"The Spirit of the Corps: The British Army and the Pre-national Pan-European Military World and the Origins of American Martial Culture,1754-1783," argues that during the eighteenth-century there was a transnational martial culture of European soldiers, analogous to the maritime world of sailors and the sea and attempts to identify the key elements of this martial culture, as reflected in the mid-eighteenth-century British Army, and briefly describes its transmission to the army of the United States. "The Spirit of the Corps" describes a pan-European military world had it origins in the wars of religion that engulfed Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries, and was a long established institution by the eighteenth-century. "The Spirit of the Corps" suggests that honor provided the justification and raison d'etre for the pan-European military world, and could be found embodied in the officer's gentlemanly sense of honor, and the espirit de corps of the rank and file. "The Spirit of the Corps" goes on to describe other important elements of the pan-European martial culture which included: weak military discipline and a relative loose control over soldiers which resulted in the soldier's life being viewed as one of relative freedom, the operation of an implicit contract between followers and leaders, a military community that included non-combatants, women, and children, a process of martial enculturation, a sense of military style that extended into drill and uniforms, and espirit de corps which loomed especially large during an era when nationalism and ideology were relatively minor factors. "The Spirit of the Corps" concludes by arguing that the Continental Line of the American Revolution was imbued with the culture of the British Army, and the pan-European military world; in its turn, this pan-European martial culture was, transmitted to the regular army of the United States were its presence could be seen clearly as late as 1940, and in some ways, can still be detected today.

As the life cycle began to expand after 1900, "old age" became a new twentieth-century site where, like the nineteenth-century factory, working-class males struggled to define and sustain identities as "men." By studying "the problem of the old man," this dissertation revises historians' understandings of gender and class -- showing how gender, class, and aging have fundamentally intersected and, in the process, shaped the histories of work, the welfare state, and organized labor. The first three chapters explore how the rise of mass production catalyzed "the problem of the old man" during the 1910s and 1920s, and why state pensions emerged as the principal way to uphold manhood in later life. Chapter 1 examines how mass production employers emphasized youth and speed in the workplace, making "growing old" a major source of unease about manhood. Chapter 2 addresses why many experts in social provision concluded by 1929 that only pensions from the state could uphold the masculinity of the aging male breadwinner. Chapter 3 looks at how both the state and the workers tried to find ways to uphold the economic foundations of manhood during the Great Depression, ranging from Social Security to labor organizing. The final chapters examine the shifting class and gender politics that accompanied the rise of modern "retirement" during the 1940s and 1950s. Chapter 4 discusses how expanding job opportunities, increasing incomes, and suburbanization made middle-class status a key foundation of manhood after World War II. As a result, aging professionals displaced factory workers in "the problem of the old man" discourse. Chapter 5 examines the strategies older men used to affirm manhood after retirement. As in their "working years," retired men struggled to be youthful and "productive." Many retired men busied themselves with rigorous routines of sports, "tinkering," and yard work in order to demonstrate their manhood. During the postwar years, as the average length of life continued to expand, men embraced a contradictory definition of manhood that depended on males' ability to sustain economic success and youthful bodies -- even as their bodies aged and they faced the end of their careers due to retirement.

