Gender and the Politics of History: Book Review

Scott’s book on gender points out the very fragile nature of “how we know what we know.” Scott points to language as the way in which people represent and organize life. Language creates a cosmology upon which people build their values, order their priorities and take action. Napoleon once said that, “a man will die for a bit of ribbon” (a medal), this because he had internalized the symbology of the ribbon. Thus if you change the language (terms of debate) you begin to change the system of values.

Why would you need to change the terms of debate? Scott suggests that history, as it had traditionally been written by men, is a fiction created through implicit processes of differentiation, marginalization, and exclusion. Power relationships determine how the story is told. As new power centers emerge in a society (class, race, gender, ethnicity) alternative views of history emerge. Scott shows the underlying power structure behind the writing of history and implicitly raises the question, “Who owns’ history?” In a homogenous society you have “one” history. In a heterogeneous society you have multiple histories.

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Cipher Book Reveals Location of Treasure

In the 1940s, Edward Rowe Snow of Marshfield, Massachusetts searched for the treasure of Captain James Turner, “The King of Calf Island”. He didn't have a treasure map, but by a stroke of extraordinary luck Snow came into possession of a 17th century book which proved to be the key to the treasure’s whereabouts. Upon examining the book he found that holes picked out certain letters which spelled out a message, “Gold is due east trees Strong Island Chatham Outer Bar.” When he searched the area, Snow discovered a small metal chest buried just above the high water mark. The chest contained 316 silver coins dating between 1799-1820.

Time Magazine Report of October 15, 1945:



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The Pirate Jean Lafitte

As communications and national maritime strength grew piracy withered. Still, as late as 1813 three thousand acts of piracy were reported in the Gulf of Mexico. It was not until 1850 that piracy finally disappeared from the Western Hemisphere.

One of the greatest pirates of the Gulf was Jean Lafitte. Jean Lafitte was born in France in the year 1780. He was apprenticed as a blacksmith in his youth, a trade which he took up in New Orleans when he and two of his brothers moved to America. Within a few years the smithy had become a clearinghouse for pirate goods.

Lafitte decided to outfit his own ships to bring in more goods. He established a base in Barrataria Bay outside of New Orleans. Soon Lafitte's ships were cruising the coastline along the Gulf of Mexico. Holding a privateer's commission from the Republic of Cartagena, Lafitte preyed on Spanish commerce. The merchandise would then be smuggled into New Orleans. All attempts to dislodge the pirates failed. The governor of Louisiana offered the unheard of sum of $5,000 for the capture of Lafitte, dead or alive. Lafitte responded by offering a $50,000 reward for the head of the governor.

The War of 1812 placed Lafitte's pirates in a tenuous position. The Barratarian gulf was an important approach to New Orleans, and in 1814 the British offered Lafitte a huge cash settlement , along with a commission in the Royal Navy for his cooperation in seizing the city. Lafitte alerted American authorities and offered to aid the Americans if the United States would offer a full pardon. General Andrew Jackson accepted Lafitte's offer, and the pirates, in charge of the artillery, rendered distinguished service in the battle of New Orleans. Lafitte and his men received a full pardon, but Lafitte found that he could not endure the monotony of a respectable life. In 1817, Lafitte, with a thousand followers, established a new pirate stronghold on Galveston Island off the coast of Texas. Finally, after several more years of piratical activities an American naval force smashed Lafitte's base. Laffite fled to South America, finally returning to Europe, where he died in 1826.

Most of the treasures hidden by Lafitte are in Louisiana, although Florida and Texas claim their share as well.


Amazon.com link to Legends of Pirate Gold





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The Potomac Blockade (Civil War 1861-1865)

Even before Virginia became part of the Confederacy, Northern Virginians realized the opportunity they had to strangle Washington by erecting land batteries on prominent points along the Potomac River.

The decision to do so was finally reached in August 1861, while the Union army lay paralyzed after its defeat at Bull Run. In all, there were thirty seven heavy guns placed along the river. And five regiments were encamped along the river to protect the vital gun positions. The Confederates also had a captured steamer, the C.S.S City of Richmond, terrorizing smaller craft on the river.

The Confederate defenses effectively closed the Potomac River from August 1861 to March 1862. The speediest ships could be kept under constant fire for almost an hour. The Confederate blockade was so successful that a foreign correspondent reported that Washington was the only city in the United States which really was blockaded.

