The Electronic Front Porch: An Oral History Of the Arrival Of Modern Media in Rural Appalachia and the Melungeon Community

In The Electronic Front Porch, the author presents an analysisof his research concerning the introduction of electronic mediain rural Appalachia, with a particular focus on the Melungeoncommunity. Historically, Melungeons, a group of people of ambiguouslymultiracial heritage, resided in the mountains of Tennesseeand for various reasons were marginalized. The geographic locationof this community impacted the speed and degree to which moderninventions were introduced into the community. Podber uses     

Money, majesty and virtue: the rhetoric of monetary reform in later sixteenth-century France

Monetary inflation accompanied the period of the French civilwars of the later sixteenth century. It provoked an animateddiscussion among France's notables, especially its monetaryexperts. The debate is largely known through Jean Bodin's famousResponse de Jean Bodin à M. de Malestroit (1568). Thisarticle seeks to recover the moral and intellectual dimensionsof that debate, placing then in the context of how public policywas arrived at in this period. It analyses a lengthy memorandumon monetary issues, prepared for the Estates General of Blois(1576–1577). Hitherto ignored, it is ascribed here toJean Bodin. The article situates the great monetary reform ofSeptember 1577 and the introduction of the écu as theFrench money of account, within the moral and intellectual frameworkswhich underlay wider attempts at the reformation and pacificationof the French kingdom in this period.     

The Mail-Coach Revolution: Landmarks in Travel in Germany Between the Seventeenth and Nineteenth Centuries

The mailcoach, more than any other mode of transport, has beenromanticized and portrayed as the epitome of old-fashioned travelfor Mr and Mrs Average. This idyllic picture dates from thegrowth of railway travel, which for ever altered perceptionsof earlier travelling patterns. In fact, before the coming ofthe railways things were very different. The introduction oftimetabled ordinari mailcoaches from the seventeenth centuryonwards brought about a transport revolution of entirely newproportions. The mail coaches were rapid, comfortable and reliable,and they brought about a new understanding of space and time.The expansion of travel enabled by the mail coaches opened thedoor to other new patterns of thought: the Enlightenment, andthe emancipation of ordinary people from the restrictions offeudal society. This new mode of transport reached its apotheosisin the early nineteenth century with the introduction of theexpress coaches and the rapid postal coaches. The overarchingprinciple, however, is that as the centuries pass, revolutionsin structures and infrastructures are the determining factorin enabling society to pass cultural milestones.     

The Six Fevrier 1934 and the 'Survival' of the French Republic

The Paris riots of the six février 1934 are rememberedchiefly as the event that provided the initial spark and theeventual rationale for the anti-fascist Popular Front. However,most French historians have tended to downplay the importanceof the riots themselves, arguing that the Republic was not underserious threat, and that the Left at the time greatly exaggeratedthe danger. Indeed, the fact that the regime ‘survived’these events has often been cited as proof of its resilience,of France’s deep-rooted ‘democratic political culture’,and its inbuilt ‘immunity’ to fascism. This historiographicalreview argues that the standard interpretation of the six févrieris deeply flawed, especially in its tendency to deduce the intentionsof the actors from the outcome of the events. The six févrierconstituted a serious challenge to the regime, and created adangerously fluid situation in which a variety of ‘outcomes’became possible. It should be analysed not as a discrete andtemporally circumscribed event but as a key moment in an ongoingprocess of political radicalization on the French Right.     

Recovering a "Lost" Story Using Oral History: The United States Supreme Court's Historic Green v. New Kent County, Virginia, Decision

Abstract In 1965, New Kent County, located just east of Richmond,Virginia, became the setting for the one of the most importantschool desegregation cases since Brown v. Board of Education.Ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared "separate butequal" unconstitutional, both public schools in New Kent, theGeorge W. Watkins School for blacks and the New Kent Schoolfor whites, remained segregated. In 1965, however, local blacksand the Virginia State NAACP initiated a legal challenge tosegregated schools, hoping to initiate desegregation where theprocess had yet to begin and to accelerate the process in areaswhere token desegregation was the norm. In 1968, the U.S. SupremeCourt decision in Charles C. Green v. the School Board of NewKent County forced New Kent County and localities across thestate and nation to fulfill the promise of Brown. While thecase has been part of the court records since it was decidedin 1968, it has remained largely unknown to the general publicand many scholars of the era. This article is an attempt touse the tool of oral history to present the people and the storybehind Green v. New Kent County and to add another piece tothe puzzle that was school desegregation in this country.     

The Italian American Experience In New Haven: Images and Oral Histories

Anthony V. Riccio's lavish new coffee table book, The ItalianAmerican Experience in New Haven: Images and Oral Histories,provides a fascinating look at the experiences of Italian immigrantsand their children in one east coast community. The field ofimmigration history has certainly benefited from the wealthof oral histories collected from immigrants and their descendants.Ranging from Al Santoli's New Americans, an Oral History: Immigrantsand Refugees in the U. S. Today (1988) to works such as La Merica:Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (1985)     

Twenty-Five Years--Where is German History Now?

