Pat M. Neff was a product of his political place and time. Born in Texas in 1871, during Reconstruction, he matured and prospered while his native state did the same as it transitioned from Old South to New South. Neff spent most of his life in Waco, a town that combined New South Progressivism with religious conservatism. This duality was reflected in Neff's own personality. On moral or religious issues, he was conservative. On economic and social issues, he was Progressive. He thus was a typical Southern Progressive who de-emphasized social and political change in favor of economic development. For instance, as governor from 1921 to 1925, his work to develop and conserve Texas' water resources brought urbanization and industrialization that made the New South a reality in the state. Neff was a devout Baptist which influenced his politics and philosophy. He was president of Baylor University, a Baptist institution, for fifteen years after leaving the governor s office and he led the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the 1940s. He combined Progressive and Christian values as he argued for the establishment of the United Nations and advocated forgiveness and brotherhood after World War II. The war's end marked the …

This dissertation argues that the strong relationship that historians see between the South and West in the early 19th century, which allowed them to form what scholars have termed the Old South, had its origins in the twenty-year period after the American Revolution when a group of far-sighted southerners worked to form a political bond between the two regions. They did so by tirelessly defending the West and westerners against political and economic attacks, often from northerners but sometimes from people within their own region. Within the ongoing debate over the emergence of a southern consciousness, historians have overlooked one important factor in its development-the West. Although it would be incorrect to argue that southern consciousness began in the 1780s or 1790s, it would not be remiss to argue that southerners began to look at the trans-Appalachian West during this period as something more than just virgin territory. A few southerners, particularly James Madison, saw the South's political future entwined with the West's advancement and worked to ensure that a strong political relationship developed between the two regions. For people like Madison, this political merger of the two sections is what they meant when they talked about a "southern and …

This thesis is a study of the Confederate command problem in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1861-1862.

Of the large amount of writings concerning the Civil War only a small percentage pertains to the Federal Navy's role. This is understandable since this was primarily a land war. A few of the Navy's exploits such as the capture of New Orleans, the sinking of the Alabama, the capture of the Florida in Brazilian waters, and the Trent affair received great amounts of publicity, but the majority of the naval activities were of a routine nature, each individually warranting little notice but collectively contributing immensely to the final Federal victory. The purpose of this paper is to show in detail the role of only a portion of the Navy, the West Gulf Blockading Squadron, during this struggle.

The Entente powers began World War I without any formal anti-submarine countermeasures. However, the Entente developed countermeasures through trial and error over time. Success was moderate until America joined the war. with America came the arrival of subchasers to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations. This highly specialized vessel helped turn the tide against U-boats. a true counter to the U-boat threat in the Mediterranean did not come until October 2, 1918 with the bombardment of Durazzo. This thesis discusses the development of Entente anti-submarine capabilities and illustrate how America's contribution led to success. a detailed analysis of the rarely discussed bombardment of Durazzo is included using archival documents.

Because of its trademark racial diversity, historians have often presented New Orleans as a place transformed by incorporation into the American South following 1804. Assertions that a comparatively relaxed, racially ambiguous Spanish slaveholding regime was converted into a two-caste system of dedicated racial segregation by the advent of American assumption have been posited by scholars like Frank Tannenbaum, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, and a host of others. Citing dependence on patronage, concubinage, and the decline in slave manumissions during the antebellum period, such studies have employed descriptions of the city’s prominent free people of color to suggest that the daily lives of non-whites in New Orleans experienced uniform restriction following 1804, and that the Crescent City’s transformation from Atlantic society with slaves to rigid slave society forced free people of color out of the heart of the city, known as the Vieux Carré, and into “black neighborhoods” on the margins of town. Despite the popularity of such generalized themes in the historiography, however, the extant sources housed in New Orleans’s valuable archival repositories can be used to support a vastly divergent narrative. By focusing on individual free people of color, or libres, rather than the non-white community as a whole, this …

