Sean F. McEnroe's "From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico"

Sean F. McEnroe is Assistant Professor of History at Southern Oregon University.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico: Laying the Foundations, 1560-1840, and reported the following:

Page ninety-nine is not a bad starting point for discussing From Colony to Nationhood. Much of the book is about how indigenous societies built themselves into the Spanish Empire. This page gives us a glimpse of that empire’s inner workings at the local level. The setting is the town of San Miguel de Aguayo (near today’s U.S.-Mexican border); the moment is the mid eighteenth century. Here I tell the story of several disputes between the town’s main Indian communities over political authority, boundaries, and the division of plunder. In the process I show how towns and citizenship evolved hand-in-hand.

San Miguel was populated by two major ethnic groups: Tlaxcalans and Alasapas (the former the descendants of central Mexico’s most powerful civilizations, and the latter the descendants of mobile Indian bands from the north). Both communities provided the crown with frontier militiamen, and both held titles to land and water, as well as the right to elect local governments. Together they waged war against other Indian populations that lay outside the empire’s control. These curious partners were Christian subjects of the king; they spoke both Spanish and their ancestral tongues, and they belonged to what Spaniards called “Indian republics.” For three centuries people like them were a cornerstone of Spanish colonization and defense.

Tlaxcalans were Spain’s oldest partners in the conquest of Mexico. In the sixteenth century, thousands of them had accompanied Cortes in his attack on Tenochtitlan, and many more helped Spanish commanders and administrators subdue and settle lands from Guatemala to New Mexico. In the seventeenth century, Tlaxcalan soldiers and miners first founded San Miguel de Aguayo as an Indian republic; Alasapas soon settled beside them in a twin community. Over time, the struggles between the two groups, both in local councils and before Spanish courts, defined and cemented their partnership under the terms of colonial law.

This small story of one town’s Tlaxcalans and Alasapas is part of a much bigger one told in Colony to Nationhood. It is the story of how resourceful groups of indigenous Americans used their skills as warriors and their grasp of European language, law, and religion to carve out places of privilege and security in Spain’s enormous multiethnic empire.

Learn more about From Colony to Nationhood in Mexico at the Cambridge University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

William Romanowski's "Reforming Hollywood"

William D. Romanowski is Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Calvin College. His books include Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture (a 2002 ECPA Gold Medallion Award Winner) and Pop Culture Wars: Religion and the Role of Entertainment in America Life.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his latest book, Reforming Hollywood: How American Protestants Fought for Freedom at the Movies, and reported the following:

Although Protestants, representing the reigning religious and cultural establishment, were at the forefront of movie reform in the early twentieth century, they receive not a single mention on page 99 [below left, click to enlarge], which considers a pivotal moment in movie regulation in the 1930s. In a remarkable turn of events, Jewish studio owners and the Presbyterian head of their trade organization involved Roman Catholics in a process to ensure the suitability of movies for the American public—largely Protestant. It is precisely the absence of Protestants on this page that ironically signifies this dramatic shift in cultural power directly related to their main strategy for movie reform.

Although Protestants are typically dismissed as moralistic crusaders, Protestant movie reform was based on beliefs derived from a religious heritage that sought both individual freedom and community welfare. At the crux of their struggle over the movies was the tension between the film industry’s concern with profit margins and the church’s concern to protect civil liberties and the public welfare.

The studio owners had forged an oligopoly with a small number of companies dominating the entire movie business. Averse to legalized censorship, Protestant leaders became convinced that eliminating the studios’ unfair trade practices (compulsory block booking) would make them responsive to real market demands for better movies—without resorting to prior censorship. It is significant that although usually situated within the discourse of censorship, Protestant reform was more centrally about industry regulation. By the early 1930s, they sought a national policy, not to curb artistic expression, but to keep the market for movies fair and balanced by preventing these huge film corporations from gaming the system. This attempt to restructure the film industry however, struck at the cornerstone of the studios’ profitable monopoly; Protestant initiatives were conceivably a greater threat to the film studios than a nationwide Catholic boycott.

The Production Code Administration’s prior censorship of movies in cooperation with the Catholic Legion of Decency amounted to a church-directed control that was beyond the pale of Protestant tolerability. Even so, Hollywood’s alliance with Catholics was a visible sign of the erosion of Protestant power that coincided with the crushing failure of Prohibition.

