Master of Arts / Department of History / Bonnie Lynn-Sherow / Joseph LaFramboise’ life was the product of a rich milieu of ethnicities working, trading, and living together in the first half of the nineteenth century. His was a multi-cultural experience on the fur trade frontier. Born in 1805 and living through the first half of the nineteenth century, LaFramboise utilized multiple identities and strategies drawn from Odawa, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, and French Canadian cultures while integrating into the developing American identity. He maneuvered socially and economically during an unstable political period along the shifting margins between native and Euro-American cultures. His life-long vocation in the fur trade, and more specifically with the American Fur Company, was influenced by his family’s successful Michigan fur trade business, his friendships within the Company, and his experience as part of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota community. The fur trade afforded him both relational and economic ties to the Eastern Dakota bands of Minnesota and to the other trade families of the American Fur Company. The trade also placed him on the cusp of American exploration into the continent’s mid-section allowing his local knowledge, built up by years of traveling the interior, to inform the explorations and writings of people like George Catlin, Joseph Nicollet, and John C. Fremont. By mid-century, ironically, LaFramboise, who had spent a lifetime building multi-ethnic relationships, found himself increasingly bound by rigid ideas about race, brought on by expanding American settlement. His business decisions and his familial ones became driven more by the expectations of an advancing Euro-American society. Even so, those decisions carried the distinctive character of a man used to living in a culturally complex world.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / As the 1950s began, Western European defense policy posed unique challenges for the United States. At the outset of the Cold War, U.S. officials recognized that maintaining a free Western Europe was vital to the long-term survival of the United States against the Soviet Union and its satellite nations. While America could rely on its long-range nuclear bombers (and, in a few years, its intercontinental ballistic missiles) as a deterrent to Soviet aggression against the continental United States, the situation in Europe was more complicated. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), first organized in 1949, was the defense pact designed to counter the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe. The NATO alliance, however, still recovering from the destruction of the Second World War, was in no condition to oppose Soviet aggression at the end of 1950. Yet by 1955, the situation in Europe was dramatically different. The NATO allies had transformed from a loose confederation of weak nations to a strong international alliance capable of confronting the Communist forces if necessary. At the center of this transformation was Dwight D. Eisenhower. In January 1951, Eisenhower assumed the position of NATO's first Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) and spent nearly two years strengthening the Western European alliance. Then, after entering the White House as president in 1953, Eisenhower used his experiences as SACEUR to reinforce several aspects of his own defense policy. Ultimately, several key aspects of Eisenhower's ―New Look‖ defense policy (such as the continued emphasis of the NATO alliance) had their antecedents in Eisenhower's service as NATO Supreme Commander.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / This thesis examines early Pentecostalism in light of the Populist Movement. There are two main arguments in this study. First, I maintain that early Kansas Pentecostalism, as seen in the teachings of Charles Fox Parham, was heavily influenced by Populist ideas and language. Parham displayed Populist tendencies in his attacks on the Protestant Establishment, which he believed had neglected to care for the spiritual and physical needs of “the people.” This failure on the part of the churches led Parham to believe that a major reform of the church was needed. Parham went beyond simply criticizing the establishment. He also developed a popular theology that empowered individuals, many of whom were poor and working-class, and created a strong sense of collective aspiration. The second argument of this study is that Populism fostered a sociopolitical environment in which Pentecostalism could thrive. Parham’s confrontations with the Protestant Establishment and his concern with the needs of “the people” was attractive to many individuals who tended to support movements that sought to disrupt the status quo. One event that can shed light on early Kansas Pentecostalism’s relationship with Populism was a revival in Galena, Kansas, a lead and zinc mining town in the southeast corner of the state, that took place from October 1903 to January 1904. By examining some of the connections between the Populist movement and early Kansas Pentecostalism, this study provides some insight into the development of one of the most popular expressions of Christianity in the world.

