wheels of justice

perverted any ethical resolution of land

title conflicts between savvy Spanish

officials and Indian litigants hamstrung

by proof contained in native documents

considered weak in European legal

traditions (the case of Chalco is

particularly illustrative of this process)

(182). “The weight of the written word

vis-à-vis the codices or Indian pictorial

records,” she writes, “is undoubtable”

(234). Ruiz Medrano argues that at other

times, however, conscious betrayals

of the crown’s ethical commitment to

preventing exploitation (even if only in

terms of Indians’ “minimal rights;” 45)

were thwarted by colonial elites. This

was the case, for example, with the

1532 founding of Puebla or with the

sustained colonial support speculators

received from lower-level institutions,

such as Mexico City’s Municipal

Council (170).

The administration of the first

viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza (1535–

50), characterized by “a good deal

of autonomy” (76), reinforced the

economic and social capacity of colonial

elites to buttress their hold over native

populations using the legal institutions

at their disposal. This was especially the

case given the viceroy’s alliance with

entrepreneurs who shared his interest

in “different ventures—mining, stock

raising, trade” (259). On the other hand,

Ruiz Medrano notes that royal insistence

on extracting tribute put bounds to

such attempts in important ways, but

ultimately created fertile ground for

financial predation by colonial officials

willing to apply the law, bend it, or,

on occasion, break it, to exercise their

economic rights over native labor and

resources. Archival records of land

transfers map precisely the degree to

which Mendoza and his encomenderos

managed to use Spanish financial

institutions to exploit the economic

vulnerability that tribute indebtedness

caused among Indian groups. Ruiz

Medrano’s analysis of how “transfers

were the most usual mechanism for

placing Indian towns in encomienda”

(86) is an important corrective to

previous simplistic analyses that failed

to explain this institution’s deeply

ingrained nature in colonial society.

Although “coercion was evidently

implicit” to such imperial structures,

they “also involved negotiation with the

dominated society” (8). Nevertheless,

she uncovers evidence of frequent

abuses, such as outright purchases

and swaps of towns—both of dubious

legality at best. For Ruiz Medrano, such

vice-regally approved acts constitute not

only examples of patronage for valuable

elite allies in the project of empire,

but also, more precisely, attempts “to

mediate between important sectors

irritated by the policy on encomienda

followed by the Crown” (114).

The second part of Ruiz Medrano’s

book examines the career of one man

who managed to become particularly

wealthy at the expense of native lands

and resources, circumventing the law

when necessary. This is perhaps the

most interesting part of Ruiz Medrano’s

work, as the figure in question—

Lorenzo de Tajada—is much less well-

known than Viceroy Mendoza, though

she draws our attention to the fact that

Tajada’s professional and personal

career, his quest for wealth through

fairly shady real estate dealings, is not

exceptional. By showing how Tajada’s

career as a judge (oidor) meshed with

his “economic behavior,” Ruiz Medrano

proves that the “political game” of

colonialism wove complex webs of

control benefiting a minority in society

(151). Tajada preyed financially on

weakened Indian collectives, knowing

full well there was less opportunity

in the second half of the century for

the expropriation of lands owned by

native nobles. This he accomplished

despite “the laws in force, which

prevented Spaniards from possessing

such lands” (153). The crown’s

leniency on such matters, argues Ruiz

Medrano, originated in its interests

to develop New Spain agriculturally,

making concessions to colonial elites

on other fronts as it gained control

over previously granted encomienda

resources. Moreover, a “far from

superficial” knowledge “regarding

native property” was one basis for

Tajada’s abuse of Spanish law and

exploitation of real estate opportunities

for self-enrichment; recruiting

Moctezuma by preventing transfer of

land ownership to current occupants

without due proof was another. In such

ways, through vice regal connivance,

patronage, and participation, “the

reality of the colony . . . far away from

Spain, generated ways of satisfying the

colonists’ aspirations of accumulating

wealth” not only at the expense of “the

native population, but also outside the

narrow path royal policy in New Spain

marked for this society” (235).

Ruiz Medrano rarely refers to

government corruption, and she

is wise not to do so. One can get

bogged down in the contextually

important distinction between

66 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

corruption as decay, the principal

meaning conveyed by the early

modern Spanish word corrupción, and

corruption as unethical subversion

of legal norms, a very specific idea

summarized quite succinctly in a

separate term contemporaries used,

corruptela. Moreover, her analysis

of concrete case studies reveals that

the accumulation of wealth in specific

hands was neither “individual” nor

“anomalous,” a point that, she is at

pains to demonstrate, has frustrated

previous historians (5). This accounts

for Ruiz Medrano’s comments (in

the introduction to the 2006 English

translation) regarding difficulties

posed by the famous residencia files

associated with crown investigations of

all high officials retiring from colonial

service (an important source for her

study): “A challenge” she had to face

early on “was how to differentiate

the various types of testimonies and

their motives and to try to find the

source of the problem from which

they arose” (7). Because historians

have not come fully to terms with the

nature of the residencias, most of the

incredibly diverse historical evidence

they offer, which Lewis Hanke

praised so long ago, has yet to reach

the scholarly and reading public. The

central revelation of the residencias

would undoubtedly be they do not

really represent a trial of the legality of

colonial administrators’ terms in office

at all. Rather, they functioned as a sort

of financial opportunity for the crown

to extract moneys from governors it

hoped would have exploited colonial

conditions just enough to expose them

to royal demands for repayment, but

not enough to de-legitimize an entire

imperial system predicated on the

trust kings placed on their aristocratic

subordinates and the obedience to these

“chosen men” kings expected from

their subjects. Evidence surrounding

corruption suggests that people knew

exactly what these residencias were

about when they cried out—in typical

ancien régime fashion—“Long live the

king and down with bad ministers!”

Much of Ruiz Medrano’s work hangs

on the balance of this difficult equation,

in which strategies of self-interest

proved the common denominator of

al lives encompassed; and what their

overall impacts were on the diplomatic,

economic, and physical landscapes of

fourteenth-century Italy. Caferro’s pro-

found understanding of economic his-

tory and mastery of the tangle of politi-

cal and diplomatic intrigue during this

era enable him to explore and explain

Hawkwood’s life and its contexts with

depth and precision.

John Hawkwood generally proceeds

along chronological lines—perhaps

the only approach possible in treating

so lengthy and complicated a career.

The trajectory of both Hawkwood’s

ambitions and his travels may confuse

the reader at various points in the

narrative, as many towns and persons are

usually involved in any given situation.

Detailed maps of Hawkwood’s military

campaign and his Italian holdings (xvi,

xviii, respectively) help significantly,

while a diagram (264) aids the non-

specialist in grasping the subtleties of

medieval warfare.

