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"As the United States grew into an empire in the late nineteenth century, notions like 'sea power' derived not only from fleets, bases, and decisive battles, but also from a scientific effort to understand and master the ocean environment. Beginning in the early nineteenth century and concluding in the first years of the twentieth, Jason W. Smith tells the story of the rise of the U.S. Navy and the emergence of American ocean empire through its struggle to control nature. In vividly told sketches of exploration, naval officers, war, and, most significantly, the ocean environment, Smith draws together insights from environmental, maritime, military, and naval history, and the history of science and cartography, placing the U.S. Navy's scientific efforts within a broader cultural context"--

This volume contains six articles on Ibn 'Asākir and his 'Ta'rīkh madīnat Dimāshq' illustrating a variety of perspectives and approaches to the material. It includes a seventh article that discusses the process by which the now standard 'Dār al-fikr' edition was compiled. The contributions address both the geographical and biographical sections of the 'Ta'rīkh madīnat Dimashq'. Some of the authors examine Ibn 'Asākir's sources, while others describe how Ibn 'Asākir's works were used by later generations of scholars and how he influenced multiple genres of later writings. The volume also contains analyses of individual biographies and discussions of Ibn 'Asākir's treatment of larger classes of people, including the first analysis of his biographies of women. In sum, it illustrates both the wide range of topics that the 'Ta'rīkh madīnat Dimashq' covers and the latest techniques for analyzing Ibn 'Asākir and his work.

"Between 1944 and 1996, Guatemala experienced a revolution, counterrevolution, and civil war. In the middle of these national shifts were students from Guatemala's only public university, the University of San Carlos (USAC). USAC students served in, advised, protested, and were later persecuted by the government, all the while crafting a powerful student nationalism founded on their responsibility to lead the nation. In no other moment has the relationship between the university and the state been so mutable, yet so mutually formative. By showing how the very notion of the middle class in Guatemala emerged from these student movements, this book places an often-marginalized region and period at the center of histories of class, protest, and youth movements, while providing an entirely new way to think about the role of universities and student bodies in the formation of liberal democracy throughout Latin America.

The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was the country's first creator of overseas Christian missions. Founded in 1810 and supported by a coalition of Calvinist denominations, the ABCFM established the first American missions in India, China, Africa, Oceania, the Middle East, and many other places. It was America's largest missionary organization in the nineteenth century, and its influence was immense. Its missionaries established the first Western schools and hospitals in many parts of the world, and they successfully promoted women's rights and other ideals from the Enlightenment. They also transformed oral languages such as Zulu, Hawaiian, and Cherokee into written form, and they preserved many elements of premodern cultures (albeit not always intentionally). The contributors to this book provide valuable insights on the work of the ABCFM (which exists today under a different name). Some of the contributors profile the lives of notable ABCFM missionaries, others focus on ideological shifts within the Board, and still others chronicle the Board's role in historic events, including the Opium Wars, the colonization of Hawai'i, and the Armenian Genocide. From reading this book, people will come to understand why the ABCFM is widely viewed as America's most historically significant missionary organization.

What is a national medicine? What does it mean for a medicine to be traditional and scientific at the same time? How could a specifically Vietnamese medicine emerge out of the medical practices and treatments that have flourished and waned during key soci

Historians have focused almost entirely on the attempt by southern African Americans to attain equal rights during Reconstruction. However, the northern states also witnessed a significant period of struggle during these years. Northern blacks vigorously protested laws establishing inequality in education, public accommodations, and political life and challenged the Republican Party to live up to its stated ideals. In "We Will Be Satisfied With Nothing Less," Hugh Davis concentrates on the two issues that African Americans in the North considered most essential: black male suffrage rights and equal access to the public schools. Davis connects the local and the national; he joins the specifics of campaigns in places such as Cincinnati, Detroit, and San Francisco with the work of the National Equal Rights League and its successor, the National Executive Committee of Colored Persons. The narrative moves forward from their launching of the equal rights movement in 1864 to the "end" of Reconstruction in the North two decades later. The struggle to gain male suffrage rights was the centerpiece of the movement's agenda in the 1860s, while the school issue remained a major objective throughout the period. Following the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, northern blacks devoted considerable attention to assessing their place within the Republican Party and determining how they could most effectively employ the franchise to protect the rights of all citizens.-- Book jacket.

"In the latter half of the twentieth century, tens of thousands of Native American families moved to cities across the United States, some via the government relocation program and some on their own. In the cities, they encountered new forms of work, entertainment, housing, and education. In this study, Stephen Kent Amerman focuses on the educational experiences of Native students in urban schools in Phoenix, Arizona, a city with one of the largest urban Indian communities in the nation. The educational experiences of Native students in Phoenix varied over time and even in different parts of the city, but interactions with other ethnic groups and the experience of being a minority for the first time presented distinctive challenges and opportunities for Native students., Using oral histories as well as written records, Amerman examines how the Phoenix schools tried to educate and assimilate the Native students alongside Hispanic, Asian, black, and white students and how Native children, their parents, and the Indian community at large responded to this new urban education and the question of their cultural identity. Reconciling these pressures was a struggle, but many found resourceful responses, charting paths that enabled them to acquire an urban education while still remaining Indian."--Pub. desc.

The Great Industrial War, a comprehensive assessment of how class has been interpreted by the media in American history, documents the rise and fall of a frightening concept: industrial war. Moving beyond the standard account of labor conflict as struggles between workers and management, Troy Rondinone asks why Americans viewed big strikes as "battles" in "irrepressible conflict" between the armies of capital and laborùa terrifying clash between workers, strikebreakers, police, and soldiers. Examining how the mainstream press along with the writings of a select group of influential reformers and politicians framed strike news, Rondinone argues that the Civil War, coming on the cusp of a revolution in industrial productivity, offered a gruesome, indelible model for national conflict. He follows the heated discourse on class war through the nineteenth century until its general dissipation in the mid-twentieth century. Incorporating labor history, cultural studies, linguistic anthropology, and sociology, The Great Industrial War explores the influence of historical experience on popular perceptions of social order and class conflict and provides a reinterpretation of the origins and meaning of the Taft-Hartley Act and the industrial relations regime it supported.