Military-diplomatic Adventurism:  Communist China's Foreign Policy in the Early Stage of the Korean War (1950-1951) (open access)

Military-diplomatic Adventurism: Communist China's Foreign Policy in the Early Stage of the Korean War (1950-1951)

The thesis studies the relations of Communist China's foreign policy and its military offensives in the battlefield in Korean Peninsula in late 1950 and early 1951, an important topic that has yet received little academic attention. As original research, this thesis cites extensively from newly declassified Soviet and Chinese archives, as well as American and UN sources. This paper finds that an adventurism dominated the thinking and decision-making of Communist leaders in Beijing and Moscow, who seriously underestimated the military capabilities and diplomatic leverages of the US-led West. The origin of this adventurism, this paper argues, lays in the CCP's civil war experience with their Nationalist adversaries, which featured a preference of mobile warfare over positional warfare, and an opportunist attitude on cease-fire. This adventurism ended only when Communist front line came to the verge of collapse in June 1951.
Date: August 2013
Creator: Zhong, Wenrui
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Rise and Fall of the Greenback Party in Texas: Economic Change and Political Dissent in the Post-Civil War Era

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
In 1873, a financial crisis plunged the United States into a deep economic depression that exacerbated a number of post-war economic issues. By the late 1870s, political dissent centered primarily on financial issues merged into the Greenback movement, which represented a loose coalition of reformers calling for economic relief based on the expanded use of greenbacks (paper currency issued by the United States Treasury during the Civil War). The Greenback Party emerged as a direct response to federal financial policies, but in Texas, it also provided a broad political platform for those opposed to the policies of "Redeemer/Bourbon" Democrats. The Greenback Party of Texas brought together a wide range of dissenters, including disgruntled Democrats, ousted Republicans, and many different economic and social reformers. From 1876, when the first Greenback clubs appeared in Texas, to the Greenback Party's virtual disappearance after the election of 1884, the Texas Greenbackers reached across boundaries of section, race, class, and sometimes gender; brought together farmers, workers, and professionals; Southerners and Northerners, white and black; former Confederates and former Unionists; native-born Americans and immigrants; and received sizable support from multiple counties in the northern, eastern, and central part of the state. In spite of its short …
Date: December 2019
Creator: Sinclair, Cameron L.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Interests Eternal and Perpetual:  British Foreign Policy and the Royal Navy in the Spanish Civil War, 1936 - 1937 (open access)

Interests Eternal and Perpetual: British Foreign Policy and the Royal Navy in the Spanish Civil War, 1936 - 1937

This thesis will demonstrate that the British leaders saw the policy of non-intervention during the Spanish Civil War as the best option available under the circumstances, and will also focus on the role of the Royal Navy in carrying out that policy. Unpublished sources include Cabinet and Admiralty papers. Printed sources include the Documents on British Foreign Policy, newspaper and periodical articles, and memoirs. This thesis, covering the years 1936-37, is broken down into six chapters, each covering a time frame that reflected a change of policy or naval mission. The non-intervention policy was seen as the best available at the time, but it was shortsighted and ignored potentially serious long-term consequences.
Date: August 2000
Creator: Sanchez, James
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Prison Productions: Textiles and Other Military Supplies from State Penitentiaries in the Trans-Mississippi Theater during the American Civil War (open access)

Prison Productions: Textiles and Other Military Supplies from State Penitentiaries in the Trans-Mississippi Theater during the American Civil War

This thesis examines the state penitentiaries of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas that became sources of wartime supplies during the Civil War. A shortage of industry in the southwest forced the Confederacy to use all manufactories efficiently. Penitentiary workshops and textile mills supplied a variety of cloth, wood, and iron products, but have received minimal attention in studies of logistics. Penitentiary textile mills became the largest domestic supplier of cloth to Confederate quartermasters, aid societies, citizens, slaves, and indigent families. This study examines how penitentiary workshops converted to wartime production and determines their contribution to the Confederate war effort. The identification of those who produced, purchased, distributed, and used penitentiary goods will enhance our knowledge of overall Confederate supply.
Date: August 2011
Creator: Derbes, Brett J.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Conquering the Natural Frontier: French Expansion to the Rhine River During the War of the First Coalition, 1792-1797 (open access)