American military plans for a war with the British Empire, first discussed in 1919, have received varied treatment since their declassification. the most common theme among historians in their appraisals of WAR PLAN RED is that of an oddity. Lack of a detailed study of Anglo-American relations in the immediate post-First World War years makes a right understanding of the difficult relationship between the United States and Britain after the War problematic. As a result of divergent aims and policies, the United States and Great Britain did not find the diplomatic and social unity so many on both sides of the Atlantic aspired to during and immediately after the First World War. Instead, United States’ civil and military organizations came to see the British Empire as a fierce and potentially dangerous rival, worthy of suspicion, and planned accordingly. Less than a year after the end of the War, internal debates and notes discussed and circulated between the most influential members of the United States Government, coalesced around a premise that became the rationale for WAR PLAN RED. Ample evidence reveals that contrary to the common narrative of “Anglo-American” and “Atlanticist” historians of the past century, the First World War did …

The Portuguese Expeditionary Force fought in the trenches of northern France from April 1917 to April 1918. on 9 April 1918 the sledgehammer blow of Operation Georgette fell upon the exhausted Portuguese troops. British accounts of the Portuguese Corps’ participation in combat on the Western Front are terse. Many are dismissive. in fact, Portuguese units experienced heavy combat and successfully held their ground against all attacks. Regarding Georgette, the standard British narrative holds that most of the Portuguese soldiers threw their weapons aside and ran. the account is incontrovertibly false. Most of the Portuguese combat troops held their ground against the German assault. This thesis details the history of the Portuguese Expeditionary Force.

The nuclear age provided U.S. soldiers and statesmen with unprecedented challenges. the U.S. military had to incorporate a weapon into strategic calculations without knowing whether the use of the weapon would be approved. Broad considerations of policy led President Dwight Eisenhower to formulate a policy that relied on nuclear weapons while fully realizing their destructive potential. Despite the belief that possession of nuclear weapons provided strategic superiority, the U.S. realized that such weapons were of little value. This realization did not stop planners from attempting to find ways to use nuclear weapons in Korea and Indochina.

General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s East African Campaign was a conventional war of movement. Lettow based his operations on the military principles deduced from his thorough German military education and oversea deployments to China and German South West Africa. Upon assignment to German East Africa, he sought to convert the colony’s protectorate force from a counterinsurgency force to a conventional military force. His conventional strategy succeeded early in the war, especially at the Battle of Tanga in October 1914. However, his strategy failed as the war in East Africa intensified. He suffered a calamitous defeat at the Battle of Mahiwa in November 1917, and the heavy losses forced Lettow to adopt the counterinsurgency tactics of the colonial protectorate force.

The purpose of the Roman Argei ceremony, during which the Vestal Virgins harvested made and paraded rush puppets only to throw them into the Tiber, is widely debated. Modern historians supply three main reasons for the purpose of the Argei: an agrarian act, a scapegoat, and finally as an offering averting deceased spirits or Lares. I suggest that the ceremony also related to war and the spectacle of displaying war casualties. I compare the ancient Near East and Rome and connect the element of war and husbandry and claim that the Argei paralleled the sacred marriage. in addition to an agricultural and purification rite, these rituals may have served as sympathetic magic for pre- and inter-war periods. As of yet, no author has proposed the Argei as a ceremony related to war. By looking at the Argei holistically I open the door for a new direction of inquiry on the Argei ceremony, fertility cults in the Near East and in Rome, and on the execution of war criminals.The Argei and new year’s sacred marriage both occurred during the initiation of campaign and spring planting and harvest season. Both in the ancient Near East and in Rome, animal victims were sacrificed …

From the earliest civilizations, victorious armies would loot defeated cities or nations. the practice evolved into art theft as a symbol of power. Cultural superiority confirmed a country or empire’s regime. Throughout history, the Greeks and Romans cultivated, Napoleon Bonaparte refined, and Adolf Hitler perfected the practice of plunder. As the tides of Second World War began to shift in favor of the Allied Powers, special commissions, established to locate the Germans’ hoards of treasure, discovered Nazi art repositories filled with art objects looted from throughout Europe. the Soviet Union Trophy Commission and the Western Allies Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Commission competed to discover Nazi war loot. the two organizations not only approached the subject of plunder as a treasure hunt, but the ideology motivating both commissions made uncovering the depositories first, a priority. the Soviet trophy brigades’ mission was to dismantle all items of financial worth and ship them eastward to help rebuild a devastated Soviet economy. the Soviet Union wished for the re-compensation of cultural valuables destroyed by the Nazis’ purification practices regarding “inferior” Slavic art and architecture; however, the defeated German nation did not have the ability to reimburse the Soviet State. the trophy brigades implemented …

This study deals primarily with the efforts of Great Britain to bring the Italian-Ethiopian War to a halt through the Hoare-Laval peace plan of December 10, 1935. Based on memoirs, diaries, and public documents, this study is devoted to an examination of the reasons, both internal and external that formulated British foreign policy toward the war.