RADICAL REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND, AMERICA, AND THE IMPERIAL ATLANTIC, 1624-1661 John Donoghue, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, April 30, 2006 This dissertation links the radical politics of the English Revolution to the history of puritan New England. It argues that antinomians, by rejecting traditional concepts of social authority, created divisive political factions within the godly party while it waged war against King Charles I. At the same time in New England, antinomians organized a political movement that called for a democratic commonwealth to limit the power of ministers and magistrates in religious and civil affairs. When this program collapsed in Massachusetts, hundreds of colonists returned to an Old England engulfed by civil war. Joining English antinomians, they became lay preachers in London, New Model Army soldiers, and influential supporters of the republican Levellers. This dissertation also connects the study of republican political thought to the labor history of the first British Empire. Although intellectual historians of the English Revolution often explore classical, renaissance and religious sources to explain political thinking, they regularly neglect the material contexts, in England and elsewhere, where political ideas took shape. The world of the university, the halls of Parliament, and the rank-and-file of the New Model Army inspired republicanism, but so too, dialectically, did the new worlds of colonial courts, plantations, and imperial armadas. As the English Revolution gave birth to the first British Empire, the circulation of experience between the old and new worlds transformed port cities like Boston, London, and Bridgetown into ideological entrepôts, where radical networks forged republican programs during a period of revolutionary upheaval. Confronting slavery, the destruction of Native American societies, and impressment for imperial wars in Ireland and the West Indies, radicals created a language of practical Christian liberty that defined the abolition of coerced labor as a principle of republican justice. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that labor history can illuminate the intellectual history of a trans-national political movement organized for, and often by, the working classes of the seventeenth-century imperial Atlantic.

THE NEW ENGLAND COD FISHING INDUSTRY AND MARITIME DIMENSIONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION Christopher Paul Magra, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2006 The American Revolution cannot be fully understood without coming to terms with why workers and merchants within the New England cod fishing industry resisted British authority and how their labor and capital contributed to the war effort. The Revolution began in New England with the shot heard around the world in Concord, Massachusetts. New England provided the most manpower for the American military each and every year of the war. And cod represented the most lucrative trade good in all of colonial New England. Between 1768 and 1772, fish represented 35% of New Englands total export revenue. The second most valuable export commodity, livestock, represented only 20% of this revenue stream. By 1775, an estimated 10,000 New Englanders, or 8% of the adult male working population, labored in the fishing industry. Yet, to date there has not been a systematic effort to investigate the relationship between this vital colonial industry and the Revolutionary War. In order to get at the linkages between the worlds of commerce and the way of war I triangulated data culled from merchant ledgers, ships log books, customs records, shipping records, diaries, newspapers, and military service records. Drawing on these sources, the dissertation defends a two-fold argument. First, economic competition between vested interests in the British Empire, principally New England fish merchants, West Country fish merchants, and West Indian sugar planters, resulted in a series of commercial regulations and naval police actions aimed at restricting New Englands economic expansion. These regulations and actions culminated in the British states fateful decision in 1775 to close the New England cod fishing industry, which ultimately motivated colonists to go to war. Second, fishermen and fish merchants played key roles in winning the war. Merchants converted trade routes into military supply lines and transformed their fishing vessels into warships. Fishermen armed and manned the first American navy, served in the first coast guard units, manned privateers, and fought on land. These multi-faceted efforts helped secure American independence.

This study examines the role of the Pennsylvania National Guard during the years between the railroad strike of 1877 to its mobilization for the Great War in 1917. An analysis of the labor disputes and strikes that took place during these years indicates that the Guard was used sparingly and with great reluctance by state authorities. Out of the hundreds of strikes during those years following the 1877 railroad strike, the Guard was deployed only six times. The Guard was a tool of last resort that was dispatched by Pennsylvania governors only after all other means to suppress violence and restore order in affected areas were exhausted. During its rare use in industrial disturbances the Guard was not at the disposal of corporate interests and certainly did not take orders or direction from factory and mine owners. On the contrary, the Guard proved such an unreliable ally that corporations increasingly turned to, and relied upon, private police forces such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency and the Coal and Iron police to engage the forces of organized labor. The Commonwealth authorities finally relieved the Guard of strike-related duties by creating the cost-effective and efficient Pennsylvania State Constabulary in 1905. Rather than serving as a policeman of labor during this period, the Pennsylvania National Guard had initiated significant reforms in structure, training, and discipline that brought it into greater conformity with the standards of the Regular Army. Years before the Root reforms and the Dick Act, the Pennsylvania National Guard had initiated its own program of reform that moved it toward higher standards of military efficiency and professionalism. The Pennsylvania National Guard had consciously fashioned itself to serve as a first-line reserve for the Regular Army, and its excellent performance in the Spanish-American War and the Mexican Border Campaign proved its value to the nation.

