Scholarly Works, History

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Research articles, presentations, and other scholarship

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 51

An Exchange of Opinion - MacArthur, Quezon, and Executive Order Number One--Another View
Rogers, P. P.; Petillo, C. (University of California Press, 1983)
Values for Varmints: Predator Control and Environmental Ideas, 1920-1939
Dunlap, T. R. (University of California Press, 1984)
American Wildlife Policy and Environmental Ideology: Poisoning Coyotes, 1939-1972
Dunlap, T. R. (University of California Press, 1986-08)
Wildlife, Science, and the National Parks, 1920-1940
Dunlap, T. R. (University of California Press, 1990-05)
Momentum shifts in the American electric utility system: Catastrophic change - Or no change at all?
Hirsh, R. F.; Serchuk, A. H. (Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 1996-04)
’Changing traditions to meet current altering conditions’: Customary Law, African Courts, and the Rejection of Codification in Kenya, 1930-60
Shadle, Brett L. (Cambridge University Press, 1999-11)
If the aim of British colonizers, Frederick Lugard wrote, was to civilize Africans ‘and to devote thought to those matters which…most intimately affect their daily life and happiness, there are few of greater importance than the constitution of native courts’. Moreover, he argued that only from native courts employing customary law was it ‘possible to create rudiments of law and order, to inculcate a sense of responsibility, and evolve among a primitive community some sense of discipline and respect for authority’. Britain had not the manpower, the money nor the mettle to rule by force of arms alone. Essentially, in order to make colonial rule work with only a ‘thin white line’ of European administrators, African ideas of custom and of law had to be incorporated into the new state systems. In a very real way, customary law and African courts provided the ideological and financial underpinnings for European colonial rule. In Kenya from at least the 1920s, but especially in the 1940s and 1950s, administrators struggled with the question of how customary law could best be used in African courts. Prominent among their concerns was the codification of customary law, against which most administrators vigorously fought. British officials believed that reducing African custom to written law and placing it in a code would ‘crystalize’ it, altering its fundamentally fluid or evolutionary nature. Colonizers naturally harbored intentions of using the law to shape society (as Cooper has demonstrated for the Kenya coast) but a fluid, unwritten law provided much greater latitude to pursue these goals. It was necessary, as one administrator put it, to allow ‘changing traditions to meet current altering conditions’. This case study of Kenya offers a different understanding of the history of customary law.
Patronage, Millennialism and the Serpent God Mumbo in South-West Kenya, 1912–34
Shadle, Brett L. (Cambridge University Press, 2002-02)
This article traces the history of Mumboism, a millennial cult of south-west Kenya, 1912–34. Mumbo, the serpent god of Lake Victoria, promised to eject whites and chiefs from the region and usher in a period of prosperity. Mumboism gained followers, it is argued, because it mixed older ideas of patron–client relations with newer ideas of omnipotent, unseen beings, introduced by Europeans as Government and God. Mumbo challenged chiefs and missionaries, struggling to create patronage networks, by attracting clients, and threatened to unmask Government and God as impotent. Chiefs and, to a lesser extent, missionaries directed state power to the repression of Mumbo, eliminating it before it could undermine the very basis of European power.
Rape in the Courts of Gusiiland, Kenya, 1940s–1960s
Shadle, Brett L. (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
This article examines the history of rape prosecutions in the African courts of Gusiiland, Kenya, from the 1940s through the first years of independence. Drawing on transcripts from African courts, it demonstrates that Gusii court elders were quite sympathetic to women who lodged rape claims. Elders handed down stiff punishments to rapists, were willing to entertain a wide definition of “indecent assault,” and did not require the extensive evidence of rape so commonly demanded by judges in Western courts (and in British courts in Kenya). Perhaps most surprisingly, men who admitted to having had sex but claimed it had been consensual were forced to prove their claims. This article advances both the historical study of rape in Africa and suggests that we reassess—or at least reserve judgment—on the nature of sexual violence in the non-West.
Bridewealth and Female Consent: Marriage Disputes in African Courts, Gusiiland, Kenya
Shadle, Brett L. (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
From the early 1940s Gusiiland (Kenya) underwent a series of transformations that pushed bridewealth to unheralded levels. As a result, many young couples could not afford a proper marriage and eloped. Some fathers forced their daughters into marriages with men wealthy enough to give cattle ; many of these women ran off instead with more desirable men. In the hundreds of resulting court cases, Gusii debated the relative weight to be given to bridewealth, parental approval and female consent in marriage. Young people did not reject marriage, but fought against senior men who would ignore women’s wishes. Gusii court elders usually agreed with fathers and husbands but also believed that female consent did carry some significance.
A Stalinist Celebrity Teacher: Gender, Professional, and Political Identities in Soviet Culture of the 1930s
Ewing, E. Thomas (Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2004)
Reconstructing Iraq: merging discourses of security and development
Sovacool, Benjamin K.; Halfon, Saul E. (Cambridge University Press, 2007-04)
