Tag Archives: history

Quick Review: The Devil in the White City

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I’m not sure what took so long for me to read The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. I have had it on my shelf for years and it revolves around the 1893 Columbian exposition in Chicago, a topic that is greatly appealing to me. Here are some thoughts about this book that tells the story of both violence and urban history:

1. The setting of the Columbian Exposition is fascinating. The amount of planning and work that had to be carried out in order to transform Jackson Park, then a outlying and relatively unimproved area on the South Side of Chicago, was tremendous. There are certain moments in history that I wish I could have been a part of: attending this fair at its peak (late summer/early fall 1893) would have been fantastic.

2. I’m less certain that the mixing of these two stories, a murderer named Holmes plus the building and holding of this fair, was done well. Early on in the book, we know that Holmes is a murderer and the details trickle out throughout the rest of the text. This is a difficult task to accomplish: it is hard to be a murder story when we already know who did it. But Holmes’ particular story and end is still intriguing. I’m not sure exactly what the contrast between these two stories is supposed to be: the best of human accomplishment (the exposition) plus the darkest part of humanity (Holmes)? The murder illustrates the difficult settings in which the exposition had to be organized? Both events are meant to provide a portrayal of the City of Chicago, a rapidly changing and growing place at this time?

3. Daniel Burnham is a main character in this text as he moves from being a co-chairman of the exposition to the full director/czar. While we learn about his struggles in putting together the fair (and his triumph in having a successful fair), we don’t learn all that much about his architecture, planning, or what makes him tick. Burnham is a renowned figure in Chicago but I wish to have learned more about him.

4. There are a couple of interesting struggles in this book: between New York and Chicago and between the elites/professionals of Chicago and the working/lower classes. Regarding the cities, the book plays up the angle that this exposition was the opportunity for Chicago to show that it could compete with New York. In fact, New Yorkers did not think Chicago could pull it off. Chicago in this time was the upstart, the place with what seemed like unlimited potential. New York was seriously concerned about this and the growth of Chicago prompted New York a few years after this fair to annex more territory and develop its five boroughs system. What is lost in some of this is some of the big Chicago boosters in its early decades were Easterners themselves. In regard to social class, there is some mention here and there about labor struggles. But perhaps this could have been the other story instead of the murder plot line: as the elite of Chicago put together this marvelous fair to showcase their city, the city was roiling with an influx of laborers and labor unrest. The Haymarket event had taken place in 1886. And yet, this fair was intended to bring Chicago together in a way that had not occurred in previous decades. There is an interesting chapter toward the end about the aftermath of the exposition: the impression is that life went back to its bleak normalcy in the big city rather quickly.

5. Did this exposition really change America? I’m skeptical. The Ferris Wheel is an interesting invention, but ultimately a diversion. The buildings were impressive – but similar style and size can be found elsewhere. This exposition was certainly consequential for Chicago, cementing it is a world class city. The exposition also brought together an incredible variety of well-known people. But what is its lasting legacy?

On the whole, I enjoyed reading this book. The setting is interesting and the myriad of storylines is engaging. But it is hard to know what it all means. As a mix of history and story, this book is entertaining but lacks depth and significance.

A call to return to studying the American character

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A historian argues that we need more current research and writing about the American character:

Does America have a distinctive national character? Up until the 1960s, this was a question of great interest to historians. But then, according to historian David Kennedy, it dropped off the map, to be taken up only sporadically by sociologists and political scientists. Writing in the Boston Review, Kennedy argues that historians need to take the question back.

Kennedy is a Professor of History, Emeritus at Stanford, and as he sees it historians are in a unique position to write on the subject of the American character. Over the last half century, they’ve put together an extraordinarily diverse set of very specific American histories, bringing once-marginalized groups into historical focus; in doing this, they stepped away from sweeping questions, becoming “a guild of splitters, not joiners.” Now, Kennedy argues, it’s time to start drawing on “the large but disarticulated library of social history that has emerged in the last few decades.”..

Kennedy singles out for particular praise Claude Fischer’s Made in America: A Social History of American Culture and Character. Fischer is a sociologist at Berkeley, but a sociologist who takes a historical approach, focusing, Kennedy writes, on “processes … trends and developments and differences over time – all matters lying squarely within the historian’s province.”

Fischer’s conclusion (according to Kennedy) is that it’s defined by voluntarism is at the core of the American character. Voluntarism has two aspects. On the one hand, it means thinking of yourself as an individual equipped with a (voluntary) will – as someone who’s entitled to pursue your own happiness. On the other hand, it means recognizing that, in Fischer’s words, “individuals succeed through fellowship – not in egoistic isolation but in sustaining, voluntary communities.” It’s because of these two aspects of voluntarism that we have an affinity for both the exclusive and the inclusive – for gated communities as well as religious diversity, for casual manners as well as social climbing. This can’t be the final answer, of course – Kennedy hopes that it’s only the first salvo in an epic exchange of fire among historians.

