Kadogo

Sample

M.J. Morgan

Drawing on research from a variety of academic fields, such as archaeology, history, botany, ecology, and physical science, M. J. Morgan explores the intersection of people and the environment in early eighteenth-century Illinois Country?a stretch of fecund, alluvial river plain along the Mississippi river. Arguing against the traditional narrative that describes Illinois as an untouched wilderness until the influx of American settlers, Morgan illustrates how the story began much earlier. She focuses her study on early French and Indian communities, and later on the British, nestled within the tripartite environment of floodplain, riverine cliffs and bluffs, and open, upland till plain/prairie and examines the impact of these diverse groups of people on the ecological landscape. By placing human lives within the natural setting of the period?the abundant streams and creeks, the prairies, plants and wildlife?she traces the environmental change that unfolded across almost a century.^ She describes how it was a land in motion; how the occupying peoples used, extracted, and extirpated its resources while simultaneously introducing new species; and how the flux and flow of life mirrored the movement of the rivers. Morgan emphasizes the importance of population sequences, the relationship between the aboriginals and the Europeans, the shared use of resources, and the effects of each on the habitat. Land of Big Rivers is a unique, many-themed account of the big-picture ecological change that occurred during the early history of the Illinois Country. It is the first book to consider the environmental aspects of the Illinois Indian experience and to reconsider the role of the French and British in environmental change in the mid-Mississippi Valley.^ It engagingly recreates presettlement Illinois with a remarkable interdisciplinary approach and provides new details that will encourage understanding of the interaction between physical geography and the plants, animals, and people in the Illinois Country. Furthermore, it exhibits the importance of looking at the past in the context of environmental transformation, which is especially relevant in light of today?s global climate change.

Sample

Alan E. Steinweis

On November 7, 1938, a Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, fatally shot a German diplomat in Paris. Within three days anti Jewish violence erupted throughout Germany, initially incited by local Nazi officials, and ultimately sanctioned by the decisions of Hitler and Goebbels at the pinnacle of the Third Reich. As synagogues burned and Jews were beaten in the streets, police stood aside. Men, women, and children, many neighbors of the victims, participated enthusiastically in acts of violence, rituals of humiliation, and looting. By the night of November 10th, a nationwide antisemitic pogrom had inflicted massive destruction on synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish owned businesses. During and after this spasm of violence and plunder, 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where hundreds would perish in the following months. Kristallnacht revealed to the world the intent and extent of Nazi Judeophobia. However, it was seen essentially as the work of the Nazi leadership. Now, the author counters that view in his vision of Kristallnacht as a veritable pogrom, a popular cathartic convulsion of antisemitic violence that was manipulated from above but executed from below by large numbers of ordinary Germans rioting in the streets, heckling and taunting Jews, cheering Stormtroopers' hostility, and looting Jewish property on a massive scale. Based on original research in the trials of the pogrom's perpetrators and the testimonies of its Jewish survivors, the author brings to light the evidence of mob action by all sectors of the civilian population. This work reveals the true depth and nature of popular antisemitism in Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust.

Sample

Gerhard J. Ens

Most writing on Metis history has tended to concentrate on the Resistance of 1869-70 and the Rebellion of 1885, without adequately explaining the social and economic origins of the Metis that shaped those conflicts. Historians have often emphasized the aboriginal aspect of the Metis heritage, stereotyping the Metis as a primitive people unable or unwilling to adjust to civilized life and capitalist society. In this social and economic history of the Metis of the Red River Settlement, specifically the parishes of St Francois Xavier and St Andrew's, Gerhard Ens argues that the Metis participated with growing confidence in two worlds: one Indian and pre-capitalist, the other European and capitalist. Ens maintains that Metis identity was not defined by biology or blood but rather by the economic and social niche they carved out for themselves within the fur trade. Ens finds that the Metis, rather than being overwhelmed, adapted quickly to the changed economic conditions of the 1840s and actually influenced the nature of change. The opening of new markets and the rise of the buffalo-robe trade fed a 'cottage industry' whose increasing importance had significant repercussions for the maintenance of ethnic boundaries, the nature of Metis response to the Riel Resistance, and the eventual decline of the Red River Settlement as a Metis homeland.

Sample

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.