The Reagan Era featured partisan clashes, controversy over fiscal policy, and a time of trial for the Democratic Party and its claim of diversity. This dissertation examines the efforts of the House Democratic Leadership to build party unity and to enhance its operating methods in battles with the Reagan administration over fiscal policy and the future of the United States. The House Democratic Leadership was challenged by the conservative Democrats. In 1980, the conservatives formed the Conservative Democratic Forum (CDF). Acting as a quasi-third party, the CDF was instrumental in passage of Reagan's economic program in 1981. Afterwards, the CDF was unable to maintain its coalition with Reagan and the Republicans or to act as a quasi-third party. Many conservative Democrats became disillusioned with the large deficits produced by Reaganomics. Conservative Democrats had to decide whether to work within the Democratic Party, become Republicans, or isolate themselves from influence. Meanwhile, the House Democratic Leadership was retooling its methods. The Caucus was revived. It was used to promote discussion and find consensus among the diverse array of liberals, moderates, and conservatives. The Leadership followed a moderate approach to building party unity that encouraged, but did not compel, party loyalty. The House Democrats worked to find budget policies that could satisfy all members while simultaneously confronting the worsening fiscal crisis. By the late 1980s, important trends had appeared. The House Democrats enjoyed greater party unity, and conservatives had found opportunities to exercise influence within the Democratic Party. The Democrats had shown a willingness to reduce popular spending and to confront the growing national debt and debt service payments. On the other hand, Reagan failed to act upon his earlier rhetoric about the need for a balanced budget and the danger of deficit spending. He failed to act as a constructive participant in the budget process for much of his administration and created a political atmosphere that inhibited fiscal responsibility. The result was a virtual tripling of the national debt and a more partisan political environment.

This administrative and social history of Hertfordshire and Essex tracks the careers, social relationships, and personal tribulations of justices of the peace and other county officials from 1590 through 1630. The study addresses the nature of the relationship between local government and the central government, the social structure of the two counties as reflected in the annual lists of the justices of the peace, and any administrative or social connections between Hertfordshire and Essex. Office holding was not only an administrative duty but also intertwined the lives of real people. Did local officials rise or fall because of central government actions, or did inter-county faction drive the successes or failures of the ruling elite? Was there any underlying social connection among the gentry of the two contiguous counties that influenced local administration? Finally, how did local government function? What role did it play on the lives of the people? The study was accomplished through first examining the annual commissions of the peace for each county; from these lists, information was compiled regarding the nature of local office holding as well as the individuals likely to serve in county government. Manuscript sources revealed the social backgrounds and personal stories of individual justices of the peace. Local records showed the workings of county administration and the jurisdiction of the shires ruling elite. Other printed sources tied the counties to the Crown and explored issues of religion, economics, and politics. Local governance in Hertfordshire and Essex was successful to the extent that it provided order and stability to the Crown, the ruling elite, and the inhabitants of the counties. For the most part, the magistracy did fulfill this function and the result was a marked continuity in local government and society. Although disorder could erupt on occasion, changes initiated by the central government caused the most tension in the shires. By the late-1620s, the lords lieutenant, their deputies, and the justices of the peace were stretched to the breaking point by the open-ended threat of economic, political, religious, and social innovations imposed from above.

Relative to its importance, little research has been done on the Romano-Parthian rivalry that existed during the first two centuries AD. By extension, even less has been written concerning the kingdom of classical Armenia, which often served as the focal point of that bitter conflict. The absence of such research is regrettable, for it was this very rivalry that dictated how the Empires eastern border would be defined. According to many modern scholars and several of the classical authors, Romans feared the looming threat of the Parthian state. Although such panic was unfounded, this fear supposedly then prompted the Empires prolonged obsession with the territory of Armenia, which both the scholarly and primary sources look upon as a military buffer state. Yet in reality, Roman action in the East was not the result of a collective decision of all Roman citizens, but rather brought about by the individual wants and desires of Romes leaders. These leaders regarded Armenia not as a buffer state, but as a staging ground for their various campaigns against Parthia. It was their personal ambitions, rather than Romes collective fear, that drew Armenia under the veil of Roman hegemony. This project intends to examine Armenias role in the Romano-Parthian conflict and hopes to prove that Roman imperialism was not defensive, as some scholars assert, but rather the end product of the ambitions of individual Roman leaders.