Conquering the Natural Frontier: French Expansion to the Rhine River During the War of the First Coalition, 1792-1797

After conquering Belgium and the Rhineland in 1794, the French Army of the Sambre and Meuse faced severe logistical, disciplinary, and morale problems that signaled the erosion of its capabilities. The army’s degeneration resulted from a revolution in French foreign policy designed to conquer the natural frontiers, a policy often falsely portrayed as a diplomatic tradition of the French monarchy. In fact, the natural frontiers policy – expansion to the Rhine, the Pyrenees, and the Alps – emerged only after the start of the War of the First Coalition in 1792. Moreover, the pursuit of natural frontiers caused more controversy than previously understood. No less a figure than Lazare Carnot – the Organizer of Victory – viewed French expansion to the Rhine as impractical and likely to perpetuate war. While the war of conquest provided the French state with the resources to survive, it entailed numerous unforeseen consequences. Most notably, the Revolutionary armies became isolated from the nation and displayed more loyalty to their commanders than to the civilian authorities. In 1797, the Sambre and Meuse Army became a political tool of General Lazare Hoche, who sought control over the Rhineland by supporting the creation of a Cisrhenan Republic. Ultimately, …
Date: December 2015
Creator: Hayworth, Jordan R.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Ruinous Pride: The Construction of the Scottish Military Identity, 1745-1918 (open access)

Ruinous Pride: The Construction of the Scottish Military Identity, 1745-1918

Following the failed Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46 many Highlanders fought for the British Army in the Seven Years War and American Revolutionary War. Although these soldiers were primarily motivated by economic considerations, their experiences were romanticized after Waterloo and helped to create a new, unified Scottish martial identity. This militaristic narrative, reinforced throughout the nineteenth century, explains why Scots fought and died in disproportionately large numbers during the First World War.
Date: August 2011
Creator: Matheson, Calum Lister
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Establishing the American Way of Death: World War I and the Foundation of the United States’ Policy Toward the Repatriation and Burial of Its Battlefield Dead (open access)

Establishing the American Way of Death: World War I and the Foundation of the United States’ Policy Toward the Repatriation and Burial of Its Battlefield Dead

This thesis examines the policies and procedures created during and after the First World War that provided the foundation for how the United States commemorated its war dead for the next century. Many of the techniques used in modern times date back to the Great War. However, one hundred years earlier, America possessed very few methods or even ideas about how to locate, identify, repatriate, and honor its military personnel that died during foreign conflicts. These ideas were not conceived in the halls of government buildings. On the contrary, concerned citizens originated many of the concepts later codified by the American government. This paper draws extensively upon archival documents, newspapers, and published primary sources to trace the history of America’s burial and repatriation policies, the Army Graves Registration Services, and how American dead came to permanently rest in military cemeteries on the continent of Europe. The unprecedented dilemma of over 80,000 American soldiers buried in France and surrounding countries at the conclusion of the First World War in 1918 propelled the United States to solve many social, political, and military problems that arose over the final disposition of those remains. The solutions to those problems became the foundation for how …
Date: August 2015
Creator: Hatzinger, Kyle J.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Highsmith Men, Texas Rangers (open access)

The Highsmith Men, Texas Rangers

The Highsmith Men is a general historical narrative of four prominent men who happened to be Texas Rangers. The story begins in Texas in 1830 and traces the lives of Samuel Highsmith, his nephew, Benjamin Franklin Highsmith, and Samuels's sons, Malcijah and Henry Albert Highsmith, who was the last of the four to pass away, in 1930. During this century the four Highsmiths participated in nearly every landmark event significant to the history of Texas. The Highsmith men also participated in numerous other engagements as well. Within this framework the intent of The Highsmith Men is to scrutinize the contemporary scholarly conceptions of the early Texas Rangers as an institution by following the lives of these four men, who can largely be considered common folk settlers. This thesis takes a bottom up approach to the history of Texas, which already maintains innumerable accounts of the sometimes true and, sometimes not, larger than life figures that Texas boasts. For students pursuing studies in the Texas, the American West, the Mexican American War, or Civil War history, this regional history may be of some use. The early Texas Rangers were generally referred to as "Minute Men" or "Volunteer Militia" until 1874. In …
Date: December 2012
Creator: Edwards, Cody
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Confederate Prisons (open access)

