December 7th, 2020
We talked to Annemarie Steidl, the author of On Many Routes: Internal, European, and Transatlantic Migration in the Late Habsburg Empire.
On Many Routes is about the history of human migration. With a focus on the Habsburg Empire, this innovative work presents an integrated and creative study of spatial mobilities: from short to long term, and intranational and inter-European to transatlantic.
Q: What is the main goal of this project, and what motivated you to write it?
Annemarie Steidl: The main goal of the book is to contextualize transatlantic migrations from the Habsburg Empire to the United States of America before World War I with the high spatial mobility in the Habsburg Empire to other European regions. Up to five million people from Late Imperial Austria and the kingdom of Hungary went overseas. However, more Austrian and Hungarian nationals moved from western parts of the kingdom to Lower Austria or from the province of Galicia to the grain fields in the German Reich.
I started the yearlong project with an analysis of transatlantic ship passenger manifests from the Norddeutsche Lloyd in Bremen and from the Hamburg America Line. During the research it became obvious that the route to the Americas was only one of various migration routes that people from Austria-Hungary took during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.
Q: How did you define “migration” and why did you make this distinction?
Steidl: In this book I define migration in its widest sense. This includes all changes of residence irrespective of distance moved or duration of any given stay. A broad definition of migration is one that includes all permanent or semi-permanent changes of residence with no restriction on distance moved. It can describe short-term and permanent changes of residence, as well as patterns of seasonal, circular, or permanent mobility, such as vagrants or traveling people. The term “migration” is applied to international and administrative border crossings, as well as short-distance and transoceanic movements.
Modern territorial states and their bureaucracies create categories like internal and international migration, because administrators need of clear guidelines by which to classify migrants in order to document, tally, and ultimately officially manage these individuals. These administrative classification systems not only obscure the complex daily practices that comprise migration, but diminish the term migration itself by defining it in terms of the state. In order to overcome nationally confined approaches, we have to plead for an open and integrative definition of migration that allows for the incorporation of international and continental as well as temporary movements like seasonal migrations within rural regions, the movement of agricultural servants from villages to towns, and those of traveling artisans and highly mobile soldiers during wartime. New approaches call for an integration of mobility studies concepts and migration research, which would help to loosen strong current associations between the term migration and nation-state logic. This can broaden our understanding of spatial mobility as a fundamental aspect of social life.
Q: Are there any common misconceptions about migration in this area that you were able to dispel? Or shed a more clear light on?
Steidl: Traditional research on transatlantic migration from the Habsburg Empire most often only focused on one direction – from the empire to overseas – and broadly neglected high mobility rates. Studies on spatial mobility within Imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary, as well as seasonal migrations to the German Empire, Switzerland, or the Romanian Kingdom, were not studied with the transcontinental moves. However, a local study of migration patterns of people from Vorarlberg, the westernmost part of Imperial Austria, gives a clearer picture of these dynamics. Since the late sixteenth century people from the Bregenzerwald and Montafon travelled to German speaking areas in the Southwest, like Alsace Lorrain and as far as Paris, France, mostly as temporary construction workers. These people were well connected, with information networks in the German and French speaking world. In addition, Vorarlberg’s textile production was part of a greater network in Switzerland around St. Gallen. Weavers and their families used to move back and forth within this greater region. It is no surprise that Vorarlbergers were among the first to leave for the new continent through French Harbors in the first half of the nineteenth century, as they already had migration experiences within families and circles of friends.
Traditional migration experiences increased the likelihood of transatlantic migration during the nineteenth century, while other traditions of spatial mobility coexisted. Mobility rates were already high before new transportation and communication technologies were introduced during industrialization. The building of railroads, increased use of steamships, stable communication with regions overseas through mail, and bank services contributed to the enormous growth of transatlantic mobility rates since the 1880s. During the second half of the nineteenth century Vorarlberg’s textile production flourished and provided many jobs for Italian speaking women and men from Trento and other northern Italian regions across the border. While we saw an in-migration from other Habsburg Provinces and the Kingdom of Italy, Vorarlberg’s textile entrepreneurs moved whole factories overseas to New York and New Jersey, taking many of their laborers with them. Vorarlberg was neither a region of emigration nor immigration, rather a province with a high turnover, with people coming and going.
In the last decades before World War I, most Habsburg transatlantic migrants originated from economically weaker provinces such as Galicia, the northwestern areas of the Hungarian Kingdom, and Mediterranean coastal regions in the south of the empire. Due to this most historical research focused on economic distress as the main cause for leaving one’s home country. However, as is the case in Vorarlberg and other prosperous regions of the Habsburg Empire, people more often left for chances in the United States labor market rather than because of abject poverty. These men and women were attracted to America by an incredibly fast-growing economy, new opportunities: cheap land and well-paid jobs in heavy industry, mines, and urban factories.
Q: Why study migration in this manner? What does it tell us about these people?
Steidl: This book deals with a lot of numbers and its analysis is mostly based on statistical data: population censuses in Late Imperial Austria, the Kingdom of Hungary, and the United States of America, ship passenger manifests from the Norddeutsche Lloyd and the Hamburg America Line, as well as local surveys on spatially mobile people. The Habsburg Empire stretched over more than 676,600 square kilometers and, in 1910, housed more than 51 million people who spoke more than ten official languages, followed different denominations and religions, were part of different social classes, and inhabited economically heterogeneous provinces, counties, and smaller regions. The intention of the mostly macro-level focus and quantitative methodical approach was to link migrations of all Habsburg regions to economic, social, and cultural characteristics. This way, I was able to cultivate a more complete understanding of the timing, selectivity, and nature of various migration patterns. I am well aware that this is a rather poor substitute for everyday practices of people living and migrating in the Habsburg Empire. Whenever possible, statistical result will be illustrated by local and individual examples. However, even this flawed evidence offers indication of the extent to which individuals were mobile in the past and that migration was a common experience for a large portion of the population in Late Imperial Austria and the Kingdom of Hungary. Some questions can only be answered by numbers.
