History

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This is the collection for the University of Waterloo's Department of History.

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'Mr. Spiritualism' Maurice Barbanell and his Life as a Twentieth-Century Spiritualist Propagandist
(University of Waterloo, 2024-04-25) Richbell, Nicholas
This dissertation explores the life and career of Maurice Barbanell, British businessman, journalist, newspaper editor, medium, and long-time propagandist of Spiritualism. Spiritualism—a religion, a science, and a philosophy—is based around the belief, or knowledge, that the human soul survives death and that communications with discarnate spirits is possible. Barbanell spent sixty-one years sharing the wisdom and teachings of his spirit guide, Silver Birch. Born into a Jewish/Atheist family, Barbanell was scornful of Spiritualism until he attended his first séances in his late teenage years, and it was during his second séance that Silver Birch began communicating through him. This dissertation follows Maurice Barbanell from his humble beginnings in east London, to meeting his spirit guide for the first time, and the medium’s involvement with a group of séance sitters known as the ‘Hannen Swaffer home circle’. Barbanell’s impact on Spiritualism is discussed in relation to lectures he gave about Spiritualism across the United Kingdom as well as the leading spiritualist newspaper he founded. The movement has long endured criticisms and accusations of fraudulent mediumship and Maurice Barbanell’s many legal cases are explored in this dissertation, as he defended the religion he fervently supported. Further, Barbanell’s rapid rise as a Spiritualist leader came as people turned away from organized religion towards Spiritualism after the First World War, and this dissertation will continue to study the medium’s endeavors during and after the Second World War, a lesser studied period of Spiritualism. This dissertation studies in detail, for the first time, the contributions one man made to a movement that has ebbed and flowed in popularity, leading to him being called ‘Mr. Spiritualism’. Leading figures of Spiritualism came before him; however, this dissertation will argue that Maurice Barbanell was well-deserving of the moniker ‘Mr. Spiritualism’ as this dissertation clearly demonstrates his unwavering support and defense of Spiritualism.
“Not a Question of Trust, but of Proof”: Malcolm Hay, A Chain of Error in Scottish History, and the History Wars of 1920s Scotland
(University of Waterloo, 2024-04-25) Bai, Elijah
The publication of A Chain of Error in Scottish History by Malcolm Hay in 1927, which concerned anti-Catholic bias in Scottish historical literature sparked controversy in Britain and Ireland. Negative reviews posted in The Times Literary Supplement and Scottish Historical Review were met with anger not only from Roman Catholics in Britain, but also Protestants sympathetic to Hay. Existing literature situated the debate over the book’s publication primarily in terms of Catholic-Protestant sectarianism and historiographical methodology, but not its deeper societal causes. I utilised historical documents from the University of Aberdeen belonging to Malcolm Hay, such as newspaper clippings and correspondence, as well as research in digital archives, to better understand the controversy itself. I also supplemented this information with research into the social history of Europe to understand its historical context. I found that the controversy’s direct historiographical and sectarian causes were in turn rooted in the crisis liberal capitalism, which supported both Protestantism and a pro-Protestant school of history in Britain, faced after the First World War. In addition, I discovered that a single individual, James Houston Baxter, had written both controversial reviews, making the Protestants appear more anti-Hay than previously appeared. Finally, I compared the controversy to that of modern-day history wars, noting commonalities both in their origins and the manner they unfolded.
