As North American plants took root in Parisian botanical gardens and regularly appeared in scientific texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they retained their connections to networks of ecological and cultural exchange in colonial North America. In this dissertation I study the history of French botany and natural history as it became an Atlantic enterprise during this time, analyzing the production of knowledge about North American flora and the place of this knowledge in larger processes of colonialism and imperial expansion in the French Atlantic World. I focus particular attention on recovering the role of aboriginal peoples in the production of knowledge about colonial environments on both sides of the Atlantic. Rather than integrating aboriginal collectors, chefs and healers into traditional histories of western science, I integrate familiar histories of science into larger histories of cultural contact in an Atlantic World with multiple centres of knowledge production and exchange. This dissertation develops two closely related arguments. First, I argue that French encounters with American environments and Native cultures were inseparable. Jesuit missionaries, for example, called both a plant and a native culture “wild rice,” conflating descriptions of local ecological and morphological features of the Great Lakes plant with accounts of indigenous cultural and moral attributes. Second, “Plants and Peoples” also analyzes the process by which the Paris-based Académie Royale des Sciences expanded its reach into North America and argues that French colonial naturalists drew on a vibrant conversation between diverse colonial and indigenous communities. Yet indigenous participation and the knowledges they provided were progressively effaced over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This research therefore presents both a new understanding of the history of early modern and enlightenment botany and a lens through which to revisit and enrich familiar histories of cultural exchange in colonial North America.

Ce mémoire offre un résumé de l’état de la recherche quant à la perception des Japonais et de l’ennemi japonais aux États-Unis avant et pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. Il en ressort que la question plus spécifique du traitement réservé à l’ennemi japonais et à la responsabilité des actions de guerre perpétrées par celui-ci dans les journaux américains mérite d’être approfondie. L’analyse des articles publiés dans les trois mois suivant l’attaque japonaise de Pearl Harbour et précédant la fin officielle de la guerre dans trois grands périodiques américains de l’époque suggère que ceux-ci offrirent un traitement de l’ennemi japonais similaire à celui présent dans l’ensemble des autres média américains de l’époque, mais que ce traitement est généralement plus nuancé et éclaté dans les trois mois précédant la fin de la guerre. Certaines dissensions importantes peuvent y être constatée quant à la question de la responsabilité des actions de guerre japonaises entre les périodiques, ce qui suggère l’existence de points de vue, de valeurs et de perceptions différentes des Japonais aux États-Unis pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. / This master’s thesis offers a summary of the state of research on the perception of the Japanese enemy in the United States before and during World War II which reveals that the question of the American newspapers’ treatment of the Japanese enemy and of who is accountable for Japan’s actions during the war deserves more attention. An analysis of the articles published in three major American newspapers in the three months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and preceding the official end of the war suggests that the American newspapers presented the Japanese enemy in a light similar to that of the other media. However, this treatment of the Japanese and the Japanese enemy tended to be more nuanced and varied in the three months preceding the end of the war as important dissensions appeared between the newspapers about the accountability of Japan’s war actions, which suggests the existence of different values and perceptions of the Japanese people in general within the United States.

En se basant sur l’histoire des Bradfords, l’une des plus grandes familles d’imprimeurs de l’histoire américaine, ce mémoire étudie la relation entre l’imprimé, les imprimeurs, et divers discours sur la liberté au cours du « long » 18e siècle. Il retrace la transition entre une ère de la « liberté de parole, » née des débats sur la liberté de presse et d’expression de la période coloniale, et une ère de la « parole de la liberté, » née au cours de la Révolution et entretenue sous la jeune république. Cette transition fut le produit de la transformation du discours des contemporains sur la liberté, mais s’effectua également en lien avec la transformation du milieu de l’imprimerie et de la culture de l’imprimé. Selon les circonstances politiques, sociales, économiques et culturelles particulières des périodes coloniale, révolutionnaire, et républicaine, l’imprimé et les imprimeurs américains furent appelés à disséminer et à contribuer au discours sur la liberté. Ils établirent ainsi une forte association entre l’imprimé et la liberté dans la culture de l’imprimé du 18e siècle, qui était destinée à être transmise aux siècles suivants. Mots- / Based on the family history of the Bradfords, one of America’s most celebrated printing dynasties, this thesis studies the interplay between print, printers, and various discourses on freedom during of the long 18th century and through the colonial, revolutionary, and early republican periods. It traces the transition between an era of the “speech of freedom,” born out of the colonial debates on the freedom of speech and press, and an era of the “freedom of speech,” born in the course of the Revolution and upheld during the early republic. This transition resulted from the transformation of the contemporaries’ discourse on liberty, but also had to do with the transformation of the printing trade and print culture. As a result of the political, social, economic, and cultural circumstances of the colonial, revolutionary, and early republican periods, American print and printers were led to disseminate and to contribute to the discourse on liberty. They thus established a strong association between print and freedom in the 18th-century print culture, an association which was destined to be transmitted to the following centuries.

