Thesis advisor: John Michalczyk / Although the National Socialists' ultimate intentions in regard to religion were concealed from the pubic under layers of political rhetoric, their objectives were nonetheless clear. The National Socialists sought the destruction of the Christian religion, whose teachings and values were seen as inimical to those of the State, and the establishment of a Reichskirche that would preach the doctrines of National Socialism. The German government during the Third Reich was a totalitarian regime, but there was one matter in which the Nazi Party did not have carte blanche, religion, which made it an intrinsic threat to the authority of the State. Many Nazi officials saw Christianity as the inherent and irreconcilable enemy of National Socialism, but they knew they risked losing the support of the German people if they instantly dissolved the Christian Churches. Instead of vehemently attacking the Christian confessions the way they did in Poland, in Germany the National Socialists set up a mirage of support for and acceptance of religious institutions, all while working to undermine the Christian tradition that they considered of greatest detriment and danger to their State. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Seventeenth and eighteenth-century French writers on Louisiana produced a wealth of propaganda on the colony known as Louisiana. This literature contained extensive descriptions of the colony's environment, peoples, and history. Stated within this literature were French plans for building a new society in Louisiana. French writers on Louisiana intended to improve upon the Ancien Regime French society which had proven unsatisfactory, violent, and inadequate in the eyes of many of its members. Despite their plans to remake their society in a better form in Louisiana, the French writers failed in their endeavors to construct a non-violent community in the territory. The reason for this failure was the fact that the Louisiana French showed definite destructive proclivities in their social construction. The Louisiana French believed that the sacrifice of the natural environment and of non-white peoples living in the colony was acceptable if made for the greater good of the civilization they tried to build. The French in Louisiana exploited the environment and destroyed Native American culture and African-American freedom in their pursuit of social-construction. The decision to exploit the landscape and the peoples of Louisiana resulted in a society that was violent, much like Ancien Regime France, as seen by the revolts and conspiracies that resulted from European policy in the region. The French writers and other philosophes revealed this violence in their records of the history of the colony and their anti-imperialist literature / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation explores the dynamics of racial construction and the emergence of racism in eighteenth century French Louisiana in the light of the evolution of French colonial discourses and attitudes towards Indians, Africans, and people of African descent in New France and the French Caribbean during the seventeenth century. It thus analyzes the emergence of 'race' in eighteenth century French Louisiana from an Atlantic world rather than regional perspective. My dissertation proposes to revise the current historiography of the French colonial Americas which holds that, by contrast to bipolar race relations in the English and Spanish Americas, the French colonial experiences in the Americas did not lead to the construction of exclusive racial groups until the last decades of the eighteenth century My argument is twofold. First, I maintain that the French colonial ethos of assimilation and relative tolerance that characterized seventeenth century conceptualizations of Indians and Africans in French Canada and in the French Caribbean, and which emphasized cultural rather than racial differences between French and Indians and French and Africans, underwent dramatic transformations during the last decades of the seventeenth century. I argue that the increasingly racial conceptualization of Indians and Africans inaugurated in late seventeenth century New France and French Antilles crystallized in the peculiar frontier context of eighteenth century Louisiana where French colonial officials and missionaries desperately struggled to establish an orderly slave regime in the midst of large and powerful Indian groups, and growing numbers of Africans. Secondly, I suggest that the movement from cultural to increasingly racial conceptualizations of Indians and Africans stemmed in large part from French colonial responses to French-Indian and French-African sexual encounters, and that these responses were shaped by early modern French metropolitan interrelated constructs of gender, social order and class, that emerged in association with the rise of metropolitan absolutism / acase@tulane.edu