Thank you to Annemarie! If you would like to know more about this book you can get your own copy or request it from your local library.
You can get 30% off these titles and any other Purdue University Press book by entering the code PURDUE30 when ordering from our website.
Filed under: PurduePressOctober 13th, 2020
We talked to Lianna Marie, the author of two new Purdue University Press books, The Complete Guide for People With Parkinson’s Disease and Their Loved Ones and Everything You Need to Know About Caregiving for Parkinson’s Disease.
The Complete Guide serves as the go-to book for comprehensive, easy-to-understand information for all Parkinson’s patients and their loved ones, and Everything You Need to Know provides an essential resource full of useful information for all caregivers of those with Parkinson’s disease.
Q: What about your experience as a caregiver motivated you write these books?
Lianna Marie: My greatest motivation for writing these books was a conversation I had with my mom in her fifteenth year of living with Parkinson’s. She told me back then she wished there was more information available to help her understand and deal with her disease as it was progressing, and written in a way that she could understand (i.e., without medical jargon).
At that point, no one had told us how powerful music could be in helping her mobility, or that there are reasons not to join a support group (there are definitely pros to joining one, but there are also cons), or that sometimes symptoms could disappear just by being really happy. We chatted about these and other useful tips she had learned about living with the disease, and shortcuts she had figured out on her own.
Mom told me she wished she had known these tips earlier, that someone living with the disease could have helped make her life easier, sooner. As a daughter, caregiver, and writer, I felt I could help others like my mom by writing a book that offered practical tips and answered the most pressing questions of someone living with the disease.
Q: How important do you feel it is for patients and family members to get this type of information early? What kind of things does your book provide for those in all parts of their Parkinson’s journey?
Marie: Being informed, or “Parkinson’s literate,” as my neurologist friends say, is imperative not only for people with Parkinson’s but their care partners as well. Having an understanding of the diagnosis process, the motor and non-motor symptoms, as well as other facets of the disease and how they may affect you, is essential to learn early on so you can make more informed treatment decisions.
Both books aim to walk a person affected by PD from diagnosis to the end-stages of the disease and give practical information and tips on how to manage the various challenges that a person with Parkinson’s may face.
Q: What convinced you to take a whole book to concentrate on the experience of the caregiver?
Marie: The caregiving book resulted from many years of witnessing the toll caring for someone with Parkinson’s can have on a person if they don’t have the right help and tools. It was initially inspired by my stepdad, who, while caring for my mom in the later stages of Parkinson’s, unfortunately, neglected to care for himself and suffered burnout and significant health issues. Additionally, I learned (through trial and error) many things about how to better care for my mom and wanted to help others save time and energy by putting them all together in an easy to read book.
My ultimate goal is to help caregivers feel less alone and give them hope that they can make it through this often challenging Parkinson’s journey with their loved one.
Q: What are you trying to provide with these books that those affected by this disease can’t find elsewhere?
Marie: I am amazed at how little information is out there written by people who have first-hand experience with Parkinson’s disease. Most books, as my mom pointed out when she was first diagnosed in the 1990s, are written by doctors, and often don’t deal enough with the specific day-to-day issues people with PD want help with. Through my AllAboutParkinsons.com website and Facebook page, I’ve been able to ask thousands of people with Parkinson’s what their most significant challenges are, how they’ve coped with these challenges, and address them head-on.
Q: What are some steps you’ve taken with the books to make this information as accessible as possible for patients and caregivers?
Marie: By listening to my readers over the past many years, I’ve learned what topics are most important and made sure to include them. I’ve also received many tips from people with Parkinson’s and their caregivers and sprinkled these throughout each book.
As far as the overall structure of the books, I’ve dissected the hard to understand medical information and explained it in layman’s terms. Both books are organized into several sections with shorter chapters so that topics are easy to find and digest. I’ve also included a “words you need to know” section in both books for terms that may be unfamiliar.
Thank you to Lianna! If you would like to know more about these books you can get your own copy or request them from your local library.
You can get 30% off these titles and any other Purdue University Press book by entering the code PURDUE30 when ordering from our website.
Filed under: PurduePressAugust 31st, 2020
We talked to Frances Pinter, editor of Escaping Extermination: Hungarian Prodigy to American Musician, Feminist, and Activist by Agi Jambor. The memoir was written by Jambor shortly after WWII and is being published for the first time now. From the hell that was the siege of Budapest to a fresh start in America, Jambor describes how she and her husband escaped the extermination of Hungary’s Jews through a combination of luck and wit.
Q: Can you tell us a bit about how you came across this memoir? And what motivated you to have it published?
Frances Pinter: Agi gave me the memoir shortly before she died in 1997. It was a while before I got around to reading it as I was very busy with my career. Once I settled down with it, I was shocked because none of this had been spoken about while I was growing up. I’d read many wartime memoirs, but they were often written decades later. As I read and re-read Agi’s memoir I felt it had a quality of freshness that only something written soon after the events could achieve. I passed the manuscript around to friends, all of whom without exception said I must get it published. Now, of course, I wish I’d had the opportunity to discuss it with her, but alas all I could do was read through her papers, now housed in the Bryn Mawr College Library Archive. That’s where I found the material for the afterword I wrote for the book. Publishing this memoir means a lot to me. Many of my generation came rather late to knowing what happened to our families in the War. Eva Hofmann explains why this is so very well in her book After Such Knowledge’. Now, we are desperate to know and understand the mark it’s left, not only on us, but to all of society. Finding a sympathetic publisher is my small contribution to ensuring that we do not forget these horrors and celebrate the strength and resilience of an extraordinary individual.
Q: You mention your shock, what were some details that surprised you the most on your first read through?
