Active History

Travels with Caroline

September 23, 2016 1 Comment

Alban Bargain-Villéger

Caroline déménage (1987)

Unlike my previous contributions, this post is the result of an accident. While browsing the contents of my external hard drive in June during a (late) spring cleaning operation, I found a folder labelled “Caroline.” Intrigued, I opened the file and immediately remembered what these forgotten documents were. In the summer of 2008, while on vacation at my grandparents’ place, I spent a couple of hours reading a number of children’s books, which my grandmother used to read to me when I was a child. Entitled Caroline, these books follow the adventures of the eponymous character, a blonde preteen in red overalls, and her eight anthropomorphized critter friends. Both amused and intrigued, I decided to photograph the books. Since I was in the early stages of my doctoral research at the time, and since I am not a historian of childhood, I decided to archive the folder and forgot about it for the next eight years.

Although there was plenty to write about this summer, chancing upon the “Caroline” folder was serendipitous. Continue reading →

The Morality of Mergers

September 22, 2016 1 Comment

By Jonathan McQuarrie

henry_herbert_stevens Recently, Monsanto received a $66 billion purchase offer from the even mightier German pharmaceutical company Bayer. It would be hard to find a more disliked firm than Monsanto, and the fact that a major pharmaceutical company is the potential buyer has created even more alarm. But should we disentangle our moral concerns from our economic understanding?

The Bayer offer is a massive one, even during a spike in of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), measured by value, in North America. Globally, the total value of M&A in 2015 set a new record as measured by total value. In Canada, the proposed merger of two major potash companies, Potash Corp. and Agrium Inc. and Enbridge’s proposal to acquire Spectra Energy Corp. have prompted concern over a “mega-merger mania.”

Financial news discussions tend to focus on two key points. Firstly, we see the typical business and financial questions that animate much of the business papers. How much will the merger or acquisition contribute to creating value, both for shareholders and the new entity? What sort of shared competencies, expertise, and efficiencies do the two firms have, and how will the larger entry generate profit from them? Might the M&A lead to some sort of bust—an unwieldy conglomeration whose brand identities fail to work together? (The Quaker Oats’ acquisition of Snapple in 1994—remember Snapple? —is used as a case study in this regard).

The second key point are any legal questions. In the United States, M&As are subject to the Federal Trade Commission’s Antitrust laws, whose origins stretch back to the Sherman Act of 1890. In Canada, M&As are subject to oversite from the Competition Bureau. The Bureau is governed by the Competition Act, which was passed in 1985, but whose origins stretch back to a Combinations in Trade Prevention Bill discussed in the House of Commons in 1888. In both the United States and Canada, M&As are subject to legal reviews that are designed to prioritize consumer rights. For instance, the FTC quashed a potential Staples-Office Depot merger because the firms failed to convince a court that their merger would lead to anything but a reduction in the number of stores, and thereby, competition and customer service.

Continue reading →

History Slam Episode Ninety-One: Teaching in China

September 21, 2016 1 Comment

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By Sean Graham

What did you for the summer? A common question asked when you see someone for the first time in the fall. Normally, I haven’t had an overly interesting answer to that question, but this year was a little different. For a couple months this summer I had the pleasure of traveling to Beijing to teach in the international summer school program at the University of International Business and Economics. It was my first time not only in China, but in Asia, so the cultural learning curve was steep, but by the end of the summer, I had started to feel more and more comfortable with my surroundings.

In addition to being in a new city, the teaching was rather different from what I expected. The biggest thing that I discovered was how much I rely on assumptions in my teaching. Teaching, whether in Boston or Ottawa, I learned how much I could reference something and be assured that the students were familiar with the reference. On the other side of the world, however, I couldn’t always rely on that luxury and had to do a better job presenting a clear narrative.

In this episode of the History Slam, I talk with Dorothy Verkerk from the University of North Carolina about the experience of teaching in the summer program at UIBE. Recording while we waited for our flight to Toronto at the end of the program, we chat about the challenges of teaching a condensed summer session, some of the highlights of the summer, and how much we enjoyed teaching our UIBE students. We also debate the pros and cons of teaching abroad and discuss my ambivalence towards Chinese beer.

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“Finally”: Peace in Colombia?

September 20, 2016 No Comments

Stefano Tijerina

Ares. “El Proceso de Paz. Secuestrado por el Miedo?” LaPluma.net, May 24, 2014.

