Emphasizing the global nature of racism, this volume brings together historians from various regional specializations to explore this phenomenon from comparative and transnational perspectives. The essays shed light on how racial ideologies and practices developed, changed, and spread in Europe, Asia, the Near East, Australia, and Africa, focusing on processes of transfer, exchange, appropriation, and adaptation. To what extent, for example, were racial beliefs of Western origin? Did similar belief systems emerge in non-Western societies independently of Western influence? And how did these societies adopt and adapt Western racial beliefs once they were exposed to them? Up to this point, the few monographs or edited collections that exist only provide students of the history of racism with tentative answers to these questions. More importantly, the authors of these studies tend to ignore transnational processes of exchange and transfer. Yet, as this volume shows, these are crucial to an understanding of the diffusion of racial belief systems around the globe.

Emphasizing the global nature of racism, this volume brings together historians from various regional specializations to explore this phenomenon from comparative and transnational perspectives. The essays shed light on how racial ideologies and practices developed, changed, and spread in Europe, Asia, the Near East, Australia, and Africa, focusing on processes of transfer, exchange, appropriation, and adaptation. To what extent, for example, were racial beliefs of Western origin? Did similar belief systems emerge in non-Western societies independently of Western influence? And how did these societies adopt and adapt Western racial beliefs once they were exposed to them? Up to this point, the few monographs or edited collections that exist only provide students of the history of racism with tentative answers to these questions. More importantly, the authors of these studies tend to ignore transnational processes of exchange and transfer. Yet, as this volume shows, these are crucial to an understanding of the diffusion of racial belief systems around the globe.

Lynching has often been called "America's national crime" that has defined the tradition of extralegal violence in America. Having claimed many thousand victims, "Judge Lynch" holds a firm place in the dark recesses of our national memory. In Popular Justice, Manfred Berg explores the history of lynching from the colonial era to the present. American lynch law, he argues, has rested on three pillars: the frontier experience, racism, and the anti-authoritarian spirit of grassroots democracy. Berg looks beyond the familiar story of mob violence against African American victims, who comprised the majority of lynch targets, to include violence targeting other victim groups, such as Mexicans and the Chinese, as well as many of those cases in which race did not play a role. As he nears the modern era, he focuses on the societal changes that ended lynching as a public spectacle. Berg's narrative concludes with an examination of lynching's legacy in American culture. From the colonial era and the American Revolution up to the twenty-first century, lynching has been a part of our nation's history. Manfred Berg provides us with the first comprehensive overview of "popular justice."

In the past two decades, a discourse of crisis has emerged about the democratic institutions and political culture of the US: many structures of authority which people had more or less taken for granted are facing a massive public loss of trust. This volume takes an interdisciplinary and historical look at the transformations of authority and trust in the United States. The contributors examine government institutions, political parties, urban neighborhoods, scientific experts, international leadership, religious communities, and literary production. Exploring the nexus between authority and trust is crucial to understand the loss of legitimacy experienced by political, social, and cultural institutions not only in the United States but in Western democracies at large.

The U.S. South is a distinctive political and cultural force -- not only in the eyes of Americans, but also in the estimation of many Europeans. The region played a distinctive role as a major agricultural center and the source of much of the wealth in early America, but it has also served as a catalyst for the nation's only civil war, and later, as a battleground in violent civil rights conflicts. Once considered isolated and benighted by the international community, the South has recently evoked considerable interest among popular audiences and academic observers on both sides of the Atlantic. In The U.S. South and Europe, editors Cornelis A. van Minnen and Manfred Berg have assembled contributions that interpret a number of political, cultural, and religious aspects of the transatlantic relationship during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors discuss a variety of subjects, including European colonization, travel accounts of southerners visiting Europe, and the experiences of German immigrants who settled in the South. The collection also examines slavery, foreign recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign government, the lynching of African Americans and Italian immigrants, and transatlantic religious fundamentalism. Finally, it addresses international perceptions of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement as a framework for understanding race relations in the United Kingdom after World War II. Featuring contributions from leading scholars based in the United States and Europe, this illuminating volume explores the South from an international perspective and offers a new context from which to consider the region's history.

Die Entwicklungen und Tendenzen der US-amerikanischen Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft im 20. Jahrhundert hatten weltpolitische Bedeutung. Dieses Jahrhundert ist gekennzeichnet von einem enormen Bevolkerungswachstum und einem erstarkenden Bewusstsein einer nationalen amerikanischen kulturellen Identitat. Die USA erlebten einen wirtschaftlichen Hohenflug, der wahrend der Weltwirtschaftskrise vorubergehend zum Stillstand kam, aber in der zweiten Halfte des Jahrhunderts wieder an Fahrt aufnahm. Aussenpolitisch (und militarisch) engagierten sich die USA in Lateinamerika, Asien und Europa. Innenpolitisch setzen sie auf eine prasidentielle Demokratie - mit all ihren Starken und Schwachen. "Die schwierige Aufgabe der gerechten Berucksichtigung eines so umfangreichen Stoffes auf so knappem Raum hat Willi Paul Adams vorzuglich gelost," urteilt Paul Nolte in der FAZ

"A sensitive and forthright analysis of one of the most gruesome episodes in Florida history... McGovern has produced a richly detailed case study that should enhance our general understanding of mob violence and vigilantism." -- Florida Historical Quarterly

" McGovern] has succeeded in writing more than a narrative account of this bloodcurdling story; he has explored its causes and ramifications." -- American Historical Review

"A finely crafted historical case study of one lynching, its antecedents, and its aftermath." -- Contemporary Sociology

First published in 1982, James R. McGovern's Anatomy of a Lynching unflinchingly reconstructs the grim events surrounding the death of Claude Neal, one of the estimated three thousand blacks who died at the hands of southern lynch mobs in the six decades between the 1880s and the outbreak of World War II.