Pinter: The clearest details that I didn’t know about were about people I knew nothing about, or that they’d even existed, such as the child Agi gave birth to during the War, or a godson who was killed in Auschwitz. But generally, it was more a sense on reading that I was descending into a Hell, taken by the hand and led down the dark stairs into the deepest crevices of human depravity. That someone so close to me managed to crawl out of it with her head held high and her spirit undeterred still fills me with awe.
Q: Written shortly after WWII and not published until now, this memoir is kind of like a time capsule. How does this affect the way it reads?
Pinter: The writing style reflects the author and it is one of crispness, modern in style, and entirely lacking in self-pity. I think people of all generations can relate to its directness. Working with the copyeditor was an interesting experience. We agreed at the outset that we should leave the text as much intact as possible. Agi’s grammar stands the test of time, but there were some small points raised such as whether to retain practices of the late forties for instance regarding when to use capital letters and when not. Language evolves, and here we see some subtle examples of it. That said, the text reads like a thriller written today with a pace all of its own.
Q: Jambor went on to have a brilliant career in America in her later life. This clearly won’t be covered in the memoir by virtue of when it was written. Does any part of you wish that this project was one she took on later in life, or that you had her whole life’s story in her own words?
Pinter: Alas, yes, it would have been wonderful to have a complete autobiography of this exceptional woman. She was such an inspiration to so many women with her own very specific way of forging a life as a woman on her own in the second half of the 20th century. There is more material about this on the website www.agijambor.org and in the Afterword. Perhaps on reading this memoir a writer will come forth wanting to write Agi’s whole biography. From scolding Albert Einstein when they played duets and he proved incapable of counting correctly, to standing up to McCarthyism and campaigning against the Vietnam War this was one very gutsy woman!
Thank you to Frances! If you would like to know more about this book you can get your own copy or request it from your local library.
You can get 30% off Escaping Extermination and all other Purdue University Press books by entering the code PURDUE30 when ordering from our website.
Filed under: PurduePressAugust 10th, 2020
We talked to Therese Kaspersen Hadchity, the author of The Making of a Caribbean Avant-Garde: Postmodernism as Post-nationalism.
Focusing on the Anglophone Caribbean, The Making of a Caribbean Avant-Garde describes the rise and gradual consolidation of the visual arts avant-garde, which came to local and international attention in the 1990s. The book is centered on the critical and aesthetic strategies employed by this avant-garde to repudiate the previous generation’s commitment to modernism and anti-colonialism.
Q: What are some of your main goals in this project?
Therese Kaspersen Hadchity: Since the mid-1990s the ‘playbook’ for visual arts practices and criticism in the English-speaking Caribbean has changed quite profoundly. My aim is to describe the moment when the spirit of nation building, which surrounded cultural production in the aftermath of the Independence-era, first gave way to a ‘nation-critique’, and then a rejection (implicit or explicit) of the nation as political goal and analytical frame. I wanted to put a frame around this transition, point out its various – and sometimes contradictory – manifestations, and give it a name (i.e. a ‘post-nationalist postmodernism’). It may ultimately end up having a different name, but I wanted to start the process of portraying and assessing it (albeit at a time when the very desire to ‘map’ and ‘name’ things is regarded with some suspicion). Rather than a densely theoretical account of aesthetic and critical dynamics (which nevertheless does occupy the first section of the book), I have tried to show, at the level of lived experience, how a series of converging factors – critical realignments, institutional failures and external pressures – have produced a new ‘common sense’ in the aesthetic choices artists make, in the way they find exposure for their work and in the way Caribbean works are critically framed, when it goes abroad.
Q: What are some of those factors that motivated this rejection of “nation building”, and therefore the cultural production inspired by it?
Hadchity: Naturally, the decades leading up to and past Caribbean Independence (most territories in the Anglophone Caribbean became independent in the 1960s and 70s) were full of confidence and optimism about forging new nations built on principles of equality and cultural diversity and the lessons learnt from the region’s traumatic history. Sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, this initial excitement was soon curbed by a toxic combination of internal challenges and external pressures: the political establishment was accused of merely having stepped into the former colonizers’ shoes by way of perpetuating patriarchal authority, elitism, and indeed also racism (in the sense that light-skinned Creole people were given opportunities for social advancement, while darker people were left behind). Populations that were internally divided by the mechanics of colonialism itself, fell prey to an equally divisive political dynamic, where those in power simply took turns to ‘service’ their supporters. In some countries, political rivalries, sometimes with ethnic undercurrents, turned lethal. All of this was coupled with the introduction of neo-liberalism and a new era of foreign policy in the Reagan-Thatcher era, which led to local governments being reined in by Bretton-Woods ‘structural adjustment programmes’. Among much else, this meant that the cultural infrastructure envisioned by the anti-colonial movement never really got off the ground. In most territories, Caribbean artists (in particular those who do not merely cater to tourists and home decorators) have therefore had very little institutional support.
Needless to say, all of this has created an atmosphere of frustration and disillusionment not only with the political system in place, but with the very concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘governance’, which have come to be regarded as easily corruptible and inherently coercive. And with the coming of a new era, which to many is defined by tele-communication networks, globalization and new mobility, many artists have simply walked away from the idea of ‘nation-building’ and invested themselves in the notion of fluid and transnational communities, thus making the previous aspiration of improving and fine-tuning the nation-state seem increasingly redundant.
Q: In the preface and introduction of the book you touch on what motivated you to take this on, could you speak on that?
Hadchity: I had a small gallery in Barbados from 2000-2010, a period during which an older artistic generation was being forcibly retired by the critical establishment. As I said above, the backdrop for this transition was a widespread frustration with the region’s political and institutional failures, and a sense of being ‘left behind’ by the global art world – disappointments, for which the older generation was held partially responsible.