This thesis presents a history of the United States' war with Mexico with a focus on the maturing of the United States artillery on the battlefields of Mexico.

This thesis was written to examine Goethe's efforts to emulate the Greeks and write in their spirit. Works most helpful in the study were Humphry Trevelyan's Goethe and the Greeks, Kenry Hatfield's Aesthetic Paganism in German Literature, Eliza Butler's The Tyranny of Greece over Germany, and the works of Goethe which show his relationship with the Greeks.

As an historio-sociological novel The Octopus is important because it synthesizes several features of late nineteenth century America, especially naturalism and the political preponderance of the Southern Pacific railroad. An analysis of this novel provides a better understanding of its features and adds a dimension to the perspective of history.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the ramifications of Taft's policy extending "all proper support to every legitimate and beneficial enterprise." One must note particularly the Mexican attitude toward Americans and the United States government because the uprising which began with the overthrow of Diaz was a repudiation of foreigners and foreign domination, especially American.

The purpose of this study will be to examine, once again, and chapter by chapter, those chief areas of controversy in Sevier's life, and in the process to arrive at some conclusions as to where the criticism is justified and, just as importantly, where the critics may have overstepped their bounds. For the sake of completeness and historical perspective, this re-examination will also include brief chapters on Sevier's ancestry and early life and his last years in the United States House of Representatives.

This thesis has three main objectives in examining the Slave Trade Question, an aspect of British-American diplomacy from 1840-1862: (1)to give a balanced treatment to both issues,(2) show their relationship to other foreign and domestic problems of the early Victorian Era, and (3) to present new material and views.

The purpose of this monograph is to study the early Texas Republican party within the framework of well-known political party functions, i.e., to provide political leadership, recruit governmental personnel, generate public policy, and propagate ideology.

This work attempts to examine the relationship shared by two ideologically opposed groups during the post-World War I period in Germany. The officer corps is viewed as a relic of the traditional imperial state while the socialists represented the harbinger of the modern, democratic, industrialized state. Although it should seem evident that these two factions of society would be natural enemies, the chaos of World War I pushed these ideological, opposites into the same corner.

In August, 1944, the Allies embarked on one of the "two supreme operations of 1944," Operation Anvil/Dragoon. It is an operation that almost did not happen. Envisioned as a direct supporting operation of Overlord, Anvil soon ran into troubles. Other operations taking away resources away from Anvil in addition to opposition from the highest levels of Allied command threatened Anvil. This thesis chronicles the evolution of this debate, as well as shed light on one of the most overlooked and successful operations the Allies embarked on in World War II.

The Military Revolution thesis posited by Michael Roberts and expanded upon by Geoffrey Parker places the trace italienne style of fortification of the early modern period as something that is a novel creation, borne out of the minds of Renaissance geniuses. Research shows, however, that the key component of the trace italienne, the angled bastion, has its roots in Greek and Roman writing, and in extant constructions by Roman and Byzantine engineers. The angled bastion of the trace italienne was yet another aspect of the resurgent Greek and Roman culture characteristic of the Renaissance along with the traditions of medicine, mathematics, and science. The writings of the ancients were bolstered by physical examples located in important trading and pilgrimage routes. Furthermore, the geometric layout of the trace italienne stems from Ottoman fortifications that preceded it by at least two hundred years. The Renaissance geniuses combined ancient bastion designs with eastern geometry to match a burgeoning threat in the rising power of the siege cannon.

Heart burial is a funerary practice that has been performed since the early medieval period. However, relatively little scholarship has been published on it in English. Heart burial began as a pragmatic way to preserve a body, but it became a meaningful tradition in Western Europe during the medieval and early modern periods. In an anthropological context, the ritual served the needs of elites and the societies they governed. Elites used heart burial not only to preserve their bodies, but to express devotion, stabilize the social order and advocate legitimacy, and even gain heaven. Heart burial assisted in the elite Christian, his or her family, and society pass through the liminal period of death. Over the centuries, heart burial evolved to remain relevant. The practice is extant to the present day, though the motivations behind it are very different from those of the medieval and early modern periods.