Master of Arts / Department of English / Timothy A. Dayton / Ralph Waldo Emerson’s early life and education led him to focus on self-development and social concerns. His subsequent individualism and concern for society were not just characteristics of his own personal behavior, but of his vision for the world. The individual and the social form a symbiotic relation critical to understanding this vision. Once Emerson had fully established this vision, he sought to make it known in an attempt to improve American society, which he felt was degenerate and in decline. Emerson suggests that the source of his rejuvenating vision can be found in the principles and ideas of the American Revolution. Emerson appeals to ideals and practice common during the Revolution and immediate post-Revolutionary period. Americans slowly drifted away from practicing these Revolutionary ideals. Emerson appropriates Revolutionary ideals and characteristics to create individual and social change in the America of his day. While this program for change seems clear and straightforward, it becomes problematic when actually applied.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / The United States Army faced a dire challenge when conscription was phased out in favor of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) in 1973. The Army was confronted with pressing manning requirements while suffering from the American public’s disapproval over the war in Vietnam. The end of the draft in favor of an all-volunteer force did not offer a great deal of promise for filling Army manpower requirements. Army leadership realized that it needed new methods that could recruit quality volunteers while simultaneously reforming the Army’s public image. Paid television advertising, able to reach a wide and diverse viewing audience, was pursued as a way to achieve both of those objectives. This study examines Army television advertisements since the creation of the AVF and analyzes their imagery and messages. Surprisingly consistent themes and messages have persisted in the Army’s television advertising for over thirty-five years of the AVF’s existence. During that same time, American attitudes toward the military were increasingly characterized by an interesting paradox. The American public overwhelmingly supported the military but grew less inclined to volunteer for military service. The public’s good feelings toward the Army and its “support for the troops” were not borne out with strong recruitment numbers during the years of the AVF. This work will argue that the messages in Army television advertising helped change the Army from a vital national institution into just another employer making a basic job offer in the audience’s mind while doing little to reform the Army’s public image. The ads did not appeal to America’s youth to commit themselves to national service. Rather, the ads promised to help individuals realize their wishes and dreams by focusing on the economic and educational advantages that the Army could deliver. Consequently, the ads cast the Army as a sort of trade school willing to provide young people with marketable skills, educational opportunities and enlistment bonuses in return for a short stint in the service. Public service and duty to the nation were rarely mentioned. The ads portrayed the Army as willing to strike deals with recruits to advance their personal goals and enrichment while demanding little in return.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Sue Zschoche / This thesis explores the development of Derby, Kansas, from the arrival of its first settlers in 1869 through the early 1970s. During its first seventy-five years, Derby never grew beyond its origins as a tiny trade center for local farmers, its economic growth constantly stymied and overshadowed by the often explosive growth of Wichita, twelve miles to the north. Derby might have met the fate of so many other Kansas farming communities that did not survive developments in industrialized agricultural and transportation in post-World War II America. With the beginning of the Cold War, however, the federal government began pouring money into the Midwest and West, building up existing, and constructing new, military installations. In addition, federal spending spurred massive new defense industries, creating growth around the cites of what some historians have called “Gunbelt America.” Wichita was one such city. Derby’s proximity to Wichita finally worked to its advantage, and the small town experienced its own boom as it became a residential community inhabited by affluent commuters to the job opportunities nearby. In addition, Derby’s racial homogeneity, its relative affluence, and the deliberate attempts of its boosters to portray it as a “family friendly,” that is, as a white, middle-class, community, further spurred its growth as Wichita went through the turmoil of school desegregation in the 1960s and early 1970s. Derby, Kansas, illustrates a distinct category in the development of the new Gunbelt West, a community that flourished both because of its proximity to a larger city as well as its distance from the perceived turmoil of that urban center.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / James E. Sherow / During the period between 1848 and 1938, a combination of land-use changes and regional climatic alterations caused changes in the physical structure of the Canadian River. The Canadian River begins in the southern Rocky Mountains and flows south and then northeast across the High Plains of New Mexico and Texas. The Comanche Indians used the river as a transportation corridor, as a winter shelter for themselves and for their horse herds, as well as hunting the bison that visited the valley. The Comanches also valued the spiritual power, puha, found in the running water and on the mesas within the river’s lowlands. After the defeat of the Comanches in the Red River Wars and the destruction of the bison herds, New Mexican Hispanos moved their flocks of sheep into the valley and established settlements along the tributary streams. These settlers practiced “extensive” land use, drawing from a broad array of the valley’s resources and using them comparatively lightly in ways that drew from older Spanish laws and customs. The enclosure of parts of the valley by Anglo-Texan ranchers drove the Hispanos out of the Canadian watershed in Texas, although access to the open range in New Mexico allowed other Hispanos to retain their settlements. Corporations including the Capitol Lands Syndicate and Prairie Cattle Company introduced large numbers of cattle to the region at the same time that regional rainfall patterns shifted. This combination of heavy grazing and altered precipitation patterns led to erosion in the uplands that caused changes in the physical structure of the Canadian River. After 1903, the arrival of railroads into eastern New Mexico accelerated the development of dry-land farms in both states. Increasing calls for damming and controlling the Canadian led to the first interstate Canadian River Compact in 1928. The advent of a severe drought in the 1930s and the Great Depression led to federal resources becoming available and the first dam was built on the stream, ending the era of the free-flowing river and again starting physical changes to the Canadian.