It is with great skepticism that I reflect on the recent announcement of the peace agreement between the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government. I grew up in Bogotá, Colombia and lived through directly and indirectly the multi-layers of the most recent Colombian Civil War. Within this fifty-two year old Civil War I experienced the other spatial dimensions of violence that also impacted and continue to impact Colombians on a daily basis. I have seen informal and organized crime, I have seen the bodies of the victims of urban social cleansing, I have been shaken by the bombs detonated by narcos, and I have heard the stories of those impacted by paramilitary violence, and even military violence. I have seen the outcomes of systemic and structural poverty that ultimately led to greater social violence, including the attacks on workers and labour union leaders, I have seen the violence that falls upon those that question the state including comedians, journalists, students, civilians and humanitarian NGOs, and I have seen the cultural violence perpetuated on women, racial minorities, the LGBTQ community, indigenous groups, the homeless and other disenfranchised groups.

There is no good and evil in this conflict and from my perspective everyone has blood on their hands directly or indirectly. Some do not want peace because there is plenty of money to make from the perpetuation of war; some do not want peace because their pain from lost ones may only now be satiated with vengeance; some want peace to advance their own individualistic agendas; others want peace because they have never experienced such pleasures; and others do not even care because they are marginalized and lack citizenship rights. My experience in Colombia, my own knowledge and historical understanding as a scholar, and my gut feeling tells me there will not be peace in Colombia. The history behind the genocide of the Unión Patriótica political party members in the late 1980s is enough evidence to show me that peace is not possible, and it is a history I am convinced will repeat itself in this particular case. Continue reading →

Historicizing Hillary Clinton’s Body

September 19, 2016 1 Comment

By Beth A. Robertson

If you are a Canadian as obsessed with current U.S. politics as I am, you probably are aware of the strange presidential election south of the border. In fact, even if you are not interested in US politics, the theatrical run-up to the 2016 US election seems hard to avoid. The Republican candidate, Donald Trump has repeatedly filled headlines with his flagrantly racist and sexist views, as well as his fondness of dictators and the use of nuclear weapons. His approach to immigration includes building monolithic walls along first the Mexican, and then Canadian border. With US citizens threatening to move to Canada in droves if Trump is elected, giving rise to “dating sites” attempting to match US citizens with compatible Canadians, this presidential race has become a truly North American preoccupation.

Clinton in Hampton, NH, by Marc Nozell, CC License Attribution Generic

Many peoples’ hope for this election, if begrudgingly, rests on the shoulders of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state. Although she has by no means courted controversy as much as Trump, she has experienced her fair share of drama. One of the more recent is a video emerging of Hillary Clinton stumbling into her SUV after attending a 9/11 memorial last Sunday. Later in the day, it was revealed by Clinton’s doctor that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday. Viewing it as “not a big deal”, Clinton continued with her campaign duties, until the fateful stumble made it apparent she might just have to give herself time to recover. This event was widely touted afterwards by the media as the “health crisis” of Clinton’s campaign that could threaten her bid for presidency. It fuelled conspiracy theories that emerged relatively early in the campaign that the Democratic candidate is in poor health, whether due to a brain injury, a heart condition, Parkinson’s Disease, or even syphilis.

There has been some understandable backlash to such claims, one of which emerged from CNN journalist, Christiane Amanpour, who pithily asked the question, “Can’t a girl have a sick day?” She then invoked history to point out an unfair double standard, listing examples of previous male presidents before Clinton who had some sort of health-related issues, yet were never questioned as to their ability to fulfill their duties as head of state. It seems fair to reason that Amanpour may be correct in thinking that the preoccupation with Clinton’s health is a product of historically ingrained sexism. Continue reading →

Religion and Auteurism in The Revenant

September 16, 2016 1 Comment

What are the problems and possibilities of Hollywood history? ActiveHistory is pleased to feature a four-essay forum on The Revenant, a 2015 Hollywood historical epic set against the backdrop of the early 1800s North American fur trade. As a primer, we recommend reading Stacy Nation-Knapper’s excellent review from earlier this year.

Benjamin Bryce and Anna Casas Aguilar

The Revenant is loosely based on a year in the life of the U.S. fur trader and mountain man Hugh Glass. The spectacular cinematography, the action, and – for some – questions about the veracity of the story may have overshadowed what in many ways is the central theme that runs through the storyline: religion.

The influence of Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director and co-author of the screenplay, can clearly be seen in the way religion appears in the movie. Iñárritu’s auterism (a film studies term that describes the indelible imprint that some directors leave on the films they make) has created a work of transnational cinema that emphasizes a specific view of the history of the North American West in the 1820s and also a specific view of religion.

The director (left) and star of the Revenant. Telegraph.co.uk.

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The True Revenants of a Buried Past

September 16, 2016 2 Comments

Michel Bouchard

Hugh Glass’s encounter with the grizzly bear was depicted in illustrations soon after it was first reported. Wikimedia Commons.