As our two founding editors write in this issue, at its inception,German History fulfilled a dual purpose. First, it arose fromthe need to find a ‘home’ for a growing body ofscholarship on German history produced and debated in the UnitedKingdom, not least under the aegis of the German History Society.Second, the journal was set up with a certain sense of mission,designed to showcase an innovative brand of German history writing,which was at variance, to some extent at least, with that predominantlypublished in the American-based Central European History. Sincethen, much has changed.     

The Tolsdorff Trials in Traunstein: Public and Judicial Attitudes to the Wehrmacht in the Federal Republic, 1954-60

This article uses the prosecution of former GeneralleutnantTheodor Tolsdorff before the Landgericht Traunstein on threeseparate occasions (June 1954, September 1958 and May/June 1960)as a means of examining both press and judicial attitudes towardsthe Wehrmacht in the Federal Republic from 1954 to 1960. Whatis most surprising about the case is that, while the press reactionsto the first hearing in June 1954 were uniformly critical ofthe guilty verdict, the first retrial in September 1958 provokedattacks on the accused in newspapers, and the abandonment ofthe case under the provisions of the Amnesty Law provoked intensecriticism of the court. The reasons for the differing reactionsin June 1954 and September 1958 are not only to be sought inthe fact that the 1958 verdict came shortly after the closeof the Ulmer Einsatzgruppenprozeβ, but rather in the upsurgein anti-militarism which occurred between September 1954 andFebruary 1955 and the effects on public opinion of the 1957Schörner trial in Munich. When examined against the backgroundof the 1957 Schörner trial and the 1959 Manteuffel trial,the Tolsdorff case indicates not only that attitudes towardsthe Wehrmacht became much more critical during the second halfof the 1950s, but also that these three ‘generals’trials' were part of a broader pattern of proceedings for ‘crimesof the final period’ which played an important psychologicalpart in paving the way for a more honest confrontation withthe mass murder committed during the Third Reich.     

The Marginality Hypothesis and Supreme Court Confirmation Votes in the Senate

Studies of Supreme Court confirmations have found that a senator's vote is primarily determined by his or her ideological proximity to a nominee and that nominee's objective qualifications. This literature does not account for the extent to which a senator's electoral safety may enhance or mitigate the effects of ideology or qualifications. We argue that senators from less competitive states are more likely to eschew a nominee's qualifications in favor of their own ideological preferences. By analyzing roll call data on confirmation votes from Byron White to Elena Kagan, we support this argument and add an intriguing new piece to the puzzle underlying the changing dynamics of Senate confirmation voting.     

The "Widowed Kingdom"

During the minority of Ivan IV, his mother, Elena Vasil'evna Glinskaia, and the boyars legitimized their rule through various means: declarations of co-rulership; references to the will of the previous grand prince, Ivan's father, Vasilii III; selected appearances by the child sovereign; and requests for Ivan's approval of plans developed without his input.     

'Stop the Flapper Vote Folly': Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail, and the Equalization of the Franchise 1927-28

This essay re-examines the Daily Mail's campaign in 1927–8against the Baldwin government's decision to equalize the franchiseby lowering the female voting age to 21. It argues that theMail's hostility to the ‘flapper vote’ was largelya product of the passionate anti-socialism of its proprietor,Lord Rothermere, and not, as has been suggested, the culminationof a decade of anti-feminism. Rothermere was convinced thatyoung women would vote overwhelmingly for the Labour Party andentrench it in government for a generation. But attacks on the‘flapper’ in 1927–8 were generally confinedto the paper's editorial and political columns, and contrastedwith the much more positive portrayal of young women that hadbeen typical of the Mail's output since 1918. The example ofthe Daily Express, which supported franchise equalization, isused to demonstrate that it was Rothermere's idiosyncratic politicalpinions, rather than the ‘typical’ anti-feminismof the Conservative press, that explained the Mail's stance.The article concludes that the gender discourse of interwarnewspapers has been unfairly stereotyped by historians, andthat media hostility to young, unmarried women in these yearshas been exaggerated.     

Vindication of the Fronde? The cost of Louis XIV's Versailles building programme

In the years after 1661, Louis XIV went some way to meetingpublic criticism raised during the Fronde. Yet the king refusedto concede the reduction of taxation. Instead, resources wereappropriated for a large land army and a navy, as well as forthe royal buildings programme. Though expensive, the Versaillesproject was affordable in years of peace. Expenditure on thechâteau of Versailles never amounted to more than 6 percent of annual total expenditure, while in most years the costdid not exceed 1 per cent. The ambitious exterior work for theproject put up the overall costs of the project from 67 to 92million livres.     

