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Item Schools of empires: the role of higher education and colonization in the American West and Japan(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Colgrove, Clinton Allen; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Michael ReidyThe historical relevance of the role of the university is related to research in both local and global exchanges, the accessibility to forms of higher education, and the decentralization and use of scientific knowledge. Using institutions at Gottingen, Amherst, New York, Bozeman, and Sapporo, this dissertation interrogates how geographical space, settler colonialism, and socio-cultural contexts inform scientific, agricultural, and engineering practices, research, and education from the nineteenth into the twenty-first century. Beginning with Wilhelm von Humboldt's twin pillars of academic freedom and the combination of research and teaching, this dissertation traces the migration of approaches to higher education from German schools to the American East. American conceptions of higher education evolved as educators like Frederick A. P. Barnard called for reform and academics returned from abroad. In the 1860s, the land grant school and the school of mines provided models to reshape the educational and geographical landscape of the country. As settlers colonized the American West, boosters established new schools based on civic or religious interests before state and industrial entities funded other institutions. In Montana, proximity to mining facilitated the establishment of its first school of mines and political interests led to the decentralization of the state schools. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan sought new forms of knowledge to strengthen its imperial rule, and in the colonization of Hokkaido, Kiyotaka Kuroda identified the land grant model displayed under William Smith Clark's leadership in Massachusetts as the ideal example to adopt. Both case studies demonstrate higher education's adaptability and its tenuous relationship with government expectations and funding. As Japan's empire crumbled, evolving geopolitical matters influenced the American government to increase federal funding opportunities leading to the alignment of schools and programs with the Academic-Military-Industrial Complex. Laboratories such as the Electronics Research Laboratory at Montana State University demonstrate how this relationship affected new forms of technology and research. Based on archival research and personal interviews, this dissertation analyzes the historical, multifaceted role of the university, its accessibility, and how Humboldtian ideals, reflected in practice, shape our understanding of the present and future role of higher education.Item Dangerous vagabonds' : resistance to slave emancipation and the colony of Senegal(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) Hardy, Robin Aspasia; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Catherine DunlopIn 1848, when slavery was abolished across greater France, slavery remained virtually intact in the French colony of Senegal on the west coast of Africa. Slavery continued to be practiced in the colony and in its expanding borderlands until at least 1905, when this study ends. This thesis challenges traditional interpretations of illicit slavery in Senegal by demonstrating the power that French imperial culture played in the problem of continued captivity. While post-emancipation slavery in the colony was due to economic and logistic pressures in West Africa, as well as a strong indigenous tradition of forced labor, this study will show that it was also true that inherent factors within the culture of French colonialism made abolishing the institution exceedingly difficult. This thesis examines three aspects of French imperial culture after 1848 that mitigated slave freedom in Senegal: the views of race and slavery maintained by Senegal's influential métis (mixed-race) population; French cultural assessments of the aptitude and capabilities of West Africans; and a trend within French political culture to deny metropolitan rights to the colonized--a phenomenon that intensified in far-flung French territories that were not completely under French control, and where few whites resided. An examination of each of these themes will lead to a deeper understanding of the persistence of slavery in Senegal between 1848 and 1905, revealing greater nuance within the French imperial project overall.Item Falling over in Philadelphia : early American psychotropy and transatlantic intoxication(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2014) Taylor, Michael John-Sibbald; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy SmithThis thesis explores the relationship among early Americans, taverns, and alcohol. It analyzes the extent to which alcohol and the drunkenness that frequently accompanied and shaped early American history. It argues that the Transatlantic marketplace functioned as a drug that early Americans associated with consumerism, including rum, wine, beer, and other beverages. It also examines the role of centralized colonial authority, questioning the effectiveness of tavern legislation in regards to public intoxication. Furthermore, it scrutinizes taverns as not only social and political institutions but also as biological institutions, a social necessity that exploits our evolutionary past. The research is interdisciplinary, using an eclectic mix of social and biological sciences, including neurology and social psychology, chemical toxicology and anthropology. Alcohol is a powerful chemical and it shares a long and storied relationship with our species. Taverns are vital, but neuro-consciousness and intoxication are the stars of this thesis. Alcohol is the great Silent American Actor and it will be treated as such throughout this work.Item Agricultural productivity change and wealth distribution in Hampshire County, Massachusetts (1700-1779)(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1979) Fritz, Richard GerardItem Fort Mose : the free African community and militia of Spanish St. Augustine(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1999) Runyon, Shane Alan; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy G. SmithAs early as 1687, the Spanish government in St. Augustine, Florida provided an asylum for African slaves who successfully escaped British plantations in South Carolina. The Florida government offered these slaves freedom not as a humanitarian gesture, but with the hope that this policy could both protect their own colony and unsettle the British government of the Carolinas. By 1740, the former British slaves moved into a military fortification called Fort Mose and became soldiers in the Spanish army. This fort thus became the first free black community in what is now the United States. However, while home to a free black militia, St. Augustine was also home to many slaves. Although some historians have recently examined Florida’s free African community, it remains in partial obscurity. When the history of the black community is told, however, the seemingly obvious contradictions are often ignored and the focus is centered on the free militia only. This thesis examines the creation of Mose and St. Augustine’s inherent paradox in hosting both a slave and free African community. This study covers the history of slaves and free Africans in St. Augustine between the late sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Much of the study centers on the early slave