In the early twentieth century jazz was a regionally based, racially defined dance music that featured solo and collective improvisation. Originating in New Orleans, jazz soon spread throughout the country as musicians left the South for better opportunities-both economic and social-elsewhere in the country. Jazz greatly increased in popularity during the 1920s. No longer a regional music dominated by African Americans, jazz in the 1920s helped define a generation torn between the Victorian society of nineteenth century America and the culture of modernity that was quickly defining the early twentieth century. Jazz and its eventual popularity represented the cultural tensions present in modern America, and the acceptance of jazz reflected the degree to which Americans rejected or accepted traditional values. This dissertation examines the historical context of this larger transformation America underwent in the 1920s and early 1930s. In general, the narrative outlines the origins of jazz in the late 19th century, its dissemination through various means after World War I, and its eventual acceptance as a uniquely American cultural expression in the last part of the 1920s. Jazz music helped define the chaotic urban culture of America in the 1920s, and cities like Chicago, New York City, and Los Angeles nurtured and shaped the music of the period. These three cities-each with dynamic black communities-supported diverse jazz scenes as well as served as the center of a particular type of mass communication technology. Together, the rapid developments in recording technology, the growing popularity of radio, and the burgeoning film industry transformed jazz from a local, predominately African American music, to a nationally accepted cultural form identified as uniquely American. The transformation of American culture in the 1920s forced people into a new set of relationships-social, regional, and political-and the cultural ambivalence generated by this change framed much of the debate surrounding the popularity of jazz music. By viewing mass culture and popular taste through the lens of jazz, this study attempts a more complete view of American culture in the 1920s.

The "Magic City" of Roanoke, Virginia, the fastest growing urban area in the South from 1880 to 1890, exemplified everything that New South boosters claimed to have wanted. The prototypical New South city, Roanoke emerged as an extreme version of all that was supposed to remedy the South's post-Civil War economic stagnation. The city's promise, however, revealed the empty promise of the New South. Despite intensive demographic and industrial growth, by the early twentieth century, Roanoke failed to evolve into the dynamic and modern city prophesied by New South visionaries. Its abysmal conditions, racial turmoil, class conflicts, and superficial "reforms" made it much more village than city, far more dystopia than utopia. "Magic City" examines that history from 1882 to 1912 using the lenses of class, community, and reform as points of departure. It analyzes Roanoke's rapid growth in the 1880s and traces the consequences of that intensive development through 1912, the year local "reform" reached its climax. Roanoke's emergence in 1882 as the headquarters for two northern-owned railroads was largely the result of native businessmen who adhered blindly to the New South creed. They cultivated a business-friendly ethos that put economic development ahead of all other causes, envisioned industrial expansion as a panacea for social ills and infrastructure troubles, and channeled municipal capital into investment schemes instead of solutions to the rapidly growing city's numerous other needs. The consequences were widespread societal and institutional malfunctioning that climaxed in a cataclysmic lynch riot. When that revolt and the city's decrepit appearance threatened to stall additional development, local elites "reformed" Roanoke in ways that made investors less anxious. Those modifications, however, were largely superficial and failed to resolve the municipality's systematic and deeply embedded problems. Roanoke's early history is primarily the story of sorting out the myriad tensions and ambiguities inherent in attempting to create a modern industrialized city on the one hand, and fomenting municipal and civic order on the other. Examining that story hopefully offers a more complete understanding of how urban development in the New South actually operated.

At the time of the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, the American army was not experienced in dealing with challenges abroad. The Army spent the last quarter of the nineteenth century fighting the Indian Wars in the West and a generation of officers grew to maturity commanding small frontier posts where only a few had the opportunity to maneuver large formations during the Spanish-American War. The infantrymen who marched into Peking in August of 1900 were transitioning between the tactics of the past and the future. The Napoleonic formations used in the American Civil War, already made obsolete at that time by the lethal firepower available, still lingered in the collective memory as the preferred method of maneuvering large bodies of troops and bringing firepower to bear. The Americans who participated in the Boxer Relief Expedition demonstrated impressive adaptability and flexibility. They assembled a sizeable force in China from a scattered military, occupied with fighting an insurgency in the Philippines and garrison duties in the United States. General Chaffee worked within a loosely organized coalition of allied armies in order to rescue the besieged legations in Peking. It is ironic that the Boxer Rebellion, and the international coalition mounted to combat it, was doomed to slip into near obscurity, overshadowed by the military conflagration to come a decade and a half later. The American role in the China Relief Expedition foretold events that would occur in the next major war in the twentieth century, the Great War.