Meanwhile, the artistic and critical generation that emerged out of the 1990s found a way forward, partly in a critical alignment with postcolonial and diaspora theory, and partly, as I mentioned earlier, in the opportunities afforded by new networking technologies. As much as these choices have opened up new possibilities, I felt the need to question the premises and corollaries of these strategies, and this is where the book gets its polemic tone. There is no question that the vision of the ‘old avant-garde’ had stagnated, but my apprehension that the new critical hegemony seemed to satisfy a series of what one might have regarded as conflicting desires, left me in a state of perpetual consternation and propelled me into this study.
What I think went missing in this period was a direction, which might have combined the older generation’s simultaneous spirit of cultural resistance and affirmation with the sharper and more restless critical eye of the younger generation. In a way, my book expresses a yearning for ‘paths not taken’.
Q: Does this mean you believe that these “paths not taken” may have been found through more collaboration between the ways of the new and old generations, rather than the rejection of the old ways way of thought that we saw?
Hadchity: I am not suggesting that a series of very clear and straightforward options were neglected: by the 1990s, Caribbean artists found themselves in a very difficult spot: the visions they inherited from the ‘old avant-garde’ were often quite problematic in their practical applications. Because their conditions were poorly understood in the wider world, Caribbean artists were also stigmatized by a perceived ‘belatedness’ in an international context.
But rather than walking away from the nation-building project envisaged by the previous generation, I think the new generation might have found ways to critique and develop it, rather than embracing a transnational cosmopolitanism, which is equally problematic. In some ways contemporary artists have in fact found ways to improve their conditions – for example by creating their own cultural infrastructures in the form of ‘alternative spaces’ – but there is a risk of such gestures playing into the hands of the current establishment. Some of the aesthetic strategies Caribbean contemporary artists have embraced (i.e. their methods and themes) are, as I try to explain in the book, similarly ambiguous in their political inflection. What I am arguing is therefore that there are aspects of the contemporary movement, which could be considered remarkably convenient for a neo-liberal imaginary and for the global status quo, but I am not suggesting that the new avant-garde is a product of that imaginary.
Thank you to Therese! If you would like to know more about this book you can get your own copy or request it from your local library.
You can get 30% off The Making of a Caribbean Avant-Garde and any other Purdue University Press book by entering the code PURDUE30 when ordering from our website.
Filed under: PurduePressJuly 6th, 2020
We talked to Mate Nikola Tokić, the author of Croatian Radical Separatism and Diaspora Terrorism During the Cold War.
Croatian Radical Separatism and Diaspora Terrorism During the Cold War examines one of the most active but least remembered groups of terrorists of the Cold War: radical anti-Yugoslav Croatian separatists. At its core, this book is concerned with the discourses and practices of radicalization—the ways in which both individuals and groups who engage in terrorism construct a particular image of the world to justify their actions.
Q: What is the goal of your book? What motivated you to write it?
Mate Nikola Tokić: Like many projects, my initial interest in exploring the history found in Croatian Radical Separatism and Diaspora Terrorism During the Cold War actually arose from something of a chance encounter. During archival research for my doctoral dissertation, I happened upon a quote from socialist Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Broz Tito where he stated that Croatian terrorism posed an existential threat to the country. The document I was reading had nothing to do with the subject, and the quote was actually a throw-away line, made to emphasize a quite different point. Nevertheless, I was struck by the observation. I had long been aware of the terror campaign Croat emigrants waged against socialist Yugoslavia during the Cold War, but had always seen the violence as more or less insignificant and little more than a nuisance to the Yugoslav regime. The comment by Tito, however, suggested a more complex story. Once I completed my doctoral thesis, I had the opportunity to follow up on the reference, and soon discovered an intricate and fascinating history that had hitherto been neglected in historiography. And the deeper I dug, the more intricate and fascinating the history became. First and foremost, my motivation for writing the book was bringing this history and its many entanglements to light.
Q: Why do you think this part of history was relatively overlooked?
Tokić: In many ways, it remains a surprise to me that this history has thus far been mostly ignored in academia. But I think there are some clear reasons for this. In terms of Yugoslav historiography, clearly the focus for many years has been on the country’s violent break-up. Scholars have had to struggle with contending why a country that so long was touted as a success story ultimately collapsed so acrimoniously. As interesting as the story I explore is, it is understandable that historians and others would focus on the causes and context of arguably Europe’s worst tragedy since World War II. In terms of the history of political violence and terrorism, in part the issue relates to the degree to which radical Croatian separatists were able to keep their cause in the spotlight. In short, they were unable to, or at least not to the degree better remembered groups of the era such as the RAF, Brigate Rosse, PLO, or ETA did. For numerous reasons, Croatian separatists rarely landed on the front page of newspapers the world over despite having been as active or even more so than these other groups. Over time, this has led them to fall into relative obscurity.
Q: You start the introduction of the book by acknowledging that many would like us to believe our current “age of terror” is unprecedented. How could your book help us understand modern terror more?
Tokić: In many ways, my desire to challenge prevailing claims about the unprecedented nature of contemporary terrorism has less to do with furthering our understanding of political violence itself and more to do with understanding how political violence and terrorism have been politicized in current politics and society. From its very inception, modern terrorism has been as much about labels and symbolic politics as it has been about social, political, economic, and cultural change. The rather hackneyed phrase “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”—to give just the most obvious example—puts this into sharp relief. A striking feature of both state and media responses to contemporary terrorism has been how ahistoricized their treatment of the phenomenon has been. The result of this, in my view, has been that our understanding of the genesis and aim of terrorism as political act in contemporary world politics lacks sufficient context. The point of the book is less that we learn from the past in order not to repeat it (to paraphrase George Santayana’s famous quote) and more simply to help create a more complete framework for how to think about pressing issues of the day, in this case the relationship between migration and radicalization. Despite its rather narrow empirical focus, ultimately the aim of the book is to provide new insights and perspectives on how to think about the link between population flows and political violence. From this, we can not only understand modern terrorism better, but more critically reflect upon how best to respond to that terrorism.
