Author: Justyna Olko, John Sullivan, Jan Szeminski
Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past is a critical, annotated anthology of indigenous-authored texts, including the Nahua, Quechua, and Spanish originals, through which native peoples and Spaniards were able to convey their own perspectives on Spanish colonial order. It is the first volume to bring together native testimonies from two different areas of Spanish expansion in the Americas to examine comparatively these geographically and culturally distant realities of indigenous elites in the colonial period.
Author: Susan Scheckel
Americans' first attempts to forge a national identity coincided with the apparent need to define--and limit--the status and rights of Native Americans. During these early decades of the nineteenth century, the image of the Indian circulated throughout popular culture--in the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, plays about Pocahontas, Indian captivity narratives, Black Hawk's autobiography, and visitors' guides to the national capitol. In exploring such sources as well as the political and legal rhetoric of the time, Susan Scheckel argues that the Indian question was intertwined with the ways in which Americans viewed their nation's past and envisioned its destiny. She shows how the Indians provided a crucial site of reflection upon national identity. And yet the Indians, by being denied the natural rights upon which the constitutional principles of the United States rested, also challenged American convictions of moral ascendancy and national legitimacy.Scheckel investigates, for example, the Supreme Court's decision on Indian land rights and James Fenimore Cooper's popular frontier romance The Pioneers: both attempted to legitimate American claims to land once owned by Indians and to assuage guilt associated with the violence of conquest by incorporating the Indians in a version of the American political family. Alternatively, the widely performed Pocahontas plays dealt with the necessity of excluding Indians politically, but also portrayed these original inhabitants as embodying the potential of the continent itself. Such examples illustrate a gap between principles and practice. It is from this gap, according to the author, that the nation emerged, not as a coherent idea or a realist narrative, but as an ongoing performance that continues to play out, without resolution, fundamental ambivalences of American national identity.
Author: James K. Voiss
Is there such a thing as Christian Forgiveness? Christians speak as though there is. But what would it be? How would it differ from forgiveness as a basic human enactment? And if there is a distinctive Christian forgiveness, what might it have to say to our world today? To answer these questions, the present work traverses three distinctive intellectual landscapescontinental philosophy, Anglo-American moral philosophy, and psychologyto establish a phenomenology of forgiving before turning to contemporary Christian literature. The multilayered dialogue that ensues challenges the assumptions of contemporary approachessecular and Christianand invites the reader to rethink the meaning of Christian forgiveness.
The United States registered phenomenal economic growth between the establishment of the new republic and the end of the Civil War Ross Thomsons fresh study accounts for the unprecedented technological innovations that helped propel antebellum growth Thomson argues that the transition of the United States from an agrarian economy in 1790 to an industrial leader in 1865 relied fundamentally on the spread of technological knowledge within and across industries Essential to this spread was a dense web of knowledgediffusing institutionsnew occupations and industries the patent office machine shops mechanics associations scientific societies public colleges and the civil engineering profession Together they composed an integrated innovation system that generated disseminated and employed new technical knowledge across everwidening ranges of the economy To trace technological change in fourteen major industries and the economy as a whole Thomson analyzes 14000 patents the records of two dozen machinery firms census data for 1800 companies and hundreds of business directories This exhaustive research leads to his interesting interpretation of technological diffusion and development Thomsons impressive study of the infrastructure that fueled and supported the young countrys economic and industrial successes will interest students of economic technological and business history
Author: Edited by Alf Hornborg and Jonathan D. Hill
A major contribution to Amazonian anthropology, and possibly a direction changer.J. Scott Raymond,University of Calgary A transdisciplinary collaboration among ethnologists, linguists, and archaeologists, Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia traces the emergence, expansion, and decline of cultural identities in indigenous Amazonia. Hornborg and Hill argue that the tendency to link language, culture, and biology--essentialist notions of ethnic identities--is a Eurocentric bias that has characterized largely inaccurate explanations of the distribution of ethnic groups and languages in Amazonia. The evidence, however, suggests a much more fluid relationship among geography, language use, ethnic identity, and genetics. In Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia, leading linguists, ethnographers, ethnohistorians, and archaeologists interpret their research from a unique nonessentialist perspective to form a more accurate picture of the ethnolinguistic diversity in this area. Revealing how ethnic identity construction is constantly in flux, contributors show how such processes can be traced through different ethnic markers such as pottery styles and languages. Scholars and students studying lowland South America will be especially interested, as will anthropologists intrigued by its cutting-edge, interdisciplinary approach.
Author: Edited by Douglas Moggach and Paul Leduc Browne
The revolutionary movements of 1848 viewed the political cataclysm of continental Europe as an explosion of liberty, a new age of freedom and equality. This collection focuses on the relationship between democratic and socialist currents in 1848, seeking to reassess the relevance of these currents to the present era of global economic liberalism.
Author: John T. Ellisor
Historians have traditionally viewed the Creek War of 1836 as a minor police action centered on rounding up the Creek Indians for removal to Indian Territory. Using extensive archival research, John T. Ellisor demonstrates that, in fact, the Second Creek War was neither brief nor small. Indeed, armed conflict continued long after peace was declared and the majority of Creeks had been sent west. Ellisors study also broadly illuminates southern society just prior to the Indian removals, a time when many blacks, whites, and Natives lived in close proximity in the Old Southwest. In the Creek country, also called New Alabama, these ethnic groups began to develop a pluralistic society. When the 1830s cotton boom placed a premium on Creek land, however, dispossession of the Natives became an economic priority. Dispossessed and impoverished, some Creeks rose in armed revolt both to resist removal west and to drive the oppressors from their ancient homeland. Yet the resulting Second Creek War, which raged over three states, was fueled not only by Native determination but also by economic competition and was intensified not least by the massive government-sponsored land grab that constituted Indian removal. Because these circumstances also created fissures throughout southern society, both whites and blacks found it in their best interests to help the Creek insurgents. This first book-length examination of the Second Creek War shows how interethnic collusion and conflict characterized southern society during the 1830s.
Author: Rocco J. Gennaro
A defense of a version of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness with special attention to such topics as concepts and animal consciousness.