population in St. Augustine, the nature of their bondage, and how the city created an environment that allowed a free African population to exist. The principle focus of the study is race relations in the nation’s oldest community, how white residents, free Africans, and enslaved Africans interacted, and how the Spanish government used a policy of racial antagonism in an attempt to unsettle British colonies in the Southeast.Item Piety, politics, and profit : American Indian missions in the colonial colleges(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 1985) Wright, BobbyThe royal charters which sanctioned the settlement of the American colonies invariably expressed as their primary purpose the propagation of Christianity among the American Indians. Throughout the colonial period, the English viewed education as a primary means to accomplish this pious mission. The purpose of this study was to examine critically the educational Indian missions in the colonial colleges. In doing so, this investigation employed ethnohistorical perspectives and methodology in examining the institutional experiments at Henrico, Virginia, Harvard College, the College of William and Mary, and Dartmouth College, spanning a period from the early seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries. The study found that, while the colonial educators professed their own piety as if this were their singular motivation, they capitalized on the charitable impulses of the pious English and on the opportunities which the charity presented in furthering other political and economic interests. This investigation also established that mixed motives led to diversions from the purposes for which money had been collected and further that this was a primary cause of the ultimate failure of these/ educational experiments. In revealing that missions in the colonial colleges were not expressions of unblemished piety, this study has confronted the declarations espoused in the early records and much of the later historical literature, thus enhancing the growing body of ethnohistorical scholarship on Indian-white relations during the colonial period, while simultaneously offering a fresh insight into the origins of higher education in America.Item Building castles in the air: Andreas Wormser, immigrant locator and land developer(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1996) Van Den Berg, Delbert Delos; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mary MurphyAndrew Wormser was the father of Dutch communities in southwestern Montana, and his promotion of immigrant settlement in the West contributed to the establishment of Dutch communities throughout the Intermountain area. Transformed from an idealistic missionary into a immigrant locator and pioneer real estate developer, Andrew's colonization attempts were choreographed by his family's heritage, and complicated by a lifestyle that created illusions of grandeur. Andrew attempted to secure a place in America's upper class by creating a personal fortune from his development schemes in Montana, but he failed to achieve his goals when he disregarded the economic and environmental realities of the frontier. Andrew's failed development schemes, however, are turned into a success when his dream of empire is redefined as a lasting imprint on the human and physical landscape of the Intermountain West. My research of Andrew Wormser's life and entrepreneurial activities consisted of an analysis of archival material, government documents, primary and secondary sources, personal interviews, and on site visits to Wormser City and Big Timber, Montana, and Wenatchee, Washington. The Montana Historical Society Library; Merrill G. Burlingame Special Collections at Montana State University, Bozeman; Hope College Archives and the Heritage Collection, Holland, MI; and Heritage Hall and Colonial Origins Collection of the Christian Reformed Church, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI, proved very valuable to my research. My study brought to light how Andrew's life and career was a microcosm of Dutch American history, and that he followed the leadership role of influential religious and civil leaders within the Dutch community of his day. The paper also challenges a Frontier Myth that insists that life in the West promotes progress, success and opportunity all leading to economic gain. Andrew Wormser's life, while sharing some of the accepted components of the Myth, actually suggests a variant of the Frontier Myth that promotes a stronger character, and accepts a spiritual wealth gained from survival within the framework of trial and error. Along with spiritual wealth, a key ingredient of a revised myth is the realization and acceptance of environmental limitations that make up the arid Intermountain West.Item Specialized residential and business districts : Philadelphia in an age of change, 1785-1800(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1988) Gentry, Thomas SamuelItem Communication and community : moving scientific knowledge in Britain and America, 1732-1782(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2012) Sivitz, Paul Andrew; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy Smith.This dissertation explores the dissemination of knowledge, letter-writing, print culture, institutionalization of knowledge, and identity. In this work, the scientific knowledge itself plays a secondary role to how that knowledge was communicated within the scientific community and to the general public. While these exchanges have been well-documented, this work delves deeper into the volume and patterns of letter-writing among the participants, examining extant correspondence, as well as known, but missing, letters that communicated ideas across dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of miles without the benefit of modern technology. The scientific content of many letters was transformed into publications, some of which were intended for the scientific community. However, other works transmitted the accumulated knowledge to a broader audience, both in Britain and America. As literacy increased, access to knowledge followed, but the widespread lack of formal education among the reading population forced works to be written in English rather than Latin. This change was part of a growing movement within the scientific community that had begun in the seventeenth century, but was not completed until the nineteenth. The dissertation investigates this shift during the long eighteenth century from the perspective of the practitioners of science and the lingua franca each chose to accept or reject. The process of institutionalizing scientific knowledge in the American colonies met with a mixture of success and failure during the period. Allegiance to established institutions like The Royal Society has explanatory power, but, as I will argue, the epistolary web was an institution itself. It prevented more widespread formal institutional formation at the time, and, in some cases, it was more effective than traditional institutions in producing knowledge. This study also examines the persistent British identity of the scientific community in America during the mid-eighteenth century. Although events leading to the American Revolution marked a shift in political identity for some, many members of the scientific community continued to see themselves as British. Moreover, this study stresses the influence of politics, both situational and institutional, on the practice of science and the ability to communicate the results of those practices.