An intellectual and cultural history which examines the process of national identity formation in a foreign environment, this dissertation argues that Great Britain provided more than just military backing, commercial opportunities and financial support to Spanish American independence leaders, it also offered a powerful social and cultural model for the construction of post-independent nationhood. Francisco de Miranda and Andres Bello emerge as the central figures of London's Spanish American community. Through their house on Grafton Street passed virtually all the major military and intellectual figures of the three creole movements for independence: Bernardo O'Higgins, Simon de Bolivar, Jose de San Martin, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, Bernardino Rivadavia, Antonio Jose de Irisarri, Vicente Rocafuerte, Juan Garcia del Rio, Agustin de Iturbide, Jose Joaquin de Olmedo, Miguel Garcia Granados and many others. London was the nexus at which members of Spanish America's regional independence movements first met each other; it was there that they discovered their common interests and began to work together on projects that concerned them all. Furthermore, these Spanish Americans sought advice and assistance from important British reformers including Jeremy Bentham, William Wilberforce and Joseph Lancaster whose ideas all contributed to the intellectual and cultural milieu that produced a particular type of creole Americanism It is important that Spanish America's independence leaders began to imagine their future societies while residing in dynamic, Anglican, industrial Britain during the Napoleonic era. Besides its overwhelming material culture, England's historical position as the enemy of both Spain and revolutionary France allowed Spanish Americans of the era to reject both their colonial heritage and Jacobin-style social revolution by providing them with a positive alternative model. Education, constitutions, laws, a free press, public opinion, History, language, patriotic civic culture and the idea of usefulness to the nation emerge as the central themes of interest to this generation. This dissertation is the first to examine Latin American national identity as a product of foreign residence and treats this group as a coherent, unified intellectual generation / acase@tulane.edu

An extensive interaction, on a much broader scale than is generally recognized or acknowledged, took place between the British and American woman suffrage movements between 1900 and 1914. During these years, suffragists in the two movements engaged in correspondence, visits, and speaking tours. Personal relationships developed which affected the course of both suffrage campaigns. Tactics and strategies were borrowed from the other country, though most of this interchange tended to be from Britain to the United States. Ongoing and lengthy coverage in the suffrage newspapers in both countries reported the interaction and kept participants aware of the common goals of the two movements. An international suffrage organization, in which suffragists of both countries participated, further connected the two movements. The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 brought the period of extensive interaction between the two movements to an end This study isolates and analyzes the interaction and connecting links between the British and American suffrage movements from 1900 to 1914. Seven particular areas are emphasized and evaluated: (1) the personal relationships, some of which resulted in friendships; (2) the bonds of 'sisterhood' and common cause generated by the two movements as each worked toward the common goal of female suffrage; (3) the participation in each other's organizations, meetings, conventions, demonstrations, and parades; (4) the speaking tours and visits, including hospitality arrangements, itineraries, and target audiences and groups; (5) the utilization of each other's situation as a stimulus to the movement in the other country; (6) the 'copying' and use of each other's tactics and methods; and (7) the influence of the international suffrage movement on the interaction. These areas are evaluated through an examination of the correspondence between the suffragists and suffrage organizations; the diaries and journals of the suffragists; the memoirs of the women involved in the two movements; the pamphlets and articles written by the participants at the time; and the coverage in the suffrage newspapers, as well as other newspapers, in Great Britain and the United States. A comparison of the British and American woman suffrage movements, as well as the impact of militancy upon the two movements, is an integral part of this study / acase@tulane.edu