Confederate Prisons

This thesis describes the difficulties of the Confederacy in dealing with prisoners during the Civil War.
Date: August 1954
Creator: Wall, Betty Jo
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Role of Texas in the Confederacy (open access)

The Role of Texas in the Confederacy

From its early days as a slave state, to its secession from the Union, to finally admitting that the south had failed, Texas played a major role in the Confederacy and the Civil War.
Date: January 1951
Creator: Whitworth, Bonnye Ruth
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Rio Grande Expedition, 1863-1865 (open access)

The Rio Grande Expedition, 1863-1865

In October 1863 the United States Army's Rio Grande Expedition left New Orleans, bound for the Texas coast. Reacting to the recent French occupation of Mexico, President Abraham Lincoln believed that the presence of U.S. troops in Texas would dissuade the French from intervening in the American Civil War. The first major objective of this campaign was Brownsville, Texas, a port city on the lower Rio Grande. Its capture would not only serve as a warning to the French in Mexico; it would also disrupt a lucrative Confederate cotton trade across the border. The expedition had a mixed record of achievement. It succeeded in disrupting the cotton trade, but not stopping it. Federal forces installed a military governor, Andrew J. Hamilton, in Brownsville, but his authority extended only to the occupied part of Texas, a strip of land along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. The campaign also created considerable fear among Confederate soldiers and civilians that the ravages of civil war had now come to the Lone Star State. Although short-lived, the panic generated by the Rio Grande Expedition left an indelible mark on the memories of Texans who lived through the campaign. The expedition achieved its greatest …
Date: May 2001
Creator: Townsend, Stephen A.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Frontier Defense in Texas: 1861-1865 (open access)

Frontier Defense in Texas: 1861-1865

The Texas Ranger tradition of over twenty-five years of frontier defense influenced the methods by which Texans provided for frontier defense, 1861-1865. The elements that guarded the Texas frontier during the war combined organizational policies that characterized previous Texas military experience and held the frontier together in marked contrast to its rapid collapse at the Confederacy's end. The first attempt to guard the Indian frontier during the Civil War was by the Texas Mounted Rifles, a regiment patterned after the Rangers, who replaced the United States troops forced out of the state by the Confederates. By the spring of 1862 the Frontier Regiment, a unit funded at state expense, replaced the Texas Mounted Rifles and assumed responsibility for frontier defense during 1862 and 1863. By mid-1863 the question of frontier defense for Texas was not so clearly defined as in the war's early days. Then, the Indian threat was the only responsibility, but the magnitude of Civil War widened the scope of frontier protection. From late 1863 until the war's end, frontier defense went hand in hand with protecting frontier Texans from a foe as deadly as Indians—themselves. The massed bands of deserters, Union sympathizers, and criminals that accumulated on …
Date: December 1987
Creator: Smith, David Paul, 1949-
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Confederate Military Operations in Arkansas, 1861-1865 (open access)

Confederate Military Operations in Arkansas, 1861-1865

Arkansas occupied a key position in the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. It offered a gateway for Confederate troops to move north and secure Missouri for the Confederacy, or for Union troops to move south towards Texas and Louisiana. During the war, Union and Confederate armies moved back and forth across the state engaging in numerous encounters. This paper is a year by year study of those encounters and engagements occurring in Arkansas between 1861 and 1865. Emphasis is necessarily placed on the significant campaigns and engagements. Actions which occurred in adjacent states but which militarily affected Arkansas are also discussed. The majority of the material was compiled from the Official Records.
Date: December 1978
Creator: Fortin, Maurice G.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Atlanta Campaign (open access)

The Atlanta Campaign

This thesis describes the events leading up to the capture of Atlanta by the Union army during the Civil War.
Date: January 1961
Creator: Swanson, Donald Lee
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Daniel's Battery: A Narrative History and Socio-Economic Study of the Ninth Texas Field Battery (open access)