These events also mark the end of the Protestant thread in film histories. Hollywood’s empowerment of Catholics in effect rendered Protestant initiatives moot, while also obscuring their contributions for future historians.

Visit the Reforming Hollywood Facebook page and William Romanowski's webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen Eric Bronner's "Modernism at the Barricades"

Stephen Eric Bronner is Distinguished Professor (PII) of Political Science at Rutgers University. He is senior editor of the internet journal Logos and has published more than twenty-five books, including Socialism Unbound: Principles, Practices, and Prospects; Of Critical Theory and Its Theorists; Camus: Portrait of a Moralist; and Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement. He received the Michael A. Harrington Prize for Moments of Decision: Political History and the Crises of Radicalism.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his latest book, Modernism at the Barricades: Aesthetics, Politics, Utopia, and reported the following:

Thanks for inviting me to contribute to the blog about Modernism at the Barricades. And I agree to the page 99 test: According to Ford Madox Ford that page determines the quality of the book. I’m not sure that I would take the author at his word. After all, Ford Madox Ford wrote one of the great opening lines ever for The Good Soldier: “This is the saddest story ever told!” Anyway, when I open my book to page 99, I see “The Myth of the Surrealist Dialectic.” Hate to admit it: but that page is somewhat indicative of my general enterprise. Modernism at the Barricades explores the interplay between aesthetics, philosophy, and politics in the major avant-garde movements that marked the first three decades of the twentieth century. I mostly focus on figures who reflected that intersection. Andre Breton was one of them. The guiding force of surrealism, he was also a seminal figure of modernism. My engagement with him as a thinker and the philosophical pretensions of surrealism is critical in character. But that is the case for the book as a whole insofar as it seeks to reinterpret modernism with an eye on its legacy for our time and contemporary cultural politics. Oddly, then, perhaps Ford Madox Ford’s page 99 test has some value – or, as in the case of my book, he just got lucky.

Learn more about Modernism at the Barricades at the Columbia University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

R. Ford Denison's "Darwinian Agriculture"

R. Ford Denison is adjunct professor of ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Minnesota and taught crop ecology at the University of California, Davis.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Darwinian Agriculture: How Understanding Evolution Can Improve Agriculture, and reported the following:

By page 99 I have introduced the challenges facing agriculture, reviewed some key principles from evolutionary biology, critiqued tradeoff-blind biotechnology, and I am starting to critique tradeoff-blind approaches inspired by nature. I argue that taking a cue from nature can indeed suggest the superiority of perennials over annuals, in some environments. But the same logic argues against current attempts to convert perennials into grain crops. A plant that puts more of its limited resources into grain (seeds) won't be able to make as much root (stabilizing soil) or build up the reserves that allow it to survive unfavorable conditions.

A perennial plant could produce more seeds in a given year by using more of its stored resources—putting its long-term survival at risk—only to have all of its seedlings destroyed by drought, fire, or grazing animals. It may be safer to produce a few seeds each year, over many years. That’s what many perennials do, as shown by the pathetic seed production (but good survival) of oak trees and many prairie plants, discussed in the preceding chapter.

But is some increase in seed production possible, without losing perenniality? Starting from a low baseline, a small increase might increase the risk of dying only slightly. For example, a perennial that puts only 5 percent of its photosynthate into reproduction might be able to double its seed production to use 10 percent of photosynthate, with only a small increase in the risk of early death. Plant breeders working to raise seed yields of these plants might therefore achieve significant increases at first—a doubling in seed yield, wow!—unknowingly accepting small increases in risk in exchange for increased yield. For seed yields to approach those of annuals, however, plants would have to put all available resources into seed production at the end of the growing season, as annuals do, making death almost certain.

So much for theory. How much actual progress has been made in breeding perennial grains? A previous 25-year effort to develop perennial wheat...

The last half of the book argues that, with more attention to tradeoffs, both biotechnology and approaches inspired by nature have untapped potential.

Learn more about Darwinian Agriculture at the Princeton University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Donna Bohanan's "Fashion beyond Versailles"

Donna J. Bohanan is the Joseph A. Kicklighter Professor of History at Auburn University. She is the author of Old and New Nobility in Aix-en-Provence, 1600–1695 and Crown and Nobility in Early Modern France.

