papers: October 2007 Archives

The assignment here was to argue that gender is/is not a useful category of analysis for understanding phenomena like imperialism and class.

The tour of Don Chombo’s hillside hortaliza had been impressive. Everywhere, his slashed-and-burned land yielded maize, red beans, tomatoes, chiles, and green squash. Toward the end of our visit, my agricultural development friend Lorenzo offered to loan Don Chombo some fertilizer. “I don’t know much about working with fertilizer,” Don Chombo replied curtly, and turned toward the next field.

Why did Don Chombo refuse what seemed to be in his interest? Was his refusal based in racial prejudice, since Lorenzo was a white North American? In class, since Lorenzo seemed wealthier? In gender, since Lorenzo was unmarried and known for compassion and gentleness? Perhaps the answer is all or none of the above. But the questions illustrate the principle categories historians use to analyze and explain the past. As academic history narrows its focus to the story of oppression, categories of race, class, and gender have become increasingly prominent.

Historians love novelty. Every year university presses publish hundreds of new interpretations of history, and reject hundreds more. The field is marked by “turns”: the literary turn, the cultural turn, the transnational turn. Professors and authors must labor to stay up-to-date, lest they be charged with a lack of secondary literature in their own work. Somewhat paradoxically, historians have helped create a flash-in-the-pan sort of business.

It is remarkable, then, when an interpretation has staying power, when a book is still being referred to and challenged nearly 30 years after its initial publication. Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution is such a book. Winner of both the Pulitzer and the Bancroft, the book’s influence is also demonstrated by the challenges to its interpretation, including T.H. Breen’s recent Marketplace of Revolution. Breen makes his dispute with Bailyn’s interpretation explicit, citing shortcomings of the ideological interpretation which he means to address. Does the challenge succeed? One way to compare the two accounts is to examine a few pages of each work, analyzing in detail the use of sources and the style of presentation. How do these authors attempt to persuade, and how effective are their methods?

Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virgina (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975).

Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia 1740-1790 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982).

The American historical profession experienced something of a revolution in the 1960s. As historians gradually came to a general consensus that historical scholarship should be more inclusive of Indians, blacks, and women, they also disagreed sharply on the form of that inclusion. For some, it was a way to “speak truth to power”; for others, a way to reconstruct a more precise picture of the past. Many historians of these marginalized groups at first depicted their subjects as victims of brutal oppression, then corrected that depiction by attempting to show that the marginalized had “agency”: control over their lives and their oppressors.

Historians soon encountered a dilemma. Can the powerless wield power? Do structures – major events and forces – or struggles – everyday lives of ordinary people – deserve the most attention? How does one write history that avoids what Peter Novick calls “overdrawn portrayals of lower-class militancy,” on one hand, and studies of the “minutiae of everyday underclass existence” on the other?

Take the case of colonial Virginia. Clearly the history of the region cannot be told without reference to slavery, the institution described as the “central paradox” and “great transforming circumstance” of American history. But what of slaves themselves? Should they be studied for their own sake or for the impact they had on the broader society? This paper will discuss how three leading historians of early America use African-Americans in their narratives of colonial Virginia and, in turn, what African-Americans themselves contribute to the story. Each is a masterpiece, and each author’s approach makes a vital contribution to the historiography – Philip Morgan’s comprehensiveness, Edmund Morgan’s emphasis on class conflict, and Rhys Isaac’s imaginative methodology – but ultimately Isaac’s study shows the most promise. Slaves in his account present themselves as human beings with crucial connections to the rest of society.

A little exercise for our Theory & Practice class. It may feel a little elementary, but I think there is something clarifying about the idea-material conditions binary.

Seldom has a historical phenomenon so concerned (and disturbed) intellectuals as the rise of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century. Philosophers, sociologists, novelists, and economists alike sought to exalt and condemn, extend and resist this new thing called capitalism. Amid this sea of intellectual debate, two figures stand out. In fact, capitalism can scarcely be discussed a century later without reference to Karl Marx and Max Weber.