In 1930, African American sociologist Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University traveled to the Republic of Liberia as the American member of a League of Nations commission to investigate allegations of slavery and forced labor in that West African nation. In the previous five years, the face of Liberia had changed after the large-scale development of rubber plantations on land leased by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, with headquarters in Akron, Ohio. Political turmoil greeted Johnson in Liberia, an underdeveloped nation teetering on the brink of economic collapse. This dissertation focuses on Johnsons role as the key member of the League of Nations Commission of Inquiry, and examines events leading up to the investigation. Also touched upon are the life and career of Harvey S. Firestone, the history of the rubber and automobile industries, and Liberias relationship with the U. S. Department of State. Central to this dissertation, however, is Charles Johnson, an important and underappreciated figure in African American history. Johnsons diplomatic approach to race relations in the United States earned him respect from philanthropic foundations that funded his research projects, but also led to criticism and jealousy from his black colleagues and peers. Because Johnson guarded his privacy so closely and left behind little in the way of personal information, the journal that he kept for six months in Liberia becomes all the more important as a clue to his inner thoughts and feelings, as well as a guide to his personality and character. Furthermore, Liberia shaped Johnsons thinking as a scholar in important ways, particularly in regard to the economic foundations of exploitation, caste and class, and political disfranchisement. Johnsons mission to Liberia and his spirited defense of that nations tribal citizens, as this study shows, suggests a more complicated and assertive individual that contrasts with the largely one dimensional image of him that has metastasized over the years. Indeed, Johnson was one of the few African Americans who showed any interest in the welfare of Liberias indigenous tribes. In that regard, he was a maverick, overlooked and underestimated.

The British image of Germany as England's "poor relation," a backward cluster of feudal states, gave way during the nineteenth century to the stereotype of England's archenemy and imperial rival. This shift from innocuous Old Germany to menacing New Germany accelerated after German unification in 1871 as German economic growth and imperial ambitions became topics for commentary in British journals. But the stereotypical "German Michael," or rustic simpleton, and other images of self-effacing servile, loyal, honest and passive Old Germany lingered on into the late nineteenth century as a "straw man" for alarmist Germanophobes to dispel with new counter-stereotypes. These included fanatical nationalists, Anglophobic militarists, overbearing officials, know-it-all professors, unscrupulous merchants and indefatigable clerks. Some Germanophobes, however, and many Germanophiles, clung to older stereotypes as a form of escapism or wishful thinking: the former believed that national character deficiencies would foil German ambitions, the latter hoped that German idealism and good sense would eventually triumph over Anglophobic nationalism. The British entente with France in 1904, and Russia in 1907, marked an end to more than a decade of Anglo-German alliance attempts. These supposed missed opportunities were thwarted by mutual distrust, opposing strategic aims, diplomatic maneuvering and, ultimately, naval rivalry. But the strength of public opinion and popular nationalism also limited official moves toward cooperation. Stereotypes contributed to what has become known as the Anglo-German antagonism through their power to encapsulate national differences. British journalists could draw upon a rich heritage of demeaning German stereotypes in order to bolster national self-image at the expense of the German nemesis. Stereotypes also gained unwarranted currency in the public media through pseudoscientific racial theories and ethnological hierarchies that constituted the nineteenth-century paradigm of innate national character differences. The record of stereotypes in print therefore reveals the psychological underpinnings of pre-World War I British attitudes toward Germany and provides a new perspective on the interface between public opinion and national rivalry.

This study examines events, conditions, and circumstances that influenced the development of the Natchez District of West Florida from its acquisition by Great Britain in 1763 until the eve of the Civil War. The strong relationships between West Florida and the original thirteen colonies created a dynamic area of Revolutionary and antebellum era growth in West Florida, and particularly in the Natchez District. Eighteenth century westward migration of seaboard colonists exerted pressure on native Americans. At the same time, colonists felt pressure from the presence of British troops remaining in America following the French and Indian War. Colonial officials recognized the need to disperse the population in order to ease tensions while still keeping colonists close enough to prevent them from feeling truly independent of England. West Florida provided a safety valve to mitigate these pressures. The exceptional quality of the land and climate in the Natchez District promoted settlement and resulted in a successful agricultural economy based on a slave labor system. When the main agricultural focus shifted to cotton after 1790, the plantation system built on previous tobacco culture was already in place. Beginning about 1795, cotton production drove the economy of the Natchez District and created a class of planter elite at least as affluent and progressive as those in more established colonies farther north. Until approximately 1830 Protestantism vied with the civil religion of land, slaves, and cotton for primacy in the Natchez District. After that, evangelicals and the planter elite moved closer to agreement on issues of slavery and wealth. Evangelicals, the planter elite, and slaves approached religion in their own ways, both secular and traditional, and adhered to systems of worship that corresponded to their own particular needs. By the eve of the Civil War the combination of these factors created a dynamic agricultural area with a cosmopolitan feel, yet firmly entrenched in the Bible Belt.

While many historians have maintained that the Provisional and First Confederate Congresses both served as legislatures intent on obstructing Jefferson Davis's policies, these southern assemblies actually provided little notable resistance to the president. Congressmen who did oppose Davis's policies never coalesced into a formal opposition. This lack of cohesion resulted from two factors: the Confederacy's eschewal of political parties following secession from the Union and the inability of disgruntled solons to organize an oppositional faction thereafter. When objections to increased centralization of the war effort came, they were from individuals who acted alone or in small factions. Consequently, Davis had a vast majority of his desired policies enacted during the period from February 1861 to February 1864.