Stalin’s Last Comrade: Hanna Wolf and the “Karl Marx” Party College in the German Democratic Republic
(University of Waterloo, 2024-01-31) McKay, Jennifer
For over thirty years, the Parteihochschule Karl Marx (PHS) was under the direction of the fervent Hanna Wolf, who oversaw the training of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party (SED) functionaries. First appointed as Director in 1950, Wolf proved to be a tenacious and calculated leader who was not only able to remain in her position for over three decades, but who also wielded power as a female member of the SED. While many high-ranking women in the East German regime were either propped up due to the influence of a more powerful partner or their positions were deemed more suitable to women’s work, Wolf’s appointment at the PHS proved neither and she broke through the male-dominated party culture of the SED on her own merits. However, scholarship focusing on high-ranking women in the SED has been quite meagre and on the PHS itself, there is a modest but important literature. Therefore, this dissertation explores how Wolf’s political savviness, which included a myriad of personality traits, helped her successfully navigate the male dominated party culture of the SED. Such personality traits included being an “iron maiden,” proving to be cold and domineering with students and peers who did not follow the party line, or warm and friendly with those in positions of power. As a result of Wolf’s keen awareness of party politics, she was able to remain in her role as Director for thirty-three years, overseeing the training of close to 25,000 party functionaries that were sent out into the workforce and branches of the party apparatus armed with a very limited set of professional skills and only the knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, which ultimately helped stall technological advancements in the East German regime. Often referred to as “Wolf Canyon” or the “Red Monastery,” Wolf ruled over the PHS with an “iron fist” and proved to be a massive barrier when it came to changing the student curricula. As a veteran communist who first joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1930, then spent the 1930s and 1940s in the Soviet Union, Wolf was instilled with a vehement dedication to Stalinism which never faltered throughout the duration of her life and which she employed in her management of the PHS. Even during the 1950s, with Stalin’s death in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of the Soviet dictator in 1956, Wolf stayed true to her ideals and faced backlash from colleagues at the party school who started a campaign for her removal. During the 1960s, Wolf had to contend with Walter Ulbricht’s transition from an ideologue to a technocrat and his attempts to reform PHS student coursework from focusing primarily on ideology to more technical topics. However, by the 1970s, Wolf’s leadership remained unchallenged as Erich Honecker, who was also a dedicated hardliner, replaced Ulbricht as Party General Secretary in 1971, and the PHS continued to operate under Wolf’s dogmatic and dictatorial rule until her retirement in June 1983.
In Protection of No Woman: Consent, Illegitimacy, and Gender-Based Violence in Early Modern Somerset, 1600-1699
(University of Waterloo, 2024-01-29) MacAlpine, Rebecca-Ann Preston
Over the course of the seventeenth century, 1298 women came before the Quarter Sessions to secure financial resources for the upkeep of their unborn children. These interactions with the legal system highlight the ways in which female experience did not always translate into the adjudication of their cases. The preoccupation of the court, which was to shift financial support away from the parish to the putative father, highlights that the lived experiences of women were secondary to the primary economic objective. The inability to fully engage with these experiences and adjudicate accordingly demonstrates the violating nature of these proceedings. Who did the court intend to protect through bastardy proceedings, and what was the marginalizing impact of these decisions? This dissertation explores the marginalizing processes embedded in the Quarter Session records of bastardy. Through the employment of a mixed methodological approach that engages both qualitative and quantitative strategies, this work shows that the Sessions were designed and implemented in a way that continued to marginalize unwed mothers for their failure to conform to socially accepted courting rituals. It also failed to account for the varied lived experiences of these women. As a result, the entire adjudicating process perpetuated institutionalized gender-based violence. The system was designed to not protect the well-being of mothers and their illegitimate children, but rather to protect the financial interests of the community at large, and reinforce gendered cultural expectations through a public shaming process. As a result, the processes ensured that women’s voices were present but silenced through the procedural mechanisms enacted in the Sessions and institutionalized gender-based violence enacted against unwed mothers in Somerset.