This is an interesting argument that might lead to some fruitful discussion. I feel that there is some discussion of this among academics: Americans of recent decades are often said to be marked by individualism, consumerism, materialism, and greed. And in order to understand something like voluntarism (or other traits), we would need to compare these behaviors and beliefs to those of other nations with similar or different historical trajectories.

Speaking of voluntarism, this has some basis in one of the key texts regarding the American character. Though it is now quite dated (over 160 years old), Democracy in America by Alexis de Toqueville is frequently cited in both popular and academic discourse. de Toqueville suggested one way Americans were distinct was their propensity to form voluntary associations. (I also wonder if this is one of those key academic works that many cite or reference but few have read all the way through.)

Kennedy also is suggesting that we need more overarching research on America and its social patterns. This is not necessarily easy: academics who engage in this sort of sweeping work could be open to criticism from many sides.

And it is also interesting to note that Kennedy singles out the work of a sociologist as the sort of work that he would like to see done regarding the American character.

James Loewen still educating people about real cause of Civil War

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Sociologist James Loewen has written several good and accessible books about American history (one about textbooks, one about historical monuments). One of the main issues he confronts is about the true cause of the Civil War: slavery or something else (like states’ rights)? Loewen explains again why we can be sure slavery was the main issue:

“One hundred and fifty years ago Christmas Eve day, everyone knew why South Carolina was seceding because they said so — it’s a wonderful document,” said James Loewen, a sociologist and co-editor of The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader.

Four days after South Carolina seceded on Dec. 20, 1860, the state adopted a second document titled “Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” Loewen considers the record, central to his new collection, one of the five most important documents in the history of the country, launching as it did a seminal chapter in America’s ongoing struggle to define itself.

“So why does nobody ever read it?” he asked. “Everybody knew [secession was] about slavery. This document is all about slavery.”

Seems like a fairly cut and dry issue to me. This may become a more public issue as we near the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.

But historical events are often open to interpretation. In the same article, noted Civil War scholar James McPherson says, “Probably 90 percent, maybe 95 percent of serious historians of the Civil War would agree on the broad questions of what the war was about and what brought it about and what caused it.”

So how could we get to a point where most or all Americans would acknowledge slavery as the primary cause of the Civil War?

WikiLeak cables as historical documents

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How should the WikiLeaks cables be viewed as historical documents? One historian suggests caution:

In the short term, this is a potential gold mine for foreign-affairs scholarship. In the long term, however, what WikiLeaks wants to call “Cablegate” will very likely make life far more difficult for my profession.

For now, things certainly look very sweet. Timothy Garton Ash characterized the documents as “the historian’s dream.” Jon Western, a visiting professor of international relations at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, blogged that WikiLeaks may allow scholars to “leapfrog” the traditional process of declassification, which takes decades. While the first wave of news reports focused on the more titillating disclosures (see: Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Ukrainian nurse), the second wave has highlighted substantive and trenchant aspects of world politics and American foreign policy. The published memos reveal provocative Chinese perspectives on the future of the Korean peninsula, as well as American policy makers’ pessimistic perceptions of the Russian state.

Scholars will need to exercise care in putting the WikiLeaks documents in proper perspective. Some researchers suffer from “document fetishism,” the belief that if something appears in an official, classified document, then it must be true. Sophisticated observers are well aware, however, that these cables offer only a partial picture of foreign-policy decision-making. Remember, with Cablegate, WikiLeaks has published cables and memos only from the State Department. Last I checked, other bureaucracies—the National Security Council, the Defense Department—also shape U.S. foreign policy. The WikiLeaks cables are a source—they should not be the sole source for anything.

Seems like a reasonable argument to me. Much research, history included, includes collecting a variety of evidence from a variety of sources. Claiming that these cables represents THE view of the United States is naive. They do reveal something, particularly about how diplomatic cables and reports work, but not everything. How much one can generalize based on these cables is unclear.

As this article points out, how these cables have been portrayed in the media is interesting. Where are the historians and other scholars to put these cables in perspective?

World War I reparation payments from Germany to end soon

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From the dustbins of history, CNN reports that Germany will on Sunday (October 3) make its last reparations payment from World War I. Here is a brief history of the payments:

The initial tally in 1919, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel, was 96,000 tons of gold but was slashed by 40 to 60 percent (sources vary) a few years later. The debt was crippling, just as French Premier Georges Clemenceau intended.