She applied the “Page 99 Test” to her new book, Fashion beyond Versailles: Consumption and Design in Seventeenth-Century France, and reported the following:

Page ninety-nine finds the reader of Fashion Beyond Versailles midway through “Á Table,” a chapter about food and sociability among the noble families of late seventeenth-century Dauphiné. Specifically, it addresses the popularity of certain cookbooks and the rise of haute cuisine among French and European elites. I see this as part of their larger patterns of consumption, which is the subject of my book.

Fashion Beyond Versailles examines the households of elites, mostly those of judicial families, in late seventeenth-century Grenoble and its environs. Far from Versailles and Paris, the epicenters of style and innovation, the material world of these provincial consumers changed rapidly during the reign of Louis XIV. What was fashionable or state-of-the-art in Versailles soon gained sway over the imaginations and purses of provincial consumers as well, suggesting a closer relationship between center and periphery than economic historians have often argued – this because consumption of decorative items had little to do with traditional market forces and much to do with fashion. Social imperatives, local politics, and style spurred elite families in their acquisitiveness, and publications of the period showed them exactly what to buy.

By the seventeenth century consumption and display had become for provincial nobles an essential means of defining their rank in society. For the Dauphinois their efforts took on even greater meaning in the aftermath of the procès des tailles. The region’s great conflict over taxation and tax exemption had been resolved by mid-century, but not easily and not without lingering effects on provincial society. Among Dauphiné’s elites, the collective memory of social conflict and challenges to their claims of social rank and privilege contributed to a clearly defined style of interior decoration and the popularity of certain domestic and decorative items. Consumption for them in particular became a crucial means of defining their position.

What their consumer purchases verified was the rise of a more modern interior that was decorated and accented by the strategic placement of splendid and fashionable goods. The household also included goods designed to promote comfort and convenience. And, as modern, it was equipped to entertain heeding new forms of sociability. By their consumer choices, the Dauphinois were participating in a gradual shift in lifestyle. And, through these selections, they bought into an emerging French national style, and perhaps national identity.

Learn more about Fashion beyond Versailles at the LSU Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Greg Woolf's "Rome: An Empire's Story"

Greg Woolf is Professor of Ancient History at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of Et Tu, Brute?: A Short History of Political Murder and editor of The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Roman World.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Rome: An Empire's Story, and reported the following:

Page 99 of Rome: An Empire’s Story finds the Roman Empire in crisis. The chapter section is entitled “The Last Superpower”. By the middle of the second century BC Roman armies had defeated all their main rivals around the Mediterranean World but no-one knew how they would exercise their power. “Perhaps” I wrote at the top of the page “Romans themselves had not agreed on this question.” I then glance back to show how all the old diplomatic systems were no use now there was only one ruling power. (Perhaps this shows very clearly that I was a graduate student when the Berlin Wall came down, and so am of the generation that has watched the politics of the Cold War be replaced by something more chaotic.) Chaos is the theme of the rest of the page. Macedonian kings who didn’t understand the Romans still expected them to obey orders even after they had made peace, the Roman Cato who said all kings were ‘flesh-eating animals’, but most of all the chaos of misunderstandings, in which Roman friends accidentally fell from grace and became her enemies. Think Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban. Rome plunged into a deeper crisis than America has – so far anyway – and nearly lost her empire entirely (just a few pages further on in fact). But it isn’t all doom and gloom. Page 99 shows kings, senators, ambassadors, Greek cities all working quite hard to put things back together, and unlike us (at least those of us who have skipped ahead or read chapter 1 which summarizes 1500 years of Roman history in an average of 3 words per year) the Greeks and Romans didn’t know what was coming next. One of the big advantages of modern analogies – I use a lot in this book at every stage from Rome’s foundation to the rise of Islam – is that they remind us how confusing things were at the time. With hindsight the patterns look too clear: rabid demagogues like Cato should have calmed down a bit, rebels were mad to try it, Rome was bound to succeed… Except for them (as for us) the future is the undiscovered country. That is what I tried to capture in this story of rise, of crisis after crisis survive, and eventually of fall.