Neal was accused of the brutal rape and murder of Lola Cannidy, a young white woman he had known since childhood. On October 26, 1934, a well-organized mob took Neal from his jail cell. The following night, the mob tortured Neal and hanged him to the point of strangulation, repeating the process until the victim died. A large crowd of men, women, and children who gathered to witness, celebrate, and assist in the lynching further mutilated Neal's body. Finally, the battered corpse was put on display, suspended as a warning from a tree in front of the Jackson County, Florida, courthouse.

Based on extensive research as well as on interviews with both blacks and whites who remember Neal's death, Anatomy of a Lynching sketches the social background of Jackson County, Florida -- deeply religious, crushed by the Depression, accustomed to violence, and proud of its role in the Civil War -- and examines which elements in the county's makeup contributed to the mob violence. McGovern offers a powerful dissection of an extraordinarily violent incident.

This book makes a valuable contribution to debates on redress for historical injustices by offering case studies from nine countries on five continents. The contributors examine the problems of material restitution, criminal justice, apologies, recognition, memory and reconciliation in national contexts as well as from a comparative perspective. Among the topics discussed are the claims for reparations for slavery in the United States, West German restitution for the Holocaust, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge's mass murders in Cambodia and the struggles of the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand. The book highlights the diversity of the ways societies have tried to right past wrongs as the demand for historical justice has become universal.

After criticism by activists, historians, and the media, Berg restores the NAACP to its place in the civil rights movement. He challenges the legalistic and bureaucratic image of the NAACP and reveals a resourceful and politically astute organization that opened up the electoral process to black participation.

This collection addresses key issues in the historical struggle for civil rights, political rights, and social rights in the United States and Germany from the late nineteenth century to the present. Using a cross-national comparative approach, this book presents national case studies that explore the similarities and differences of conceptualizing rights on both sides of the Atlantic. This book analyzes the struggle for these rights by individuals and groups and how this struggle became an essential feature not only in political discourse but also in social and political practice and culture in both Germany and the United States. More specifically, the book examines the different ways rights have been denied due to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Considerable attention is given to the impact of Nazism and the struggle for social rights during and after World War II.

This collection of essays addresses, in a comprehensive and critical fashion, fundamental issues in the history of medicine in modern Germany. The essays also investigate important continuities and discontinuities in German history, and between Germany and the West. The central focus is on the professionalisation of modern medicine and the medicalisation of modern society. The problem of Nazi Germany is addressed in many of the essays, partly because of its influence on the debate over the nature of modern German government and society in relation to Western social, political, and economic development. Other topics include: the place of hospitals in the early nineteenth century, various forms of Social Darwinism, the politics of state-run health insurance, the influence of eugenics, social control and 'shell shock' in World War I, sterilization and euthanasia, Nazi experimentation, the abortion debate, and the role of former Nazis in the postwar medical leadership.

This book addresses key issues in the historical struggle for civil rights, political rights, and social rights in the United States and Germany from the late nineteenth century to the present. The essays address issues such as the struggle for the rights of women and minorities (including African Americans, Jews, and Asians), National Socialism and the dismantling of civil rights, and the emergence of the concept of social rights. What becomes clear are the unique features that distinguish German from American history and that these differences have been created by both social movements and dissimilar cultures of rights.

This collection addresses, in a comprehensive and critical fashion, fundamental issues in the history of medicine in modern Germany and considers the nature of modern German government and society in relation to Western social, political, and economic development. The central focus is on the professionalization of modern medicine and the medicalization of modern society. The problem of Nazi Germany is a recurring theme. Other topics include: hospitals in early nineteenth century society, Social Darwinism, state-run health insurance, eugenics, social control, Nazi experimentation, and the postwar medical leadership.

This book makes a valuable contribution to recent debates on redress for historical injustices by offering case studies from nine countries on five continents. The contributors examine the problems of material restitution, criminal justice, apologies, recognition, memory, and reconciliation in national contexts as well as in comparative perspective. Among the topics discussed are the claims for reparations for slavery in the United States, West German restitution for the Holocaust, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge s mass murders in Cambodia, and the struggles of the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand. The book highlights the diversity of the ways societies have tried to right past wrongs as the demand for historical justice has become universal.

Manfred Berg behandelt konzise und kompetent die "klassischen" Themen der US-Geschichte: Kulturkontakt und Konflikt mit den Ureinwohnern, die Westexpansion, die Sklaverei, Rassenbeziehungen und ethnische Vielfalt, die Einwanderung, den religiosen Pluralismus, die Grundung und Entwicklung der foderalen Republik, die Ausbildung der Demokratie, die Entwicklung der modernen Industrie- und Konsumgesellschaft sowie den Aufstieg zur globalen Supermacht."