When Confederate forces shifted south in March 1862 to forestall a Union drive on Richmond, the batteries along the river were evacuated.






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Revolution and the Gilded Age

There was a mandate for change in the Gilded Age, but no agreement on what that change should be among the divergent groups that made up American society. (1) The upper industrial class engineered a wrenching economic transformation, accumulated staggering fortunes, and pursued notorious private lives, upholding a set of values at odds with the middle class, farmers, and workers. Even among themselves the upper industrial class disagreed how best to live their lives and secure their future. Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, among the most successful, were, with their austere lifestyles and doctrines of philanthropy, revolutionaries to other members of the upper industrial class; (2) the middle class was split between old style Radicals such as Albion Tourgee with notions of color blind meritocracy and more cautious middle class reformers such as the Progressives who sought to avoid societal turmoil and remake workers, immigrants and the industrial upper class in their own image; (3) the agrarian class simultaneously pursued the agrarian myth of the yeoman farmer, while living the life of the rural small businessman; (4) labor divided between those seeking a re-structuring of society and those primarily concerned with wages and working conditions; (5) sectional and racial issues unresolved from the time of the Civil War continued to divide; (6) women increasingly questioned prescribed gender roles.

No group could unilaterally impose its will. Instead, each group usually had to make alliances, some of them strange and uncomfortable, and win over at least some of the enemy in order to achieve its goals. For example, by the end of the century, many women suffragists argued that Anglo-Saxon women’s votes, would serve as bulwark against the influence of foreign and black votes. Then, as now, the very fragmentation of America precluded revolution or the emergence of a successful radical opposition.



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Domestic Propaganda in World War I

Amazon.com link to: Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen by Christopher Capozzola

In 1917 the United States government established the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to mobilize and sustain public opinion in favor of America’s war effort. Since that time, the historical treatment of American domestic propaganda efforts in World War I has evolved in three distinct phases, reflecting an evolution in thinking not only about the definition of propaganda but also about its impact on American life.

Christopher Capozzola, a scholar trained in the post-Cold War period, analyzes the past from a vantage point in which a “rights society”, diversity, and pluralism are the enshrined national norms. His book is compelling in that he shows us that such was not always the case.

The works of earlier historians bear out that American thought has undergone a significant change. In the 1940s, Lavine and Wechsler could write unblushingly “In the molding of public opinion, the miners and unskilled workers didn’t figure very decisively; ‘the Americans’ delivered the sermons and wrote the newspaper editorials.” Here was a top down driven society where historians wrote knowingly for a narrow and homogeneous elite. During the period 1950-1990s, we see the emergence of the voice of dissent, and increasing attention to previously excluded groups. The discourse revolves around the relationship of the individual to the state, with the balance shifting in the direction of historians giving the rights of individuals an increasing significance in relation to the needs of the state. The scholarship of this period clearly reflects the national security anxieties and domestic political battles of the Cold War.

Interestingly, with the end of the Cold War, and the emergence of historians trained after the fall of the Soviet Union, scholarship concerning World War I launches forth in a new direction, leading one to speculate if historians are inevitably prisoners of the political era in which they live. If so, then no one book can ever do justice to a subject, and the history book/web product of the future must incorporate the viewpoints of all prior historical schools/phases in order to provide the most skillful and useful analytical tool.


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The Longest Day: D-Day - June 6, 1944

THE NORMANDY CAMPAIGN

“Incentive is not ordinarily part of an infantryman’s life. For him there are no 25 or 50 missions to be completed for a ticket home. Instead the rifleman trudges into battle knowing that statistics are stacked against his survival. He fights without promise of either reward or relief. Behind every river, there’s another hill….and behind that hill, another river. After weeks or months in the line only a wound can offer him the comfort of safety, shelter, and a bed. Those who are left to fight, fight on, evading death but knowing that with each day of evasion they have exhausted one more chance for survival. Sooner or later, unless victory comes, the chase must end on the litter or in the grave”
General Omar N. Bradley, Commander US First Army.

June 6, 1944
On June 6, 1944 the Allies land in Normandy, on the north coast of France. Operation Overlord is underway.

August 25, 1944
Paris is liberated by the Allies. The Battle of Normandy costs the German army 450,000 men. Some 240,000 of these were killed or wounded. The Allies suffered 209,000 killed or wounded.




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