Learn more about Rome: An Empire's Story at the Oxford University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Richard Whatmore's "Against War and Empire"

Richard Whatmore is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex UK and director of the Sussex Centre for Intellectual History.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century, and reported the following:

Against War and Empire is about the struggle by a tiny republic to remain independent at a time in history when its traditional markets were being strangled by foreign competition, when its politics were being undermined by interference by imperial neighbors, and when the rise of commerce and luxury were seen to be threatening its national identity, and especially its religious identity.

The tiny republic was Geneva and the time was the eighteenth century and especially the decades leading up to the French Revolution and after. Geneva, as the Rome for Protestants, was seen by many of its inhabitants to be losing its Calvinist identity, to be losing its economic power, and above all to be losing its liberty.

The page 99 test reveals the background to the story. Two imperial powers, Britain and France, were battling for international supremacy during a second hundred-years war. Britain was accused of being obsessed by trade and of not giving a damn for morals or mores. France was accused of seeking to dominate Europe, by making itself a universal monarchy, and of plotting to destroy Protestantism and replacing it with its own Gallican version of Catholicism. The French accused the British of secretly fostering civil war within France (in other words of paying revolutionaries to do exactly this). One person who was convinced of this was Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was worried that the independence of North America might be jeopardized by civil war in France paid for by Britain (French soldiers were of course fighting alongside the patriots against the British in North America).

Page 99 reveals that Franklin’s acquaintance, Jean-Louis Soulavie, a Catholic priest and natural philosopher, believed that the British government was paying Genevan revolutionaries to initiate civil war in France. Later in his life Soulavie was certain that the French Revolution of 1789 was caused by the British-funded Genevan rebels.

Later in the book I show how wrong Soulavie was. There was no British-inspired conspiracy. But the Genevans did try to save the independence of their state by becoming involved in politics in London and Paris, and in making the Genevan cause one embraced by cosmopolitans and friends of liberty and Protestantism everywhere.

The broader story is one of how modern states and politicians face difficulties in the midst of the ill winds of commerce, against a background of the clash of imperial rivals, and with corruption and inequality permanent challenges. The Genevans believed in a moralized world of liberty, pure religion and honest trade. Their great fear was that the modern world was one where democracy did not work, because markets were too powerful and states too large. Their solution was to try and abolish war and empire. The parallel with our times does not need to be underlined.

Learn more about Against War and Empire at the Yale University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mark Denny's "The Science of Navigation"

Mark Denny is a theoretical physicist who worked in academia and industry. He is the author of a number of books for scholars, students, and general readers, including Gliding for Gold: The Physics of Winter Sports; Their Arrows Will Darken the Sun: The Evolution and Science of Ballistics; Super Structures: The Science of Bridges, Buildings, Dams, and Other Feats of Engineering; and the recently released The Science of Navigation: From Dead Reckoning to GPS.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to The Science of Navigation and reported the following:

In my books I like to explain technology with a historical narrative. I aim to omit technical details while getting across key concepts in a lively manner, as different as possible from a formal lecture. Sometimes this is a difficult balancing act, made easier when the subject matter is inherently geometrical, because core ideas can then be conveyed via diagrams and figures. In such cases a picture really does replace a thousand words, and gets across an essential part of the story quickly and painlessly.

Page 99 of my navigation book happens to be about maps, and how it is that the surface of a three-dimensional globe can be projected onto a two-dimensional piece of paper with minimal distortion. It explains, mostly with a diagram, the three main families of map projections and how they work. (The well-known Mercator projection, invented in the sixteenth century, has the unique property that a mariner’s course—say north-north-east as determined by his magnetic compass—appears as a straight line on such a map. For navigators of old with crude equipment on stormy seas, this matters.)

There are four “quadrants” to this book—it seemed appropriate to use the navigators’ term for division—each with a couple of chapters: geodesy (the physical earth), cartography (maps), exploration (a convenient vehicle for sharing a few of the amazing historical expeditions), and modern navigation (electronic equipment). It’s a little humbling, and more than a little interesting, to see just how our advances in navigation techniques have been matched in every detail within the animal world, where the need to navigate is every bit as important among migratory species. So I end the book with a demonstration of each technique within the animal world. Are there really animals with a GPS system? Well, yes there are, though their system is terrestrial and does not dependent on artificial satellites…but the explanation is on p231, not p99.