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Jack M. Holl / Donald J. Mrozek / General Walter Bedell Smith is the subject of this dissertation. It examines his career as Eisenhower's chief of staff from a functionalist perspective. Functionalism as a school of thought emphasizes the organic nature of social institutions, the importance of improvisation while framing solutions to problems, and the necessity of producing predictable results. In practice, the US Army and Smith applied functionalism in a restricted way, but conceived of the General Staff as the "brain of the army." While working for General Marshall in the War Department General Staff and later as General Eisenhower's chief of staff, General Smith met his responsibilities with respect to order, cohesion and objectives. Two general conditions complicated Smith's role at Eisenhower's headquarters: first, the burgeoning size of the staff made it difficult for Smith to manage by means of direct supervision and still preserve a measure of initiative among staff members; second, Smith's poor health and choler sometimes hindered his ability to adopt means that were consistent with the organic aspect of functionalism. In Washington, Algiers and London, Bedell Smith gained notoriety as a "hatchetman" who did his superior's dirty work. His ugly reputation was fitting in some ways, but undeserved in others. His achievements have been underestimated. Smith was the firm defender of the Eisenhower's prerogatives. Among British colleagues, he was a disciple of cooperation and diplomacy. He was intelligent, orderly and functionalist in the sense that his decisiveness and willingness to accept responsibility achieved quick and predictable results. Smith's understanding of principal issues and his grasp of details earned the trust and respect of colleagues. He acted out of duty, not "natural" meanness. The traits of a "hatchetman" - feared and detested by some - were the distinguishing features that won favor from his superiors, Marshall and Eisenhower.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / The United States Army became the dominant U.S. government agency for post-World War II occupation planning. Despite President Roosevelt’s own misgivings, shared by several influential members of his Cabinet, the Army nonetheless prevailed in shaping occupation policy in accordance with its understanding and priorities. The Army’s primacy resulted from its own cultural and organizational imperatives, to include its drive towards professionalization and its acceptance of legalized standards for conflict in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Other related factors included the Army’s ability to create coherent internal doctrine, the training and experience of its leaders, the relative weakness of comparative civilian agencies, the real-world experiences of civil affairs in North Africa in 1942-43, and the personality and leadership style of President Roosevelt himself. As a result, the Army created internal training and education, doctrine, and organizations that operated both at the strategic and tactical level to implement military government in accordance with the Army’s institutional understanding. The Army’s planning and implementation of military government in Germany, Austria, and Korea show the effects of the Army’s dominance in planning and implementing the postwar occupations. Furthermore, in these three occupations (unlike Japan’s), of particular concern were how the Americans interacted with their Soviet counterparts in the occupied territories at the beginning of the Cold War. As these three occupations reveal, American military government in those locations, as well as the actions of the occupants themselves, profoundly shaped American interests in those countries and thus profoundly shaped American policy during the early Cold War.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / This dissertation examines the influence of the US Army experience in military government and occupation missions on occupations conducted during and immediately after World War II. The study concludes that army occupation experiences between the end of the Civil War and World War II positively influenced the occupations that occurred during and after World War II. The study specifically examines occupation and government operations in the post-Civil War American South, Cuba, the Philippines, Mexico, post-World War I Germany, and the major occupations associated with World War II in Italy, Germany, and Japan. Though historians have examined individual occupations, none has studied the entirety of the American army‘s experience with these operations. This dissertation finds that significant elements of continuity exist between the occupations, so much so that by the World War II period it discerns a unique American way of conducting occupation operations. Army doctrine was one of the major facilitators of continuity. An additional and perhaps more important factor affecting the continuity between occupations was the army‘s institutional culture, which accepted occupation missions as both important and necessary. An institutional understanding of occupation operations developed over time as the army repeatedly performed the mission or similar nontraditional military tasks. Institutional culture ensured an understanding of the occupation mission passed informally from generation to generation of army officers through a complex network of formal and informal, professional and personal relationships. That network of relationships was so complete that the World War II generation of leaders including Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, Clay and MacArthur, and Secretary of War Stimson, all had direct personal ties to individuals who served in key positions in previous occupations in the Philippines, Cuba, Mexico, or the Rhineland. Doctrine and the cultural understanding of the occupation mission influenced the army to devote major resources and command attention to occupation operations during and after World War II. Robust resourcing and the focus of leaders were key to overcoming the inevitable shortfalls in policy and planning that occurred during the war. These efforts contributed significantly to the success of the military occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II.