France, although an enemy in the recent war, had always provided a reliable model in times of crisis, and since the seventeenth century, it had remained a static presence in the German consciousness. In the wake of the First World War, France, as an established nation with respected cultural traditions and enduring national myths, functioned as an important 'other' nation against which the Germans could compare their own national development This dissertation examines the Germans' understanding of France as a cultural counter identity in the years 1919 through 1945, calling attention to their repeated recourse to French cultural symbols in their cultural production of these years. The dissertation begins with an analysis of the broader German conceptions of France and its enduring cultural traditions. Chapters 2 and 3 investigate the myth of France in general terms, exploring its persistence as a geographical and cultural presence in the German consciousness. As this dissertation will show, many of the traditional French symbols and ideals (the French Revolution, the French Resistance, French patriotism, the notions of the artiste engage, those of liberte, egalite, and fraternite) converged for the Germans in the symbol of Paris and the cultural heritage of France, both of which united for them the broad concept of the 'nation' with particular political, philosophical, and literary traditions. The two following chapters take a much narrower approach to the question of identity/counter-identity, examining the French symbols and heroes which populated German writing of the interwar years and their roles in helping the Germans negotiate their own road to nationhood. The concluding chapter, 'Ewiges Frankreich (Eternal France),' synthesizes the evidence presented in the five preceding chapters and attempts to elicit from these views a better understanding of the German expression 'Ewiges Frankreich,' a phrase which appears repeatedly in the writings of German exiles and soldiers in the 1930s and 1940s / acase@tulane.edu

With the publication by Maurice Parturier between 1941 and 1964 of the complete letters of Prosper Merimee--which number more than 5,000--a correspondence rivaling that of Voltaire in depth, beauty, wit, and especially style was revealed in its fullness. In these letters Merimee, who served both as Inspector of Historical Monuments and senator, and was an intimate of the court, observed the personages and events of the Second Empire and often expressed his feelings and judgments on them to a number of close friends. This thesis surveys his views on several important historical and political figures glimpsed or discussed in the letters, including Napoleon III; Count Alexandre Walewski; Emile Ollivier; Victor Hugo; Adolphe Thiers; Achille Fould; Charles Auguste, Duc de Morny; Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys; Eugene Rouher; Victor Fialin de Persigny and Jules Baroche. Such a survey is intended as a scholarly aid for students of his correspondence and literary works, as well as those doing research in nineteenth-century French history The study of the individual figures is preceded by a background chapter that sets forth and evaluates Merimee's political views, which are visible throughout the letters. Acquaintance with these views is essential for a proper assessment of his judgments on his contemporaries. It becomes clear, from examination of his correspondence, that he was both anticlerical and conservative; he thought the parliamentary system unsuited to France. Although he was not a creative political theorist, he did develop his own understanding of governance and in particular of the authoritarian regime that he believed suitable for his nation. He proposed notably a code of political conduct that he wanted to see followed, based on courtesy, orderliness, and fairness. He viewed such a code as pragmatic, a means of achieving stability and longevity in government. These political views did not, however, prevent him from giving perceptive and balanced appreciations of those who did not share his assumptions about government. Whether he was regaling his friends with caricatures or lamenting the fate of France in the hands of unwise statesmen, Merimee, the honnete homme, made a plea for statesmen loyal to the regime, behaving in accordance with common courtesy / acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation examines how, why, and to what effect the Romantic genre of heroic landscape painting was recovered and recast in German art of the 1970s and 1980s. This study seeks to revise the narrative of this notable period in German history by examining the ways in which artists from East and West Germany's main cultural hubs---the Leipzig and Dusseldorf art academies, specifically---chose to adopt and adapt heroic landscape representation as a way of dealing with sociopolitical questions of the day. This study asserts that artists, including Jorg Immendorff, Werner Tubke, Michael von Biel, Ursula Mattheuer-Neustadt, Gunter Richter, and Michael van Ofen, selected the heroic landscape trope because they identified historic similarities with the early nineteenth century (when the genre was developed) and because of the genre's specifically German connotations. The familiar forms and icons of heroic landscape art, as adapted by these artists, helped its audience embrace a collective past and challenge contemporary hegemony during a time when both German governments were attempting to escape that 'special' history. Similarities in style and form suggest the shared nature of Germany's early nineteenth century and late twentieth century struggles with war memory, shifting gender relationships and religious