Practical Inclusion: Representing French-Canadians in the Army during the Second World War
(University of Waterloo, 2024-01-26) d'Eon, Ryan
This dissertation offers a thorough re-examination of the process and reasons for why French-Canadian representation in the Canadian Army increased during the Second World War. It argues that the army’s leadership endeavoured to increase French-Canadian representation because of a shortage of recruits for the expanding army to combat the growing Axis threat and to avoid conscription for overseas service. The Goforth Report in 1941 proposed solutions to increase representation and by 1942-1943, the number of French-speaking units, officers, French language manuals, French language training camps, trades, and advanced training centres increased considerably. During the 1944 reinforcement crisis, senior officers exhausted efforts to maintain Francophone army representation within the four French-speaking battalions prior to sending conscripts overseas. This thesis also argues that French-Canadians, especially when compared to those who joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), made an even more significant contribution to the strength of the wartime Canadian Army. Other studies in this thesis further explore the French-Canadian army experience. An examination of the Parliamentary debates and the Francophone press shows that most Francophone Members of Parliament (MPs) did not want to participate in another global war while the stance of the French language press was more complex. A random sample of courts martials of both French and English-speaking soldiers shows that the most common crimes were absence without leave (AWL) and desertion. Francophones faced harsher punishments as they were charged and convicted slightly more often of AWL and desertion and spent more time incarcerated for these two crimes. Both language groups also had significant differences to explain their offences. Finally, a study of Francophone soldiers and their Catholic faith shows that Catholicism both sustained and undermined French Canada’s relationship with the army.
Letters from the Boiler House: Conflict and Communication in a Second World War Canadian Internment Camp
(University of Waterloo, 2023-10-30) Wagenaar, Gillian
In March of 1941, two members of the Veterans Guard of Canada were court martialled for conduct “to the prejudice of good order and Military Discipline.” Their crime: passing letters, “illicit correspondence,” between a small group of “enemy alien” internees, known as the Musketeers, in an internment camp in rural Quebec, and a teenage girl named Winkie in Montreal. The case of Winkie Henson and the Musketeers shows the Canadian internment camp during the Second World War to be a complex, often liminal, space of connection and conflict. It illuminates the tension inherent between official regulation and human action, pitting the needs of civilians, Canadian or otherwise, against governing powers. It highlights the role of correspondence in a pre-internet world and shows how relationships could begin and end by pen and paper. In later reflections and representations of the case, it also shows the selective nature of memory and how our relationship with the past is shaped by both time and emotion. Most importantly, the story of illicit correspondence presents the internment camp and, more widely, the Canadian home front, as a space in which strict social boundaries became fluid and malleable in a wartime context, to both the benefit and cost of young romantic prospects, hopeful fathers, social elites, and supposed “enemy aliens.” In this, the case, told as a microhistory, adds further complexity to the view of Canadian internment camps as simultaneous spaces of oppression and opportunity for those within and beyond their barbed wire bounds.
“By Their Own Efforts”: First Nations Health Policy in Canada, 1940s-1970s
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-20) Vorobej, Lucy
This dissertation explores the early years of Ottawa’s 20th century integration policy with a focus on the impact of settler-colonial power and priorities on First Nations’ access to Canadian health care systems under it. Using critical discourse analysis and the theoretical frameworks of Post-Colonialism and Critical Race Theory to read “along the grain of colonial common sense,” this study explores settler archives to examine the discourses, policies, and practices of settler political and bureaucratic leadership from the 1940s to the 1970s. I argue that Ottawa’s policy of integration, despite settler pronouncements of its break from the past, represented a profound continuity of settler desires for Indigenous erasure and White settler power. As a result, many settler politicians and department officials chose willful blindness to First Nations’ assertions of their Indigenous or treaty rights to health care—deemed to be threats to the status quo. In their place, settler leadership drew on racialized myths of First Nations landlessness and “a primitive unproductive” culture to claim exclusive sovereignty, to “justify” settler incursion, and to offer access to settler health care systems on settler terms. Ultimately, Ottawa’s approach produced a system of profound harm. It left Ottawa’s Indian Health Service unprioritized and underfunded, its mandate unwanted by provincial governments, and its policies the target of resistance from many First Nations individuals and communities. My dissertation joins with a rising number of health care historians who recognize that the history of settler-colonialism and systemic racism is a necessary addition to the history of health care in Canada. Specifically, my research will result in a richer understanding of how racialization continued to impact First Nations access to health care during a political period in Canadian history when overt racial discrimination was no longer sanctioned and details how settler efforts to develop policy in “First Nations best interests” operated largely to serve settler aims.