The real rewards, particularly

for those not intimately familiar

with the terrain of northern Italy or

the constantly changing network of

alliances, enmities, and family relations

that defined fourteenth-century Italy,

lie in the opening and closing chapters.

In frank revisionist style, Caferro

confronts and debunks many commonly

held misconceptions about mercenaries

and poses new and striking questions.

The social status of many mercenaries,

their relationships with one another and

with their employers, and the impacts

of their presence on the landscape

and economy all receive precise and

thoughtful examination.

As with any great work, a few flaws

exist: typographical errors (182, 283),

repetition of some points, and a few

minor errors of fact (e.g., the pope

in 1381 was Urban VI, not Urban

V). These in no way detract from the

excellence of the whole, however. John

Hawkwood is a magnificent work,

laying to rest earlier romantic visions

of Hawkwood as the perfect gentleman

and model of chivalry (he was, after all,

in it for the money), yet showing his

keen intellect, courage, and flexibility.

Ironically, Machiavelli, who despised

mercenaries, would have had to admit

that this most successful soldier of

legitimacy for a dynastic government

not based on merit. Overuse of the

former (long live the king) could

seriously undermine the latter (down

with bad ministers), but the greater

the distance from the center of ethical

(read, pecuniary) supervision, the

greater the freedom of movement

offered to peripheral elites.

Ruiz Medrano’s thoroughly

convincing and careful reconstruction

of the webs of entrepreneurial

speculation and exploitation reminds

the reader that the usual imperial

conflation between personal lucre and

state interest characterized the early

moments of Iberian expansion. It is

not altogether clear from her book,

however, how Indian elites and mestizo

families—members of the peripheral

elites—may have benefited from their

special status as socioeconomically

privileged and culturally aware

participants in these webs. One hopes

she will dedicate another book to

elucidating this other important topic

in the history of corruptelas.

FABIO LOPEZ-LAZARO

Santa Clara University

Caferro, William

John Hawkwood: An English

Mercenary in Fourteenth-Century

Italy

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press

480 pp., $35.00, ISBN 0-8018-8323-7

Publication Date: March 2006

What a wonderful book John Hawk-

wood: An English Mercenary in Four-

teenth-Century Italy is! Exhaustively

researched and compellingly written,

it boldly sweeps aside assumptions and

proposes innovative reevaluations of

specific historic episodes and of the ste-

reotype and significance of the merce-

nary himself. By crafting the narrative

of one of the most famous mercenary

captains, John Hawkwood, William

Caferro demonstrates how reputations

flourished, both among contemporaries

and in the historical record; how mer-

cenaries waged war; what their person-

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 67

fortune exhibited exactly the qualities

required of those who would triumph

over Fortune herself.

ALISON WILLIAMS LEWIN

Saint Joseph’s University

Dewald, Jonathan

Lost Worlds: The Emergence of

French Social History, 1815–1970

University Park: Pennsylvania State

University Press

241 pp., $50.00, ISBN 0-2710-2890-4

Publication Date: October 2006

In Lost Worlds: The Emergence of

French Social History, 1815–1970,

Jonathan Dewald, a historian of early

modern Europe, ventures out of his

chronological period of expertise to

challenge conventional accounts of the

rise of French social history. According

to such accounts, historians dissatisfied

with nineteenth-century historiography

created social history in the early-twen-

tieth century. Taking their cue from

the new social sciences and their in-

spiration from leftist Marxist politics,

these historians developed a new kind

of history focused on ordinary people

and everyday life rather than great men

and grand events and related these new

focal points to broader social, econom-

ic, and cultural structures: une histoire

totale. Two of these historians, Lucien

Febvre and Marc Bloch, went on to

found the journal Annales, and the rest,

as they say, is history.

In contrast to these accounts, Dewald

argues that the intellectual roots of

French social history are to be found

in a group of early-nineteenth-century

writers—none of them an academic

historian—and, furthermore, that

“a history of social history can be

written with almost no reference to

its authors’ stated political ideologies”

(220). While all roads in this work of

intellectual history lead to the Annales,

Dewald manages to avoid teleology

by relating the ideas he explores to

their multiple contexts, showing a

continuous and fruitful dialogue

between twentieth-century historians

and their predecessors.

The book opens with three chapters

devoted to the nineteenth century. The

first chapter focuses on the group of

writers, including such luminaries as

literary critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-

Beuve, Hippolyte Taine, Gustave

Flaubert, and Ernst Renan, which,

according to Dewald, developed “a

robust conception of social history”

(52). Dewald locates in their intellectual

exchanges the ideas that would become

the staple of French social history: a

study of “real life” rather than political

events, a focus on marginal groups

such as women or peasants, the use of

unorthodox sources such as memoirs

or letters rather than government

documents, and a strong interest in the

psychological patterns of life in the past.

The second chapter analyzes nineteenth-

century debates about the seventeenth

century. For academic scholars such as

Victor Cousin or Auguste Comte, the

seventeenth century marked the origin

of French modernity, and they produced

progressive narratives, stressing

similarities between the past and the

present. For Sainte-Beuve and his milieu,

the seventeenth century was absolutely

alien to nineteenth-century sensibilities,

and their histories therefore became

efforts at reconstructing a lost world, as

seen in Sainte-Beuve’s magnum opus,

Port Royal, which is the subject of the

third chapter. Taken as a whole, this part

of the book shows how these nineteenth-

century writers, who came from different

and fluid political backgrounds, laid

down the foundations for social history

by developing the idea of the radical

otherness of the past: for them there was

a deep dividing line between the modern

and premodern periods.

The rest of the book focuses on the

Annales and twentieth-century social

history. Chapter 4 explores how the

notion of the otherness of the past

operated in the work of Febvre, himself

a historian of the early-modern period.

Dewald qualifies the Annales’ claim of

scholarly innovation by showing that

Febvre and his colleagues borrowed

and reinterpreted ideas from their

nineteenth-century predecessors. More

important, this chapter places Febvre’s

thought about the difference of the

past in multiple contexts: the crisis of

a generation that has survived the Great

War, the otherness of the colonial world

that leads to actual analogies between

the colonies and pre-modern Europe,

and Febvre’s remarkable insight into the

newness of his period as one of increasing

interactions between people around the

world. All this supports Dewald’s claim

that “the idea of otherness . . . appealed

to writers who were uncertain about the

contemporary world” (108).

Chapter 5 focuses on the emergence

of the history of private lives through

two projects: Alfred Franklin’s La vie

privée d’autresfois (1880s) and Philippe

Ariès’s project, History of Private

Lives (1980s). Chapter 6 explores

the ambivalent place of the nobility

in modern French historiography as

both central and invisible. Chapter

7 is a comparative study of rural

historiography in France and Germany.