morals, national division, and environmental crises, while moments of disjuncture in the appropriation of the landscape form illuminate issues specific to the 1970s and 1980s. This dissertation will revise currently-held concepts regarding postwar life and culture in both Germanies by exposing these landscape paintings as vehicles for the communication of a popular historical narrative left unspoken by the hegemonic powers of the period. This dissertation will demonstrate that these twentieth century paintings, much like their nineteenth century counterparts, helped mobilize and inform the public through their cultural critique as they acknowledged and transmitted a very different picture of life in the FRG and in the GDR than that officially propagated by the nations' respective governments, encouraging the development of private memory and action as a response to the real sociopolitical concerns of the period / acase@tulane.edu

La inmigracion alemana a Guatemala se inicio con la critica situacion socio-economica en la transicion a la era industrial. Los alemanes llegaron primero a la colonia belga de Santo Tomas en la decada de 1840, pero luego se asentaron en la Capital y en muchas partes del interior de la Republica y se dedicaron a sus profesiones artesanales, a los negocios y al comercio. Esta inmigracion aumento significativamente en las ultimas decadas del siglo XIX por la expansion industrial y comercial del Imperio Aleman como por las necesidades y posibilidades de desarrollo de Guatemala bajo los regimenes liberales Los alemanes se dedicaron en especial al cultivo del cafe y al comercio de importaciones y exportaciones. A fines del siglo controlaban una tercera parte de la produccion cafetalera de Guatemala y explortaban dos terceras partes del mismo a Alemania. Tanto el floreciente mercado del cafe de Hamburgo, con altos precios entre 1887 y 1896, como las ventajas obtenidas bajo del Tratado de Comercio de 1887 entre Guatemala y el Imperio Aleman, mas el espiritu empresarial, la preparacion profesional y el trabajo tesonero de los inmigrantes alemanes, favorecieron las inversiones alemanas en la agricultura, comercio, industria e infraestructura del pais y aumentaron las comunicaciones maritimas con Alemania Hacia fines del siglo vivian en Guatemala unos mil alemanes, cuyo numero crecio a 3,000 en la decada de 1920. Ellos fundaron asociaciones, clubes, colegios, una iglesia protestante y un periodico aleman. A traves de estas instituciones conservaron las caracteristicas de su nacionalidad, lengua y cultura. Hacia 1940 la comunidad alemana era una fuerza visible y de influencia en la sociedad y economia guatemaltecas Durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, bajo la fuerte presion economica y politica de Estados Unidos, el gobierno de Guatemala confisco todos los bienes y propiedades de esta minoria, siendo deportados y repatriados muchos de ellos a Alemania Esta disertacion esta basada en investigacion en archivos estatales y privados en Alemania, Guatemala y Estados Unidos, asi como testimonios orales, memorias manuscritas, periodicos y obras secundarias / acase@tulane.edu

Rock and roll music helped transform British conceptions of class and social stratification through its role as the premier medium in Britain's booming popular culture industry in the 1960s. The 'texts' people used to describe their social status change in the postwar era, and were often borrowed from popular music. Such texts included not simply music and language but fashion, ideas, politics, literature, even people's every-day behavior. British rock and roll helped break down old post-Victorian individualist values and replace them with the values of professionalism, thus reasserting the dominance of the middle classes at the center of British life At first, the music was lionized for its mythical working-class values, and which led many young people to believe that they were on the verge of living in a classless society. Furthermore, British rock and roll's working-class youth values proved exportable, especially to America, and it presented many entrepreneurs with an outlet for their energies. For this reason, rock and roll in Britain had to be taken at least somewhat seriously by the cultural establishment As British rock and roll matured, however, musicians expanded their horizons toward a common Romantic cultural ground---spiritual, exotic, pastoral, individualistic and communitarian at the same time---that invited middle-class professional values into the music. 'Rock and roll' became 'rock' music, imbued with 'progressive' values and disdaining the commercialism of 'pop' music. The best way to get wealthy and respectable in the British music industry was to act as if one did not want wealth and respectability. Eventually, that meant that the wealthiest progressive acts were those that eschewed the British market for America, where their Romantic values made them exotic and celebrated. By 1970, British rock music had become a cog in the machinery of middle-class cultural dominance, far removed from its origins in working-class youth rebellion / acase@tulane.edu