This work examines U.S. recognition policy toward governments obtaining power through extra-legal means (coup d'etat or revolution). The purpose of the research is to evaluate the effectiveness of withholding diplomatic recognition as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Through empirical analysis of U.S. recognition policy toward Latin American states (1913-1994), the research determines if the withholding of diplomatic recognition enabled the United States to influence the behavior and policies of target governments, under what conditions the strategy is successful, and what conditions influence the U.S. to withhold recognition. Withholding recognition is treated as a bargaining strategy intended to elicit a desired response from the target state in exchange for diplomatic recognition by the United States. An analytical framework derived from the coercive diplomacy model, developed by Alexander George, is used to evaluate policy effectiveness. The intent is not only to determine if the U.S. recognition strategy succeeded or failed but also to identify conditions conducive to successful use of the policy in order to guide contemporary foreign policy choices.

This dissertation is a study of Mexican children along the U.S. border from 1880 to 1930. The study explores the ways in which Mexican children were incorporated into the growing capitalist border society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During this period, there were demographic changes in both the United States and Mexico as children comprised an increasingly significant portion of the population. As a result of this growth, and the heightened visibility of children, both nations focused on the implications, both positive and negative, of being "nations of youth." Along the border, the fears and hopes associated with children were accentuated as a result of the already difficult ethnic relations between Mexicans and Anglo Americans and shifting international relations between Mexico and the United States. Mexican children became symbols of the tremendous socio-economic changes taking place along the border. Issues of control, which expressed themselves in the creation of institutions to monitor immigration, expanding educational and social service systems, and the rapid incorporation of Mexican children into the labor force, were hotly contested. On the U.S. side of the border Mexican children entered a highly racialized society in which Mexicans were considered inferior and useful only as low-paid workers. Yet at the precise time that the population of Mexican children was growing along the border, American society advocated a more protective stance towards children. As a consequence of these two circumstances, Mexican children played a unique role in this region. Mexican children were recruited as workers, and expected to act as adults by both employers and family. Schools sought to educate them yet the education was limited by ethnic stereotypes which dictated that Mexican children would become nothing more than low-paid, menial laborers. Mexican parents attempted to control their children, particularly in maintaining a Mexican identity and values while Americanization efforts undermined their parental authority. American nationalists viewed them with alarm, fearful that the growing numbers of Mexican children would overwhelm that Anglo American population. The Mexican government, in turn, viewed the emigration of Mexican children as a cultural and economic loss to the nation.

Although Europeans unquestioningly impacted the indigenous economies of the Americas, these original economies have shifted, but have never entirely disappeared. Early European witnesses of these tribal systems were often off the mark in interpreting their observations, especially when the data was forced into completely European models. With the secondary sources available, a less Eurocentric model of the 18th and 19th century Choctaw economy can be constructed. This reconstruction will help develop more accurate portrayals of functions within tribal societies.

<p> Freshman Sen. William H. Seward of New York was not expected to say anything noteworthy in his "Freedom in the New Territories" speech against the Compromise bills on March 11, 1850. The venerated "Great Triumvirate" had previously addressed the Senate&mdash;Sen. Henry Clay on Jan. 29, Sen. John C. Calhoun on March 4, and Sen. Daniel Webster on March 7&mdash;so everything there was to say was thought to have been said. Seward's "Freedom in the New Territories" speech, however, is recalled as one of the more divisive of Compromise orations and most significant of Senate maiden speeches in history because of its appeal to "a higher law than the Constitution." The utterance drew a maelstrom of criticism from the partisan press and congressional adversaries and colleagues; however, Seward's rhetoric introduced a reformist interpretation of the phrase "higher law" to the slavery discourse. </p><p> This thesis applies concepts from the literature on rhetoric of agitation and control and ideographs to define Seward's rhetoric as managerial, show his motives as socio-economic, and discover how the senator's reformist arguments were controlled by the establishment after the Christiana Riot in 1851. The researcher suggests that the establishment employed a kind of denial of rhetorical means to obstruct Seward's reformist rhetoric of its solidifying slogans. Future research into the control response to agitative rhetoric is suggested to understand the strategies and tactics used to control reformist rhetoric. </p>

