Department of History Faculty Bookshelf

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  Maritime Culture and Everyday Life in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Coastal Ghana: A Social History of Cape Coast

  Kwaku Nti, Georgia Southern University

  1-2-2024
  

  The communities along the coastline of Ghana boast a long and vibrant maritime culture. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the region experienced creeping British imperialism and incorporation into the British Gold Coast colony. Drawing on a wealth of Ghanian archival sources, historian Kwaku Nti shows how many aspects of traditional maritime daily life—customary ritual performances, fishing, and concepts of ownership, and land—served as a means of resistance and allowed residents to contest and influence the socio-political transformations of the era.

  Nti explored how the Ebusua (female) and Asafo (male) local social groups, especially in Cape Coast, became bastions ... Read more

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  Jesuit Libraries

  Kathleen M. Comerford, Georgia Southern University

  11-17-2022
  

  The Society of Jesus began a tradition of collecting books and curating those collections at its foundation. These libraries were important to both their European sites and their missions; they helped build a global culture as part of early modern European evangelization. When the Society was suppressed, the Jesuits’ possessions were seized and redistributed, by transfer to other religious orders, confiscation by governments, or sale to individuals. These possessions were rarely returned, and when, in 1814, the Society was restored, the Jesuits had to begin to build new libraries from scratch. Their practices of librarianship, though not their original libraries, ... Read more

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  Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism since the New Deal

  Jonathan O'Neill, Georgia Southern University

  11-29-2022
  

  An intellectual history of American conservativism since the New Deal.
  
  The New Deal fundamentally changed the institutions of American constitutional government and, in turn, the relationship of Americans to their government. Johnathan O'Neill's Conservative Thought and American Constitutionalism since the New Deal examines how various types of conservative thinkers responded to this significant turning point in the second half of the twentieth century.

  O'Neill identifies four fundamental transformations engendered by the New Deal: the rise of the administrative state, the erosion of federalism, the ascendance of the modern presidency, and the development of modern judicial review. He then considers how various ... Read more

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  Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 2020

  Bryan A. Bank and Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University

  1-2021
  

  Summary: This volume comprises selected papers delivered at the 50th Annual Meeting of the Consortium of the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850, in convened in Tallahassee, Florida from 27-29 February 2020 under the sponsorship of the College of Arts and Sciences, and of the Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution, at Florida State University, with additional sponsorship by the Leon County Tourism Board and the Weider Family. All contributions published herein have undergone the peer-review process. The 2020 edition of the Selected Papers of the Consortium of the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850 was produced as a collaboration between the Consortium’s Board of ... Read more

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  Sources for Europe in the Modern World with Guided Writing Exercises

  Allison Scardino Belzer, Georgia Southern University and Jonathan S. Perry, University of South Florida

  7-2020
  

  Georgia Southern faculty member Allison Scardino Belzer co-edited Sources for Europe in the Modern World with Guided Writing Exercises.

  Extensively revised by new coeditor Allison Scardino Belzer, Sources for Europe in the Modern World with Guided Writing Exercises, Second Edition, includes more than 100 primary sources. Expertly edited for clarity and pedagogical utility, the sources range from letters, political tracts, memoirs, and fiction to essays, speeches, poems, legal documents, and visuals. Each document is accompanied by a headnote and reading questions. The second edition features fifty-two new and expanded sources and now includes images. Guided writing exercises, derived from the ... Read more

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  Old Southern Cookery: Mary Randolph's Recipes from America's First Regional Cookbook Adapted for Today's Kitchen

  Christopher E. Hendricks, Georgia Southern University and Sue J. Hendricks

  5-1-2020
  
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  The Yudahua Business Group in China's Early Industrialization

  Juan Juan Peng, Georgia Southern University

  3-4-2020
  

  By tracing the history of Yudahua from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, this study analyzes a successful inland business model among textile companies in modern China. The steady growth of this enterprise relied primarily on its strategy to focus on low-end markets and to locate new mills in underdeveloped interior regions. This strategy further allowed the enterprise to pioneer industrialization in its host localities, demonstrating a major social and economic impact on the local societies. At the same time, Yudahua’s unique team leadership pattern—five leading families shared its ownership and management—made the business an ... Read more

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  The Culture of Enlightening: Abbé Claude Yvon and the Entangled Emergence of the Enlightenment

  Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University

  5-2019
  

  Recent scholarly and popular attempts to define the Enlightenment, account for its diversity, and evaluate its historical significance suffer from a surprising lack of consensus at a time when the social and political challenges of today cry out for a more comprehensive and serviceable understanding of its importance. This book argues that regnant notions of the Enlightenment, the Radical Enlightenment, and the multitude of regional and religious enlightenments proposed by scholars all share an entangled intellectual genealogy rooted in a broader revolutionary "culture of enlightening" that took shape over the long-arc of intellectual history from the waning of the sixteenth-century ... Read more