Dewald finds that, astonishingly, it

was German historians, some of whom

were enthusiastic members of the Nazi

party, who stressed peasant agency and

political consciousness, while French

historians depicted peasants as objects

rather than subjects of history. Hence

Dewald’s conclusion that social history

“can as easily derive from authoritarian

as from radical or critical political

impulses” (206).

Although Dewald neglects to deal with

alternative conceptions of social history

operating at the same time in France,

such as those preferring serial data and

quantitative methods, his emphasis

on the otherness of the past as the

principal idea of French social history

is compelling, productive, and well

substantiated. Readers at the graduate

level and beyond who are interested in

French history or historiography more

generally have much to benefit from

Dewald’s challenge to long-standing

beliefs about the political motivations

of social history. As this book shows,

good things happen when historians go

beyond their areas of expertise.

RONEN STEINBERG

University of Chicago

68 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

Sarfatti, Michele

The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: From

Equality to Persecution

Trans. by John and Anne C. Tedeschi

Madison: University of Wisconsin

Press

419 pp., $65.00, ISBN 0-299-21730-2

Publication Date: August 2006

This welcome translation of Michele

Sarfatti’s Gli ebrei nell’Italia Fascista:

Vicende, identità, persecuzione (2000)

is the first of his numerous books on

the plight of Jews under Fascism to

appear in English. Sarfatti, director of

the Center for Contemporary Jewish

Documentation in Milan, has based

his study on documents located at his

center, numerous Italian state archives,

and the archives of the Union of Italian

Jewish Communities. He has written

a detailed juridical exposition of the

discrimination, persecution, and partial

destruction of the Italian Jewish com-

munity under Nazi–Fascist rule.

The two phrases Benito Mussolini

most often repeated regarding Italian

Jewry were “anti-Semitism does not

exist in Italy” and “there is no Jewish

question in Italy.” Such boasts were

believed at the time and after, until

scholars like Sarfatti began to probe

deeper. Rather than appearing fully

born on the eve of Kristallnacht, Italian

anti-Semitism had a long gestation,

beginning with the advent of Fascism

itself. The myth of a supposed Judeo–

Bolshevik–Capitalist world conspiracy

was a common motif in Fascist

publications since the 1920s. Long

before its first race-based periodical—

Telesio Interlandi’s La Difesa della

Razza—appeared in August, 1938,

Fascist Italy was as awash in printed

prejudice against Jews as any other

country on the continent, except

Germany.

Average Italians under Fascism may

not have recognized any distinction

between their Catholic and Jewish

compatriots other than their houses of

worship. Yet, between the years 1922

and 1936, an increasingly virulent

anti-Semitism was propagated by

the government in what Sarfatti calls

the “attack on Jewish equality.” This

established a pseudo-intellectual

foundation for its future anti-Semitic

All told, the Fascists and their Nazi

allies killed 7,000 Jews from Italy, 16

percent of the 43,000 residing there.

Sarfatti proves his case of the

culpability of the Fascist regime and, in

turn, the Italian people in persecuting

their Jewish neighbors, friends, and

relatives. It would have been no

less well proven had he given more

recognition to the many Italians who

hid and rescued Jews in their midst.

Such redemptive behavior by Italians

for their past sins was too rare an

occurrence in the Holocaust. With

more testimonial reference to the lives

of individual Italian Jews, Sarfatti’s

work of prodigious learning would

have more fully portrayed the horror

that befell them under Fascism.

This erudite study goes further

than all others to lay bare the road to

Auschwitz that Fascism tried to pave

for the Jews in Italy.

JAMES TASATO MELLONE

City University of New York–Queens

College

Feinberg, Melissa

Elusive Equality: Gender,

Citizenship, and the Limits of

Democracy in Czechoslovakia,

1918–1950

Pittsburgh, PA: University of

Pittsburgh Press

275 pp., $35.00, ISBN 1-5882-6176-X

Publication Date: March 2006

Melissa Feinberg’s book Elusive Equal-

ity: Gender, Citizenship, and the Lim-

its of Democracy in Czechoslovakia,

1918–1950 traces the intricate history

of ideas and practices of gender equal-

ity throughout three different regimes:

the interwar Czechoslovak Republic,

the Nazi Protectorate, and the postwar

“People’s Democracy.” Feinberg, an

assistant professor in the department of

history at the University of North Caro-

lina–Charlotte, argues that during these

periods “women’s citizenship was a

privileged arena in which uncertain-

ties about democracy, and especially

democracy’s more radical potential,

policies. After the 1936 victory over

Abyssinia, Mussolini initiated race-

based legislation in Italy and its colonies

by legally prohibiting miscegenation

between Italians and Africans. This

began the next stage in Fascist anti-

Semitism (1936–43), what Sarfatti

labels the “attack on Jewish rights.” In July

1938 the Manifesto of Racist Scientists

started racially based persecution by

defining Italians as Aryans and Jews as

non-Aryans. The Racial Laws of October

1938 were more severe in their strictures

and more permanently damaging to the

Italian Jewish community than anything

heretofore. In short, Jewish participation

in public life and relations or marriage

between Italians (“Aryans”) and

Jews (“non-Aryans”) were restricted

or prohibited. Since Sarfatti is less

interested in when or whether Mussolini

became a racial anti-Semite and more

concerned with the legislation that

resulted from racial ideology, readers

would have benefited greatly had he

reproduced in his appendix some of

the legal documents to which he most

frequently refers in the text.

The Nazis encouraged, but never

pressured, Mussolini to turn Italy

into an Aryan heimat. Envying Nazi

power, his own egoism led him to

create his own brand of racial anti-

Semitism. Nevertheless, what Sarfatti

characterizes as the “assault on Jewish

lives” (1943–45) was astoundingly

similar to that assault in Nazi Germany,

albeit less systematically promulgated.

Mussolini’s mantra—“discrimination,

not persecution”—held only for a short

time. Sarfatti records in detail how

Italian Jews, no matter how patriotic

or Fascist, were increasingly stripped

of their civil rights, separated from

their fellow countrymen, and made into

enemies of the state. Such isolation

turned deadly shortly after Mussolini’s

removal from power in July 1943. In

a country occupied by the Nazis, Jews

had no defense, despite the efforts

of Jewish community organizations

to represent them. Mussolini’s Nazi-

supported Italian Social Republic fully

complied with the Final Solution. The

“assault on Jewish lives” commenced

in October 1943 in Rome, with the

Nazi arrest, deportation, and murder of

over 1,000 Italian Jews from the ghetto.

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 69

could be vocalized and enacted.” Using

gender as a window on a larger process

of state building, Feinberg convinc-

ingly argues that the demise of demo-

cratic governments in interwar Europe

could not be attributed solely to outside

forces of Nazism and fascism. Internal

factors, such as societal anxieties re-

garding equal rights, contributed to the

deterioration of democratic values.