<p> This thesis explores how the Haliwa-Saponi Indians Halifax and Warren County, North Carolina, challenged the Jim Crow black-white racial classification system between the 1940s and 1960s. To seek political autonomy the Indians worked with and against the dominant strategies of the civil rights movement. The Indians strategically developed Indian-only political and social institutions such as the Haliwa Indian Club, Haliwa Indian School, and Mount Bethel Indian Baptist Church by collaborating with Indians and whites alike. Internal political disagreement led to this diversity of political strategies after 1954, when school desegregation became an issue throughout the nation. One faction of Meadows Indians embraced a racial identity as "colored" and worked within the existing black-white political and institutional system, while another group eschewed the "colored" designation and, when necessary, asserted a separate political identity as Indians; as such, they empowered themselves to take advantage of the segregated status quo.</p>

<p> Hawai`i's ranching community grew out of indigenous attempts to manage European livestock introduced by explorers and merchants in the late 1700s. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the ranch workforce became increasingly multiethnic with the inclusion of Asian contract laborers and their descendants. This dissertation examines the origins and development of the ranching community to understand the underlying social forces that encouraged the incorporation of immigrants into its ranks. Hawai`i has long been considered a "social laboratory" for studying interethnic relations, and models of assimilation, acculturation, and creolization have been used to describe its multicultural population, but these models inadequately characterize and explain Hawai`i's ranching community. Rather than apply these models uncritically to describe the community's ethnogenesis, this dissertation proposes that a metaphor derived from the Hawaiian concept of <i>pili</i>, roughly "connection" in English, provides a contextualized explanatory framework appropriate to its Hawaiian linguistic, geographic, and cultural origins. <i>Pili </i> describes the ethnogenesis of the ranching community as the formation and reinforcement of kin- and kin-like connections among existing community members and newcomers. Using documentary and archaeological evidence of a century of ranching at Laumai`a on Hawai`i Island, I frame this process as one informed by tensions between two modes of capitalism used on the ranch: on the one hand, an indigenized capitalism that included Hawaiian genealogical and social connections in its management strategies, and on the other, an EuroAmerican form that emphasized profit and efficiency over human connection. These strategies structured the negotiations of identity among ranch workers that transformed transnationals into community members who contributed to a hybrid culture that, paradoxically, remains uniquely Hawaiian.</p>

<p> Using a memory archaeology paradigm, this dissertation explored from 2010 to 2012 the ways people used place-based narratives to create and maintain the sacredness of four historic battlefields in Montana: Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument; Nez Perce National Historical Park- Bear Paw Battlefield; Nez Perce National Historical Park- Big Hole National Battlefield; and Rosebud Battlefield State Park. This research implemented a mixed-methods approach of four data sources: historical research about on-site interpretation and land management of the battlefields; participant observations conducted during height of tourism season for each battlefield; 1,056 questionnaires administered to park visitors; and 32 semi-structured interviews with park personnel. Before formulating hypotheses to test, a preliminary literature review was conducted on three battlefields (Culloden, Fallen Timbers, and Isandlwana) for any observable patterns concerning the research domain. </p><p> This dissertation tested two hypotheses to explain potential patterns at the four battlefields in Montana related to on-site interpretation of primary sources, the sacred perception of battlefields, and the maintenance and expression of place-based cultural heritages and historical knowledge. The first hypothesis examined whether park visitors and personnel perceived these American Indian battlefields as nationally significant or if other heritage values associated with the place-based interpretation of the sacred landscapes were more important. Although park visitors and personnel overall perceived the battlefields as nationally important, they also strongly expressed other heritage values. The second hypothesis examined whether battlefield visitors who made pilgrimages to attend or participate in official on-site commemorations had stronger place-based connections for cultural heritage or historical knowledge reasons than other visitors. Overall, these commemoration pilgrims had stronger connections to the battlefields than other park visitors. </p><p> Closer comparisons of the four battlefields demonstrated that they had both similar patterns and unique aspects of why people maintained these landscapes as sacred places.</p>