Q: Where there any particularly surprising or interesting things you found when researching?
Tokić: I’m not sure that I would say that it was particularly surprising, but one thing that definitely struck me was how little the state security services of various countries either knew about or understood radical Croatian separatist groups. There is, I believe, a general belief that intelligence agencies are generally efficient and effective, if not in fact omniscient. This notion has developed through both popular culture and state efforts to propagate the idea that their security services are resourceful and competent. From what I was able to see of classified and top-secret documents (which of course was limited) it is clear that not only did the intelligence agencies have little idea about the organization and activities of radical groups, what they did know they often misunderstood. This is not to say, of course, that security services were completely ignorant or blind to the threat posed by extremist organizations in their countries. Rather, like any governmental bureaucracy or agency they were hampered by a variety of ideological, partisan, financial, administrative, and even managerial limitations and shortcomings. The end result was an understanding of radical groups that was often at best imperfect, if not outright distorted.
You can get 30% off Croatian Radical Separatism and Diaspora Terrorism During the Cold War and any other Purdue University Press book by ordering from our website and using the code PURDUE30 at checkout.
June 18th, 2020
We talked to Alex M. Spencer, the author of British Imperial Air Power: The Royal Air Forces and the Defense of Australia and New Zealand Between the World Wars.
British Imperial Air Power examines the air defense of Australia and New Zealand during the interwar period. It also demonstrates the difficulty of applying new military aviation technology to the defense of the global Empire and provides insight into the nature of the political relationship between the Pacific Dominions and Britain.
Q: What motivated you to take on this project?
Spencer: Distilled down from the book’s introduction:
The inspiration of this work comes out of my interest in the Royal Navy during the interwar period. The terrible loss of HMS Prince of Wales and Repulse to waves of Japanese torpedo bombers on December 10, 1941 and the surrender of 84,000 British and Commonwealth troops resulted in many books about the failed “Fleet to Singapore” strategy conceived by Fleet Admiral John Jellicoe in 1919. After my arrival at the National Air and Space Museum, my interests turned to aviation and I wanted to discover why the Royal Air Force was equipped with inadequate aircraft at Singapore and why this topic tended to receive less treatment by historians. After reading the studies about Singapore, I began to wonder if the RAF was making similar efforts, concerning the defense of the Pacific Empire. The answer was yes in an almost forgotten survey by Group Captain Arthur Bettington. Like Jellicoe, Bettington toured the Pacific Dominions in the immediate post World War I period and made recommendations concerning the future of aerial defenses of the Dominions. With century passed since these events, I’ve became more interested in the Royal Air Force during the interwar period and wanted to trace its defense planning for the Empire.
Q: Air combat was relatively novel in WWI, what are some things that may help us understand how different things were at that time?
Spencer: One aspect that I found interesting about aviation technology during World War I was how aircraft made dramatic advances in speed, performance and increased armament. Throughout the war, airmen on both had to invent tactics and strategies for this new technology. Even though there were demonstrations on the potential of aircraft they still remained inadequate to perform the tasks that the airmen envisioned. It was not until the middle of the 1930s when new all metal aircraft with powerful engines and resulted in higher performance and the ability for aircraft to carry heavier payloads. With new specialized designs, aircraft at the opening of the new World War could actually deliver upon the promises made by the air power advocates.
Q: What are some of the principle conclusions of this project?
Spencer: The RAF designed their interwar air strategies to help maintain the long-established British foreign policy goals of a balance of power on the European continent and protect the vital trade routes throughout the Empire. The air services spent the entire interwar period attempting to create a strategy in the face of considerable economic restrictions.
The RAF answer to its limitations was an air strategy centered on the concept “air mobility.” Successful operations throughout the Middle East from 1919 to 1924 encouraged the Air Ministry assertions that air mobility offered an economical imperial defense. By 1928, air mobility became the cornerstone imperial air defense plans.
By the end of the 1920s, it was clear that the budget cuts were having a detrimental impact upon the operational capabilities of the RAF Even if increased funding were committed to the service it likely would not have improved its condition. Throughout the interwar period, military service remained unpopular and service in the RAF did not appeal to the public. As long as the international situation remained calm, the military economies did not seem detrimental to the security of the Empire.
As Germany, Italy, and Japan began their military preparation and expansions in the 1930s, the effects of economizing and disarmament became evident. The British government understood the danger that these three powers represented and by 1934, a new program of rearmament and expansion of the military industrial infrastructure began as well as renewed efforts to strengthen the bonds of the RAF, RAAF, and the RNZAF.
Central to the story of the Royal Air Force during the Interwar period is how this infant military service had to fight to maintain its independence and its very existence. The Air Force created by the unification of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service during the First World War faced a battle against the two senior services to reclaim their air assets. The air defense of the Empire gave the RAF justification for its continued independence. The defense of Australian and New Zealand, Britain’s most distant imperial partners, was the most daunting test for the fledgling service. To survive the Empire’s military air services presented themselves as a viable and economical third option in the defense of Britain’s global Empire. The imperial air forces had to navigate the political and economic difficulties of the interwar period that forced their leaders to muddle through. During the war they achieved great victories and suffered humiliating defeats but by the end of the war they were larger and stronger than any prewar strategist could have imagined.
Thank you to Alex for his time! If you would like to know more about the book you can get your own copy or request it from your local library.
You can get 30% off British Imperial Air Power and any other Purdue University Press book by ordering from our website and using the code PURDUE30 at checkout.
Filed under: PurduePressMay 20th, 2020
We talked to Scott O. Moore, an assistant professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University and author of Teaching the Empire: Education and State Loyalty in Late Habsburg Austria.
