Recent ucla_history_historyjournal items

Navigating the Green Book: Review of New York Public Library’s Digital Mapping Project

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Navigating the Green Book: Review of New York Public Library’s Digital Mapping Project

“For a More Perfect Communist Revolution”: The Rise of the SKWP and the Twilight of “Unitary Socialism”

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I will trace the early history of the Southern Korean Workers' Party and examine how the rise of the SKWP ensured the coming of a twilight for "Unitary Socialism" and led to the death of any possibility for non-ideological unification prior to the outbreak of the Korean War. I will show that the two events under examination were simultaneously linked with each other that the former not only determinied the latter but also ensured a synonymous relationship between the Southern Left and the party, thereby laying the cornerstone for Communist supremacy in southern Korea. This would serve as the groundwork for the Left-Right clash in southern Korea that would last from 1946-1948 and inspire north Korea to make the ultimate decision to launch war on June 25, 1950.

A Collection of Project Reviews in the New Frontier of Historical Research and Expression

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A Collection of Project Reviews in the New Frontier of Historical Research and Expression

Narrativizing the Self: Niccolò Machiavelli’s use of Cesare Borgia in The Prince

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Niccolò Machiavelli is best rememebered today for penning the political treatise The Prince, a version of which was originally distributed in 1513. This text is influential in part because it is one of the earliest sources discussing Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. Machiavelli observed Borgia during his military campaigns in the Italian Romagna, and used him in his text as one of the models of how a prince should behave. Beyond this, however, Machiavelli also made specific authorial choices in order to construct a narrative of Borgia in the style of a Greek tragedy. Reorienting ourselves to this fictionalization of Borgia sheds light on the parallels Machiavelli saw between their respective tribulations and his own ultimate vindication.

Revealing the Relationships of the Jazz Community: Review of Linked Jazz

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Revealing the Relationships of the Jazz Community: Review of Linked Jazz

Christians and Pagans in Roman Nea Paphos: Contextualizing the ‘House of Aion’ Mosaic

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Since its chance discovery in 1983 at the site of ancient Nea Paphos, the proper interpretation of the “House of Aion” mosaic, a 4th-century floor pavement located in the triclinium of a wealthy Roman villa, has confounded scholars. While ostensibly depicting a simple assortment of traditional scenes from Greco-Roman mythology, several scholars have claimed to see in the layout of work’s pagan motifs a veiled anti-Christian polemical message. Although investigation of the mosaic has heretofore probed exhaustively the work’s own symbolic imagery, little attention has been paid to how the tumultuous religious history of Cyprus might illuminate its meaning. This paper seeks to remedy that lack of contextualization by reconstructing the religious atmosphere of 4th-century Nea Paphos through a range of historical, archaeological, and artistic evidence, with an eye toward how such evidence might be made to support the “Christian” interpretation of the mosaic. I conclude that,...

The Joy of the Find: A Review of Form and Landscape

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The Joy of the Find: A Review of Form and Landscape

Letter from the Editor

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Letter from the Editor

Front Matter

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Front Matter

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Front Matter

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Front Matter

Letter from the Editor

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Letter from the Editor

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

Sun, 15 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review

The Complex Depiction of Nicias in Thucydides

Tue, 12 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The main source of information about the Peloponnesian War, which took place between Athens and Sparta at the end of the fifth century BCE, is an account written by the historian and Athenian general Thucydides. Unfortunately, it is problematic to try to recover the historical figures who participated in this war from Thucydides’ work. Oftentimes, he was not present for speeches that he provides and his biases are frequently evident. It is, however, possible to study historical figures as Thucydides depicts them, through both his narrative and the speeches he attributes to these figures. This paper examines Thucydides’ depiction of the Athenian general Nicias, who unwillingly led a failed expedition to Sicily during the Peloponnesian War. An analysis of both Nicias’ speeches and his actions in Thucydides’ narrative shows a complex depiction. Nicias has many faults and only some of his predictions to the people of Athens come true. Ultimately, he is unsuccessful as a...