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  Volume 6 ( 2019): Issue 3 (Aug 2019): The Culture of Jesuit Erudition in an Age of Enlightenment

  Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University

  2019
  
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  The Skeptical Enlightenment: Doubt and Certainty in the Age of Reason

  Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University and Anton M. Matytsin, Kenyon College

  5-1-2019
  

  Although many historical narratives often describe the eighteenth century as an unalloyed 'Age of Reason', Enlightenment thinkers continued to grapple with the challenges posed by the revival and spread of philosophical skepticism. The imperative to overcome doubt and uncertainty informed some of the most innovative characteristics of eighteenth-century intellectual culture, including not only debates about epistemology and metaphysics but also matters of jurisprudence, theology, history, moral philosophy, and politics. Thinkers of this period debated about, established, and productively worked for progress within the parameters of the increasingly circumscribed boundaries of human reason. No longer considered innate and consistently perfect, reason ... Read more

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  Savannah's Midnight Hour: Boosterism, Growth, and Commerce in a Nineteenth-Century American City

  Lisa L. Denmark, Georgia Southern University

  2019
  

  Savannah's Midnight Hour argues that Savannah's development is best understood within the larger history of municipal finance, public policy, and judicial readjustment in an urbanizing nation. In providing such context, Lisa Denmark adds constructive complexity to the conventional Old South/New South dichotomous narrative, in which the politics of slavery, secession, Civil War, and Reconstruction dominate the analysis of economic development. Denmark shows us that Savannah's fiscal experience in the antebellum and postbellum years, while exhibiting some distinctively southern characteristics, also echoes a larger national experience. Her broad account of municipal decision making about improvement investment throughout the nineteenth century offers ... Read more

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  A History of the Muslim World Since 1260

  Vernon O. Egger, Georgia Southern University

  2018
  

  A History of the Muslim World since 1260 continues the narrative begun by A History of the Muslim World to 1750 by tracing the development of Muslim societies, institutions, and doctrines from the time of the Mongol conquests through to the present day. It offers students a balanced coverage of Muslim societies that extend from Western Europe to Southeast Asia. Whereas it presents a multifaceted examination of Muslim cultures, it focuses on analysing the interaction between the expression of faith and contemporary social conditions.

  This extensively updated second edition is now in full colour, and the chronology of the book ... Read more

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  From Rome to Zurich, from Ignatius to Vermigli: Essays in Honor of John Patrick Donnelly, S.J.

  Kathleen M. Comerford, Georgia Southern University; Gary W. Jenkins, Eastern University; and Torrance Kirby, McGill University

  2-20-2017
  

  Book Summary: From Rome to Zurich, between Ignatius and Vermigli brings notable scholars from the fields of Reformation and Early Modern studies to honor their friend, mentor, and colleague, John Patrick Donnelly with essays commensurate with his own broad interests and scholarship. Touching Protestant scholasticism, Reformation era life writing, Reformation polemics – both Protestant and Catholic – and with several on theology proper, inter alia, the essays collected here by a group of international scholars break new ground in Reformation history, thought, and theology, providing fresh insights into current scholarship in both Reformation and Catholic Reformation studies. The essays take ... Read more

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  A History of the Muslim World to 1750: The Making of a Civilization

  Vernon O. Egger, Georgia Southern University

  2017
  

  A History of the Muslim World to 1750 traces the development of Islamic civilization from the career of the Prophet Muhammad to the mid-eighteenth century. Encompassing a wide range of significant events within the period, its coverage includes the creation of the Dar al-Islam (the territory ruled by Muslims), the fragmentation of society into various religious and political groups including the Shi'ites and Sunnis, the series of catastrophes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that threatened to destroy the civilization, and the rise of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires.

  Including the latest research from the last ten years, this ... Read more

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  Eighteenth-Century Thought, 6

  Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University

  2016
  
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  Jesuit Foundations and Medici Power, 1532-1621

  Kathleen M. Comerford, Georgia Southern University

  10-13-2016
  

  Book Summary: Jesuit Foundations and Medici Power, 1532-1621 focuses on the cooperation between two new foundations, the last Medici state and the Society of Jesus, spanning nearly a century, concentrating on the Jesuit foundations in Florence, Siena, and Montepulciano. As the Medici built and centralized their power in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, they sought to control both the civic and religious behavior of their citizens. They found partners in the Jesuits, whose educational program helped establish social order and maintain religious orthodoxy. Via a detailed investigation of both minor and major Italian Jesuit colleges, and of multiple Medici rulers, ... Read more

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  Eighteenth-Century Thought, 5

  Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University

  2-28-2015
  

  Book Summary: Eighteenth-Century Thought is aninternational, interdisciplinary annual founded for the purpose of advancing the study of the long eighteenth century from c. 1650 to the end of the Atlantic and European Revolutionary Era (c. 1750–1850). The annual publishes research pertinent to the fields of Revolutionary Europe, the history of the Atlantic world, the Enlightenment, the globalization of thought and culture between c. 1650–1850, the history of political thought and philosophy, eighteenth-century cultural and literary studies, history of science, legal history, the intersection of Enlightenment and religion, as well as economic thought and the human sciences as they were conceived ... Read more