Teaching the Empire explores how Habsburg Austria utilized education to cultivate the patriotism of its people.
Q: What got you interested in studying and writing about civic education in Late Habsburg Austria?
Scott O. Moore: I’ve always been fascinated by the issue of identity – how people think about themselves and others. This interest is part of the reason why I’ve always been attracted to the history of the Habsburg Monarchy. It was such a diverse country, and culturally it was defined by forces pulling its people together, but also pulling them apart. Because of the Monarchy’s collapse after World War I, historians have usually focused on the things that diminished the cohesion of Habsburg society. There has also been an enormous amount of interest in the development of national and ethnic identity, but not so much the development of a Habsburg or Austrian. Because of these trends, I thought it would be interesting to look at what was tying the Monarchy’s citizens together. That led me to look at civic education. I wanted to explore the way institutions, like schools, helped create a sense of cohesion and “togetherness” among the Monarchy’s population, even when that population spoke different languages, followed different religions, or adhered to different cultural customs.
Q: What was unique about Habsburg Austria’s system of civic education?
Moore: One of the most interesting things I discovered in my research is how similar Habsburg civic education was to its neighbors. Because the Monarchy was a multinational state, there has always been an assumption that it couldn’t develop civic education in the same way its more ethnically homogeneous neighbors did. The thought was that without language and culture to tie people together, it would be harder to make them share common heroes, a common view of their history, or share common values. I discovered the opposite. Like other European countries and the US, Habsburg Austria consciously used schools to teach a common, patriotic version of the past. It used holidays and public celebrations to enhance a sense of belonging. It also utilized all the tools of the modern state to achieve these goals. Habsburg civic education was a consciously crafted, well-engineered process. What was unique, of course, was that officials attempted to reach these goals in a multinational state, where they couldn’t rely on a common language or culture. Because of this, the teaching of things like history and civic values actually became more important. Habsburg officials wanted students to realize that even if their neighbors spoke a different language, everyone was bound by a common, shared history, that everyone who lived in Austria shared the common goal of making the state strong, that everyone had a common purpose.
Q: Do you feel there is a comparable civic education system now?
Moore: If you look at schools in the US, I think we can see the legacy of traditional civic education. We still use holidays, like President’s Day or the Fourth of July, to enhance the patriotism of students; we still teach civics and government with the hope of making well-informed citizens; and many would argue (much to the frustration of many professional historians) that teaching history in schools is a patriotic exercise. Obviously there are considerable differences, but I think that public schools still share many of the missions they had when they were created in the 19th century. That said, as Europe and the United States become increasingly diverse, I think that policy makers could learn from exploring the history of the Habsburg Monarchy. Prior to World War I, it was the only European state that embraced a multi-national, multi-ethnic identity, challenging the notion that linguistic or cultural unity was the best way to forge a sense of community.
Thank you so much to Scott for his time! If you would like to know more about the book you can get your own copy or request it from your local library.
You can get 40% off Teaching the Empire and any other Purdue University Press book by ordering from our website and using the code PURDUE40 at checkout.
Filed under: PurduePressMay 20th, 2020
We talked to Jennifer Levasseur, a museum curator in the Department of Space History at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC and the author of Through Astronaut Eyes: Photographing Early Human Spaceflight.
Through Astronaut Eyes explores the origins and impact of astronaut still photography from 1962 to 1972, the period when human spaceflight first captured the imagination of people around the world. Featuring over seventy images from the heroic age of space exploration, the book presents the story of how human daring along with technological ingenuity allowed people to see the Earth and stars as they never had before.
Q: How did this project start?
Jennifer Levasseur: As a graduate student intern at the National Portrait Gallery, I cataloged photographic portraits of notable figures, learning how to describe them in words for digital records. A few years later, I took over responsibility for the human spaceflight camera collection at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. That meant caring for material culture from human spaceflight, and it overlapped with thinking about the visual products and interpreting the messages in images. My questions began to include how astronauts, our representatives in space exploration, also had to capture what they saw to tell us stories. The cameras tell a technological story, but the images tell sublime stories also defined by the people who took them – people who defined themselves as pilots, engineers, or scientists, but not photographers. The reality of spaceflight complicated a narrative of exploration photography seen for almost a century prior to the 1960s, so that brought more intensity to how we remember that time, even if we weren’t alive.
Q: Is there any single photograph, or even a couple, that you think encapsulate the unique and interesting subject that is astronaut photography?
Levasseur: Some images captured by astronauts hold special meaning because they’ve permeated our culture so deeply, they’re now almost part of our everyday lives. Most books still use the image of the whole Earth from Apollo 17 as the image of our planet even though it’s almost 50 years old. Or how we still think of the Buzz Aldrin image “Moonman” as the quintessential astronaut image. Those serve as the iconic, but I always love looking through those that seem mundane and yet reveal something new upon each viewing. Like a favorite movie you’ve seen hundreds of time, it’s awesome to look for something you haven’t caught before. I think Earth-facing photography can be that since our planet is incredibly diverse. But for the era my book examines, everything leading up to the end of the Apollo program, the image Michael Collins took looking towards Earth with the lunar module in the foreground is just beyond words in its sublimity. Sometimes called the “loneliest man” image because Collins is the only human in all of history to that point not captured in the photograph, the perspective is unique and almost unimaginable. That one really captures the story of the missions, the people, and our planet all in one frame.
Q: Given the stakes of traveling in space, what do you think is the best defense for time spent on astronaut photography, something that may not seem pertinent to mission success?