The Czech case was unique in that it

traditionally placed a strong emphasis

on women’s rights as part of national

independence and democracy. None

other than the most prominent Czech

national leader, Tomás Masaryk,

championed gender equality. In the

early-twentieth century, rather than

working in opposition to the state as was

the case in most European countries,

Czech feminists allied themselves

with Masaryk and the nationalist

cause. For these women, according

to Feinberg, being Czech and being

feminist was one and the same. After

1918 the leaders of independent

Czechoslovakia enthusiastically

granted voting rights to women, but

they were less eager to support gender

equality within the family. Marriage,

divorce, and reproduction remained

“outside the purview of the egalitarian

impulses of the democratic system.”

According to Feinberg, tensions

between equality and the well-being

of the national community, which was

believed to rest on the subordinate

role of women within the family, were

central to understanding the demise of

Czech and European democracy in the

interwar period.

Feinberg’s work makes a significant

contribution to East–Central European

historiography in which issues of

gender have not been thoroughly

studied. The book’s major strength lies

in situating issues of gender have not

been thoroughly studied. The book’s

major strength lies in situating issues

of gender and state firmly within a

broader European context.

Feinberg’s book is intended for a

broad scholarly audience. Nevertheless,

its subject matter and compelling

personal stories behind the struggles

for women’s rights in the Czech lands

make this work excellent reading for

undergraduate and graduate classes.

This includes classes on modern

European history and those dealing

with larger issues of state building,

citizenship, and rights.

MALGORZATA FIDELIS

University of Illinois–Chicago

Kenez, Peter

Hungary from the Nazis to the

Soviets: The Establishment of the

Communist Regime in Hungary,

1944–1948

New York: Cambridge University

Press

312 pp., $75.00, ISBN 0-5218-5766-X

Publication Date: May 2006

Those familiar with earlier works by

Peter Kenez, a veteran professor of

history at the University of California

at Santa Cruz, will not be surprised to

learn that Hungary from the Nazis to

the Soviets: The Establishment of the

Communist Regime in Hungary, 1944–

1948 merits high praise. Born in Hun-

gary, Kenez retains some memories of

his homeland in the period between the

end of World War II and the consolida-

tion of Communist power; he has now

mined recently available sources relat-

ing to those tragic years.

Unlike the late Hugh Seton-Watson

and others, Kenez has concluded that

Stalin never drafted a blueprint for the

establish establishment of a Communist

regime in Hungary. Instead, he adjusted

his tactics to a complex and rapidly

evolving international reality. At first, for

example, Stalin seems to have envisioned

a lengthy period of transition to

Communism. There was, however, never

any doubt concerning his ultimate goal of

Sovietization. The presence in Hungary

of the Red Army and the Communists’

control of the instruments of coercion—

the ministry of the interior and the

political police—made it inevitable that

that goal would be achieved; nothing,

Kenez maintains, that democratic leaders

such as Ferenc Nagy and Béla Kovács

could have done would have frustrated

the Soviet dictator’s iron will.

Kenez regrets this deeply, not least

because he believes that for a limited

time an imperfect pluralism was able to

sustain itself. He believes that democrats

who rejected both traditional Hungarian

conservatism and Communism were

right to seek an accommodation with

the Communists in the hope that the Red

Army would eventually withdraw from

the country and, as a result, a measure

of democracy could be preserved. For

that reason he is critical of Cardinal

Mindszenty, who, in his judgment,

was too wedded to a discredited past

and too “rigid” in his dealings with the

Communists. Kenez may be right, but

it is difficult, based on what we now

know, to understand why the cardinal’s

intransigence was less wise than the

democratic leaders’ endless and futile

compromises. But concerning this matter

reasonable people may certainly differ.

Kenez has given us a superb account

of how Hungarian Communists,

backed by the Soviet Union, employed

ruthless “salami tactics” to drive the

Smallholders’ Party, the Socialists, the

unions, and the churches—one by one—

from the political arena. Sooner than

they expected, the Communists found

themselves in possession of total power.

LEE CONGDON

James Madison University

Fuller, William C.

The Foe Within: Fantasies of

Treason and the End of Imperial

Russia

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press

320 pp., $39.95, ISBN 0-8014-4426-8

Publication Date: June 2006

William C. Fuller’s tour de force work

The Foe Within: Fantasies of Trea-

son and the End of Imperial Russia

informs readers about the illegal and

illicit conduct of people within the

power structure of late Imperial Rus-

sia. His goal is to expose the cor-

rupt activities of state servitors who

aimed primarily to enrich themselves

by using their power to grant state

70 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

RUSSIA AND THE C.I.S.

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 71

contracts in response to bribes and in

exchange for kickbacks. Late impe-

rial civil servants were always in need

of funds to support expected social

and professional obligations as well as

their wives, families, and mistresses.

Revealing the dark, seamier underside

of the imperial government, Fuller

aptly demonstrates how such rampant

corruption discredited tsarism and

contributed enormously to the dys-

function, and ultimately the collapse,

of Imperial Russia. The focus of this

tragic tale is the notorious and largely

misunderstood case of Lt. Colonel S.

N. Miasoedov, a former gendarme of-

ficer and entrepreneur on active duty

with the Russian army, who was con-

victed of treason after a two-hour trial

in Warsaw and hanged on March 19,

1915. Accused (on ultimately unprov-

en charges) of spying for the Germans,

blamed for military setbacks in the

disastrous fall of 1914, and victimized

by irregular legal proceedings, Mia-

soedov became known to history as a

traitor to his tsar and motherland.

In addition to masterfully

reconstructing the story with all

known primary and secondary

sources, thereby laying to rest the

misinformation surrounding this

case by demonstrating the hapless

Miasoedov’s innocence, Fuller should

be commended for analyzing the broad

impact of Miasoedov’s execution on

the fate of Imperial Russia. According

to Fuller, the Miasoedov affair was

evil and dangerous because it created

an atmosphere of hate and paranoia

detrimental to the war effort. After

catastrophic defeats in the spring of

1915, spy mania swept through the

empire as the best explanation for the

military failures at the front. The wave

of spy mania culminated with hundreds

of arrests that eventually reached the

highest levels of the regime, including

the arrest and trial of wartime War

Minister V. A. Sukhomlinov, who had

direct contacts with Miasoedov.

In deftly exposing the sordid

connections between tsarist generals,

courtesans, Baltic nobleman, Jewish

businessmen, war profiteers, Austrian

and German spies, and even Rasputin,

Fuller reveals how the decision to hang

Miasoedov created a malignancy in

Imperial politics that eroded the claim

of the tsar and the post-March 1917

Provisional Government to rule Russia.

