Yale Historical Review an Undergraduate Publication Fall 2014
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THE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW AN UNDERGRADUATE PUBLICATION FALL 2014 THE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW AN UNDERGRADUATE PUBLICATION The Yale Historical Review provides undergraduates an opportunity to have their exceptional work highlighted and FALL 2014 encourages the diffusion of original historical ideas on campus by VOLUME IV providing a forum for outstanding undergraduate history papers ISSUE I covering any historical topic. The Yale Historical Review Editorial Board For past issues and information regarding gratefully acknowledges the support of the submissions, advertisements, subscriptions, following donors: contributions, and our Editorial Board, please visit our website: FOUNDING PATRONS Matthew and Laura Dominski WWW.YALE.EDU/ In Memory of David J. Magoon YALEHISTORICALREVIEW Sareet Majumdar Brenda and David Oestreich Or visit our Facebook page: Stauer Derek Wang Yale Club of the Treasure Coast WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/ Zixiang Zhao YALEHISTORICALREVIEW FOUNDING CONTRIBUTORS With further questions or to provide Council on Latin American and Iberian feedback, please e-mail us at: Studies at Yale Department of History, Yale University [email protected] Peter Dominksi J.S. Renkert Joe and Marlene Toot Or write to us at: Yale Center for British Art Yale Club of Hartford THE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW Yale Council on Middle East Studies 206 ELM STREET, #204762 YALE UNIVERSITY CONTRIBUTORS NEW HAVEN, CT 06520 Annie Yi Greg Weiss The Yale Historical Review is published by Department of the History of Art, Yale Yale students. Yale University is not University Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations responsible for its content. Department at Yale ON THE COVER: Courtesy of: North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library Farrell, Charles Anderson. “William and Rufus, circa 1938-1939.” C. 1938-9. Photograph. P0024/0005 in Charles Anderson Farrell Photographic Collection, North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library. Aug. 2011. Last accessed Nov. 13, 2014. http://www2.lib.unc.edu/ncc/pcoll/inv/P0024/P0024. html#bwsheetfilm_0005#1. EDITOR IN CHIEF Olivia Pollak, DC ’16 EDITORIAL Spencer Weinrich, PC ’15 Scott Remer, PC ’16 David Shimer, DC ’18 BOARD MANAGING EDITOR Christine Wang, SY ’18 Jacob Wasserman, SY ’16 COPY EDITORS SENIOR EDITORS Graham Ambrose, JE ’18 Tiraana Bains, CC ’15 Bernard Stanford, JE ’17 Samuel Becker, CC ’16 Lauren Wackerle, TC ’16 Andrew Tran, BK ’16 Emily Yankowitz, PC ’17 DEVELOPMENT CHAIR Andrew Stein, TD ’16 ASSOCIATE EDITORS Simon Horn, JE ’18 PRODUCTION AND Anthony Kayruz, BR ’17 DESIGN EDITOR Jessica Liang, TD ’17 Julie Lowenstein, TC ’16 DAVID BLIGHT ADVISORY Class of 1954 Professor of American History; Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the BOARD Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition JOHN GADDIS Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History; Director of the Brady Johnson Program in Grand Strategy BEVERLY GAGE Director of Undergraduate Studies for History GLENDA GILMORE Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History, African American Studies, and American Studies JAY GITLIN Lecturer of History; Associate Director of the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders STEVEN PINCUS Bradford Durfee Professor of History; Co-Director of the Center for Historical Enquiry and the Social Sciences NORMA THOMPSON Director of Undergraduate Studies for Humanities LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Each day’s headlines—from the tensions of Ferguson, MO to mistrust between Argen- tina and Great Britain—prove that the conflicts of the past are by no means dead and gone. Whether fought with pens or missiles, votes or dollars, history’s flashpoints illuminate the world we live in, and how it got that way. No war remains on the battlefield: conflicts are shaped as much by observers as com- batants. As the British launched a counteroffensive in the Falklands, the media at home drew on tropes of patriotism and treason to reframe the collective memory of empire, argues Jackson Busch ’16. Matthew Koo, UNC-Chapel Hill ’15, documents the spectrum of American Prot- estant Christian reactions to the 1973 Yom Kippur War, challenging perceptions of a univocal American policy towards Israel. Conflicts hardly cease when the guns fall silent; in the debates of politicians and the memories of ordinary people, they rage on. Delving into untold story of the Angolan Civil War, Paul Elish ’15 lays out how politics have forced the misrepresentation or willful forgetting of Cuba’s involvement. Half a century earlier, as Alexander Saeedy ’15 chronicles, revolutionary journalist Victor Serge laid claim to the “spirit of 1917,” struggling with a fractured European Left over the legacy of the Russian Revolution. Our final essays examine America’s history of racial conflict, as manifested in children’s literature and housing policy. In this issue’s cover essay, Joshua Mandell ’16 