This dissertation is about American Red Cross and YMCA work in revolutionary and civil war Russia. It focuses on the most significant phases of these organizations’ efforts in terms of the numbers of personnel involved and the funds expended: Moscow and Petrograd, 1917–18; northern Russia during the Allied military intervention, 1918–19; and Siberia and the Russian Far East, from 1918 through the early 1920s. By drawing on dozens of often underused archival collections this study is able to discuss these “constructive efforts” in much fuller detail than have existing works. The activities of the Americans who worked in Russia, rather than those who made policy from afar, are of primary interest. The concern here, beyond the what, where, and who, is why: Why did American relief or social service work occur? The answers, of which there are several, include a desire to provide assistance to suffering populations. But the humanitarian impulse was often not the one that carried the day when decisions about policy and practice were taken. Military concerns were important, especially while the Great War still raged on the western front, and while Allied and American soldiers fought Russian Bolsheviks. American relief workers also saw themselves as contributing directly to relations between Russia and Russians on the one hand, and the United States, the Allies, and the American people on the other. They were moved to carry out their work because they saw the importance of it for the present and future of relations between the two countries. Americans in Russia also took advantage of the presence of soldiers, civilian refugees, and former prisoners of war from a variety of European countries to spread the good word about all things American. Ultimately, Americans viewed revolutionary Russia through the lens of modernization. With American help, the future could be bright. With the right leadership in place to oversee their education, honest, hardworking, and intellectually curious peasants (as they were described by contemporary observers) could be turned into modern citizens. The Russian project failed to achieve its promise, but for a time Americans retained their optimism about Russia’s future.

This dissertation is about American Red Cross and YMCA work in revolutionary and civil war Russia. It focuses on the most significant phases of these organizations’ efforts in terms of the numbers of personnel involved and the funds expended: Moscow and Petrograd, 1917–18; northern Russia during the Allied military intervention, 1918–19; and Siberia and the Russian Far East, from 1918 through the early 1920s. By drawing on dozens of often underused archival collections this study is able to discuss these “constructive efforts” in much fuller detail than have existing works. The activities of the Americans who worked in Russia, rather than those who made policy from afar, are of primary interest. The concern here, beyond the what, where, and who, is why: Why did American relief or social service work occur? The answers, of which there are several, include a desire to provide assistance to suffering populations. But the humanitarian impulse was often not the one that carried the day when decisions about policy and practice were taken. Military concerns were important, especially while the Great War still raged on the western front, and while Allied and American soldiers fought Russian Bolsheviks. American relief workers also saw themselves as contributing directly to relations between Russia and Russians on the one hand, and the United States, the Allies, and the American people on the other. They were moved to carry out their work because they saw the importance of it for the present and future of relations between the two countries. Americans in Russia also took advantage of the presence of soldiers, civilian refugees, and former prisoners of war from a variety of European countries to spread the good word about all things American. Ultimately, Americans viewed revolutionary Russia through the lens of modernization. With American help, the future could be bright. With the right leadership in place to oversee their education, honest, hardworking, and intellectually curious peasants (as they were described by contemporary observers) could be turned into modern citizens. The Russian project failed to achieve its promise, but for a time Americans retained their optimism about Russia’s future.

As North American plants took root in Parisian botanical gardens and regularly appeared in scientific texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they retained their connections to networks of ecological and cultural exchange in colonial North America. In this dissertation I study the history of French botany and natural history as it became an Atlantic enterprise during this time, analyzing the production of knowledge about North American flora and the place of this knowledge in larger processes of colonialism and imperial expansion in the French Atlantic World. I focus particular attention on recovering the role of aboriginal peoples in the production of knowledge about colonial environments on both sides of the Atlantic. Rather than integrating aboriginal collectors, chefs and healers into traditional histories of western science, I integrate familiar histories of science into larger histories of cultural contact in an Atlantic World with multiple centres of knowledge production and exchange. This dissertation develops two closely related arguments. First, I argue that French encounters with American environments and Native cultures were inseparable. Jesuit missionaries, for example, called both a plant and a native culture “wild rice,” conflating descriptions of local ecological and morphological features of the Great Lakes plant with accounts of indigenous cultural and moral attributes. Second, “Plants and Peoples” also analyzes the process by which the Paris-based Académie Royale des Sciences expanded its reach into North America and argues that French colonial naturalists drew on a vibrant conversation between diverse colonial and indigenous communities. Yet indigenous participation and the knowledges they provided were progressively effaced over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This research therefore presents both a new understanding of the history of early modern and enlightenment botany and a lens through which to revisit and enrich familiar histories of cultural exchange in colonial North America.