Germany went bankrupt in the 1920s, Der Spiegel explained, and issued bonds between 1924 and 1930 to pay off the towering debt laid on it by the Allied powers in 1919’s Treaty of Versailles…

Germany discontinued reparations in 1931 because of the global financial crisis, and Hitler declined to resume them when he took the nation’s helm in 1933, Der Spiegel reported.

After reaching an accord in London in 1953, West Germany paid off the principal on its bonds but was allowed to wait until Germany unified to pay about 125 million euros ($171 million) in interest it accrued on its foreign debt between 1945 and 1952, the magazine said.

In 1990, Germany began paying off that interest in annual installments, the last of which will be distributed Sunday.

I had no idea that these payments were still being made. I don’t know the answer to this: are reparation payments between nations still a common method for helping to rectifying the wrongs of war?

It is also a reminder of the major consequences of World War I, a war that gets a lot less attention in the United States due to a smaller US role and a majority of the fighting taking place away from American shores.

How national sports broadcasts contribute to the collective understanding of their sports

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I’ve watched many sporting events in my lifetime. National broadcasts of the major four sports are somewhat different than local broadcasts: because they are for a wider audience and because they are more neutral, they emphasize broader plot lines. I believe these national broadcasters try to cast themselves as keepers of the collective understanding of their particular sports. There are three primary components to retelling and producing this collective memory: an emphasis on history, overcoming hardship, and continuity across networks.

The most obvious way this happens is through the historical overview. The common plot line: “this is not just a single game. This is another match-up in a long and engrossing history. You the viewer should pay more attention because you could be seeing history tonight.” There are often flashbacks to games or championships decades ago like Joe Namath guaranteeing a win in Super Bowl III. This history can be fun, particularly if considering how modern stars would fit in an older era or vice versa or reliving some emotional or breathtaking moments. Of course, these historical overviews and comparisons may have nothing to do with the current team but they imbue the current game with a sense of meaning. This can quickly turn into unnecessary sentimentalizing.

The emphasis is typically on how the teams involved have overcome hardship. These narratives like nothing better than the team that has risen from the pits of the league to be on top. Teams that have received this treatment in recent: the Tampa Bay Rays, the Chicago Blackhawks, the New Orleans Saints, the Boston Celtics. This return to the top is cast in heroic terms as players and coaches successfully battled all the odds. This heroism can be over the top and result in the sportscasters making hyperbolic claims about the power of sports. Returning to the New Orleans Saints: there is no doubt the team overcame difficulties but to suggest the team has been vital in helping to revive the city after Hurricane Katrina is a much more difficult argument to prove.

It is remarkable to see how consistent these messages can be across networks and broadcasters. It is like they have a common storyline vault that they all share and tweak a little bit in each broadcast. If you watch enough national broadcasts, you have heard all the main stories: how remarkable so and so is, how this franchise has survived or has had difficulty winning the big game, how great the hustle of the role player is. Part of the problem with this is it leads to blandness – who has new insights? Why not focus more on the game at hand? They also may be repeating hard to prove stories: is Mariano Rivera really key to the success of the Yankees (even as statistics suggest closers are not as valuable as other position players)

With these tactics, national broadcasts build a collective understanding of each sport. This understanding is difficult to reverse or steer in a new direction.

Current-day Muslims and 19th century Catholics following same path in America?

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A history professor at Northwestern College in Minnesota suggests the position of Muslims in America today may be similar to the position of Catholics in 19th century America.

Vested interests in the telling of history

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In a recent class, we were discussing an article that talked about a number of issues of doing research after an event has happened. One of the main concerns was the vested interests of the respondents. Particularly, if the respondent were socially near to the event or phenomenon, their retelling is filtered through their own personal interests.

A classic example of this came across the news wires today: some new information that sheds light on why the Titantic hit an iceberg and then sank so quickly. A brief part of the story:

The Titanic hit an iceberg in 1912 because of a basic steering error, and only sank as fast as it did because an official persuaded the captain to continue sailing, an author said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Louise Patten, a writer and granddaughter of Titanic second officer Charles Lightoller, said the truth about what happened nearly 100 years ago had been hidden for fear of tarnishing the reputation of her grandfather, who later became a war hero.

Lightoller, the most senior officer to have survived the disaster, covered up the error in two inquiries on both sides of the Atlantic because he was worried it would bankrupt the ill-fated liner’s owners and put his colleagues out of a job.

I’ll be curious to see how quickly this new information can (or cannot) be corroborated.