Fathers, Sons, and Hippies: Changes in American Blues in the 1960s and its Connection to the Counterculture
(University of Waterloo, 2023-09-05) Gingerich, Joel
This thesis examines the changing landscape of American blues music in the 1960s as well as the blues’ connection to the 1960s counterculture. This paper makes frequent use of oral histories from musicians and counterculture members. It also uses underground press publications to gauge the perceptions and opinions of the counterculture with respect to blues music. This project traces the journey of mid-century blues players from the Deep South up to northern industrial cities while arguing that commercialism and professionalism was a major part of their careers. This project then explores the younger generation of blues musicians (those born in the 1930s and early-1940s) as they developed relationships with the older generation of mid-century blues players. The younger generation, using a wide variety of influences, developed a new, energized subgenre of the blues during the 1960s. Older blues musicians in Chicago generously shared their music with younger musicians, both Black and White, while forming close, familial relationships with each other and sustaining the genre through the 1960s. Largely through the efforts of several notable blues artists, the genre became popular in White American circles. The mixed-race Paul Butterfield Blues Band largely increased the blues’ popularity with White people and the counterculture. While early-1960s White blues fans were largely members of the folk revival, valuing only acoustic Black country blues, the counterculture largely embraced the blues in all its forms by the late-1960s. Unlike the folk revivalists, the counterculture did not demand Black blues artists play folk-blues, and instead valued electric blues, albeit some problematic perceptions remained throughout the 1960s. The counterculture embraced blues music for many reasons. The genre was a basis for other popular genres like rock, it could be adapted and appropriated to fit countercultural views, and it was a method of rejecting the mainstream. The counterculture also developed a progressive blues cultural, using the blues to demonstrate solidarity with Black civil rights advocates. Blues musicians from Chicago found unprecedented popularity within the counterculture and greatly influenced countercultural musicians. Blues musicians likewise embraced the counterculture, adopting subversive lifestyles and incorporating countercultural motifs in their music by the mid-1960s. The paper concludes with a discussion of post-1960s blues, arguing against the myth that the blues stagnated and vanished since the end of the 1960s.
“The Art of Getting Drunk:” Martial Masculinity, Alcohol, and the British Army in the Canadas in the War of 1812
(University of Waterloo, 2023-02-14) Abbott, Jesse
This thesis argues that alcohol consumption, both real and perceived, played a key role in the construction and negotiation of masculine identities within the British army in the Canadas during the early nineteenth century. Officers in particular proved their manliness and constructed their dual gentleman-officer identity not only by fighting well, but also by socializing and drinking well; by demonstrating what the famous moral essayist, Dr. Samuel Johnson, called “skill in inebriation,” or the “art of getting drunk.” An officer’s capability or skill in drinking with his fellow gentlemen-officers denoted manliness, while habitual or public drunkenness had the opposite effect. His polite consumption in both public and private social settings defined him as a gentleman, while his strong consumption on the battlefield fortified his constitution and facilitated his performance as a warrior. His heavy consumption with peers established his place within a hierarchy of manliness, and his condemnation of the propensity for drink and the drunken comportment of his perceived social inferiors established his position atop larger gendered, classed, and racialized hierarchies in colonial society. Officers constructed their own masculine identity in direct relation to those with whom they interacted, specifically enlisted soldiers (and NCOs), Indigenous allies, and American enemies, and these constructions were heavily informed by early nineteenth century perceptions of alcohol.
Another Life, Another World: The Spiritual Origins of Spaceflight
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-26) Snopek, Ryan
This work reassesses the origins of the idea of humanity’s destiny in outer space, examining the development of popular enthusiasm about extraterrestrial life and reincarnation in Europe and America from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. It connects popular interest in the afterlife to transcendental and spiritualistic perceptions of outer space, which originated as mystical and theological ideas which over the course of the nineteenth century became increasingly secular and scientific. The result was a utopian view of humanity’s future on other planets, one which transformed from the spiritual to the physical and inspired early rocket pioneers to seriously theorise and advocate for spaceflight, leading to the ultimate achievement of this goal in the 1960s.
