The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Author: Steven Bryan
Publsiher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2010-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780231526333

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By the end of the nineteenth century, the world was ready to adopt the gold standard out of concerns of national power, prestige, and anti-English competition. Yet although the gold standard allowed countries to enact a virtual single world currency, the years before World War I were not a time of unfettered liberal economics and one-world, one-market harmony. Outside of Europe, the gold standard became a tool for nationalists and protectionists primarily interested in growing domestic industry and imperial expansion. This overlooked trend, provocatively reassessed in Steven Bryan's well-documented history, contradicts our conception of the gold standard as a British-based system infused with English ideas, interests, and institutions. In countries like Japan and Argentina, where nationalist concerns focused on infant-industry protection and the growth of military power, the gold standard enabled the expansion of trade and the goals of the age: industry and empire. Bryan argues that these countries looked less to Britain and more to North America and the rest of Europe for ideological models. Not only does this history challenge our idealistic notions of the prewar period, but it also reorients our understanding of the history that followed. Policymakers of the 1920s latched onto the idea that global prosperity before World War I was the result of a system dominated by English liberalism. Their attempt to reproduce this triumph helped bring about the global downturn, the Great Depression, and the collapse of the interwar world.

The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Author: W. E. B. Du Bois
Publsiher: Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780823254569

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Early essays from the sociologist, displaying the beginnings of his views on politics, society, and Black Americans’ status in the United States. This volume assembles essential essays?some published only posthumously, others obscure, another only recently translated?by W. E. B. Du Bois from 1894 to early 1906. They show the first formulations of some of his most famous ideas, namely, “the veil,” “double-consciousness,” and the “problem of the color line.” Moreover, the deep historical sense of the formation of the modern world that informs Du Bois’s thought and gave rise to his understanding of “the problem of the color line” is on display here. Indeed, the essays constitute an essential companion to Du Bois’s 1903 masterpiece The Souls of Black Folk. The collection is based on two editorial principles: presenting the essays in their entirety and in strict chronological order. Copious annotation affords both student and mature scholar an unprecedented grasp of the range and depth of Du Bois’s everyday intellectual and scholarly reference. These essays commence at the moment of Du Bois’s return to the United States from two years of graduate-level study in Europe at the University of Berlin. At their center is the moment of Du Bois’s first full, self-reflexive formulation of a sense of vocation: as a student and scholar in the pursuit of the human sciences (in their still-nascent disciplinary organization?that is, the institutionalization of a generalized “sociology” or general “ethnology”), as they could be brought to bear on the study of the situation of the so-called Negro question in the United States in all of its multiply refracting dimensions. They close with Du Bois’s realization that the commitments orienting his work and intellectual practice demanded that he move beyond the institutional frames for the practice of the human sciences. The ideas developed in these early essays remained the fundamental matrix for the ongoing development of Du Bois’s thought. The essays gathered here will therefore serve as the essential reference for those seeking to understand the most profound registers of this major American thinker. “A seminal contribution to the history of modern thought. Compiled and edited by the world’s preeminent scholar of early Du Boisian thought, these texts represent his most generative period, when Du Bois engaged every discipline, helped construct modern social science, employed critical inquiry as a weapon of antiracism and political liberation, and always set his sites on the entire world. We know this not by the essays alone, but by Nahum Dimitri Chandler’s brilliant, original, and quite riveting introduction. If you are coming to Du Bois for the first time of the 500th time, this book is a must-read.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

American Empire at the Turn at the Twentieth Century

American Empire at the Turn at the Twentieth Century
Author: Kristin L. Hoganson
Publsiher: Macmillan Higher Education
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2017-02-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781319065065

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This volume introduces students to primary documents on American empire from a pivotal era of U.S. expansion beyond the North American continent in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Along with covering a wide range of places-including Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines--the documents touch on a wide range of themes, among them race, citizenship, civilization, democracy, cross-cultural encounter, and self-determination. Kristin Hoganson's introduction provides the context essential to understanding this period and the ways in which the echoes of 1898 still reverberate today, including in the reach of U.S. power and the composition of the American people. Through a collection of sources representing the voices of those living under imperial rule as well as those imposing and opposing it, students can consider the American imperial endeavors. Document headnotes, maps, a Chronology of American Empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific, Questions for Consideration, and a Selected Bibliography provide pedagogical support.