Levasseur: Astronauts opinions overall hovered at lukewarm on adding photography to their mission duties, with some very supportive and invested in the final products, and others preferring to mostly ignore it or find other tasks where they could specialize. But few of them could deny the privileged position it put them in, to see something just over 500 humans have ever seen even today. From that position, they can all contribute to seeing space to understand it better, and photographs are critical to that narrative. Astronauts tell stories in interviews, and have for decades after their missions, but that same message can be conveyed with a simple image. It brings the story to life, and inspires, and prompting new generations with that inspiration was a key factor in NASA’s mission, really their directive from Congress, to share with everyone what was learned through their work. NASA had that cultural/educational component from day one, so things like artwork, films, photographs, and eventually displays in museums were critical to fulfilling that part of their mission.
Q: Are there astronauts that are historically considered good or bad “space photographers”?
Levasseur: Two astronauts were significant contributors to showing the intent of the person behind the lens. Alan Bean was an artist and conceived of his photographs more like a professional photographer than any other astronaut of his generation. His photographs of Pete Conrad next to Surveyor 3 on the Moon with the lunar module in the background are particularly sublime. Much later, on the last servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009, John Grunsfeld took a photo of his reflection in Hubble that serves as a book-end of the images of Bean, showing a path from very classic landscape photography, thoughtful and considered, to something almost abstract and modern art-like. Astronauts really evolved as thoughtful participants in photography from the day of just pointing and shooting out the window.
Q: Why you think astronaut photography is so important for the public’s feelings towards space travel?
Levasseur: We can see space and our world and our universe through many eyes: described by astronauts from memories of what they saw, in photographs they took with cameras, and through telescopes directed at things we cannot see with our own eyes. The visible world around us, as seen through photographs, offers a sense of our place in it. When the languages of math or science are too complicated for some of us, the visual language of images simplifies that information and makes it possible for almost anyone to grasp. Knowing a person was on the other side of a camera lens, we connect to that event through that person. Their story is intertwined with what is seen in the images. The astronauts are part of the portal through which we see and understand the image content, and they can’t and shouldn’t be removed from the stories we tell about those images. In a time when the isolating experiences of being an astronaut seem more understandable than ever to the rest of us, the photographs they’ve captured prompt new thinking about their value to understanding the big picture of human life on Earth.
Thank you so much to Jennifer for her time! If you would like to know more about the book you can get your own copy or request it from your local library.
You can get 40% off Through Astronaut Eyes and any other Purdue University Press book by ordering from our website and using the code PURDUE40 at checkout.
Filed under: PurduePressApril 9th, 2020
We talked to Marlene Orozco, an editor and author of Advancing U.S. Latino Entrepreneurship: A New National Economic Imperative.
The book, also edited by Alfonso Morales, Michael J. Pisani, and Jerry I. Porras, examines business formation and success among Latinos by identifying arrangements that enhance entrepreneurship and by understanding the sociopolitical contexts that shape entrepreneurial trajectories.
Q: What makes the goal of advancing US Latino entrepreneurship so important?
Marlene Orozco: It is commonly known that the Latino population in the United States is large, representing nearly 60 million people, or 18% of the total US population. What is less well known, however, is that Latinos are starting businesses at a much faster rate than their population growth and Latinos are outpacing the growth in businesses among all other demographic groups. Over the last 10 years, the number of Latino business owners grew 34% compared to only 1% for all business owners. We titled the book, Advancing U.S. Latino Entrepreneurship as we are a group of scholars from a number of disciplines including sociology, economics, history, policy, and geographical sciences and together we are advancing the study of Latino entrepreneurship with this volume. Each chapter takes on Latino entrepreneurship from the discipline of its coauthors to focus on micro, macro, or policy perspectives. The second part of the title, A New National Economic Imperative, is a call to action advanced by interview subjects, business owners and leaders, to policy makers, capital providers, and other stakeholders to take note of the trends among Latino-owned businesses. We estimate there are roughly 5 million Latino-owned businesses in the US, thus, the opportunities and challenges to business growth will be important for understanding current and future contributions to the US economy.
Q: Why is this a particularly important time to advocate for Latino businesses?
Orozco: In the midst of a global pandemic, the impacts of COVID-19 are certainly being felt by nearly all businesses, big and small. Beyond impacting local and regional economies, Latino-owned businesses are global businesses as Latinos are more likely to export their products and services relative to all other groups in the US. We also highlight other important characteristics of Latino-owned businesses. For example, immigrants are more likely to start businesses, and are among the most successful Latino-owned businesses and Latinas are driving much of the growth of new businesses. Understanding the profile of Latino-owned businesses, including capital experiences and relationships with government and corporations, informs not only academic work and questions but can also have policy implications. For the purposes of addressing the Latino business needs during this epidemic, stakeholders may provide a more targeted response by understanding the reach of Latino-owned businesses and other characteristics such as their social network utilization (Chapter 9) and business language needs (Chapter 11).
Q: What are some of the institutional barriers Latino entrepreneurs face? And how does your book address them?
Orozco: Studies on minority entrepreneurship often depict this group of entrepreneurs from a deficit perspective – severely capital constrained, lacking in skills and higher education, and devoid of professionalized businesses. Indeed, access to capital remains an important institutional barrier and the chapter by Monika Mantilla (Chapter 14) provides a practitioner’s perspective on capital solutions. However, this book also highlights the assets of the Latino business community where in fact Latino business owners are more highly educated than the general Latino population and are creating innovative businesses in tech and non-service industries. Several chapters, including the ones I have authored, highlight the growing segment of Latino firms poised for growth and those generating over $1 million in annual revenue. The stories of these entrepreneurs are expanding the narrative and the face of Latino businesses, highlighting the substantial and significant contribution to the U.S. economy made by Latino-owned businesses as a whole.
Q: The word “Latino” in this context is certainly describing a group that in a large number of ways is quite diverse, how does your book balance the diverse needs and desires of the Latino population?