Learn more about The Science of Navigation at the Johns Hopkins University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jack McCallum's "Dream Team"

Jack McCallum is the author of Seven Seconds or Less and was a longtime member of the staff of Sports Illustrated. He has edited the weekly SCORECARD section of the magazine, has written scripts for various SI Sportsman of the Year shows, and is currently a Special Contributor to the magazine and SI.com. He has won the Curt Gowdy Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the National Women Sports Foundation Media Award and teaches college journalism.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever, and reported the following:

Page 99 turns out to deal with a controversial part of Dream Team—the exclusion from the team of Isiah Thomas, who was a great player but widely disliked by many of his peers. Chosen in his stead was John Stockton, a more button-down player, who was perceived as a “safer” choice.” (Don’t get this wrong: Stockton was a great player, too.)

Anyway, after being snubbed, Thomas went against Stockton in a regular-season game and dominated him. Page 99 begins a description of a rematch when Stockton’s teammate, a physically intimidating player named Karl Malone who was also a Dream Team member, takes it upon himself to almost decapitate Thomas during the game.

In that moment of collision between Malone and Thomas (actually it’s on page 100) is a microcosm of sport—the violence, the animosity between opponents and the concomitant bond between teammates, the leitmotifs of vengeance and retribution. And think of it: Ford Madox Ford never saw an NBA game.

Learn more about the book and author at Jack McCallum's website and blog.

Writers Read: Jack McCallum.

--Marshal Zeringue

C.M. Curtis's "Jefferson’s Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion"

Christopher Michael Curtis is an Associate Professor of History at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He also holds an appointment by the Governor to serve on the South Carolina Commission on Archives and History.

He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Jefferson's Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion, and reported the following:

Score another one for Ford Madox Ford. Page 99 of Jefferson’s Freeholders explains the consequences of the democratic political and ideological reforms made in Virginia between 1829 and 1832. The reconceptualization of the political value of individual ownership stood at the crux of these democratic reforms and, indeed, provides the narrative thread for this history of Virginia’s transformation from a British colony into a Southern slave state. The ideal of individual ownership has proven to be a powerful and persistent theme in American politics. One finds it appearing today in many guises; from questions of government takings for economic developments, to issues of home ownership and foreclosure in a world of mortgage derivatives, or as an individual mandate requiring people to be owners of health insurance. As political design, however, it is perhaps best articulated in Congressman Paul Ryan’s Lake Woebegone-inspired “path to prosperity,” where all Americans are potential entrepreneurial owners and all of the children are above average. But this ownership ideology got its start with Thomas Jefferson and his revisions to Virginia’s land laws in the midst of the American Revolution. Jefferson sought to secure the requisite economic independence for a self-governing citizenry by abolishing the English common-law doctrine of tenure and implementing an allodial regime of private ownership. In the end, however, as most students of American history remember, Jefferson’s ownership ideal did not work out too well. When his “chosen people” were given the exclusive right of ownership over the land, they squandered it. They exhausted the soil, contracted significant debt, and mortgaged their lands for immediate material gain. By the early decades of the nineteenth century, Jefferson, and even James Madison, had accepted the principle tenet of liberal democracy, the idea the political rights needed to be vested in individual persons.

Page 99 provides an overview of the reforms that initiated liberal democracy in Virginia. It explains that during the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830, Virginians abandoned the centuries old concept of the franchise vested in a freehold in favor on the contemporary belief that more “diverse forms of property ownership, most notably property in labor, also possessed substantial political value.” At the core of this new conceptualization stood the idea that the economic capacity to produce goods through labor was of equivalent in political value to the ownership of land. This ideological change was not confined to Virginia alone. E.P. Thompson’s classic work, The Making of the English Working Class, documented the political consequences of this change in England, and Sean Wilentz’s Chants Democratic pursues similar themes in nineteenth-century New York City. Virginia, however, was a slave-owning society and the ownership of labor meant something fundamentally different there than it did in New York or Manchester. Slave ownership replaced the ownership of land as the distinguishing basis of political and economic privilege. Democratic development thus took a different path in Virginia, with tragic consequences for the fate of the American Union.

Learn more about Jefferson's Freeholders at the Cambridge University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue