From Valmy to Waterloo

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Theda Perdue

Theda Perdue examines the roles and responsibilities of Cherokee women during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a time of intense cultural change. While building on the research of earlier historians, she develops a uniquely complex view of the effects of contact on Native gender relations, arguing that Cherokee conceptions of gender persisted long after contact. Maintaining traditional gender roles actually allowed Cherokee women and men to adapt to new circumstances and adopt new industries and practices. - Publisher.

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selected and edited by Claire Laubier

Intended for the language student, this is a collection of documentary and statistical materials taken from adverts, newspapers, etc. Each extract relates to the different experiences of French women at work, at home and in politics.

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Christopher Morris

Mississippi, perhaps more than any other state, epitomized the Old South and all it stood for. Yet, at one time, this area had more in common with newly settled northwest territories than it did with older southeastern plantation districts. This book takes a close look at a "typical" Southern community, and traces its long process of economic, social, and cultural evolution. Focusing on Jefferson Davis's Warren County, Morris shows the transformation of a loosely knit Western community of pioneer homesteaders into a distinctly Southern society. This region was first settled by farmers and herders; by the turn of the nineteenth century, the wealthiest residents began to acquire slaves and to plant cotton, hastening the demise of the pioneer economy. Gradually, farmers began producing for the market, which drew them out of their neighborhoods and broke down local patterns of cooperation. Individuals learned to rely on extended kin-networks as a means of acquiring land and slaves, giving tremendous power to older men with legal control over family property. Relations between masters and slaves, husbands and wives, and planters and yeoman farmers changed with the emergence of the traditional patriarchy of the Old South; this transformation created the "Southern" society that Warren County's white residents defended in the Civil War. Drawing on wills, deeds, and court records, as well as manuscript materials, Morris presents a sensitive and nuanced portrait of the interaction between ideology and material conditions, challenging accepted notions of what we have come to understand as Southern culture.

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Hervé Cheuzeville

<a href="javascript:pop_img(' class=encadrevitrine2>Lire les articles parus dans France Soir<a><br> Des massacres de masse se déroulent discrètement en Afrique Centrale depuis des années. Le prétexte : les "rébellions" et les "luttes tribales". Mais en vérité, ce sont les conséquences d'un combat féroce entre chefs pour s'approprier le pouvoir exclusif sur les ressources locales. Les groupes armés des milices ethniques impliquées sont composés en majorité de jeunes et d'enfants presque toujours recrutés de force : les Kadogo. Leurs récits de vie dramatiques rompent avec le silence qui couvre les guerres chroniques au Soudan, en Ouganda, en R.D du Congo, au Rwanda.