<p> This dissertation chronicles the role of airpower as a focal point in the evolution of the hawk vs. dove dynamic in American politics. It accounts for the relationship between changes in the viability of aerial weapons technologies and the general commitment of elected officials to expand or restrict the standing and use of hard power as a foreign policy tool. By comparing and contrasting the aftermath of two main paradigms of conflict -- the post-Vietnam era and the post-9/11 era -- it shows how disagreement over the size, scope, and role of the nation&rsquo;s armed forces has changed amid the introduction of airpower technologies that have in many cases been developed to mitigate the increasing level of conflict asymmetry witnessed by the transition from one strategic threat environment to the next. Accordingly, the analysis follows a basic chronology of comparative case study: first it examines the waning years of the Vietnam War through to the years following its conclusion, establishing a baseline for the character of the hawk/ dove dynamic amid a mindset of mostly conventional conflict before proceeding to the post-9/11 era, evaluating how trends in the hawk/ dove debate have shifted in an age of extreme asymmetry and non-linear battlefields. The lion&rsquo;s share of the research analyzes legislative voting data on the U.S. Congress from 1964-2012 to visually chart how the hawk/ dove dynamic has fluctuated over time in terms of its intensity, primary focal point(s), and the balance of the dynamic. Seven litmus tests are identified as individual moving parts: 1) airpower policy, 2) defense spending in general, 3) (de)escalation of conflict, 4) foreign military aid, 5) WMD policy, 6) war powers/ inter-branch relations, and 7) NASA support as part of air and space power. Providing a quantitative basis for analysis, the findings are revealed along with contextual points of interest found in the public communication of key intellectual leaders (including those in the executive branch). Taken together, the research offers a comprehensive view into the evolving debate over peace and war in an age of rapidly-advancing airpower systems used in increasingly asymmetrical conflict. </p>

When the people of a given society contemplate the outside world, they do so with inherited but constantly changing values, assumptions, preoccupations, and aspirations. Who they are, one might say, largely determines what they perceive. For a variety of reasons, the Chinese have long had a fascination with the United States--a country which has not only been an active participant in Chinese affairs for well over a century, but which has also served as an idea and an example. Naturally, China's direct and indirect experiences with America, together with the vast cultural and political differences that still separate the two countries, have shaped Chinese perceptions. In China's search for a new political, social and economic order, America, as both a world power and as a concept, has played a major role. This dissertation examines the way images of America were transmitted to China in the twentieth century, and how these images were debated and represented (or misrepresented) by three main social groups of Chinese--the Chinese state, Chinese intellectuals, and the Chinese masses. Although America has unquestionably played a part in shaping modern China, the Chinese, for various reasons and in different ways, have constructed their own distinctive "America."

Throughout the pages of nineteenth-century American fiction men remain fascinated by the sound of women's speech. Literary depictions of men's intense interest in women's pleasing and distinct utterance occur with a frequency that suggest not so much that there "are" unalterable differences between American men's and women's speech, but that the imagining of that difference is central to the nation's understanding of itself as a distinct entity or to the creation of what Lauren Berlant calls a "national symbolic." These lengthy depictions of women's speech thus participate in cultural work of a profound, enduring, and to date unspecified nature. It is the project of this dissertation to describe the cultural burden placed on women's language in mainstream nineteenth-century American literature and, then, to carve out new ways of thinking about the public significance of women's speech and its impact on the nineteenth-century political arena. In chapter one, I analyze the writings of, among others, Henry James, Sarah Hale, and Noah Webster in order to show that the separation of women's speech from the public arena was a process that depended for its success on the attention that men paid to the sound of women's talk and to the desire that sound produced. In short, I establish a clear relation between the creation and reinforcement of the public sphere and the depictions of women's speech that occur repeatedly in American fiction. In my second chapter, however, I show that by mid-century a minority of American writers, including Herman Melville and E. D. E. N. Southworth had begun arguing that the sexually explicit subject matter, rather than eroticized sound, of women's language recenters their speech in the public sphere. Using their figuration as a departure point, I show, in chapters three through six, how Maria Monk, Caroline Lee Hentz, Harriet Jacobs, Lillie Devereux Blake, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps employed and foregrounded this alternative paradigm of women's speech in their political fictions in order to influence, respectively, the nativist, pro-slavery, abolitionist, women's suffrage, and labor reform movements. My analysis thus revises the critical consensus that nineteenth-century women's speech failed to impact America's political life.