Daniel's Battery: A Narrative History and Socio-Economic Study of the Ninth Texas Field Battery

This thesis combines a traditional narrative history of a Confederate artillery battery with a socio-economic study of its members. A database was constructed using the Compiled Service Records, 1860 census, and county tax rolls. The information revealed similarities between the unit's members and their home area. Captain James M. Daniel organized the battery in Paris, Texas and it entered Confederate service in January 1862. The battery served in Walker's Texas Division. It was part of a reserve force at the Battle of Milliken's Bend and was involved in the battles of Bayou Bourbeau, Mansfield, and Pleasant Hill. The battery also shelled Union ships on the Mississippi River. Daniel's Battery officially surrendered at Natchitoches, Louisiana, in May 1865.
Date: December 1995
Creator: Perkins, John Drummond
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Break-up of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Army, 1865

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Unlike other Confederate armies at the conclusion of the Civil War, General Edmund Kirby Smith's Trans-Mississippi Army disbanded, often without orders, rather than surrender formally. Despite entreaties from military and civilian leaders to fight on, for Confederate soldiers west of the Mississippi River, the surrender of armies led by Generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston ended the war. After a significant decline in morale and discipline throughout the spring of 1865, soldiers of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department chose to break-up and return home. As compensation for months of unpaid service, soldiers seized both public and private property. Civilians joined the soldiers to create disorder that swept many Texas communities until the arrival of Federal troops in late June.
Date: May 2001
Creator: Clampitt, Brad R.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
"Victory is Our Only Road to Peace": Texas, Wartime Morale, and Confederate Nationalism, 1860-1865 (open access)

"Victory is Our Only Road to Peace": Texas, Wartime Morale, and Confederate Nationalism, 1860-1865

This thesis explores the impact of home front and battlefield morale on Texas's civilian and military population during the Civil War. It addresses the creation, maintenance, and eventual surrender of Confederate nationalism and identity among Texans from five different counties: Colorado, Dallas, Galveston, Harrison, and Travis. The war divided Texans into three distinct groups: civilians on the home front, soldiers serving in theaters outside of the state, and soldiers serving within Texas's borders. Different environments, experiences, and morale affected the manner in which civilians and soldiers identified with the Confederate war effort. This study relies on contemporary letters, diaries, newspaper reports, and government records to evaluate how morale influenced national dedication and loyalty to the Confederacy among various segments of Texas's population.
Date: May 2008
Creator: Lang, Andrew F.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Morale in the Western Confederacy, 1864-1865: Home Front and Battlefield

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
This dissertation is a study of morale in the western Confederacy from early 1864 until the Civil War's end in spring 1865. It examines when and why Confederate morale, military and civilian, changed in three important western states, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. Focusing on that time frame allows a thorough examination of the sources, increases the opportunity to produce representative results, and permits an assessment of the lingering question of when and why most Confederates recognized, or admitted, defeat. Most western Confederate men and women struggled for their ultimate goal of southern independence until Federal armies crushed those aspirations on the battlefield. Until the destruction of the Army of Tennessee at Franklin and Nashville, most western Confederates still hoped for victory and believed it at least possible. Until the end they drew inspiration from battlefield developments, but also from their families, communities, comrades in arms, the sacrifices already endured, simple hatred for northerners, and frequently from anxiety for what a Federal victory might mean to their lives. Wartime diaries and letters of western Confederates serve as the principal sources. The dissertation relies on what those men and women wrote about during the war - military, political, social, or otherwise - …
Date: May 2006
Creator: Clampitt, Brad R.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Confederate Military Operations in Texas, 1861-1865 (open access)

Confederate Military Operations in Texas, 1861-1865

This study examines several of the Confederate military operations in Texas from the years 1861 to 1865, including early defensive moves, the Battle of Galveston and the Battle of Sabine Pass.
Date: August 1957
Creator: Crow, James Burchell
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Administration of the Atlantic Blockade 1861-1865 (open access)