Chinas nation-building agenda in the early twentieth century embraced the causes of womens rights and medical modernization. Modernizers considered the poor health of the Chinese population to be a major impediment to progress. Specifically, modern midwifery would improve the health of the nation at its most fundamental level, both by lowering the high infant mortality rate and by securing the well-being of future generations. Amid growing interest in maternal and child health, women entered the Western medical profession as midwives, nurses, and obstetrician/gynecologists. Local and national governments in China supported midwife training and research for the health of future generations. Chinas central government established a National Midwifery Board in 1929 to create and oversee training programs and enact laws to regulate modern midwives and physicians. Medical professionals and associations had enough political clout to transform public health policy. They successfully lobbied for legislation and actively advocated adopting aspects of Western medicine for women. Midwives engendered better and stronger generations by using new methods and equipment. Furthermore, midwife training allowed Chinese women to participate in modernization by joining the labor force, thus challenging traditional Chinese notions of female passivity and seclusion. At the same time, however, these modern midwives displaced the traditional old-style birth grannies who had served as social and ritual mediators within the family and community. This research examines midwifery and childbirth technologies introduced into China in the early twentieth century in relation to nation building, modernization, and changing gender ideologies. By using biographical data, legislation, and articles in the popular press, among other sources, I explore the changing notions of gender propriety that prompted Chinese women to utilize Western-trained midwives, read literature dealing with such intimate matters as childbirth and prenatal training, give birth in hospitals or maternity clinics, and enter the medical profession as midwives.

This dissertation examines how amateur sports once dominated and controlled by Pennsylvanias Leisure Class became accessible to non-elites over the course of the twentieth century. Rising standards of living and increased leisure time were pre-requisites for broader public participation. But this study argues that the democratization of amateur sport depended on the active intervention of the state and, to a lesser extent, the market, both of which broadened access to privately controlled playing fields. In hunting, state game management restored wild game populations, thus ensuring a bountiful supply of game for all Pennsylvanians, irrespective of social class. Likewise, the first municipally owned golf courses, often situated in public parks, offered the only alternative to the private courses which up to that point dominated the game and regulated participation. Finally, the market-driven demand for new sources of football material on college campuses opened opportunities for working-class student athletes, most of whom were recruited and subsidized by wealthy alumni. Many of these changes were set in motion by elites acting in their own self interest. Over time, though, the democratization of amateur sports became a goal in itself. During the 1910s, the state game commission shifted its emphasis from game propagation and game law enforcement to the acquisition of public game lands, a policy focus which benefited hunters without access to private property. In golf, a second wave of municipal courses, many billed as peoples country clubs and fortified by federal money, were designed to be accessible to the greatest number of people, and without the membership restrictions which obtained at many early public courses. While the social composition of amateur sports continued to expand after World War II, the market played an increasingly more visible role in that process, as evinced by growth of semi-public golf courses and the increased prevalence of leased or privately owned hunting grounds. Elites frequently responded to the crowding of the playing fields by retreating or refortifying boundaries within these same sports.