The Red Road to Victory: Soviet Combat Training 1917-1945
(University of Waterloo, 2023-01-20) Parkhomenko, Anton
This thesis provides a comprehensive account of early Soviet combat training and its associated attitudes from 1917 to 1945. From its inception in 1918 and throughout the evolution of Soviet military doctrine and practice, the Red Army paid insufficient attention to existing and growing deficiencies in military training. Due to a combination of Bolshevik ideology, leftover Imperial Russian influences, and unique historical circumstances, Soviet leaders – both deliberately and accidentally – embraced a military culture based on amateurism and dilettantism. The military leadership’s systemic oversights regarding combat training and military professionalism undermined the tactical combat capacity of the Soviet Armed Forces in the short and long term. While Joseph Stalin’s dictatorial policies had a negative impact on combat training during the 1930s, they merely exacerbated an existing crisis that began with the formation of the Soviet state in 1917. Despite periodic efforts to remedy this problem, military reformists largely failed to overcome the formidable institutional forces that continue to advance a harmful military culture on combat training to the present day. This study also provides valuable historical context to a similar crisis in combat training faced by the Russian Armed Forces during their ongoing invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Stand Fast for Peace & Freedom: A Study of Foreign Policy of the British Labour Party in Opposition 1931 to 1940
(University of Waterloo, 2022-11-21) Cater, Evan
This thesis examines the evolution of foreign policy within the British Labour Party during its years in opposition from 1931 to 1940. It argues that Labour policy was locked in a bitter divide between idealist and pragmatic forces who both sought a foreign policy which could effectively counter the spread of fascism. In 1933 Labour had a radical turn towards a policy of war resistance and abandoned hope in multilateralism after witnessing the failure of the World Disarmament Conference. Labour would undertake a long and difficult process of gradually shifting away from this radical turn first by trying to revive its faith in collective security through the League of Nations and later by accepting rearmament and a return to the traditional balance of power system. Labour policy reached a turning point in 1938 when it found an honourable cause to defend Czechoslovakian democracy from the reach of Adolf Hitler. It was able to galvanise cross-party support and generate significant public sympathy for its hostility to Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement. This stand against the Prime Minister, while unsuccessful, laid the foundation for Labour to return to Government in 1940 during a period of national emergency. The lessons learned from these experiences allowed the Party to help shape the postwar world after it secured a majority Government in 1945.
Orphans and Vulnerable Children: An Analysis Surrounding Jamaica, 1800-1852 with Case Studies
(University of Waterloo, 2022-09-13) Amodeo, Allyson
This article traces the experiences of orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs) during the British slave trade between 1800-1852, while looking specifically at connections to Jamaica. The British set out to colonize, ‘civilize,’ and control Black parents, children, and bodies throughout Jamaica, as particularly shown through enslavement practices and governmental regulations implemented that impacted notions of safety, protection, and autonomy for Black families. Such practices and regulations changed and evolved as abolition, apprenticeship, and emancipation came into effect. Although the legal landscape was changing, the horrific systemic abuse against Black people remained the same. Yet, there is evidence that even within that broad system of British-implemented and enforced control, there were frequent moments of collective care, resistance, and bonds formed between both kin and fictive kin within Black communities. Although Empire, in general, tended to silence voices of the subaltern, and especially their children, this thesis explores the ways in which members of those communities shaped that control and fought to be heard.