Monarchism became closely linked to

treason in the collective mind of the

Russian public, discrediting everyone

associated with Imperial politics.

The book’s most impressive aspects

are its clarity and great accessibility.

Through his exposure of imperial

Russia’s poisonous political culture,

Fuller posits that Nicholas II’s downfall

became inevitable once Miasoedov met

his fate. Along the way, Fuller emerges

as the preeminent historian of late

imperial Russia.

JOHN W. STEINBERG

Georgia Southern University

Stanislawski, Michael

A Murder in Lemberg: Politics,

Religion, and Violence in Modern

Jewish History

Princeton: Princeton University Press

152 pp., $21.95, ISBN 06911-2843-X

Publication Date: January 2007

A Murder in Lemberg explores the as-

sassination of the religious reformer

and chief rabbi of the Ukrainian city

Lemberg (now Lviv), Abraham Kohn,

in September 1848 by an Orthodox Jew.

At the core of this work by one of the

world’s leading historians of Russian

Jewry is a minute reconstruction of the

circumstances surrounding the poison-

ing of Kohn’s family, which led to the

death of the rabbi’s infant daughter.

Michael Stanislawski situates the

crime within the context of Galician

Jewish history and describes the rising

tensions between Kohn and Lemberg’s

Orthodoxy that forms the backdrop of

the killing. As he is careful to note, not all

of these tensions were of an ideological

or religious nature. In fact, some of the

leaders of the Orthodox community,

who were profiting from taxes levied

on kosher meat and candles used for

religious practices, had strong financial

reasons to oppose a rabbi who proposed

the abolition of the taxes enriching them.

Mapping the interests of various groups

and actors, Stanislawski convincingly

shows how an inextricable mixture of

political, religious, and financial motives

likely contributed to the murder.

Ultimately, however, the involvement

of the Orthodox tax-farmers could never

be proven, and the authorities focused

mostly on investigating the Orthodox

silversmith Abraham Ber Pilpel. Pilpel,

who in Stanislawski’s view was justly

convicted in July 1849, was exonerated (in

the Criminal Appellate Court in Lemberg

in November 1849 and subsequently in

the Supreme and Cassation Court in

Vienna in March 1851) due to lack of

evidence. Stanislawski suspects that the

antipathy of the reactionary government

for politically and religiously liberal

Jews was the decisive factor leading to

Pilpel’s acquittal.

Following the example of Helmuth

Walser Smith’s The Butcher’s Tale

(2002), Stanislawski attempts to use

a complex case as an opportunity to

touch on some larger important issues.

This, however, leaves some questions

unanswered. Among other arguments,

Stanislawski contends that Kohn’s

murder was the first political murder

of a Jew by another Jew and thus

constitutes “a radical turning point in

Jewish history” (118). If indeed this case

was such a pivotal moment for modern

Jewry, it remains to be explained why

none of Europe’s Jewish newspapers

reported on the case. Even Germany’s

most respected Jewish periodical, the

Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums,

which had a correspondent in the city

at the time, did not mention the case

with a single word. Can an event that

left its trace almost exclusively in a

single court file be a turning point in

political or cultural history?

Second, Stanislawski attempts to

revise prevalent views that Reform

Judaism had little influence in Eastern

Europe. Although such efforts are

welcome, it is not completely clear

exactly what Kohn’s case is supposed to

represent. Moreover, it might be argued

that Austrian Galicia was not typical

of most of Eastern European Jewry,

who lived under the Tsar’s sovereignty,

nor that urban Lemberg was typical of

mostly rural Galicia.

In spite of these shortcomings, Murder

in Lemberg offers a very readable history

of Lemberg Jewry for the nonspecialist,

identifies important desiderata in the

scholarship on intra-Jewish violence and

Jewish Reform in Eastern Europe, and,

most of all, is an entertaining story of a

little known, intriguing murder case—

which appears to have been precisely

Stanislawski’s intent.

ALEXANDER JOSKOWICZ

University of Chicago

Eyal, Gil

The Disenchantment of the Orient:

Expertise in Arab Affairs and the

Israeli State

Stanford: Stanford University Press

336 pp., $60.00, ISBN 0-8047-5403-9

Publication date: May 2006

Israel has provided fertile ground in

the critique of national, colonial, and

disciplinary categories that character-

izes social thought in recent decades.

Even if the Israel-focused studies of

historians, anthropologists, linguists,

and literary scholars vary in style and

substance, many of them take aim at

cornerstones of national discourse. To

the degree that it embraces a purposeful

skepticism, Gil Eyal’s fascinating book

about the development of dominant Is-

raeli understandings of the Middle East

places him squarely within this genera-

tion of critical scholars.

On closer examination, however,

this sociological study of the changing

practice of orientalist expertise in

Israel and its pre-1948 predecessor

points to a new generation of critical

Israel scholarship. First, it interweaves

what have often been discrete

concerns: the intellectual genealogy

of pre-state Zionism, the fate of the

Palestinians in 1948, and the place

of Arabs and of Jews from Muslim

societies in Israel. Second, the book

vigorously challenges many aspects

of the larger critical project that it

embraces. In each of the three sections

of his complex argument, Eyal revises

the revisionists.

Eyal’s first major claim is that before

1948, many Zionists viewed the Orient

not as enemy territory, but as a utopian

space of possibility. A metaphor for

encounter mediated and interpreted

by expert institutions, the Orient in

the early period was an enchanted,

symbiotic whole that promised fertile

ground for Jewish renewal. For this

strand of his argument, Eyal relies on

the German Jewish academics and

Sephardi notables whose importance

in the pre-state political arena is often

neglected in favor of the dominant Labor

Zionists. He suggests that although the

neglected players’ influential vision of

the Orient was essentializing, it was

generally not adversarial or separatist.

In the second major claim, Eyal

contends that the Orient as a Zionist

metaphor underwent a process of

disenchantment around 1948. He

suggests that the expulsion of the

Palestinians created facts on the ground

that led to the wholesale reconfiguration

of the field of orientalist expertise. A

new preoccupation with monitoring

Arab populations internal and

external to the new state fragmented

the enchanted, holistic, essentialized

Orient into a body of cold, disparate

facts that demanded specialization and

bureaucratic mastery. Eyal asserts that

the expulsion of the Palestinians was

not so much an expression of cultural

separatism as it was a motor that

ensured its triumph in the new state.

After 1948, Israeli orientalists’

attention turned to managing the threat

allegedly posed by the Palestinian

infiltrator and the Israeli Arab, two

kinds of hybrids created by expulsion

and state formation. This last major

strand in the argument focuses on the

relationship between these hybrids

and a third: the mizrahi, or immigrant

Jew from Muslim societies. He places

the latter’s designation as a problem

population after 1948. Because of

their perceived Arabness, mizrahim

were ideal candidates for peopling the

strategic “buffer zone” between Jews

and Arabs embodied in the development

town. For Eyal, the mizrahi category

arose from this geographic, social, and

discursive in-betweenness.

