The weight of nineteenth century Mexicans in the Western United States

When traditional methods for measuring economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, heights and BMIs are now well-accepted measurements that represent biological conditions during economic development. Weight, after controlling for height, is an additional measure for current net nutrition. Little is known about how weights varied among Mexicans living in the nineteenth century American West. Between 1870 and 1920, average Mexican weight was low and remained constant. Mexican farmers had the heaviest weights, and unskilled worker weights were low. Weight of Mexican-born individuals were higher than Mexicans born in the United States at low weights but lower at high weights. For combined characteristics, weight varied the most with age, an uncontrollable characteristic, indicating that nineteenth century Mexican current net nutrition varied the most with factors over which they had no control.     

Seductive Alienation: The American Way of Life Rearticulated in Occupied Japan

This article explores how the notion of American domesticity promoted by US occupation forces in postwar Japan was decoded and rearticulated by non-elite Japanese women, a social group that has been largely overlooked in studies of the global promotion of the American way of life during the early Cold War years. Specifically examined here is the case of Takehisa Chieko, an actress and the wife of an American officer, who enjoyed high visibility in popular women’s magazines as the embodiment of the idealised postwar American lifestyle. A reading of Takehisa’s magazine writings, interviews, and photographs suggests, however, that she was far from a passive recipient and transmitter of this cultural message. As such, a close unpacking of her rearticulation of the idea of American domesticity toward the particular socio-cultural fabric of postwar Japan reveals the particular nature of this supposedly universal American model. In demonstrating the various dilemmas that stemmed from confronting both the seductive and alienating features of the American way as promoted in occupied Japan, this study illuminates a point of rupture in the larger US global promotion of American domesticity as a means toward cultural hegemony and political containment in the early Cold War period.     

Assessment and Significance of a World War II battle site: recording the USS Emmons using a High‐Resolution DEM combining Multibeam Bathymetry and SfM Photogrammetry

The USS Emmons, a 106m US Navy Gleaves‐class destroyer minesweeper that sank in 40m of water off Okinawa Island, Japan after kamikaze attack in 1945, is used as a case study for examining the history, multivocal significance, and heritage management of a World War II naval battle site. A baseline record of the site was made using an innovative method incorporating precise control points obtained from high‐resolution multibeam echosounding bathymetry to generate 3D models using structure‐from‐motion photogrammetry. The 3D models produced can be used for sharing information about this underwater cultural heritage and for future in situ monitoring of the archaeological remains.     

The $15 Wage Movement Moves South: Politics of Region in Labor Union Campaigns

The North American labor movement continues to wrestle with the challenges of organizing workers in the US South. This article explores the contradictory position of the South in the contemporary labor movement, using the circulation of the $15 minimum wage to ground the analysis. By problematizing the place of the South in US labor, this article contributes to efforts to complicate the geographic imaginaries of the South and to our understanding of the contemporary labor movement's expansionary projects. Drawing on qualitative interviews and participant observation in Greensboro and Durham, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia, I trace the abstract circulation of organizational resources, strategies, and tactics of the $15 wage movement into, throughout, and back out of the South.     

The Importance of Status: The US–ROK Alliance Cohesion and the First Korean Nuclear Crisis, 1993–94

The US–ROK alliance during the First Korean Nuclear Crisis provides the most likely case of high alliance cohesion. Curiously, however, instead of dancing to the American tune in their joint management of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) threat, the Republic of Korea (ROK) caused frequent policy collisions – supporting the US–DPRK negotiations at one point and opposing it at another – at the risk of jeopardizing its physical security. The main finding here is that the variations in the South Korean behavior were a function of their experience of status inconsistency. In particular, the ROK became compliant with the US–DPRK talks when it believed that its desired status marker of taking the leadership role in crisis management was within reach, and unyielding otherwise. These fluctuations ended up not only eroding the US–ROK alliance cohesion but also inhibiting a successful resolution of the crisis. All this bears directly on the fundamental question of whether international politics is to be understood in essentially realist terms.     