Staging the World

Staging the World
Author: Rebecca E. Karl
Publsiher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2002-04-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822328674

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DIVAn historical analysis of how the Chinese constructed their understandings of their place in the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries./div

I Speak of the City

I Speak of the City
Author: Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo
Publsiher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2015-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226792736

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In this dazzling multidisciplinary tour of Mexico City, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo focuses on the period 1880 to 1940, the decisive decades that shaped the city into what it is today. Through a kaleidoscope of expository forms, I Speak of the City connects the realms of literature, architecture, music, popular language, art, and public health to investigate the city in a variety of contexts: as a living history textbook, as an expression of the state, as a modernist capital, as a laboratory, and as language. Tenorio’s formal imagination allows the reader to revel in the free-flowing richness of his narratives, opening startling new vistas onto the urban experience. From art to city planning, from epidemiology to poetry, this book challenges the conventional wisdom about both Mexico City and the turn-of-the-century world to which it belonged. And by engaging directly with the rise of modernism and the cultural experiences of such personalities as Hart Crane, Mina Loy, and Diego Rivera, I Speak of the City will find an enthusiastic audience across the disciplines.

The Poison Squad

The Poison Squad
Author: Deborah Blum
Publsiher: Penguin
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780525560289

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A New York Times Notable Book The inspiration for PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film The Poison Squad. From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. "Milk" might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by "embalmed milk" every year. Citizens--activists, journalists, scientists, and women's groups--began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, "The Poison Squad." Over the next thirty years, a titanic struggle took place, with the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for food safety and consumer protection. Together with a gallant cast, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction revealed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then the most famous cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, one of the few food producers who actively advocated for pure food, Dr. Wiley changed history. When the landmark 1906 Food and Drug Act was finally passed, it was known across the land, as "Dr. Wiley's Law." Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying "David and Goliath" tale with righteous verve and style, driving home the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption with a bracing clarity, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political challenges we face today.

Ladies of Labor Girls of Adventure

Ladies of Labor  Girls of Adventure
Author: Nan Enstad
Publsiher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 1999
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0231111037

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, labor leaders in women's unions routinely chastised their members for their ceaseless pursuit of fashion, avid reading of dime novels, and "affected" ways, including aristocratic airs and accents. Indeed, working women in America were eagerly participating in the burgeoning consumer culture available to them. While the leading activists, organizers, and radicals feared that consumerist tendencies made working women seem frivolous and dissuaded them from political action, these women, in fact, went on strike in very large numbers during the period, proving themselves to be politically active, astute, and effective. In Ladies of Labor, Girls of Adventure, historian Nan Enstad explores the complex relationship between consumer culture and political activism for late nineteenth- and twentieth-century working women. While consumerism did not make women into radicals, it helped shape their culture and their identities as both workers and political actors. Examining material ranging from early dime novels about ordinary women who inherit wealth or marry millionaires, to inexpensive, ready-to-wear clothing that allowed them to both deny and resist mistreatment in the workplace, Enstad analyzes how working women wove popular narratives and fashions into their developing sense of themselves as "ladies." She then provides a detailed examination of how this notion of "ladyhood" affected the great New York shirtwaist strike of 1909-1910. From the women's grievances, to the walkout of over 20,000 workers, to their style of picketing, Enstad shows how consumer culture was a central theme in this key event of labor strife. Finally, Enstad turns to the motion picture genre of female adventure serials, popular after 1912, which imbued "ladyhood" with heroines' strength, independence, and daring.

Towards the Sun

Towards the Sun
Author: Kenneth McConkey
Publsiher: Unknown
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2021-08-15
Genre: Electronic Book
ISBN: 1913645088

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While there have been monographs on British artist-travellers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, there has been no equivalent survey of what the writer, Henry Blackburn, described as ?artistic travel? a hundred years later. By 1900, the ?Grand Tourist? became a ?globe-trotter? equipped with a camera, and despite the development of ?knapsack photography?, visual recording by the old media of oil and watercolour on-the-spot sketching remained ever-popular.00Kenneth McConkey?s new book explores the complex reasons for this in a series of chapters that take the reader from southern Europe to north Africa, the Middle East, India and Japan revealing many artist-travellers whose lives and works are scarcely remembered today. He alerts us to a generation of painters, trained in academies and artists? colonies in Europe that acted as crèches for those would go on to explore life and landscape further afield. The seeds of wanderlust were sown in student years in places where tuition was conducted in French or German, and models were often 0Spanish, Italian, or North African. At first the countries of western Europe were explored 0afresh and cities like Tangier became artists? haunts. Training that prioritized plein air naturalism led to the common belief that a well-schooled young painter should be capable of working anywhere, and in any circumstances.00This richly illustrated book explores key sites visited by artist-travellers and investigates artists including Frank Brangwyn, Mary Cameron, Alfred East, John Lavery, Arthur Melville, Mortimer Menpes, as well as other under-researched British artists. Drawing the strands together, it redefines the picturesque, by considering issues of visualization and verisimilitude, dissemination and aesthetic value.