Writing in an age when the call for the rights of man had brought revolution to America and France, Mary Wollstonecraft produced her own declaration of female independence in 1792. Passionate and forthright, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman attacked the prevailing view of docile, decorative femininity and instead laid out the principles of emancipation: an equal education for girls and boys, an end to prejudice, and the call for women to become defined by their profession, not their partner. Mary Wollstonecrafts work was received with a mixture of admiration and outrageWalpole called her a hyena in petticoatsyet it established her as the mother of modern feminism.
A concise survey that introduces readers to the people, ideas, and conflicts in European history from the Thirty Years' War to the Napoleonic Era. The authors draw on gender studies, environmental history, anthropology and cultural history to frame the essential argument of the work.
The work of women is recognised as having been fundamental to the industrialization of Britain. These studies explore how that work was remunerated, in studies that range across time, region and occupation. Topics include the changing nature of women's work, customary norms, and women and the East India Company.
To date, the history of military and war has focused predominantly on men as historical agents, disregarding gender and its complex interrelationships with war and the military. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 investigates how conceptions of gender have contributed to the shaping of war and the military and were transformed by them. Covering the major periods in warfare since the seventeenth century, the Handbook focuses on Europe and the long-term processes of colonization and empire-building in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia. Thirty-two essays written by leading international scholars explore the cultural representations of war and the military, war mobilization, and war experiences at home and on the battle front. Essays address the gendered aftermath and memories of war, as well as gendered war violence. Essays also examine movements to regulate and prevent warfare, the consequences of participation in the military for citizenship, and challenges to ideals of Western military masculinity posed by female, gay, and lesbian soldiers and colonial soldiers of color. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 offers an authoritative account of the intricate relationships between gender, warfare, and military culture across time and space.
The debate on the origins of modern gender norms continues unabated across the academic disciplines. This book adds an important and hitherto neglected dimension. Focusing on rural life and its values, the author argues that the modern ideal of separate spheres originated in the era of the Enlightenment. Prior to the eighteenth century, cultural norms prescribed active, interdependent economic roles for both women and men. Enlightenment economists transformed these gender paradigms as they postulated a market exchange system directed exclusively by men. By the early nineteenth century, the emerging bourgeois value system affirmed the new civil society and the market place as exclusively male realms. These standards defined women's options largely as marriage and motherhood. Marion W. Gray received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He studied in Göttingen, was a visiting faculty member at Gießen, and has worked at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen and the Arbeitsgruppe Ostelbische Gutsherrschaft in Potsdam. Formerly a faculty member in History and Women's Studies at Kansas State University, he is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Western Michigan University.
To date, the history of military and war has focused predominantly on men as historical agents, disregarding gender and its complex interrelationships with war and the military. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 investigates how conceptions of gender have contributed to the shaping of war and the military and were transformed by them. Covering the major periods in warfare since the seventeenth century, the Handbook focuses on Europe and the long-term processes of colonization and empire-building in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia. Thirty-two essays written by leading international scholars explore the cultural representations of war and the military, war mobilization, and war experiences at home and on the battle front. Essays address the gendered aftermath and memories of war, as well as gendered war violence. Essays also examine movements to regulate and prevent warfare, the consequences of participation in the military for citizenship, and challenges to ideals of Western military masculinity posed by female, gay, and lesbian soldiers and colonial soldiers of color. The Oxford Handbook of Gender, War, and the Western World since 1600 offers an authoritative account of the intricate relationships between gender, warfare, and military culture across time and space.
The Seneca Falls Convention is typically seen as the beginning of the first women's rights movement in the United States. Revolutionary Backlash argues otherwise. According to Rosemarie Zagarri, the debate over women's rights began not in the decades prior to 1848 but during the American Revolution itself. Integrating the approaches of women's historians and political historians, this book explores changes in women's status that occurred from the time of the American Revolution until the election of Andrew Jackson. Although the period after the Revolution produced no collective movement for women's rights, women built on precedents established during the Revolution and gained an informal foothold in party politics and male electoral activities. Federalists and Jeffersonians vied for women's allegiance and sought their support in times of national crisis. Women, in turn, attended rallies, organized political activities, and voiced their opinions on the issues of the day. After the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a widespread debate about the nature of women's rights ensued. The state of New Jersey attempted a bold experiment: for a brief time, women there voted on the same terms as men. Yet as Rosemarie Zagarri argues in Revolutionary Backlash, this opening for women soon closed. By 1828, women's politicization was seen more as a liability than as a strength, contributing to a divisive political climate that repeatedly brought the country to the brink of civil war. The increasing sophistication of party organizations and triumph of universal suffrage for white males marginalized those who could not vote, especially women. Yet all was not lost. Women had already begun to participate in charitable movements, benevolent societies, and social reform organizations. Through these organizations, women found another way to practice politics.
The events of 1989/90 in Europe demonstrated the renewed relevance of the mid-nineteenth century uprisings: both by showing, once again, how a revolutionary initiative could quickly spread through different European countries, but also by calling into question the nature of revolution and the criteria for a revolution's success and failure. To commemorate the 1848 revolution in a spirit of renewed critical inquiry, an international team of prominent historians have come together to produce what must be the most comprehensive work on this topic to date and to offer a synthesis that sums up the current state of scholarly research, emphasizing the many new interpretations that have developed over several decades.