Translation de Domicile: Rethinking Sedentarity and Mobility in the Early Modern French Countryside

Was the countryside of early modern France marked fundamentallyby mobility or sedentarity? Tax rolls suggest the former, highendogamy rates the latter. For the period 1660–1720, ararely used source, the registers of translation de domicile(change of tax domicile), provide a more comprehensive answerthan civil or tax records. They suggest that, first, 60,000–70,000better-off families moved each year; second, poor migrants,such as day labourers, rarely made declarations; third, thosewho owned land, moved far less often; fourth, laboureurs typicallymoved between 10 and 40 kilometres to take on farms of greaterimportance; fifth, cottagers and day labourers moved to a nearbyvillage, rarely more than 5 kilometres away and finally, menand their families moved for economic gain, whereas women movedbecause of economic loss, after the death of their husband.Because the laboureurs dominated the villages—for example,paying most of the taxes—their movement shook the villagein fundamental ways. The translation de domicile registers indicatevillages open to the outside, full of in-migrants, whose economicstatus often bore a close correlation to the distance of theirmove (high-long, low-short).     

Inconstant Companions: Archaeology and North American Indian Oral Traditions

As an historian of the American West, I find myself in the unusualposition of writing a review of a book, written by an archaeologist,for an audience of oral historians. But Ronald J. Mason's elegantlyprovocative Inconstant Companions: Archaeology and North AmericanIndian Oral Traditions cries out for interdisciplinary linkagesand understandings. Mason spent his professional years as anarchaeologist among anthropologists and is the author of thehighly acclaimed Great Lakes Archaeology (1981). In InconstantCompanions, Mason "addresses a fundamental historiographicalproblem in archaeology, history, and anthropology":     

Regoverning markets: a place for small-scale producers in modern agrifood chains? * B. Vorley, A. Fearne and D. Ray (Eds)

The international expansion of supermarkets and concomitanttransformation of food production and distribution systems hasemerged as an issue of global importance during the past decade.As such, the purported globalization of food retailing has drawnincreasing attention from geographers and economists alike,who have identified a host of profound implications for producers,consumers, suppliers, domestic competitors and workers in bothdeveloped and developing countries. The salience of the ‘supermarketrevolution’ within developing countries is further highlightedby the World Bank's 2008 World Development Report Agriculturefor Development that focuses specifically on the barriers impedingparticipation of small-scale agricultural producers in globalcommodity chains and potential opportunities for improving rurallivelihoods. Like the 2008 World Development Report, Regoverning Markets:A Place for Small-scale Producers in Modern Agrifood Chains?attempts to understand how     

Ask and Tell: Gay and Lesbian Veterans Speak out

At the outset of Ask & Tell, Estes recalls the debates thatproduced the 1993 "don’t ask, don’t tell" policyprohibiting "homosexual conduct or activity in the armed forces"of the U.S. and laments the silenced voices of those most directlyaffected by the policy: gay and lesbian service members. Inresponse, Estes, an associate professor of history at SonomaState University, enlists oral history as an ally in the on-goingcampaign to allow gay men and lesbians in the U.S. to serveopenly in the armed forces. He argues "that historically, thesilence concerning gays in the     

Turkey's Modernization: Refugees From Nazism and Ataturk's Vision

In an era when Turkey is known more for its mediocre recordon human rights and freedom of speech, Arnold Reisman's Turkey'sModernization brings light to a lesser known phase of Turkishhistory, where Turkey, as a young republic, had opened its doorsto Jewish scholars escaping Nazi Europe. In fact, the storyof Jewish scholars taking refuge in the newly established TurkishRepublic has been a long neglected topic, a subject matter discussedmore as "popular knowledge" than "scholarly analysis." In thatregard, Reisman's book is an important contribution becauseit fills that gap with its rich visual     

From Algerie Francaise to France Musulmane: Jacques Soustelle and the Myths and Realities of 'Integration', 1955-1962

This article explores the rise and fall of the notion of intégrationas a means of resisting pressure for decolonization in Algeria,focusing on the work of Jacques Soustelle, the eminent ethnologistand Gaullist politician who was Governor-General in Algeriafrom 1955 to 1956. Soustelle’s integration plan was avision developed in Algeria, and its diffusion in France andadoption by a number of diverse groups in the metropole canbe seen as an important case of Algerian influence on Frenchpolitical and intellectual life. The network of Algériefrançaise sympathizers and movements which adopted integrationas their watchword is examined, demonstrating how integrationtook on almost mythical qualities and appealed to figures fromacross the political spectrum. The article also suggests thatintegration can be seen as a contribution to our understandingof the role that a vision of a multiracial and multiculturalgreater France played in the policy and rhetoric of some advocatesof Algérie française.