"Historians and Nature" considers five cutting-edge questions facing environmental historians today. How can we historicize nature? Is nature a historical actor? How have human beings interacted with nature and what patterns have emerged? How do we understand the ecology of urban spaces? What is the history of environmental diplomacy? Focusing on the United States and Germany, the book takes a comparative approach in examining environmental history. The authors draw on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including history, cultural studies, human geography, biology and ecology. Case studies include Native Americans and their relationship to the environment, the California Gold Rush and the Coal Fields of the Ruhr Basin in the nineteenth century, the controversial building of dikes in seventeenth-century Germany, cleaning up modern cities, and the Greenpeace movement and the development of international environmental activism in the 1970s.

Predictions about the world have the power to grip whole societies, and shape the actions of many groups whether working in politics, ecology or religion. At the end of epochs and eras humans tend to reflect on the shape of things to come. Most recently, fears about the 'millennium bug' had thousands rushing to stock up on candles and food in the weeks before New Year's Eve.
Concerns about the future have been expressed differently throughout history. This book explores the historical context surrounding various debates, decisions and beliefs about the future in recent centuries. Religious, political, literary and ecological visions of the future in America and Germany are addressed comparatively. In particular, scholars from the United States and Germany explore the meaning of eschatological and utopian thoughts pursued during the last three centuries and tackle subjects ranging from science fiction to religious radicalism, utopian social experiments, and visions of race relations. This book delves into the hopes and fears for the future that have shaped the past and will be of interest to comparative historians as well as to historians of Europe and the United States intrigued by the subject of utopias.

In this illuminating comparative study, three generations of leading American and German scholars explore the phenomenon of nationalism in Germany and the United States, from the Declaration of Independence to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The book identifies and defines the similarities and differences between American nationalism, based on an ideology of inherent rights and faith in the 'American dream', and the 'blood and soil' nationalism of Germany. In the process, contributors encounter striking differences between the role of national symbols and the representation of the nation in both countries, and equally revealing parallels regarding the role of political and social movements, as well as the way in which colonial aggression has been related to a nationalistic discourse at home.
This interdisciplinary book focuses on five areas:
politics (American republicanism and German monarchism)
culture (art, architecture, and the arts)
warfare and militarism
the writing of national history
the role of political and social movements
This book not only represents a major contribution to studies of German and American history, but, through the uniqueness of its comparative approach, provides profound insights into the concept of nationalism and signals the way for future comparative research.

In Citizens in a Strange Land, Hermann Wellenreuther examines the broadsides--printed single sheets--produced by the Pennsylvania German community. These broadsides covered topics ranging from local controversies and politics to devotional poems and hymns. Each one is a product of and reaction to a particular historical setting. To understand them fully, Wellenreuther systematically reconstructs Pennsylvania's print culture, the material conditions of life, the problems German settlers faced, the demands their communities made on the individual settlers, the complications to be overcome, and the needs to be satisfied. He shows how these broadsides provided advice, projections, and comment on phases of life from cradle to grave.

These are the proceedings of the 2nd Krefeld Historical Symposium of 1987 - a meeting of 34 distinguished historians to compare the constitutional history of Germany and the USA. Interdisciplinary in approach - an encounter between legal historians and those specializing in political and social history - the emphasis is on concrete historical realities of constitutional thought in both countries. Dissimilarities between the countries are highlighted in addition to ascertaining factors common to both, to explain why their respective developments diverged. There are 12 papers included, two from each of the six sessions, published here in the original German.

These are the proceedings of the 2nd Krefeld Historical Symposium of 1987 - a meeting of 34 distinguished historians to compare the constitutional history of Germany and the USA. Interdisciplinary in approach - an encounter between legal historians and those specializing in political and social history - the emphasis is on concrete historical realities of constitutional thought in both countries. Dissimilarities between the countries are highlighted in addition to ascertaining factors common to both, to explain why their respective developments diverged. There are 12 papers included, two from each of the six sessions.

David Zeisberger (1721-1808) was the head of a group of Moravian missionaries that settled in the Upper Ohio Valley in 1772 to minister to the Delaware Nation. For the next ten years, Zeisberger lived among the Delaware, becoming a trusted adviser and involving himself not only in religious activities but also in political and social affairs. During this time he kept diaries in which he recorded the full range of his activities. Published in English for the first time, The Moravian Mission Diaries of David Zeisberger offers an unparalleled insider's view of Indian society during times of both war and peace.

Zeisberger's diaries, today housed at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, present a detailed picture of the effect of the American Revolution on one Indian nation--not only on political issues but also in terms of its economy, culture, and demographic structure. A later portion of the diaries, covering the post-Revolutionary War years, was translated and published in the nineteenth century, but the 1772-81 diaries have never been published in English translation. This translation is based on the full scholarly edition of the diaries, which Wellenreuther and Wessel published in Germany in 1995. Publication of this volume will forever change the way we see the impact of the American Revolution on Indian life and on the Ohio country.

Bridging the Atlantic discusses comparative developments in modern European and American history. The case studies on British, German, and U.S. history since the eighteenth century assembled here seek to establish an integrated vision of Atlantic history. The contributions by European and American historians challenge the concept of American exceptionalism and present a vivid example of the ongoing debate among American and European historians on the structure and nature of European-American relations.

Bridging the Atlantic discusses comparative developments in modern European and American history. The case studies on British, German, and U.S. history since the eighteenth century assembled here seek to establish an integrated vision of Atlantic history. The contributions by European and American historians challenge the concept of American exceptionalism and present a vivid example of the ongoing debate among American and European historians on the structure and nature of European-American relations.