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  Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 2012

  Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University; Karl Roider; Suzanne Marchand; and Alexander Mikaberidze

  2015
  
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  The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences

  Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University and Jonathan Wright, University of Oxford

  10-29-2015
  

  Book Summary: In 1773, Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus, a dramatic, puzzling act that had a profound impact. This volume traces the causes of the attack on the Jesuits, the national expulsions that preceded universal suppression, and the consequences of these extraordinary developments. The Suppression occurred at a unique historical juncture, at the high-water mark of the Enlightenment and on the cusp of global imperial crises and the Age of Revolution. After more than two centuries, answers to how and why it took place remain unclear. A diverse selection of essays - covering France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, ... Read more

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  London: The Selden Map and the Making of a Global City, 1549-1687

  Robert Batchelor, Georgia Southern University

  1-6-2014
  

  Book Summary: If one had looked for a potential global city in Europe in the 1540s, the most likely candidate would have been Antwerp, which had emerged as the center of the German and Spanish silver exchange as well as the Portuguese spice and Spanish sugar trades. It almost certainly would not have been London, an unassuming hub of the wool and cloth trade with a population of around 75,000, still trying to recover from the onslaught of the Black Plague. But by 1700 London’s population had reached a staggering 575,000—and it had developed its first global corporations, as well ... Read more

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  Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History

  Jeffrey D. Burson, Georgia Southern University and Ulrich L. Lehner, Marquette University

  5-30-2014
  

  Book Summary: In recent years, historians have rediscovered the religious dimensions of the Enlightenment. This volume offers a thorough reappraisal of the so-called “Catholic Enlightenment” as a transnational Enlightenment movement. This Catholic Enlightenment was at once ultramontane and conciliarist, sometimes moderate but often surprisingly radical, with participants active throughout Europe in universities, seminaries, salons, and the periodical press.

  In Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History, the contributors, primarily European scholars, provide intellectual biographies of twenty Catholic Enlightenment figures across eighteenth-century Europe, many of them little known in English-language scholarship on the Enlightenment and pre-revolutionary eras. These figures represent ... Read more

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  Politics, Gender, and Belief. The Long-Term Impact of the Reformation: Essays in Memory of Robert M. Kingdon

  Kathleen M. Comerford, Georgia Southern University; Amy Nelson-Burnett, University of Nebraska; and Karin Maag, Calvin College

  11-13-2014
  

  She also authored “Cosimo I dei Medici’s Cooperation with the Jesuits in Creating a Christian Realm in His Expanding State” in the publication.

  Book Summary: This volume is a posthumous festschrift honoring the memory and research of the late Robert M. Kingdon. The ten contributions in this work are authored by several of his former students and fellow scholars. The contributions are divided into three main themes, all of which Kingdon explored in his own writings: Calvinism and its impact; church and state; and gender, family, and marriage. Topics cover a geographical range from Spain to Poland-Lithuania and Hungary, and ... Read more

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  Toward an American Conservatism: Constitutional Conservatism during the Progressive Era

  Joseph W. Postell and Jonathan O'Neill, Georgia Southern University

  11-12-2013
  

  During the Progressive Era (1880-1920), leading thinkers and politicians transformed American politics. Historians and political scientists have given a great deal of attention to the progressives who effected this transformation. Yet relatively little is known about the conservatives who opposed these progressive innovations, despite the fact that they played a major role in the debates and outcomes of this period of American history. These early conservatives represent a now-forgotten source of inspiration for modern American conservatism. This volume gives these constitutional conservatives their first full explanation and demonstrates their ongoing relevance to contemporary American conservatism.

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  My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War

  William T. Allison, Georgia Southern University

  7-16-2012
  

  Book Summary: On March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed as many as five hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in a village near the South China Sea. In My Lai William Thomas Allison explores and evaluates the significance of this horrific event. How could such a thing have happened? Who (or what) should be held accountable? How do we remember this atrocity and try to apply its lessons, if any?

  My Lai has fixed the attention of Americans of various political stripes for more than forty years. The breadth of writing on the massacre, from news reports to scholarly accounts, ... Read more

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  The Gulf War, 1990-1991

  William T. Allison, Georgia Southern University

  10-2-2012
  

  Book Summary: In August 1990, Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces boldly invaded and occupied neighboring Kuwait. It was a move that shocked the world and threatened the interests of those countries, such as the USA and the nations of Europe, dependent on oil from the Middle East. The ensuing Gulf War signaled, for many, a new dawn in warfare: one based upon lethal technology, low casualties, and quick decisive victory.

  Incorporating the latest scholarship, William Thomas Allison provides a concise overview of the origins, key events and legacy of the first Gulf War, as well as the major issues and debates. ... Read more