Mobility,farmworkers, and Connecticut's tobacco valley, 1900–1950

By the early decades of the twentieth century, southern New England's Connecticut Valley had become a center of shade tobacco production and a destination for seasonal farmworkers drawn from sources inside and outside of New England. This paper explores the history of three groups of seasonal workers—children from area cities and towns; white southern high school students; and young African American men from southern high schools and black colleges—with an eye to assessing the impact of their presence on the form and meaning of the Connecticut Valley. My first goal is to add depth to the historiography of twentieth-century New England farming by drawing attention to the largely overlooked story of non-rural and extra-regional seasonal farmworkers. My second goal is to frame the case of Connecticut tobacco labor according to the study of mobility and its relationship to landscape. The mobility of workers into and within the region, I suggest, made possible the success of the shade tobacco economy while at the same time posing challenges to popularized cultural conventions about regional identity. For this reason, I argue, the history of Connecticut's shade tobacco landscape was informed by the efforts of shade tobacco growers to direct and control a confluence of environmental conditions, group and place-based identities, and the mechanics and meanings of mobility among seasonal workers. By hiring non-local, seasonal workers and by attempting to control their mobility, large-scale, corporate growers and their spokespeople ultimately sought to maintain control over the development and identity of the valley's rural landscape.     

Introduction: Historical geographies of internationalism, 1900–1950

This introduction to a special issue on historical geographies of internationalism begins by situating the essays that follow in relation to the on-going refugee crisis in Europe and beyond. This crisis has revealed, once again, both the challenges and the potential of internationalism as a form of political consciousness and the international as a scale of political action. Recent work has sought to re-conceptualise internationalism as the most urgent scale at which governance, political activity and resistance must operate when confronting the larger environmental, economic, and strategic challenges of the twenty-first century. Although geographers have only made a modest contribution to this work, we argue that they have a significant role to play. The essays in this special issue suggest several ways in which a geographical perspective can contribute to rethinking the international: by examining spaces and sites not previously considered in internationalist histories; by considering the relationship between the abstractions of internationalism and the geographical and historical specificities of its performance; and by analysing the interlocking of internationalism with other political projects. We identify, towards the end of this essay, seven ways that internationalism might be reconsidered geographically in future research through; its spatialities and temporalities; the role of newly independent states; science and research; identity politics; and with reference to its performative and visual dimensions.     

Cows and capitalism: humans,animals and machines in West German barns, 1950–80

ABSTRACT

From the beginning of the 1950s, milking machines increasingly replaced former agricultural workers in West German stables who now preferred better-paid jobs in the industrial sector. The investment necessary for the milking machines led to new ideas about economic thinking and production-optimization, which changed the interplay among human, animal and technology. Within less than two decades, cattle farming in the Federal Republic of Germany changed from an animal-lacking, devastated economic branch of manual labour to a mechanized profit-oriented industry, which produced more than was demanded. This essay challenges the prevailing historical interpretation in which the industrialization of farming has been described as one of the last stages of capitalism’s penetration of society. Central aspects of capitalism remained unfulfilled: there was neither a free market nor individual autonomy of entrepreneurs, and wage labour literally vanished within the barns. A close-up view of the practices at the place of action reveals an arbitrary mixture of efficiency and care that made the industrialization of animal farming differ from the traditional narrative of capitalistic expansion. When animals are the resources to be utilized, capitalist economic activity reaches its limits at the point where the animals’ vital processes begin to malfunction. By bringing together human-animal studies with economic history, this article offers new insights into the role of animals as living beings in history as well as into the expansion of capitalism in an economic sector that continued to operate according to its own rules.     

The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900–1914

J. N. LOCKMAN. Scattered Tracks on the Lawrence Trail: Twelve Essays on T. E. Lawrence. Whitmore Lake, Mich.: Falcon Books, 1996. Pp. xxii, 208. $24.00 (us); ANITA ENGLE. The Nili Spies. London: Frank Cass, 1997; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. x, 244. $36.00 (us); YOAV GELBER. Jewish-Transjordanian Relations, 1921-48. London: Frank Cass, 1997; dist. Pordand, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. 320. $37.50 (us); MICHAEL J. COHEN. Fighting World War Three from the Middle East: Allied Contingency Plans, 1945-1954. London: Frank Cass, 1997; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. xv, 349. $24.00 (us), paper; P. J. VATIKIOTIS. The Middle East: From the End of Empire to the End of the Cold War. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Pp. xi, 284. $65.00 (us); YEZID SXYIGK. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. xliv, 953. £70.00; HAROLD M. CUBERT. ThePFLP's Changing Role in the Middle East. London: Frank Cass, 1997; dist. Pordand, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. xiii, 235. $47.50 (us); MAJID KHADDURI and EDMUND GHAREEB. War in the Gulf, 1990-91: The Iraq-Kuwait Conflict and Its Implications. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. x, 299. $39-95 (CDN); KEMAL KIRISCI and GARETH M. WINROW. The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of a Trans-state Ethnic Conflict. London: Frank Cass, 1997; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. xvi, 237. $45.00 (us); ZEEV MAOZ, ed. Regional Security in the Middle East: Past, Present, and Future. London: Frank Cass, 1997; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. 208. $42.50 (us); EFRAIM KARSH, ed. Between War and Peace: Dilemmas of Israeli Security. London: Frank Cass, 1996; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. 298. $37.50 (us); AHARON LEVRAN. Israeli Strategy after Desert Storm: Lessons of the Second Gulf War. London: Frank Cass, 1997; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. ix, 169. $47.50 (us).     

Small and scattered: poor law children’s homes in Leeds, 1900–1950

By the turn of the twentieth century, the concepts of home and family had begun to have a positive influence on institutional life. Within poor law circles, large, residential institutions became seen as inappropriate for the needs of children without family support, and moves were made to transfer them into smaller, family-sized units of care. Cottage homes were one option, and, less commonly, scattered homes. This article argues that it was scattered homes that held the greatest potential to create a homely, family-orientated environment, and its adoption by the Leeds Poor Law Guardians in Leeds placed them in the vanguard of best practice at the beginning of the twentieth century with regard to the care of children. At the twentieth century’s mid-point, the local authority in Leeds continued to favour the same system.     

Australian Defence Awareness and German Naval Planning in the Pacific, 1900–1914

Abstract

Australia has been re-echoing the alarm of Britain at finding herself out-Dreadnoughted by Germany, while Patriots … have waved cheques at club dinners … and Lord Mayors have intervened to save Great Britain.

Bulletin, 1 April 1909