This project explores the military and political mobilization of rural and urban working sectors of Puerto Rican society as the Island transitioned from Spanish to U.S. imperial rule. In particular, my research is interested in examining how this shift occurs via patterns of inclusion-exclusion within the military and the various forms of citizenship that are subsequently transformed into socio-economic and political enfranchisement. Analyzing the armed forces as a culture-homogenizing agent helps to explain the formation and evolution of Puerto Rican national identities from 1868 to 1952, and how these evolving identities affected the political choices of the Island. This phenomenon, I argue, led to the creation of the Estado Libre Asociado in 1952. The role played by the tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans in the metropolitan military in the final creation of a populist project taking place under colonial rule in the Island was threefold. Firstly, these soldiers served as political leverage during WWII to speed up the decolonization process. Secondly, they incarnated the commonwealth ideology by fighting and dying in the Korean War. Finally, the Puerto Rican soldiers filled the ranks of the army of technicians and technocrats attempting to fulfill the promises of a modern industrial Puerto Rico after the returned from the wars. ^ In contrast to Puerto Rican popular national mythology and mainstream academic discourse that has marginalized the agency of subaltern groups; I argue that the Puerto Rican soldier was neither cannon fodder for the metropolis nor the pawn of the Creole political elites. Regaining their masculinity, upward mobility, and political enfranchisement were among some of the incentives enticing the Puerto Rican peasant into military service. The enfranchisement of subaltern sectors via military service ultimately created a very liberal, popular, and broad definition of Puerto Rico’s national identity. When the Puerto Rican peasant/soldier became the embodiment of the Commonwealth formula, the political leaders involved in its design were in fact responding to these soldiers’ complex identities, which among other things compelled them to defend the “American Nation” to show their Puertorriqueñidad . ^

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In the autumn of 1775, American revolutionaries invaded Canada in the hope of winning a fourteenth colony for the cause, dealing a fatal blow to the British war effort, and forcing London to reconcile on American terms. Led by Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold, the two-pronged effort met with nothing but victory on the way to Quebec. Set back by an unexpected repulse on December 31, however, the Northern Army was finally forced to retreat from the province altogether in the summer of 1776. Having failed either to secure an alliance with Canada or to achieve reconciliation with Britain, the campaign proved a total disaster, and has therefore been understudied or ignored completely by most historians. This dissertation argues that the invasion of Canada proved crucial in destroying the British empire in America and creating the social logic for independence. When the campaign failed to deliver on its primary objectives, American leaders in Philadelphia and colonists throughout the home front recognized that reconciliation was impossible. Historians frequently give credit to Thomas Paine’s Common Sense for igniting widespread calls for independence, but it was the failure of the Canadian campaign that lent urgency to these arguments, occasioning the swift transition from colonial rebellion to all-out civil war for American independence. The nature of the conflict had changed, creating a political-military context that made foreign assistance and a declaration of independence essential to sustaining the Revolution. This study also hopes to break down military history as a category too frequently walled off from other branches of historical inquiry. Early American historians tend to imagine the American Revolution and the War for Independence as two overlapping but distinct events. By analyzing the Canadian campaign’s effect upon the American home front, this dissertation seeks to use military events as a lens to reorient our understanding of the breakdown of empire and the path to independence. / 2022-08-31T00:00:00Z

This dissertation studies the Continental Army’s attempts to control navigation on the Hudson River in the New York Highlands during the American Revolutionary War. It examines the overlapping lines of authority between federal, state, and military entities; the escalation of civil-military tensions over supplies, provisions, and pay; how American strategy created varying levels of resources and troops in the region, and the failure of efforts to mitigate that risk; the anxiety created in Continental officers when they rejected a French engineers’ advice on the location and scope of riverside defenses; and how George Washington and his officers used the fortifications at West Point to demonstrate the legitimacy of the United States to domestic and foreign audiences. This dissertation utilizes correspondence, diaries, memoirs, the journals of legislative proceedings, orderly books, archeological studies, and contemporaneous newspapers to reveal that, despite the hindrance of overlapping authorities, the fortifications in the Highlands enabled US strategy and displayed the aftermath of colonialism in the United States. Controlling river traffic in the Highlands began as a colonial project with plans that outstripped available resources and relied on technology incapable of achieving its purpose. The New York Provincial Congress relocated its efforts five miles south and included a physical obstacle in the water. A British attack overwhelmed the defenses at the southern location in just a few hours. The Continental Army, contrary to the advice from a French military engineer, decided to rebuild near the original site and began the iterative development of a system of layered defenses. The project successfully deterred the British from attempting to take the works forcefully. Civil-military relationships grew tenser as the war wound down, but Washington’s intervention assured continued civilian control of the army. This dissertation uses the example of the Highlands fortification process to provide a new understanding of strategy that gives the term more explanatory value. It takes seriously the impact of the power imbalance between Great Britain and its North American colonies and analyzes the lingering effects of that relationship on the United States. Finally, it reveals the tension and conflict between different lines of authority throughout the war and uncovers the roots of civil-military tensions in the young republic. / History

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This thesis is a historiographical study concerning the strategic bombing campaign of Germany during World War II. The study questions how effective the campaign was in comparing the prewar theories to wartime practices. Secondly, it questions the morality of the bombings and how and why bombing techniques changed throughout the course of the war. Lastly, the study looks at a recent topic in the historic community, which is the question of remembrance and Germans as victims of the war. This study concludes that the strategic bombing campaign of Germany was a success but not in the sense that prewar planners had anticipated. The moral implications of the bombings were horrific, but given the severity of the war they were fighting, were a necessity. The question of Germans as victims will be open to debate for some time, especially because Germans and Americans have opposing viewpoints on the matter.

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