This article argues that reconstruction is an emerging discourse of international politics that merges security and development discourses in powerful and troubling ways. We focus on Iraq as a site for articulating and institutionalising a particular version of reconstruction, uncovering five narratives that constitute Iraqi reconstruction discourse. We conclude by suggesting that reconstruction repackages security and development into a singular, technical, and bureaucratic worldview. This view obscures working and reliable solutions to poverty and instability by treating development as a central justification for war, and war as a promising way to develop a state and society.
Should Women Vote?
Ewing, E. Thomas; Gumbert, Heather L.; Hicks, David; Lehr, Jane L.; Nelson, Amy; Stephens, Robert P. (Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2008)
History Practice: Using Cartoons to Teach the Suffrage Campaign in European History
Noah Webster and the Invention of Immigration
Shumsky, Neil Larry (MIT Press, 2008-03)
Like all lexicographers, Noah Webster built his dictionaries on the works of others. But in the case of the verb to immigrate and its derivatives, he coined a new definition, one that has had a profound impact on how Americans conceive of the phenomenon of immigration.
Sexual Offences in Kenya Courts, 1960S-2008
Shadle, Brett L. (National Council for Law Reporting, 2010)
Historians of Technology in the Real World Reflections on the Pursuit of Policy-Oriented History
Hirsh, R. F. (Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2011)
Despite widespread acceptance of the notion that studies of the past provide tangible benefits, academic historians usually remain reluctant to apply "lessons" from history to the realms of public and business policy. This article suggests reasons for that reluctance while also suggesting that historians of technology can make valuable contributions to the policy community. In particular, these professionals can employ tools and insights developed in their field to highlight the social contexts in which technology evolves, helping decision makers understand why specific policies may or may not accomplish stated goals. The article also suggests means by which historians can influence policy, such as through their teaching, their writing and speaking to lay ! audiences, and their direct participation in government bodies. Due to institutional disincentives for this nontraditional activity, however, historians interested in policy work should already have acquired secure, tenured positions within their academic institutions.
Cold War Theaters: Cosmonaut Titov at the Berlin Wall
Gumbert, Heather L. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011-11-01)
Introduction: Towards a History of Violence in Colonial Kenya
Carotenuto, Matt; Shadle, Brett L. (African Studies Center, Boston University, 2012)
An introduction to the journal is presented in which the authors discuss topics addressed in the issue related to violence in colonial Kenya, including corporal punishment, the connections between the death penalty and racial hierarchies, and repatriation.
Settlers, Africans, and Inter-Personal Violence in Kenya, ca. 1900-1920s.
Shadle, Brett L. (African Studies Center, Boston University, 2012)
The article discusses interpersonal violence in colonial Kenya enacted by white settlers against African natives. The author begins by charting the gradual acceptance of certain forms of violence by Britons throughout history and notes the importance of violence to the general activity of imperialism. He draws a connection between settlers' notions of racial superiority, corporal punishment, and colonial social control. The use of violence as a form of labor regulation and the infantilization of African natives are also discussed.
Wind Turbines and Invisible Technology Unarticulated Reasons for Local Opposition to Wind Energy
Hirsh, R. F.; Sovacool, Benjamin K. (Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2013)
Local opposition to wind turbines stems from concerns about environmental and economic damage, as well as conflicts between rural and urban residents. This essay goes beyond these considerations to explore the often-unarticulated explanations for animosity toward this energy technology. Originally, it posits that opposition to visually obvious turbines arises from the successful history of an electric utility system that made its product largely invisible in its manufacture and physical manifestation. The existence of conspicuous turbines, however, reminds observers that power generation requires difficult choices in a technology-based society. The system's previous achievement in hiding infrastructural elements, in other words, sometimes works ironically to spur objections to wind turbines. Receiving little historical study, the concealed features of a system's infrastructure often influence assessments of technologies. By revealing the previously invisible, this essay, which draws on research in history, landscape architecture, geography, and psychology, therefore provides insights for social scientists and policymakers.
The Currency of Kinship: Trading Families and Trading on Family in Colonial French India
Agmon, Danna (Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2014)
In the French colony of Pondichéry, French and local actors alike drew on the shared idiom of kinship to strategically advance their political and commercial agendas. Recent scholarship has shown that the structures of family underlay early modern European state building and imperial expansion. This essay deploys this insight in the colonial context, to examine how indigenous families in the Tamil region entered into the European colonial project. For native commercial brokers, involvement with European newcomers could actually strengthen local family ties. Simultaneously, French employees of the Compagnie des Indes were eager to insert themselves into Tamil networks and did so by deploying public and inscribed performances of kinship.

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