I think I found patient zero or the missing link for Fonerite reconstruction historiography. James G. Blaine's memoir of his time as a Republican congressional rep for Maine and eventually a senator from 1861 to 1881. This memoir contains a large amount of political/
historical analysis of reconstruction and its shocking how much it resembles all the post 1960's/70's reconstruction literature in its extreme radical liberal political views and even loud virtue signaling about the downtrodden freedmen. Especially during the time of
reconstruction itself, historians like Claude Bowers were quick to point out, that most radical Republican politicians that loudly proclaimed themselves to be crusaders for the rights and dignity of the freedmen were usually just anti-southern and vindictive as when these
same reps were called out about the lack of rights and liberties for the blacks or racial minorities who existed in their own district or states, they would clam up and say "well, that's different". I will try and retweet it, but I did a pretty good suggested
readings list/historiography for reconstruction a while back - (its certainly my fav type of historiography as I find the historiography of reconstruction to be almost as interesting as the era/historical events itself) - which gets into alot of the older turn of the century
literature, that was critical of the radicalism, vindictiveness, furtherance of sectional strife as well as constitutional/legal and even race/human nature issues inherent with radical reconstruction. If you are looking for older histories of reconstruction that are critical
of it, look up Burgess, Dunning, Bowers, Rhodes, Garner, Simkins, and Coulter in relation to historical research on southern reconstruction. @Irkutyanin1 You might be interested in the first book I posted. I think I remember you being interested in older reconstruction literature
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Until a few days ago, I thought this book by Christopher Othen was the only academic work on international volunteers for nationalist side of the Spanish Civil War. It turns out there is at least one other one, as I found this book by Judith Keene entitled "Fighting for Franco".
I wasnt able to give it thorough read, but my impression is that Kenne's book is more driven by chacter studies and personal bios of these more eccentric right-wing types that fought on nationalist side; whereas Othens book seems to have more of a genral approach that doesn't
really drill down deep into the bios of any single one volunteer. Hes also good for discovering some more obscure dyanmics within the right, like the fact that Mosley and certain other more modernist/technocratic left-leaning fascist types
Heather Cox Richardson wrote an interesting book where she argued that part of the failure of reconstruction was the inability for some republicans, even radicals (many of which were laissez-faire libs) who steadfastly championed "free labor" ideology as cure to all the
problems of backwards south, to understand contradictions inherent in its application to black ex-slaves . The actual real world economic conditions of black sharecroppers were radically out of sync with Repub "free labor" "laissez faire" ideology.
When blacks seem to sour on or even rebel against these social/economic arrangements that just seem like a continuation of slavery in some sense, traditional "free labor" repubs lose interest in their cause (they are more concerned with the universal application of
Goody is less known, but this book is really important for understanding the leftist critique of "western civ" and "Eurocentrism" (I don't know if it was written before Said's book, but if it was, then Said ripped alot of his framing from Goody, because its identical
in certain areas). Basically "Theft of History" was a critique of "Eurocentric" history in that it looked at the claims of traditional European writers and historians in terms identifying the west as having originated or invented certain types of science or philosophy or even
certain concepts like "love", "romance, "chivalry", "honor", "liberty", etc. While it easy to pick apart some of the chauvinistic European writers from eighteenth century, they were sort of right in a number of areas and Goody's book is not particularly convincing in its .
I was reading Meyers book on the "final solution" and he brought up an interesting moment in early Nazi German relations with outside world, specifically international Jewish community. In response to the international Jewish boycott of German goods, Hitler and others arranged a
boycott of Jewish businesses domestically (I think internationally as well). At that moment Rabbi Stephen Wise organizes rallies across US and a meeting at Madison Square Garden to step up, not only boycotts, but international trade sanctions on Germany. Hitler personally
responded with a statement arguing that "Jewish Marxism" in USSR claimed millions of lives but our German "national revolution" has claimed hardly any lives and most Nazis's have not harmed any Jews. Goering organized a meeting of four representatives of different communities
Purchased this last night, have been looking for something like this for quite awhile. There was a French historian named de Rougemont that wrote a book like this with the same name. Tony Judt also has something similar and there other essays on the subject (and other books).
Padgen is just the editor, this is a collection of essays digging into to antiquity, middle ages, but primarily the last 300-400 years documenting different ways Europe as a single entity, political unit, civilization, or culture has been conceptualized. I know from Judt, Padgen,
and some of these other people you might be getting modern cosmopolitan EU propaganda. However, I am kind of obsessed with trying to understand why Europe develops in a decentralized manner and why it ultimately resisted the temptation in such a small geographical location
This is a great thread of, to my knowledge, one of the better single volume US economic histories. This issue of the development of "Sunbelt" and south's post-war economic and political modernization is an important body of literature that many probably aren't aware of.
A number of good books, but Schulman’s “From Cotton-Belt to Sunbelt” is the best. What initially spurred this was Roosevelt's insistence on “modernizing” the south, referring to it in 1938 as Americas “economic problem no.1”. The primary way the federal govt accomplished this
was by awarding disproportionate number of military contracts to southern states which spurred development of heavier industry as well as growth of white-collar jobs related to science, engineering, technology,etc.