Death, Divorce, and Desertion: Strategies of Survival in Abusive Marriage in Seventeenth Century England
(University of Waterloo, 2022-09-02) Baker, Jennifer
This thesis demonstrates how seventeenth century English women in abusive marriages employed limited survival strategies to separate from their violent husbands. It explores the ecclesiastical and magisterial court systems built on deeply rooted political, religious, and cultural attitudes towards women, marriage and marital violence, using urban London cases during the last quarter of the seventeenth century as a lens through which to observe the social and legal toleration of violence in the marriage without commensurate punishment. By using cases from across the social hierarchy, what emerges is a picture of a society deeply affected by the political and religious upheaval that began in the sixteenth century and influenced cultural attitudes towards marital violence that merely reasserted earlier systems of gendered marital hierarchy even as it reframed and redefined these systems of authority. Longstanding canon law defined the possible ways women might secure a separation and survive financially without remaining in an abusive relationship through divorce or desertion by reason of cruelty that changed little over the centuries. The narrow avenues available to women also presented a third option: murder. The limits of social toleration bound authority and the seventeenth century English toleration for violence in the family made it difficult to define and demonstrate when marital violence had crossed from legitimate methods of correction to illegitimate forms of abuse. Establishing this burden of proof was one of an abused wife’s most significant obstacles in court and shaped their approach even as social ideals and perceptions of women shaped how the court viewed women. Most women never experienced excessive violence in their marriage. While these cases are exceptional, they also exemplify the deep-seated religious and socio-cultural customs that shaped normative ideals that tolerated this abuse. Despite the extreme physical, sexual, mental, and emotional assault that violated contemporary notions of reasonable modes of correction, these cases demonstrate how society, the church, and the state understood the abuse, failed to punish the violence, and at the same time allowed the violence to be a legitimate ground for women to separate themselves from abusive husbands. In this way, it is possible to use the exceptional to illuminate everyday attitudes.
Intelligentia Spiritualis: Platonism, the Latin Polemical Tradition, and the Renaissance Approach to the Prophetic Sense of History
(University of Waterloo, 2022-07-25) Attrell, Daniel
This study sheds light on key figures and trends in the medieval Latin West that influenced the intellectual lives of the humanist theologians Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), specifically regarding their respective visions of world history, which they understood primarily through the lens of biblical prophecy and the Greco-Roman classics. It highlights continuities over changes from the medieval to the Renaissance period so as to demonstrate how a longstanding culture of interreligious theological and philosophical disputation between Christians, Jews, and Muslims, particularly among converts, served as a vehicle for the exchange (and appropriation) of knowledge across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Among the exchanged and appropriated ideas were not only insights into the history of the world – its beginning, middle, and end – but also deeply intertwined mystical concepts, some of Late Antique Pythagorean and Platonic provenance, and some derived from more recent innovation, such as those derived from medieval Jewish Kabbalah, especially regarding the correct understanding of divine names (what is herein called ‘esoteric philology’). During the Renaissance, humanist theologians reinterpreted, recombined, and redeployed these concepts in various ways to serve their own particular pro-Christian polemical ends. This study, therefore, focuses on the rise, development, and embattlement of a distinctly Latin anti-Jewish polemical tradition, and attempts to demonstrate how the pro-spiritual and anti-carnal attitudes present in Ficino and Pico’s theological works cannot be fully understood without locating them within the wider context of this longstanding culture of interreligious disputation.
Abandoning Private Femininity: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the 1784 Westminster Election, and Its Implications for the History of Women in Politics
(University of Waterloo, 2022-04-26) McManus, Madison Summer
My thesis argues that women had a powerful influence on politics long before the fight for suffrage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that the focus in political history on “high politics” has not allowed for women’s less formal involvement in politics to be recognized as it should be. I discuss the socio-political culture of eighteenth-century England, including the nature of the role of women in politics and how it aligns with the social expectations of women during the eighteenth century. I analyze the impact of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, on the 1784 Westminster election, as well as her prominent role within the Whig party. Finally, I discuss the rise of the newspaper press’s influence on politics in the eighteenth century and how its harsh criticisms of Georgiana played a role in not only causing Georgiana to take a step back from politics, but also reduced the visible activity of women in politics for the next hundred years.
Indictments, Dismissals, and Obstruction – Republika Srpska: 1992 - 2011
(University of Waterloo, 2022-01-10) Koyu, Kemal
This work details the transformation of the Republika Srpska from its foundation in 1992 to the election of Milorad Dodik as the entity's president in 2011. It covers the bloody birth of the RS and the role of its founders in the within the Serb Democratic Party (SDS). It extensively discusses the postwar political divisions between members of the SDS old guard, which include Biljana Plavsic, Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic, and others. This work also discusses the rise, fall, and rebirth of Milorad Dodik who transitioned from a reformist oriented toward the West, to a reactionary bent on the independence of the RS. Throughout this time, the Office of the High Representative gained tremendous power within Bosnia and Herzegovina, and subsequently lost it. This work explains how American disengagement, force reduction, and shifts in the geopolitical balance of power caused the OHR's lacklustre decline and Dodik's empowerment.