Each thread in the argument challenges

Eyal’s predecessors. Occasionally, the

revisions are not entirely convincing.

For example, Eyal’s impressive

account of the discourse about the Arab

village belies his own claim that the

disenchantment of the Orient entailed de-

essentialization. His linkage of discourse

about the Palestinians and mizrahim, on

the other hand, is deft. Many writers

have asserted such a connection but

have failed to fully demonstrate it. By

deploying Bruno Latour’s work on

hybrids and modernity, and by revealing

the connection between the discourse

about the Arab village and the discourse

about the mizrahi development town,

Eyal successfully shows the subtle,

persistent way in which orientalist

expertise has defined Palestinians and

Jews from Muslim societies in relation

to one another.

Eyal has written a painstakingly

fair and useful book that shows the

deep, sometimes surprising roots of

orientalist discourse in Israeli society.

It also offers a sophisticated theoretical

approach to the wider sociology of

expertise. The close attention he

pays to divisions between military,

governmental, and academic experts

and institutions is likewise richly

revealing. At the same time, this focus

on centers of power at times paints

Israeli discourse about the Middle East

as hermetically sealed and impervious

to subversion. Although Eyal treats

cultural separatism as the original sin of

state formation (rather than of Zionism),

one wonders if attention to the margins

of contemporary Israeli society might

present a less entrenched vision of

the Middle East. But perhaps this is

precisely Eyal’s point: Israeli discourse

about the Middle East today maintains

its force because it is reproduced at the

center of the power structure. If the first

generation seeks to upend cornerstones,

the second measures their depth.

JONATHAN GLASSER

University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

72 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

AFRICA AND THE

MIDDLE EAST

Moyar, Mark

Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam

War, 1954–1965

Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press

532 pp., $32.00, ISBN 0-521-86911-0

Publication Date: August 2006

We have seen a recent resurgence in

the publication of books focused on the

Vietnam War. This resurgence has pro-

vided readers with a new generation of

historians who have analyzed the war

with a fresh perspective. One of these

historians is Mark Moyar, whose in-

sight and analysis is displayed through-

out Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam

War, 1954–1965. It is a book readers

will find thought provoking, exhaus-

tively researched, highly organized,

and above all, outstanding.

In the preface of his volume, Moyar

categorizes himself as a member of

the revisionist school of Vietnam War

history. He defines membership as one

who believes the war was right, but

poorly executed,” in contrast to the

orthodox school of historians who see

U.S. involvement in the war as unwise

and unmerited. The author uses the

remainder of the volume to outline

his “revisionist” argument on how the

United States should have prosecuted

the initial years of the war. Within his

argument readers will find meticulous

background and examination on

subjects, including the performance of

South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh

Diem, the United States’ role in the

overthrow and subsequent assignation of

Diem, and the factors that combined to

escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Moyar is highly qualified to tackle

these and the other subjects he addresses

in Triumph Forsaken. His credentials

include history degrees from Harvard

(BA) and Cambridge (PhD) and the

highly acclaimed Phoenix and the Birds

of Prey: The CIA’s Secret Campaign to

Destroy the Viet Cong. This combination

enables him to transform his superb

research abilities into a book that is

highly readable for his audience.

an empire, the United States is ruin-

ing its own economy and destabilizing

small countries. The picture of Lynndie

England making a mocking gesture at

the genitals of Iraqi prisoners became

a worldwide symbol of American ar-

rogance. James maintains that Ameri-

cans are following the “Roman Empire

model” in The Roman Predicament:

How the Rules of International Order

Create the Politics of Empire. He argues

that the Romans imposed Christianity

and established a single set of values on

their subjects. Roman economic policy

enriched the wealthy while impover-

ishing the masses. The United States

should reject this model and exercise its

leadership through culture, enlightened

commerce, and the rule of law.

James maintains that the European

Union, with its superior culture, is more

capable than the United States to lead the

world in the era of globalization. Europe

is more humane, has a more refined

culture and is more committed to the

rule of law and to establishing a system

of international trade that benefits the

masses. Such liberal and humane policies

can eliminate failed states that spawn

disease and support terrorists and drug

trafficking. As an example of its success,

James cites the European Union’s role

in bringing stability to Greece after the

Junta fell in 1974. Actually, the United

States some thirty years earlier saved

Greece from Communism and chaos

with military aid through the Truman

doctrine. James lauds the European

Union’s liberal immigration policy and

seems to regard the murder of Theo Van

Gogh by a Muslim in Holland as an

aberrant act representing a “false and not

true religion.” But where was the Muslim

outcry condemning the act? James is too

optimistic about the potential benefits

flowing from multiculturalism. Quite the

contrary, many Europeans now believe

their liberal policies are leading to cultural

suicide and are beginning to reject them.

James’s “Roman model,” which is

based on his reading of Gibbon does

not reflect Roman reality. James refers

to the destruction of Carthage in the

late Roman Republic. By the second

century AD, emperors tolerated a

variety of culture and religions and

made citizenship very accessible. A

century later, Rome rejected liberal

I found numerous strengths throughout

the book. First, Moyar uses many

unreleased Communist sources that

enable him to glean and thus provide

readers with a complete perspective of

the war. Second, the author furnishes

readers with an eighty-three-page notes

section, which is highly detailed and

informative. Finally, Triumph Forsaken

is one of the best organized books I have

read in recent memory. Moyar moves

patiently from event to event in an

environment that was extremely chaotic.

This organization provides readers with

a setting conducive to understanding

the complexities of the early years of

the war.

Is this revisionist or orthodox

history? Truthfully, I believe it is

difficult to label opinions and analyses

in a war where such middle ground

exists. Perhaps the best label to put on

Triumph Forsaken is that it is simply

an excellent book. For readers looking

for a comprehensive book on the early

years of the Vietnam War, this is an

excellent stop. It will satisfy their

information needs, spark passionate

debate, and best of all, prepare them

for Moyar’s next volume, which keys

on the remaining years of the war.

RICK BAILLERGEON

U.S. Army Command and General

Staff College

James, Harold

The Roman Predicament: How the

Rules of International Order Create

the Politics of Empire

Princeton: Princeton University Press

166 pp., $24.95, ISBN 0-6911-2221-0

Publication Date: March 2006

The thesis of this book is that after

9/11, the United States became a hege-

monic state intolerant of other cultures.

It practices an economic policy favor-

ing large corporations, widens the gap

between rich and poor, and imposes this

world order with force. In building such

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 73

ASIA

ANCIENT

policies when faced with the menace of

aggressive German and Persian forces

on its frontiers.