Controlling the California Gold Steamers: The Panama Route in the United States Civil War

Fri, 26 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The United States Civil War was not fought merely on the more famous battlefields of Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Bull Run, and Chickamauga. While armies of hundreds of thousands battled on land, a secret campaign was being waged for control of the financial backing of the United States. Gold transshipped along the Panama route, from San Francisco to Panama to New York, sustained the Union war effort for four years. With a fleet of vessels operating along this route, each capable of transporting over $1 million in bullion, Southern leadership quickly took interest in the Panama route. Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen Mallory was keen to intercept these gold shipments, intending to use the captured bullion to both finance Confederate military expenses while simultaneously adding international legitimacy in Europe. What developed was a four-year campaign involving both warships at sea and diplomats across the globe. New concepts such as commerce raiding and small teams of special...

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

No Abstract

[Front Matter]

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

[No abstract]

Birthing Cases: Narrative and Medical Knowledge in Francois Mauriceau's Observations (1694)

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

No Abstract

Voices from the Field: A Collection of Personal Experiences and Advice to Graduate Students

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Contributors: Ghislaine Lydon, PhD., Karen Wilson, PhD., Janira Teague, PhD., and PhD Candidates, Myles Chykerda, MaryAnn Kontonicolas, Iris Clever, Preston McBride, Toulouse Roy, and Deborah Sneed

Letter from the Editor

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

No Abstract

Interview with Teofilo Ruiz

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

No Abstract

Finding Buddha in the Barrio: Reflections on the Unanticipated Consequences of Archival Research

Thu, 12 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

No Abstract

Crescent City Girls: The Lives of Young Black Women in Segregated New Orleans

Sun, 1 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Book Review

Interethnic Mayan and Afro-descendent Relations through War, Trade, and Slavery during the Mayan Caste Wars, 1848-1901

Sun, 1 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The broader purpose of this paper is to contribute to an awareness of the cultural and social role of African descent peoples in the history of late colonial and nineteenth century Mexico. I specifically focus on the ethnic relations between African descent peoples and Mayans in communities of the Yucatán peninsula during the 1847 to 1901 guerras de casta or Caste Wars. This period offers unique insights to interethnic relations in a region and time where Indigenous peoples maintained autonomy from western powers, which influenced the parameters of the dynamic interactions between African descent and Native American peoples. I utilize quantitative and qualitative sources such as census data, court documents, newspaper articles, and ethnographic interviews that depict the social, political, and cultural context of the Yucatán peninsula. This essay reveals that Mayan and Afro-descendent trends originating in the colonial era continued into the nineteenth and early twentieth...

San Francisco, 1906: The Law and Citizenship in Disaster

Sun, 1 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Using the city of San Francisco and the earthquake and fire of 1906 as a case study, this paper examines the use of violence to impose public order, while seeking to show that disaster can affect the laws of a community. In San Francisco, the belief that martial law was in effect led to a power shift. The confusion created a unique situation in which city leaders contradicted the very law they were seeking to enforce, and obliterated the rights of citizens in the name of protection and public order.

In the scholarship of the 1906 disaster, most works that consider the military involvement in disaster tend to downplay the events, which so many memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and newspaper reports described from that year. This paper uses those primary sources to show how Mayor Schmitz and the military leaders directly affected the scale of the urban disaster that followed the earthquake by essentially seizing power through the military. The mayor’s...

Front Matter

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

[no abstract]

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

[no abstract]

Letter from the Editor

Wed, 25 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

A review of this year's publication from the editor.