Orozco: We acknowledge that Latinos are not a homogenous group. Importantly, there is an early chapter in the book that addresses the historical conditions that shape the experiences of Latino subgroups. Nonetheless, there are also lots of commonalities and shared experience among Latino business owners even among those with differing national origins, including histories of immigration and bilingualism with the Spanish language. Importantly, as one of the primary data sources, the SLEI Survey of U.S. Latino Business Owners gathers detailed data on the Latino business owner and their business beyond what any government survey collects. Thus, among the chapters that leverage this quantitative data set, the authors model differences across gender, immigrant status, region, language, and national origin to paint a holistic and nuanced understanding of the Latino business population.
Thank you so much to Marlene for her time! If you would like to know more about the book you can get your own copy or request it from your local library.
Through April 30 you can get 40% off Advancing US Latino Entrepreneurship and any other Purdue University Press book by ordering from our website and using the code PURDUE40 at checkout.
Filed under: UncategorizedFebruary 26th, 2020
In this interview, we talk with author Eric Grissell about writing his new book A History of Zinnias: Flower for the Ages.
A History of Zinnias is a cultural and horticultural history documenting the development of garden zinnias—one of the top ten garden annuals grown in the United States today.
Q: Why did you choose the Zinnia?
Eric Grissell: The subject of zinnias first came about as a result of moving from my shady Maryland garden to southeastern Arizona where sun and water became the primary factors of gardening. I had a bit of luck with dwarf zinnias in Maryland, but I wanted to grow the tall, colorful sorts that require lots of sun. I soon discovered several native species of zinnia that piqued my life-long interest in native plants, and quickly became inundated in zinnias, growing from seed as many color forms and shapes of the annual sorts as possible. I also researched what the native species had to offer. Being a normal gardener (i.e., obsessive compulsive) I soon began to question zinnia origins and histories. Answers were not immediately forthcoming so I began my other indulgence of finding answers about questions that intrigued and/or bothered me. I’ve spent my life doing this with insects so plants were not far behind. At the same time my interest in zinnias became serious I read the entertaining book A Perfect Red by Amy Butler Greenfield, which is the history of a single species of scale insect. For some still-unexplained reason I thought a book about zinnias might possibly be infinitely more interesting than one about a little red bug. This admission cannot become common knowledge or I will be ostracized by my entomological colleagues.
Q: Did Zinnias live up to that billing?
Grissell: I suppose readers will be the judge of that! I can say, however, that attempting to learn about zinnias was both challenging and greatly improved my view of “history.” History seems to be divided into specific subjects such as geography, politics, music, and art, along with subsets of these broader categories. Researching the subject of zinnias surprisingly lead me to integrate areas I would not have imagined when I began. That is what eventually lead to a book that is more interesting than a simple history of a flower.
Q: You mention the preface of the book that some purported historical facts about Zinnias are actually complete falsehoods, what were some of your favorite myths to bust?
Grissell: I don’t consider myself a myth buster, but more appropriately a truth seeker. Perhaps the most often quoted sentence in all of zinnia literature is that they were a favorite flower of the Aztec peoples. This statement is made unhesitatingly throughout literature of all kinds but without attempts to verify it. Like much of life (and the Internet) it is simply repeated “knowledge.” Three chapters of my book investigate this problem from many different angles. The obvious of which is that the word “Zinnia” did not exist until 1759. So what was it called before that and how could I find out? Other odd notions about zinnias are that Gottfried Zinn, for whom the zinnia is named, collected zinnia seed in Mexico and was accosted by bandits. The purported incident occurred 150 years after his death, and Zinn had never even left his home country of Germany. This legend appears as fact in popular field guides to this day. Another bit of nonsense is that an elderly British Prime Minister fell off a cliff to his death while botanizing. His wife supposedly had a role in importing zinnia seed to England. Although an interesting bit of legend, it was the wrong wife, the wrong husband, and he didn’t die until a year after the fall—as a result of old age.
Q: On that note, was there anything you learned in research for this book that surprised you?
Grissell: I found it interesting that so many famous people and subjects were associated with zinnias in one way or another. Normally these associations would go unnoticed because no one in their right mind would think to look for them. These simply popped up as a result of searching for information on zinnias. Additionally, when people envision zinnias in the garden the first—and possibly only—thought is of the brightly colored garden varieties, all of which are annuals. I was surprised to learn that half of the two dozen known species are perennials, some verging on dwarf, woody shrublets. These species are considered wildflowers but are rarely mentioned even in wildflower guides. The so-called Desert Zinnia has even been the subject of work by the U. S, Department of Agriculture to develop a genetically diverse (but not engineered) seed source with which to help in restoration of disturbed areas, wildlife habitat improvement and for increasing plant diversity on lands in southeastern Arizona. The Desert Zinnia has also been used in attempts to introduce perennial status into annual garden zinnias.
Q: Do you feel the relative lack of knowledge on the history of Zinnias made your research more fun? or possibly more frustrating?
Grissell: I would have to say both! It certainly was frustrating because I was searching in the dark for 250 years before 1759 when the name “Zinnia” was created. It did force me to look at plants that were more thoroughly researched such as marigolds and dahlias. These have a documented history going back centuries and are endemic to Mexico as is the zinnia. Having to dig deeper and deeper into what was, or was not, known either forces one to give up in frustration or press onward with hope. I chose the latter out of stubbornness and the love of mystery. Eventually discovering minor and major bits of information along the way became increasingly more productive. Integrating such notions as Winston Churchill and battle ships, or Mozart and his students, seemed to have nothing to do with where I started, but a number of such diversions made the latter-day history of zinnias outweigh the earlier frustrations of searching through an abyss until I could admit that the whole project was more fun than I should admit. Hopefully the reader will agree.
Thank you to Eric for taking the time to answer our questions! If you’d like to learn more about Zinnias, you can order your own copy of A History of Zinnias or pick a copy up from your local library!
You can get 30% off A History of Zinnias and all other Purdue University Press books by ordering from our website and using the discount code PURDUE30.
Filed under: PurduePress