The depiction of George Bush in the

guise of a Roman Emperor on the cover

is an effort to lure the general reader.

But this book will serve mainly the

specialists who will understand laconic

references to esoteric matters, such

as the Athenian devastation of Melos.

Although I disagree with many of its

points, I find the book stimulating.

In the age of globalization, rule of

law is necessary, but how to achieve

it requires more detailed thinking and

more specific recommendations.

ANTHONY J. PAPALAS

East Carolina University

Ivanov, Sergey A.

Holy Fools in Byzantium and

Beyond

Trans. Simon Franklin

New York: Oxford University Press

479 pp., $99.00, ISBN 0-19-927251-4

Publication Date: May 2006

A welcome addition to the body of

translated scholarly works, this wide-

ranging study deals with a fascinating

cultural phenomenon: how the delib-

erate assumption of irrationality, and

specifically of aggressive and provoca-

tive behavior, became linked not with

rebellion and violence, but with peda-

gogical, ascetic, and saintly aspirations.

Relying mainly on Byzantine and Old

Russian hagiographic literature, Ser-

gey A. Ivanov traces the operations of

individual “fools” in Byzantium and

medieval Russia. Originally published

in Russian in 1994, the 2006 English

version has been revised and adapted

for an English-speaking audience.

The book contains fourteen chapters,

beginning with a brief survey of the

origins of holy foolery in cynicism,

Judaism, and Egyptian monasticism

and of the evolution of the meaning

of salos (stupid) and its association

with concepts of insanity, simulation

of insanity, and saintliness. The second

chapter focuses primarily on women in

a monastic context whose assumption

of excessive humility is (mis)interpreted

as stupidity by their immediate

environment, only to be vindicated with

the arrival of an outsider, usually a holy

man or an authoritative ecclesiastical

figure. The third chapter examines the

migration of fools and incipient holy

foolery from the countryside to the city,

where protests against the conventions

of urban life involved scandalizing and

troublemaking. Here Ivanov analyzes

what he regards as a paradigm of

holy foolery (85), a progression that

begins with an act of provocation

(such as walking naked impassively

around the city) and ends with the

revelation of the truth only after it is

too late to change anything. The basic

and most outrageous principle was

that a “fool for the sake of Christ”

would unhesitatingly lead people into

sin (91) to achieve self-perfection or

self-redemption. Chapters 4–8 focus

on individual holy fools, such as the

famed Symeon and Andrew, within

the Byzantine orbit between the sixth

and the fourteenth centuries. Chapters

9–12 explore the history of the Russian

“iurodstvo,” beginning with Isaakii, the

Cave Dwellers, in the early twelfth

century, and ending with contemporary

figures of holy fools. Ivanov links

the popularity and ubiquity of such

paradoxical figures to the perpetual

Russian preoccupation with the

truth behind deceptive realities, with

concealed absolutes that can only be

revealed to one inhabiting the “other”

world. The last two chapters deal with

holy foolery in various eastern (e.g.,

Rabbinic, Tibetan, Islam) and western

(e.g., medieval France, Italy) contexts.

The concluding chapter reemphasizes

the fictional nature of the sources

examined, which set out to articulate a

nonverbal protest against a staid church

and a stagnate state.

Each chapter is richly illustrated

with generous quotations from

sources. Especially beneficial are those

from Old Russian. A comprehensive

bibliography and index conclude this

stimulating study. The translation is

eminently readable, rendering this

analytical survey of fools accessible

to anyone interested in exceptional

contravention of conventions and in

mechanisms used by authorities to

neutralize and appropriate idiosyncratic

and potentially dangerous behavior

HAGITH SIVAN

University of Kansas

Bosworth, R. J. B.

Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the

Fascist Dictatorship, 1915–45

New York: Penguin

720 pp., $20.00, ISBN 1-5942-0078-5

Publication Date: February 2006

In the past decade, R. J. B. Bosworth

has published two-hundred fifty pages

on The Italian Dictatorship, six hun-

dred on Mussolini, and now seven hun-

dred more on Mussolini’s Italy. Might

this be too much of a good thing? Per-

haps. One cannot help but note that, at

this rate, Bosworth may come to chal-

lenge the prolixity of il duce’s Italian

biographer, Renzo De Felice, to whom

he is a grudging heir.

Mussolini’s Italy is the latest of these

works. In it Bosworth proposes to go

beyond his previous work of biography

and to write a “history of the life of

Italians under the Italian dictatorship” so

that he may better explain Fascism and

thus understand “why so many Italians

accepted the Italian dictatorship” (xxi–

xxii). Interesting to note, his primary

vehicle for accomplishing this end is,

once again, biography. Bosworth has

taken his considerable knowledge of the

period and supplemented the general

narrative with a plethora of biographies

of Italians in Fascist Italy. Archive adept

that he is, Bosworth has culled a wealth

of stories and anecdotes from police and

other sources and combined them with

memoirs and accounts of fascist notables.

The population of his volume, then, is

necessarily a select one—mostly fascist

hierarchs or individuals who fell foul

of the law and whose stories therefore

turn up in the police archives. Do those

stories add up to the promised history of

Italians under dictatorship? I will confess

that I found myself wanting both less and

74 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

BIOGRAPHY

more: less of the biographical approach,

which becomes a bit numbing at times (a

touch exasperated with the story of yet

another fascist hierarch, I wondered at

one point if a more appropriate title might

not have been Mussolini’s Minions), and

more exploration of the social, cultural,

and political dimensions of interwar Italy.

The moments when Bosworth turns his

focus in the latter directions are for me

the strongest: social conditions after

Caporetto (chapter 3); fascist uniforms,

calendar, and celebrations (chapter 7);

and the institutional tools of Fascist

repression (chapter 8).

And there is indeed lots of good

material here, as Bosworth pours his

fine scholarship into the book’s eighteen

chapters. The titles of those chapters

reveal a generally chronological

progression (including nearly one

hundred pages on the period prior to the

founding of Fascism in 1919). Within

that structure, however, the organization

of the book is at times a bit mystifying.

For example, for discussion of schools,

the Littoriali games, the regime’s

attitude toward homosexuality, and the

architectural mark left by Fascism, one

has to look, curiously, in the chapter,

“Lurching into War” (chapter 15).

That and other examples can leave the

reader with a sense of wandering rather

aimlessly across the range of Fascist

Italy. Nor is this a social history of

Fascist Italy (though perhaps we should

not be looking for one). We learn details

about numerous individuals through

anecdotes and biographies, but they are

exceptional individuals, either because

of their prominence or because they

were arrested. So we never really get

a feel of what day-to-day life was in

fact like for most people in Mussolini’s

Italy. Largely absent, for example,

are discussions of class, occupation,

unemployment, and urban and rural life.