examines the 1939 book Tobe: A Six Year Old Farmer: ground-breaking in its sympathetic depictions of African American families, even as it remained mired in the stereotypes of a segregated America. Far from North Carolina’s farms, Seth Kolker ’15 explores how unlikely allies Robert Moses and Abraham Kazan built the largest cooperative housing project in the world, amid the tensions of integration, class mobility, and the Red Scare. From the Review’s own alumnus, we present—through our website—the senior essay of former Managing Editor Andrew Giambrone ’14, who explored the archives of the Centre Albert Camus to illuminate the early years of one of the twentieth century’s greatest minds, the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Stranger, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The Fall. Finally, it is a tremendous pleasure to announce that the American Historical Associa- tion has honored Jacob Anbinder ’14 (a former Senior Editor) and The Yale Historical Review with the Raymond Cunningham Prize, in recognition of “The South Shall Ride Again: The Origins of MARTA and the Making of the Urban South,” published in the Spring 2013 issue. We are deeply gratified by this honor, a testament to the potential of undergraduate historical writing. We promise to keep fighting the good fight. Sincerely, Spencer J. Weinreich, Editor in Chief Jacob Wasserman, Managing Editor CONTENTS COMMUNAL GLORY 7 Media, War, and the Ghosts of Empire Jackson Busch A CAMP DIVIDED 27 Protestant Christian Reactions to the Yom Kippur War Matthew Koo DISAPPEARING HISTORIES 47 Remembering and Forgetting Angolan-Cuban Relations Paul Elish THE SPIRIT OF 1917 66 Victor Serge, the Fracturing of the European Left, and the Memory of Revolution in Interwar Europe Alexander Saeedy LESSONS FROM TOBE 80 A Work of Black Children’s Literature in Context Joshua Mandell LENGTHENED SHADOW 100 Rochdale Village, Racial Integration, and Robert Moses the Cooperator Seth Kolker 122 THE STRANGER, OR THE BOY FROM BELCOURT The Education and Formative Years of Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) Andrew Giambrone COMMUNAL GLORY MEDIA, WAR, AND THE GHOSTS OF EMPIRE Immediately after Argentina’s surprise 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands, a powerful organ of the British response leapt into action: the press. Examining both high-brow news- papers and popular tabloids, Jackson Busch ’16 presents a compelling picture of a cutthroat media landscape in which the government and the papers all employed “a language of loyalty and betrayal.” In both pro- and anti-war editorials during the crisis, affirmations of patrio- tism and accusations of treason came from all sides. As a result, argues Busch, the collective memory of a declining imperial power was reconstructed and sanitized into a vision of shared heroism. As the sun set on the British Empire, a different Sun and its competitors preached a new dawn. By Jackson Busch, ES ’16 Written for “Decolonization in Comparative Perspective” Professor Amanda Behm Faculty Advisor: Stuart Semmel Edited by Tiraana Bains and Jessica Liang 7 COMMUNAL GLORY INTRODUCTION: THE TURNCOATS OF FLEET STREET On May 7th, 1982, three pillars of the British media establishment—The Guardian, the BBC, and the Daily Mirror—were charged with treason. Not by the state, but by The Sun, Britain’s highest-selling daily and the veritable newspaper of record for the easily titillated and barely literate. In a seething editorial, titled “Dare Call It Treason,” the paper blasted critical coverage of Britain’s role in the Falklands conflict.1 “There are traitors in our midst,” the piece began, before naming each in turn. First came The Guardian, which had published a cartoon snidely critical of the war effort. Then the BBC, whose correspondent, Peter Snow, had suggested on air that the British government’s official narrative might not be the unassailable truth. The harshest reproach was reserved for the Daily Mirror, The Sun’s lowbrow, mass-market rival whose vocal anti- war stance made it a “timorous, whining publication.”2 The coverage of all three was “exactly calculated to weaken Britain’s resolve at a time when lives have been lost, whatever the justice of her cause.”3 And dissent was a luxury that Britain could not afford; “We are caught up in a shooting war, not a game of croquet,” The Sun’s leader-writer, Ronald Spark, helpfully reminded his readers. Worse still, an anti-war stance indicated a lack of faith in the British nation. The Mirror, which billed itself as everyman’s mouthpiece, “has no faith in her country and no respect for her people,” the editorial concluded damningly.4 Predictably, The Sun’s tirade provoked outrage from all corners of the British media. The General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists called it “odious and hysterical.”5 The editor of The Guardian labeled it “sad and despicable.” Even a member of The Sun’s editorial board, displaying characteristic British understatement, thought that labeling individual reporters as traitors was “a bit much.”6 The Mirror responded with an equally blistering editorial that, while contesting The Sun’s claims, mimicked its rhetoric.