Manorial Regulation and Negotiation in a Late Medieval Environment: Land and Community at Herstmonceux, 1308-1440
(University of Waterloo, 2021-12-17) Moore, Andrew
This dissertation examines the role that environment played in the negotiation of rights and responsibilities on a fundamental socioeconomic institution of rural communities in late medieval England — the manor. It analyzes all of the extant documentation generated by the manor, especially a series of fourteenth-century court rolls, and uses it as a lens through which to observe this process. What emerges is a picture of continuous negotiation of power that affected, and was affected by, the environment. Some effects of this process included the creation of new bureaucracies, the increasing standardization of procedure and documentation, and regulations promoting intensive, rather than extensive, land use. This occurred during a period of significant environmental crises, including marshland flooding, disease, and the increasingly unsustainable clearing of woodlands. The manor of Herstmonceux is an especially useful case study for an analysis of the relationship between communities and their environment, as it administered a broad landscape that straddled distinctly different environments, from lowland marshes to upland woods. Prescriptive, often written, initiatives from the seigneurial administration conflicted with custom, much of it oral, and local memory. In this way, the manor court acted as a mechanism of enforcement for the seigneurial administration. Geography also played a crucial role in Herstmonceux manor’s imposition of authority in its periphery. Though much of the demesne utilized lower elevations and wetlands near the manor house, the tenants lived in clustered communities dispersed widely throughout an upland, wooded region. In practice, the court wielded little influence on tenant behaviour over great distances, and especially in dense woodlands, and acted mostly as a source of record-keeping and revenue generation. People grazed their animals widely and trespassed on the demesne frequently, for which the court generally levied a minor access fee, and utilized wood for many purposes, though the sheer lack of prosecutions indicate a lack of enforcement in the manor’s distant woodlands. In contrast, the lord wielded greater control over access to nearby marshland, wherein much of his demesne was located. This influence only grew as royal bureaucracies imposed standardized, written procedures to ameliorate flooding; unsurprisingly, tenants exerted increasingly less autonomy in matters of water management.
We Are All Digital Now: Digital Photography and the Reshaping of Historical Practice
(Canadian Historical Review, 2020-12) Milligan, Ian
Visiting a reading room in the last five years is a very different experience than what it looked like even fifteen years ago: while a few researchers carefully read archival documents in situ, most are crouched over their archival documents with a smartphone or digital camera in hand, taking thousands of photos that will be analyzed upon return to their home institutions. With the advent of digital photography and less-restrictive archival policies on digital reproduction for personal use, historical research is now characterized by quick trips to gather thousands of photos. What does this mean for the research and writing of history, however? How do researchers create their corpuses and on what information? What work takes place before the archival visit, after the archival visit, and how can we better support this sort of work? Drawing on a 2019 survey of 253 historians employed at Canadian universities, this article argues that through specific reference to the use of digital archival photography, we can see the varied ways in which historical work is being adapted to these new and emerging technological circumstances.
Three Years and Two Continents Apart: A Comparative Study of the Great Sioux War and Anglo-Zulu War
(University of Waterloo, 2021-11-26) Winter, Cameron
In 1876 and 1879, the American and British armies suffered extremely similar disasters at, respectively, the Battles of the Little Bighorn and Isandlwana. Though these two colonial reversals have often been compared to one another in passing, no serious comparative work on them has been done. This paper aims to change that, while placing both battles within the larger frameworks of their respective wars and arguing that it was the similarities in American and British perceptions of their Indigenous foes that led to the defeats at the Little Bighorn and Isandlwana, as well as the other difficulties that both campaigns encountered. It will be argued that both the American and the British battleplans relied upon the assumption that their enemies would flee from an army of white men and planned accordingly, a belief that led to catastrophic reversals when the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Zulu instead took offensive action. Only by overcoming this detrimental prejudice and adjusting their plans accordingly were the colonial powers able to conquer their Indigenous enemies.

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