RÉSUMÉ : Avec le dénouement de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, le problème des réfugiés en Europe devient un enjeu international. Plusieurs millions de personnes, que l’on nomme les Displaced Persons (DP), sont sans refuge et doivent recevoir une aide immédiate pour survivre. Même si la majorité de ces gens retourneront dans leurs pays d’origine, il reste encore des centaines de milliers de réfugiés en 1948. La seule solution concrète pour régler cette problématique est l’émigration des réfugiés dans des pays prêts à les accepter. Les Américains jouent un rôle crucial en acceptant 415 000 DP entre 1948 et 1952 grâce au Displaced Persons Act de 1948 et ses amendements en 1950 et 1951. Après d’âpres discussions entre les restrictionnistes et ceux qui défendent la libéralisation des lois d’immigration, naîtra le Displaced Persons Act (DP Act) signé avec beaucoup de réticence, le 25 juin 1948, par le président Harry S. Truman. Cette loi qui prévoit la venue de 202 000 DP en deux ans, contient des mesures jugées discriminatoires à l'endroit de certaines ethnies. Afin d'améliorer le DP Act, le Congrès effectue des recherches sur la situation des réfugiés toujours dans les camps en 1949 tout en étudiant l’impact de la venue des DP aux États-Unis entre 1948 et 1950. Cette étude est soumise sous forme de rapport, le Displaced Persons and Their Resettlement in the United States, le 20 janvier 1950. Ce mémoire propose une analyse minutieuse du rapport et de son contexte politique afin de démontrer le rôle important de cette étude dans le processus décisionnel du Congrès américain visant à accueillir un plus grand nombre de DP tout en posant les bases pour une politique d’accueil en matière de refugiés. / ABSTRACT : With the ending of the Second World War, the refugee problem became an international issue. Several million people, which are called the Displaced Persons (DPs), are without shelter and should receive immediate help to survive. Although the majority of DPs will return to their home country, there are still hundreds of thousands of refugees in 1948. The only practical solution to solve this problem is the migration of refugees out of Europe. The Americans have played a crucial role by agreeing to receive 415,000 DP between 1948 and 1952 through the Displaced Persons Act (DP Act) of 1948 and its amendments in 1950 and 1951. After heated discussions between the restrictionnists and those who advocate the liberalization of immigration laws, the Displaced Persons Act was voted with great reluctance and signed, June 25, 1948, by President Harry S. Truman. This law provides for the arrival of 202,000 DPs in two years, but it contains measures deemed discriminatory to certain ethnic groups. In order to improve the DP Act, Congress conducted research on the situation of refugees still in camps in 1949 while studying the impact of the DPs arrival in the United States from 1948 to 1950. This study was submitted as a report, the Displaced Persons and Their Resettlement in the United States, January 20th, 1950. This thesis proposes a thorough analysis of this report to demonstrate how the study helped the decision-making process of the U.S. Congress that led to the acceptance of a larger number of DP’s while also laying the basis for a settlement policy with regard to refugees.

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Master of Arts / Department of History / Donald J. Mrozek / This work examines Maxwell M. Rabb's role in the area of civil rights and race relations from January 1953 through May 1958 during the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Rabb was the first Secretary to the Cabinet, a position created by Eisenhower. In his lesser known duty, Max Rabb quietly developed many aspects of President Eisenhower's civil rights program. Chapter One describes Rabb's pivotal role in ending segregation in the military establishment to include the Navy and the Veterans Administration. In this chapter Rabb is a lone operator, personally meeting with principal actors in the Eisenhower Administration and U.S. Congress to end segregation. Chapter Two examines how Rabb participated in and helped to develop the various organizations of the White House. As the organizations within the Eisenhower White House matured, Rabb was able to use them as roads into the problem of civil rights and to use their power to advance civil rights. The final chapter focuses on the confluence of race relations and human rights on the one hand with U.S. domestic and foreign policy on the other. The chapter uses four cases studies to illustrate the growing importance of American race relations in world affairs after World War II. Max Rabb's participation in each case serves as a reminder that the American domestic sphere had become a cause of international concern and could damage the credibility of U.S democratic values in the a world where racial sensitivity was on the rise and increasingly a factor in international relations. This work ends by concluding that Rabb's effectiveness was severely limited by President Eisenhower's narrow understanding of the limits of government. Rabb was a New Deal Republican serving in the administration of a man who rejected the activism required by New Deal Liberalism. Though Rabb served Eisenhower well, it was Eisenhower who failed to sense the full scope of the problems in U.S. civil rights and race relations.