Amateur history for (a) future historian(s)
If there is a single reason why the military dictatorship in Chile under Augusto Pinochet is viewed less negatively than contemporaneous authoritarian governments elsewhere in Latin America, it is the conventional wisdom of an “economic miracle” that took place in that country between 1973 and 1990. As is now well known, under the Pinochet régime, …
Continue reading “Review of Valdés, ‘Pinochet’s Economists’”
This week’s reading – Lara Putnam’s Radical Moves – offers a view of Caribbean society in transit during the first half of the 20th century. Using the causes and effects of migration by these people, Putnam offers general observations about the development of both black nationalism and black internationalism. I found Putnam’s definition of …
Two of this week’s readings return us to the topic of the United States government’s imperial relationship with indigenous peoples in North America. Much like the case of Ned Blackhawk’s Violence Over the Land, Cathleen Cahill’s Federal Fathers and Mothers is interested in part in exploring how native people cooperated in this imperial relationship by …
Once again, this week’s readings, particularly Emily Rosenberg’s Financial Missionaries to the World, overlapped to some extent with the periods/topics I teach. In this case, I spent the last week teaching the topic of American populism to my students and so addressed to a great extent the rise of the progressive movement and the …
This book was of particular interest to me because my girlfriend’s father is Filipino, specifically from the former political elite of the islands. His maternal grandfather was the governor of Batangas from 1910 to 1916, his father was one of the first Filipinos to attend college and medical school in the United States, and his …
This book offers fascinating insights into two areas of inquiry — German imperialism in Africa and postbellum African-American education – by examining how these two fields intersected when the German imperial government hired instructors from Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute to train Togolese farmers how to most productively farm cotton in West Africa. I was …
Continue reading “On Andrew Zimmerman’s ‘Alabama in Africa’”
This book was the most sheerly entertaining one I’ve read so far this term. Baumgartner is a wonderful writer with an engaging style, in addition to being a talented historian. Furthermore, I don’t know that I’ve ever read a book that provided as comprehensive an overview of the political histories of both Mexico and …
Continue reading “On Alice Baumgartner’s ‘South to Freedom’”
I took particular interest in reading this book because it engages some of the material that I teach my students every year, i.e., the different visions of the United States’ economic future envisioned by some of the Founders. Usually, my own discussion focuses entirely on Jefferson’s vision of a nation of yeoman farmers with decentralized …
I haven’t posted here in a while, so I thought I’d provide a brief update. At this point, I’m halfway through with my courses for the M.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania. I’ll begin my fifth course, entitled “American Empires,” in a few weeks. With luck, this course’s assignments will provide me with …
Simulblogged at Holocaust Controversies Since we began this blog 15 years ago, we’ve been fully aware that Holocaust deniers have individual motives. Certainly among these motives is antisemitism — it’s perhaps the one trait that the overwhelming majority of deniers share — but there are also motives like ego and grift. With the rapid graying …
Inevitable Historicity