The Origins of American Expansion in Hawaii and Samoa, 1865–1900

From Nixon to Reagan, official US perceptions of West German trade with the Soviet Union (Osthandel) underwent a remarkable evolution. Despite initial skepticism, the Nixon and Ford administrations placed no major obstacles to West German–Soviet economic relations. Carter, however, changed the situation. His stance on human rights and economic sanctions against the Soviets for various developments - along with his belief that West Germany should follow the United States' lead - led Carter to ask Schmidt to curtail Osthandel, an action that contributed to Schmidt's notoriously poor relationship with the US President. Despite coming from a different political party, Reagan initially continued Carter's outlook on Osthandel. Yet rather than emphasize human rights, he publicly stressed Poland's self-determination as the reason to implement his aggressive policy to curb trade with the USSR, even though his advisers feared the strategic implications of greater German dependence on Soviet energy. Carter's and Reagan's early approaches were ineffective. Their actions, especially the latter's, strained US relations with Germany, the United States' most important ally in central Europe. Equally important, both Carter's and Reagan's policies undermined détente with Moscow. Because Nixon and Ford's approach to Osthandel harmed neither US–German relations nor US–Soviet relations, these presidents' responses had conspicuous advantages over succeeding administrations.     

Narcissus's Mirror: Manufacture and Modernism in the American Great Basin—The Case of Pottery

The commodification of pottery cannot be reduced to strict econo-technological terms. Commodification is a cultural process, enmeshed in local, regional, and international systems of meaning. As Victorian Modernism eroded, anti-modern movements commodified traditional culture. These philosophies, themselves commodities, had repercussions on the pottery industry throughout the world. In both America and Australia, these processes produced art and studio potteries. In the American Great Basin, these changes were experienced very differently by potters from different cultures. The commodification and industrialization of modern pottery factories predicated the reification of a pre-industrial artisanal past.     

The Trans-Saharan Railway and the Politics of Imperial Expansion, 1890–1900

The trans-Saharan railway scheme was the dominant, if intermittent, theme of French African expansion in the last 20?years of the nineteenth century. Behind political and economic arguments for the scheme lay a hidden agenda—the promotion of Algerian railway interests. Its revival in 1890, after a ten-year interval, was driven by a need to safeguard returns on railway investments, threatened by the growing political influence of the Radicals. Success in a campaign on its behalf was dependent on reinvigorating empire-building in tropical Africa, a function performed by the Chad plan, which also provided the required territorial configuration for a trans-Saharan railway. Subsequently, interest shifted from West Africa to the Sahara where efforts to promote railway construction through exploitation of the Tuat question stood greater chances of success. Saharan expansion was delayed for almost a decade by the obstinacy of the Algerian generals and the timidity of governments in France, before finally being resolved by a fait accompli. However, political circumstances at home, and the emergence of new railway competition in the Sahara, prevented the railway companies from reaping the full reward for their efforts. On the map, if not in any practical sense, a territorially unified French African empire had been completed by 1900, whose origins can be traced directly to the activities of the railway lobby.     

Stitching Professionalism: Female-Run Embroidery Agencies and the Provision of Artistic Work for Women, 1870–1900

The activities of female-run embroidery agencies have been largely ignored in scholarship dedicated to the design professions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This study reveals that embroidery agencies and societies played a key role in organizing and systematizing the female-dominated embroidery workforce, thereby granting women needleworkers new access to the business side of art. In illuminating the material and economic conditions of these women’s working lives, the author unpacks the complicated, and sometimes contradictory, relationship between embroidery organizations and professionalism, at a time when the design industries themselves were becoming increasingly professionalized and commercialized. Two broad categories of embroidery agencies are examined: modest, economically driven work depots; and artistically and philanthropically motivated embroidery societies. In the brief period of time when the popularity of the Arts and Crafts aesthetic and demand for ecclesiastical embroidery made embroidery a viable remunerative business, dedicated agencies and societies gave women with little or no connections to the art world access to a market for their wares. It was this access that allowed female needleworkers to practice as professional art workers according to that term’s most basic definition – they supported themselves monetarily through artistic work.