The Revenant is the latest of ghostly resurrections of the Hugh Glass story, and in many ways the worst in the ways it distorts the history of the French-speaking traders, trappers, and boatmen who outnumbered the Anglo-American “mountain men” by a ratio of four-to-one in the era depicted. Each time the tale has been told, the purpose is nonetheless the same, to define the new American hero. This latest haunting is no different. The movie first and foremost glorifies the hyper-individualist hero. Not only does Glass kill a grizzly bear, he does so alone. The first telling of the tale in 1825 was a bit more modest as it was Glass’s companions that came to his rescue: “the main body of trappers having arrived, advanced to the relief of Glass, and delivered seven or eight shots with such unerring aim as to terminate hostilities, by despatching [sic] the bear as she stood over her victim.” Written shortly after the incident and having certainly met Glass or acquaintances of Glass in person, the 1825 account had to be a bit more restrained in telling Glass’s story. Nonetheless, since 1825, both historians and popular culture have contributed to denigrating then burying then denying the history of the French speakers of the West and on both sides of the 49^th Parallel.

The reality is the colonial French were actively pushing into the plains a century prior to the 1820s. In the 1720s, the French had established the “Compagnie des Sioux” with the stated intent of trading with the Sioux in this very region of the world where the historical Hugh Glass was crawling. Continue reading →

Hugh Glass: The Evolution of a Legend

September 15, 2016 1 Comment

Claire Kaufman

Wikimedia Commons.

The fur trader and mountain man Hugh Glass – the heroic protagonist of The Revenant – has been captivating audiences for almost two centuries. The first known publication describing Glass being left for dead in the wilderness was written by James Hall in the 1825 edition of The Port Folio. There was a boom of interest in 1830s and 1840s, with other authors repeating Hall’s account and adding new information to the story. Even Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2015 film (based on Michael Punke’s 2002 novel) is not the first cinematic depiction of Glass; another version of the story appeared as Man in the Wilderness (1971) starring the Oscar-nominated actor Richard Harris.

Given that the factual aspects of Glass’s life are spotty at best, ample room has been left for storytellers to embellish the details when weaving Glass into the historical tapestry of the fur trade. Of all chapters of his life, it is the brutal attack by a grizzly bear, subsequent survival against all odds and quest for vengeance that are the most captivating. Yet despite this core story, many elements of the legend have evolved over time. Continue reading →

“Inspired by True Events”: The Fur Trade, The Revenant, and Humanity

September 15, 2016 1 Comment

Ted Binnema

Jim Bridger. Wikimedia Commons.

The Revenant’s trailer indicates that the movie is “inspired by true events.” True, the names of all of its main characters—Hugh Glass, Jim Bridger, John Fitzgerald, and Andrew Henry—are names of actual mountain men, and the movie is obviously inspired by William Ashley’s Rocky Mountain Fur Company’s brigade of 1823.

The claim that a movie is “inspired by,” “based on,” or is actually a “true story,” influences viewers’ perceptions of movies. But in my opinion, moviegoers should assume that movies are works of fiction—not documentaries—regardless of any claims. I won’t belabor the fact that there is very little correlation between known historical events and The Revenant. Others have already done so.

I think it is more interesting to explore what historians know about actual events, so that viewers might be in a better position to review the movie as a work of serious fiction—something it was intended to be. Continue reading →

Memorial Dissonance in the Garden of Remembrance

September 14, 2016 2 Comments

By Rachel Hatcher
[Editors note: this post was revised on March 1, 2017. This is the fourth post in the Learning and unlearning history in South Africa’s public spaces series.]

photo-1

The Garden of Remembrance at the National Women’s Memorial and Anglo-Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein was inaugurated at the end of November 2015. It is located in the the Free State (former independent Boer, now Afrikaner, republic of the Orange Free State). The Garden is dedicated to “the more than 51 927 black and white woman [sic] and children who died in the concentration camps during the South African War (Anglo-Boer War) 1899-1902.” The names of about 35,000 of the over 50,000 who died in the camps were collected and the list of names that forms the focus of the Garden. photo-2

The concentration camps were created by the British in their effort to defeat the Boers and incorporate the different regions and their populations into the South African Republic. Significantly, this included the Witswatersrand gold fields located near Johannesburg in the then Boer Republic of the Transvaal. Given the Boers’ decision to engage to guerrilla-style warfare, and their reliance on Boer farmers scattered across the countryside for information, food, and other supplies, the British rounded up white women, children, and the elderly and all blacks in rural areas and re-located them to what turned out to be deadly concentration camps. The Women’s Memorial, inaugurated in 1913, and now the Garden of Remembrance, commemorate those who died, more often than not of disease. Continue reading →

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