The Arthurian Legend: A Vehicle for Symbolic Appropriation of the Insular Space

Thu, 1 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Around the twelfth century there was a change in the English concept of their territory, which explains where the legal formulation of England and Britain's inalienability—at the turn of the thirteenth century—came from. The shift of the territorial conceptualization was due to the structural changes of the proto-state during Henry I's reign, the transformation of social identity, from being ethnic-based to territorially-politically-based, and the construction of a proto-national historic corpus that, among others, William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon elaborated. But the key element was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, especially King Arthur’s story. He translated the Arthurian Myth from a mythological Breton frame in order to introduce it into the Catholic world of Medieval England. Within this pagan context, the island was thought as a sacred being and because of this, man had no right to modify it, except for those whose right...

Book Review: Yvonne Seale, Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne

Thu, 1 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Review of Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne. By Sara McDougall. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Pp. 216. $55, hardback.

Book Review: Rebecca M. Kluchin, Fit to Be Tied: Sterilization and Reproductive Rights in America: 1950-1980.

Thu, 1 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Kluchin’s Fit to Be Tied explores the neo-eugenic debate about sterilization in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Using sources from the popular media and court cases, she sets up a conflict between women deemed reproductively fit and unfit. Moreover, throughout this work she ably interweaves constructions of race, gender, and class into the neo-eugenic sterilization debate about fit and unfit women.

Half the Household Was African: Recovering the Histories of Two African Slaves in Iran

Thu, 1 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Little scholarly research has been undertaken on the history of African slavery in Iran in the nineteenth century. What has been written focuses, almost by necessity, on statistical information or on the lives of the wealthy and powerful. Haji Mubarak and Fezzeh Khanum offer a rare opportunity for historians of Iran to reconstruct the biographies of two ordinary slaves. Because they were the slaves of the Shirazi merchant, Mirza ‘Ali-Muhammad, the founder of Babism, surviving Babi and Baha’i chronicles (and oral traditions) include them in their pious histories and record at least part of their lives. At the same time, these histories erase these persons by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge any significance in their presence.

This paper will demonstrate that the recovery of the history of slavery in nineteenth-century Iran, even at the level of individual biographies, is possible. It will also argue that the significance of large numbers of African slaves in Iran...

Race and Racism: British Responses to Civilian Prison Camps in the Boer War and the Kenya Emergency

Thu, 1 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

During both the Boer War (1899-1902) and the Kenya Emergency (1952-1960), British authorities responded to nationalist movements by adopting a policy of total war that included imprisonment of suspected conspirators and civilians alike in overcrowded detention camps with inadequate facilities and high mortality rates. During both conflicts, women activists – Emily Hobhouse in 1901 and Barbara Castle in 1955 – spearheaded campaigns, demanding official, independent inquiries into camp conditions and treatment of detainees. Despite the similarities, the British authorities’ reactions to the two campaigns differed significantly. While the conflicts’ differing lengths and the Empire’s decline influenced British policy on camp conditions in both cases, ultimately, the British authorities’ willingness to address atrocities occurring in civilian prison camps during the Boer War, yet hesitance to do so in Kenya, was determined largely by the race of the detainees.

Letter from the Editors

Sun, 9 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Grace Ballor and Susan Rosenfeld

Front Matter

Tue, 21 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

FRONT MATTER

Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America by Kathleen Donegan

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Book review of Kathleen Donegan's Seasons: of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America (UPENN, 2014).

‘Father-and-Son’ or Communist ‘Brothers’? The Significance of ‘Socialist Solidarity’ in the Sino-Soviet Split

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The split between Communism’s most powerful exponents, the USSR and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), shocked socialists and non-socialists alike when it became public in the early 1960s. Enjoying vastly greater access to relevant documents, many historians today lend credence to a domestic politics interpretation of the split, with strong emphasis upon the role of ideology in shaping Soviet and Chinese decision making. This ideology-informed approach, however, should extend beyond domestic politics to encompass alliance relations as well. Surprisingly little attention has been dedicated to the differing ways in which Beijing understood its alliance relationship, as a mediating variable between the domestic and international realms. This paper examines how Chinese perceptions of the alliance shifted over time, with particular emphasis on the period between 1960 and 1962, an interregnum that is not particularly well explained in the existing literature. Throughout the life...