FOR NATION AND GAIN: ECONOMY, ETHNICITY AND POLITICS IN THE CZECH BORDERLANDS, 1945-1948 David Gerlach, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2007 This dissertation investigates the post-World War II expulsion of approximately three million Sudeten Germans from the Czech borderlands and the settlement of nearly two million Czechs and others in their place. While studies of the Sudeten German expulsions and of ethnic cleansing generally focus on violent conflict, I argue that officials and settlers efforts to control confiscated German property and labor overwhelmingly shaped the economic, ethnic and political transformations of the borderlands. I examine the actions of and debates within local governments, called national committees, as well as their interaction with central government organs from 1945 to 1948. Expulsion, confiscation and settlement created competing objectives in the borderlands. During the summer of 1945, military units and national committees began expelling Germans and seizing their property. While the army prosecuted expulsions, and plundered in the process, national committees strove to manage expulsions and settlement to benefit their communities, for example, attempting to retain German workers for local production. Despite these committees efforts to stabilize the borderlands, widespread looting and the settlers quest for social mobility precluded order. Material gain was often more the goal than the physical removal of Germans. Thus Czechs worked with Germans to find and seize property, and they fought with other Czechs over the spoils. In addition to local conflicts, expulsion and settlement spurred disputes between Prague and borderland officials, and among political parties. The confiscation of Sudeten German property dovetailed with the Communist-dominated governments land reform and nationalization policies. The Communist Party utilized the distribution of confiscated German farms to win political support in the borderlands, and it allocated confiscated factories to nationalized enterprises. However, the Partys efforts to consolidate and liquidate borderland industries faced considerable resistance from national committees even after it took over the state in 1948. While this dissertation studies the economic motives and imperatives that drove ethnic cleansing in postwar Czechoslovakia, its significance extends to other cases of forced migration in which property confiscation and labor issues played central roles.

This dissertation is an explanation of the life and music of the American composer Stephen Collins Foster in terms of his historical world. Foster captured the essential dynamics of the antebellum mind and heart, which accounted for the immense popularity of his music even during the composers lifetime. Consequently, by placing Foster and his music within the historical context of his own antebellum society, culture, and history, I sought explanations for the following: the function of sentimentality in Fosters tear-inducing parlor songs and in his blackface plantation songs; the Copperhead, anti-Lincoln politics of the Foster family; Fosters non-companionate marriage to the high-tempered yet independent Jeanie; what the young Foster learned during his stay in the free city of Cincinnati, located just across the river from a slave state; Fosters position on minstrelsy and how he transformed the racially denigrating minstrel song into the refined, sentimental hybrid plantation song that sympathized with the slaves; how and why the piano girls were the major purchasers of Fosters parlor songs; the meaning behind the ghost-like images of the women in Fosters songs; life in Civil War New York along the Bowery where Foster spent his final years and a re-evaluation of his New York songs; and, finally, the curious conditions of his tragic death from an accident in his hotel room on the Bowery. Although Fosters association with the minstrel stage is often viewed as a source of embarrassment by twenty-first century Americans, I was able to demonstrate that iv Stephen Foster wrote his greatest plantation songs during the years when blackface minstrelsy expressed sympathy for the slaves, and that he abandoned the genre when it did not.

This dissertation argues that the economic demands of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world made Charleston, South Carolina, a center of significant sailor, slave, and servant resistance, allowing the working people of the citys waterfront to permanently alter both the plantation slave system and the export economy of South Carolina. It explores the meanings and effects of resistance within the context of the waterfront, the South Carolina plantation economy, and the wider Atlantic World. Focusing on the period that began with the major slave rebellion along the Stono River in 1739 and culminated with the 1785 incorporation of Charleston, this dissertation relies on newspapers, legislative journals, court records, and the private correspondence and business papers of merchants and planters to reveal the daily activities of waterfront workers as they interacted with each other, and with their employers and masters. During these decades, while masters and employers dominated the plantation fields and urban households of South Carolina, the waterfront of Charleston and the waterways of South Carolina were the reserve of maritime workers. These environs muted the power of the white elite and greatly expanded the autonomy of workers. Due to their near-constant mobility and daily interactions with others who were mobile, maritime workers created an environment that allowed them to challenge and reset the boundaries of acceptable behavior in and out of the work environment. While the story of planter and merchant domination in South Carolina is well documented and understood, any story of slave, servant and free worker subversion of the plantation regime from within is incomplete without a consideration of the important role that maritime laborers played in this process. By highlighting the central role that maritime laborers played in challenging and reshaping local and regional social and economic systems in the eighteenth century, this work expands our understanding of Southern, African American, Atlantic, and maritime history.