‘What They Need is Management’: American NGOs,the Second Seven Year Plan and Economic Development in Iran, 1954–1963

Following the August 1953 coup d'etat, the government of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in Iran embarked upon an economic development program. While financial backing for the program came from the Anglo-American oil companies running Iran's oil industry, Iran's semi-independent Plan Organization and its administrator Abu'l-?asan Ebtehāj turned to American non-governmental organizations for administrative expertise, in order to turn Iran's oil power into economic improvements and a basis for the regime's lasting stability. The work of these organizations was hampered by internal disagreements and divisions, discontent among Iranians over the foreign infiltration of their development program, and skepticism from the US government regarding the capacity of Iran to accomplish an integrated development effort on such a scale. Such feelings were influenced by cultural prejudices and perceptions of Iranians as corrupt and incompetent. Ultimately American non-government organizations were pushed out by the shah who seized control over Iran's development during the 1963 White Revolution. The course of Iran's Second Seven Year Plan illustrate how Western technical and administrative ‘know-how’ were tied to the efforts harnessing new oil wealth, and how the relationship between American and Iranian developmentalists was undone by politics, prejudice and opposing view of how progress could come from petroleum.     

Final Strategy: The Post-War Grand Strategic Designs of Henry L. Stimson

Few men arguably shaped the trajectory of American foreign policy in the twentieth century as durably and profoundly as Henry L. Stimson. After all, Stimson was not only directly involved in many consequential decisions dealing with highly important matters of war and peace, but was also a major influence in the United States’ more proactive involvement in extra-territorial affairs. For Stimson, it was simply wishful thinking to presume that the United States could forever disengage itself from far-reaching occurrences in other parts of the globe. Accordingly, he thought it just as critical to anticipate international problems as it was to successfully resolve them afterwards, with the result that he became an ardent and early proponent of a much more sophisticated global strategy after the Second World War. In that context, however, most historians have primarily focused on Stimson's role in the development and use of the atomic bomb against Imperial Japan, though arguably less on his more sweeping grand strategic designs. Consequently, the present article will attempt to offer a more comprehensive analysis of Stimson's grand strategic designs, particularly as they related to his vision and reflections on the necessary ingredients of a more peaceful, stable and secure interstate system.     

Anti-Ballistic Missiles and the Liberal–Conservative Internationalist Divide in Cold War Canada, 1966–1970

Shortly following Canada's controversial adoption of nuclear weapon roles in NORAD and NATO in 1963, the focus of nuclear debates shifted to the potential impact on Canadian and international security of the construction of US anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems. This article expands the focus of scholarship on the ABM issue from the political and policy-making settings to include members of the attentive elite and the news media, and finds these groups deeply divided between liberal and conservative internationalists. On the one hand, supporters of liberal internationalism believed that AMB systems would destabilise the international security environment and ultimately increase the likelihood of nuclear war. Conservative internationalists took the opposite position, arguing that the systems represented a necessary addition to the Western nuclear deterrent and would make nuclear war less likely. In other words, the ABM debate exposed deep divisions in Canadian society between those who preferred diplomatic and multilateral versus military means of achieving middle power goals in the international system.     

‘The Most Developed of the Underdeveloped Nations’. US Foreign Policy and Student Unrest in 1960s Spain

Throughout the 1960s, Spanish students staged a strong opposition against the dictatorship of General Franco. Also during this decade, the U.S. Foreign Service in Spain began to pay great attention to these students for two key reasons. On the one hand, student protests posed a threat to US defensive interests in a country with a high strategic value during the Cold War in southern Europe. However, on the other hand, campus agitation could lead to positive effects for the United States if students’ expectations of social change were channeled toward national development in a context of order and political stability. So, how could student activism and idealism be directed toward a controlled modernization of Spain? This article attempts to answer this question by studying American programs aimed at disseminating the principles of modernization theory in Spanish universities as an instrument to (1) influence students’ political and intellectual socialization and to immunize them against radical ideologies and (2) channel students’ aspirations towards constructive and responsible reform of their country's socioeconomic structures.     

建国初期"联苏抗美"国防战略思路论析

建国初期"联苏抗美"的国防战略是"一边倒"外交战略的延伸,但不能将两者混淆。"一边倒"外交战略着眼点在于社会制度的一致和意识形态的价值取向,"联苏抗美"的国防战略着眼于国家安全和国防巩固,它的提出既有历史经验的因素,更取决于新中国国家安全环境;它经受了历史的检验,证明是一个符合当时新中国国家安全利益的正确的决策,应给予充分的肯定。