Abolishing Wage Slavery in the Gilded Age: The American Labor Movement’s Memory of the Civil War

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

John Swinton’s Paper, a labor newspaper published between 1883 and 1887, subscribed neither to the reconciliationist nor to the emancipationist memory of the Civil War. John Swinton and his circle of reformers emphasized the issue of slavery, but they imbued it with new meaning related to labor’s circumstances in the Gilded Age. Referencing the Civil War helped labor reformers represent themselves as the true champions of the republic.

From Test Plots to Large Lots: The Gardens of San Marino, California as Natural and Social Laboratories

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

In 1905, the Southern California transportation, electric power, and real estate magnate Henry E. Huntington hired German immigrant William Hertrich as head gardener for his San Marino Ranch. Huntington told Hertrich that he would have the extensive ranch lands “to play with” for as long as he lived, and Hertrich continued to experiment there until his death in 1966. Establishing numerous test plots on the property, he pushed the limits of Huntington’s boosterish claim that almost anything could grow in Southern California. As it turned out, more than a few things could not. Interestingly, Hertrich’s published writings reveal that there was also a social dimension to his experimentation. He tested notions of race and class then popular among the elites of greater Los Angeles. In so doing, he tried to create a structure for his workforce that corresponded in peculiar ways with the composition and layout of his gardens. His management of the ranch employees as well as his landscaping...

Birth of the Cold War

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Much of the literature about the Cold War victimizes one side and puts most of the blame for the emergence of tensions on the other; thus, it is no wonder that the general public remains misinformed about the whole affair. Hence, this paper presents an analysis of the events that were crucial to the rise of the Cold War, including the question of control over Poland, the British intervention in Greece, and the incidents that increased tensions between the Allies. It examines why missteps from both sides generated further missteps and, finally, a dangerous confrontation. Finally, this paper concludes with an analysis of the combined impact of these factors. The timeframe for these events is the period from the end of World War II in 1944 to 1945 until the Berlin Blockade, which began on 24 June 1948 (and ended on 12 May 1949). The latter is commonly acknowledged as the “real” manifestation of the Cold War but will not be described in detail here, as it is not my intention to...

Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past. By Peter Boag

Wed, 1 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past. By Peter Boag. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2011. Pp. xii+257, $27.95 paperback.

Front Matter

Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Front Matter for UCLA Historical Journal Volume 24

Rosenfeld Letter from the Editor

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This volume of the UCLA Historical Journal explores the relationship between “the history of politics and the politics of history.” The editors chose this issue’s five articles from papers presented at the 2012 History Graduate Student Association Conference, entitled “History Plus.” These articles illustrate UCLA Historical Journal’s emphasis on historical scholarship that embraces an interdisciplinary approach. I wish to thank the authors for submitting their articles to the Journal for discussion, and the editors for their contributions during the publication process. The current volume of the UCLA Historical Journal is possible because of the continued commitment and support of the UCLA History Department’s faculty and staff, including our Department Chair, David N. Myers, and our Graduate Advisors, Eboni Shaw and Hadley Porter. Also, I would like to thank our History Graduate Student Association Presidents, Kristen Hillaire Glasgow and...

Tropics of Savagery Book Review

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This is a book review of Robert Tierney's Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame.

Parable on Ice: Hockey, Capitalism and American Decadence at the Lake Placid Olympics

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Two misconceptions fed the seemingly instantaneous mythologizing of the Miracle on Ice. First, that the win came “out of nowhere.” Second, that the players were amateurs. These aspects of the Miracle story developed out of battles endemic to the larger sporting world. Juxtaposed against professional athletes, the image of the “boys” was bolstered by the idea that they were not corrupted by monetary incentive, that they did not rely on the kindness of boosters, and that they were self-made. The story of the Miracle, in the biblical sense, relied on this construct. Even the secular definition of “miracle” demanded that the impetus for the event did not measure up to the output. Thus, a few details were consistently missed.