Administration of the Atlantic Blockade 1861-1865

The purpose of this paper is to show in detail the role of only a portion of the Federal Navy, the Atlantic Blockading Squadrons, during the Civil War.
Date: January 1967
Creator: Delafield ,Charles Henry
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Confederate Texas: A Political Study, 1861-1865 (open access)

Confederate Texas: A Political Study, 1861-1865

"No adequate history of the activities of the Texas state government during the Civil War has been written. Instead this phase of state history has been treated only in a limited manner in general state and Civil War histories. A history of the state government's functions and role during this period is essential to understanding Texas' development as a state and its place in the Confederacy. This work is an attempt to provide such a history. A study of the internal political affairs of Texas during the war years, this work begins with the movement toward secession and ends with the collapse of the state government and the establishment of military rule in Texas. Emphasis has been placed on revealing how the state government attempted to cope with the numerous problems which the war engendered and the futility of these attempts." -- p.iii
Date: August 1969
Creator: Ledbetter, Billy D.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Making a Good Soldier: a Historical and Quantitative Study of the 15th Texas Infantry, C. S. A. (open access)

Making a Good Soldier: a Historical and Quantitative Study of the 15th Texas Infantry, C. S. A.

In late 1861, the Confederate Texas government commissioned Joseph W. Speight to raise an infantry battalion. Speight's Battalion became the Fifteenth Texas Infantry in April 1862, and saw almost no action for the next year as it marched throughout Texas, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory. In May 1863 the regiment was ordered to Louisiana and for the next seven months took an active role against Federal troops in the bayou country. From March to May 1864 the unit helped turn away the Union Red River Campaign. The regiment remained in the trans-Mississippi region until it disbanded in May 1865. The final chapter quantifies age, family status, wealthholdings, and casualties among the regiment's members.
Date: December 1998
Creator: Hamaker, Blake Richard
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Fire Eater in the Borderlands: The Political Life of Guy Morrison Bryan, 1847-1891

From 1847 to 1891, Guy Morrison Bryan was a prominent Texas politician who influenced many of the policies and events that shaped the state. Raised in his Uncle Stephen F. Austin's shadow, he was a Texas nationalist who felt responsible for promoting the interests of his state, its earliest settlers, and his family. During his nineteen years in the Texas Legislature and two years in the United States House of Representatives, he safeguarded land grants, supported internal improvements and education, and challenged northern hostility towards slavery. Convinced that abolitionists would stop at nothing to destroy the institution and Texas, he led his state's walkout of the National Democratic Convention in 1860 and became a leading proponet of secession. During the Civil War, he served as a staff officer, and his ability to mediate conflicts between local and national leaders propped up the isolated Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department. Finally as Speaker of the House, he helped oust Governor Edmund J. Davis in 1874 and "redeem" the state from Republican rule before convincing President Rutherford B. Hayes to adopt a conciliatory policy towards Texas and the South. Despite the tremendous influence Bryan wielded, scholars have largely ignored his contributions. This dissertation establishes his …
Date: August 2020
Creator: Kelley, Ariel Leticia
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The United States and Irish Neutrality, 1939-1945 (open access)

The United States and Irish Neutrality, 1939-1945

During the second world war relations between the United States and Ireland deteriorated to the point that many Irishmen feared that an American invasion of Ireland was imminent. At the same time many people in the United States came to believe that the Irish government of Eamon de Valera was pro-Nazi, This study examines the causes for the deterioration of relations between the two countries and the actual attitudes of David Gray, the United States minister to Ireland, and other American officials toward Irish neutrality. Since there are few secondary works on the subject, the research was undertaken almost entirely among primary sources, personal and diplomatic papers, various American newspapers, and memoirs. Of particular importance were David Gray's personal papers, especially his frequent letters to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.. Copies of some letters, not available among Gray's personal papers at the University of Wyoming, were furnished by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York. The study has also made extensive use of the diplomatic papers published by the Department of $tate in the various volumes of the Foreign Relations of the United States. Finally, the author corresponded with more than a dozen of those still living who were …
Date: August 1973
Creator: Dwyer, Thomas Ryle, 1944-
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library