It may be unfair to ask the book to do

things that the author did not intend, but

if we are to understand why Italians did

(or did not) accept the dictatorship, we

still need something more than we are

given here. To take one important topic,

racism, Bosworth reviews the positions

of various hierarchs but never gets at

how racism played out in Italy and what

it meant to Italians, Jewish and not. An

extended anecdote on one sycophant

Daum, Andreas W., and Christof

Mauch, eds.

Berlin–Washington, 1800–

2000: Capital Cities, Cultural

Representations, and National

Identities

New York: Cambridge University

Press

318 pp., $80.00, ISBN 0-521-84117-8

Publication Date: December 2005

Berlin and Washington seem an un-

likely couple, even for a comparison

of capital cities. They are dissimilar in

so many ways, as this volume makes

abundantly clear, but the editors also

identify some unexpected similarities

between these places, making for some

instructive and interesting essays.

The first commonality is that both

cities are capitals, even if Berlin

temporarily lost the seat of government

to Bonn. Andreas Daum’s introductory

essay and the essays in the first part

of the book emphasize each city’s

role as capital in the nation-state and

the world. Daum argues that capital

cities serve nation-states. They are

home to national administrative,

economic, and social functions, as

well as performative, representative,

preservative, and informative cultural

ones. As places where “power,

memory, and culture are set in stone to

create the impression of a coherent and

strong nation,” capitals symbolically

integrate the social, ethnic, religious,

and political diversity of a country.

Capitals are also connected to a global

system of capital cities with similar

functions, providing a focus for both

national and international identity.

In the case of these two particular

cities, there are further similarities. Both

became capitals in a context of much

political debate over geography, urban

image, and federalism, as Kenneth R.

Bowling and Ulrike Gerhard document

in their chapter contribution. Both have

endured war and occupation. Both

are capitals of federal states that favor

decentralization. Both face competition

from more powerful and populous

Fascist racist cannot substitute for

a general evaluation of the degree to

which Italians embraced, rejected, or

ignored Fascist racism (chapter 14).

As usual, Bosworth writes deftly

and incorporates translated excerpts

from relevant primary sources. He does

indulge though (an academic tendency

or too much reading of Italian?) in

overly long sentences that send the

reader scurrying back to the opening

to determine exactly which dependent

clause goes where. Occasional stylistic

acrobatics make one wonder if Bosworth

might not be a bit too taken with his own

linguistic prowess. Sentences like the

following brought me to a stop:

To the dismay of some ras, Mussolini

suddenly announced that he wished to

frame a deal with those socialists who

might be willing to treat, especially

with their trade unionist wing, end the

social war burning through the coun-

tryside and, by implication, look to

the formation of a grand coalition of

new mass parties and organizations in

order to overthrow the liberal system,

be it embedded in the parliament of

Rome or in the institutions of civil

society. (172)

At the work’s conclusion, Bosworth

offers his approach as an antidote to

those who overemphasize the role of

ideas and ideology in the history of

Fascism. He has a valid point, but I think

he sets up something of a straw person

here. I doubt any serious historian

would suggest that Mussolini “intruded

his fundamentalism into every nook and

cranny of his subjects’ minds” (561).

What Bosworth’s work and others

show is that Fascism did not achieve its

totalitarian ends. Nor were Italians (or

any particular social class) immune to its

appeal or untouched by its twenty-year

dominance of Italian political, social,

cultural, and economic life.

There is a lot of good material in

Mussolini’s Italy, and the biographical

sketches are, of course, intrinsically

interesting. Still, in choosing among the

Bosworthian oeuvre, most I think will

find Mussolini (see my review in Journal

of Modern History, volume 77, number

1 [March 2005]) more satisfying.

CARL IPSEN

Indiana University

Winter 2007, Volume 35, Number 2 75

GENERAL

rival cities. If they are well-networked

“international cities,” as Carl Abbott

convincingly argues, they are not full-

fledged “global” cities. Berlin and

Washington are also capitals of countries

with antiurban traditions, further justified

by spells of local political corruption,

disorder, and even dictatorship.

As Christof Mauch notes, Berlin

and Washington both have great

central parks, the Tiergarten and the

Mall, respectively, as well as more

conventional classicist monuments

and national icons. Indeed, the second

part of the book considers the themes

of architecture, memory, and space.

Janet Ward’s insightful comparison of

Holocaust architecture in Berlin and

Washington (the Jewish Museum and

the Mahnmal, respectively) rightly

acknowledges the different contexts—

capital of the victor and liberator versus

the vanquished and perpetrator—in

which the Holocaust memorials were

built. Brian Ladd’s discussion of the

development of East Berlin as capital

of the German Democratic Republic

illustrates how German architectural

motifs, urban design, and national

symbols tempered the display of

antinationalist socialism in unadorned

modernist housing, landmarks, and

government buildings in the 1970s and

1980s.

The volume’s third section discusses

political power and the functions of

capitals. Alan Lessoff’s essay addresses

government’s greater role in promoting

development and governance in

Washington compared with Berlin. As a

purpose-built capital with few industrial,

commercial, or other nongovernment

interests, Washington became one of the

only capitals in the world where, after

home rule was rescinded in 1878, the

nation-state controlled the city (through

the District of Columbia Commission).

Lucy Barber’s chapter examines the

transformation of early Washington’s

places for quiet deliberation and

national ceremonies into “national

public spaces.” “Alternative practice

of citizenship,” namely, marches on

Washington—from Coxey’s army of the

unemployed in 1894 to Martin Luther

King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech

in 1963 transformed Pennsylvania

Avenue and the Mall. Belinda Davis

describes the centuries-long tradition

of “everyday” clashes between Berlin

residents, especially in working-class

neighborhoods, and the capital’s police,

who obsessively sought to impose

order on the streets. From 1830 to the

present, these conflicts were not about

nation-wide symbolic issues, like the

marches on Washington by those living

outside the city, but rather about state

concern over controlling those residing

in the city where the state was situated.

Washington’s local politics reflected

national conflicts over region and

race, but, Lessoff explains, they never

disrupted national affairs in the way

Berlin’s local politics did.

The best chapters in this collection

discuss both Berlin and Washington.

Unfortunately, many of the essays

are dedicated to only one case or do

not systematically compare the two

cities. This somewhat undermines the

justification for selecting Berlin and

Washington as case studies for learning

about capitals in general. However,

many of the essays are sufficiently well

researched and well written to stand on

their own for readers interested in either

city, and they may encourage studies of

additional capitals in the future.

HILARY SILVER

Brown University

76 HISTORY: Reviews of New Books

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























■

■













































■

■





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