Tezcan, Baki. Second Empire Book Review

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Book review of Baki Tezcan's Second Empire, including its theoretical and historiographical contextualization.

The Arch of a Sephardic-Mizrahi Ethnic Autonomy in Palestine, 1926 to 1929

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the efforts of Sephardic-Mizrahi leadership to achieve political and cultural independence in the Yishuv between 1926 and 1929. In tracing their attempts for intra-Jewish ethnic autonomy, I trace the formation of separate Sephardic-Mizrahi settlements and communities, including the inception of a Sephardic bank and establishment of an international Federation with its own economic resources. I examine how and why Sephardic-Mizrahi leaders proposed the idea of a separate “Sephardic-Mizrahi autonomy,” throwing light on Sephardic-Mizrahi agency, chiefly as a result of a growing sense of discrimination within the Jewish community of Palestine. Additionally, I contend that Sephardic-Mizrahi political initiatives evolved in tandem with an internalization of a timeless sense of Sephardic-Mizrahi inferiority, sentiments that continued (and perhaps still continue) to be relevant the discourse about Sephardim and Mizrahim in contemporary Israel and the broader...

The Iranian Legacy in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution: Military Endurance and US Foreign Policy Priorities

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

In the latter half of the twentieth century, militaries have been a major source for change in the Middle East. In 1952, radical nationalist military officers staged the overthrow of the Egyptian monarchy and proclaimed a republic. A year later, the Iranian military, in collusion with the American CIA and the British MI-6, toppled Iran’s democratically-elected government. In the same decade, Iraqi military officers, following on the heels of their Egyptian counterparts, ousted the monarchy in Iraq and likewise established a republic. Militaries were indeed a force for radical change and often became the final arbiters of power. However, they also frequently served as stalwart defenders of the status quo. During the 14-month protest movement that evolved into the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the military tried desperately to fend off the protest movement, to the extent of establishing a military government two months before the revolution’s triumph and fighting until the...

Reproducing Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Slave women’s reproductive practices are central to understanding the gradual emancipation process in Brazil. In 1850, Brazil finally gave in to British political pressure and ended its trans-Atlantic slave trade. As a slave society reliant on the external reproduction of labor, Brazil now became a society beholden to the natural reproduction of its female slaves. In 1871, the Brazilian parliament passed the Law of the Free Womb, which freed the unborn children of all slave women. In 1885, the Sexagenarian Law freed all slaves over the age of 60. Finally, in 1888, full abolition occurred. Using court cases, medical journals, and legislative debate, this paper looks at the rhetoric surrounding slave women’s reproductive and maternal practices. I argue that initially, Brazilian elites saw women’s fertility control practices as resistance to their enslaved state. Yet legal debates allowed slave women theoretical access to upper-class white feminine virtues such as sexual honor and...

Triumph & Commemoration: Collective Imagination and the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Controversy

Tue, 1 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

This study reassesses the meaning of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ controversy of 2010 through the lens of urban sociology and collective imagination. It utilizes the imaginative fruits of civic forums, such as “Imagine NY” and “Listening to the City,” to determine New Yorkers’ collective vision for the rehabilitation of Ground Zero and Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11. Articulated as a clarion call for the manifestation of commemoration and triumph over terrorism in the New York cityscape, it is this concept of collective imagination that became the litmus test for revitalization efforts in the downtown district. Years later, the proposal of the Park51 Community Center—what the media dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque”—failed the test, igniting perhaps the most heated debate in the history of urban planning. This article argues that the Park51 Community Center, as it was represented in the press, was a violation of collective imagination regarding how the space—incorporating...

Henning, Joseph M. Outposts of Civilization: Race, Religion, and the Formative Years of American-Japanese Relations. New York: New York University Press, 2000. $50.00 (Hard). 249 pp. ISBN: 081473605X.