Reflection

Types of Secondary Sources

In previous studies we examined textbooks and journals, comparing narrative and argumentative formats. This

section engages students in a deeper understanding of the study of scholarly arguments, and will introduce the

usefulness of source reviews and critiques.

Why are there differences in interpretation?

Historians differ in their interpretation because their personal knowledge is informed by particular sources,

which may not be the same sources referenced by another scholar. Historians also differ in their views because

they become invested in interpreting history through a particular perspective. For instance, scholars with a

background in economics may interpret events primarily through an economic lens, so they would be

considered economic historians. Historians with a background in military may interpret events primarily through

a military perspective, although military historians also have a strong understanding of geography and so their

interpretations may overlap with geographical, medical, or cultural discussions. Some historians prefer to

understand events solely through the perspective of the individuals participating in those events, which would

qualify them as hagiographers. These historians are less concerned with the minutia and instead are

preoccupied with understanding the worldview of a particular historical figure. Hagiographers seek to pinpoint

what motivates the figure, what inspires them, what they aspire to achieve, how they function in the world and

how they understand their own existence.

Historians who give preference to culture are considered ethnohistorians. Classification of historians also

includes labor historians, political historians, and gender historians. It is not uncommon for historians to

provide multiple historical interpretations with convincing evidence, especially on popularly studied events with

a high number of participants, e.g. World War I. Students engaging in research should not be overwhelmed by

the high number of interpretations. Evaluate each interpretation, identify the evidence supplied and the

credibility of that evidence, and then determine which interpretations are most convincing. Study the following

source samples and test your ability to identify the historian’s classification.

Source 11:

The Knoxville Journal-Tribune was the first of the two papers to report on the influenza outbreak. A

story of national scope appeared on page five of its 9/12/1918 edition in which it was reported that

several soldiers had become ill with “flu like symptoms” at an army training facility near Boston,

Massachusetts. The mention that the illness may be ‘war related” was also included in this story.

1 Heinrich, Roger. “A Small Town Newspaper and a Metropolitan Newspaper Report on a Deadly Virus: A Content Analysis of the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918,” Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, Vol. 4, Issue 1, 2011. Heinrich is an Associate Professor at Middle Tennessee State University.

SECONDARY SOURCES: FIELDS OF STUDY, SCHOLARLY

REVIEWS, HISTORIOGRAPHY AND WORLD VIEWS

The New York Times’ first story ran on page 14 of its 9/15/1918 edition. The story was of regional

scope and included a quote from a government official concerning the status of the ill soldiers near

Boston. The story also included the fact that a number of the soldiers had died and that several were

in “grave” condition.

The scope of the stories in both newspapers was nearly identical, with The New York Times running

five more regional stories than the Knoxville Journal-Tribune. The fact that the Times was more

regionally distributed than the Journal Tribune may account for this. Both papers ran a similar number

of local stories and national stories.

It was the metropolitan paper that speculated most often about a probable cause of the influenza

outbreak. In one of its early stories (9/19/1918) mention was made that perhaps the virus was,

“brought to these shores by German agents, intent on spreading biological warfare.” The

metropolitan paper also suggested, in two separate stories that only “God” knew how the illness

might have begun.

Government officials were by far the most quoted sources, appearing a total of 38 times in the

Times and 34 times in the Journal-Tribune. These government officials served in capacities ranging

from the surgeon general to senators and military officers. The Journal-Tribune ran twice as many

stories as did the Times with doctors as the main source of information. A hospital spokesperson was

quoted twice in the Journal-Tribune and only once in the Times leading to the conclusion that doctors

were simply too busy treating the afflicted to take time out for interviews.

Story location was widely dispersed throughout both newspapers. The Journal-Tribune ran stories

three times on its front page; 38 times between pages 2 and 10; and twice between pages 18 and 26.

The Times ran a total of three front page stories; 17 between pages 2 and 10; 15 between pages 10

and 18; and 10 between pages 18-16. Stories that were first reported about the influenza epidemic

tended to be further inside the papers in the first few days of the epidemic reaching the United

States and moved closer to the front page as the influenza began its spread. The fact that The Times

typically contained more pages per day than the Journal-Tribune would account for the number of

stories appearing after page 18 in The Times.

The Times was more likely to print the names of those either ill with the influenza or having

succumbed to it, doing so in 13 stories. The Journal-Tribune listed names eight times.

Both newspapers began printing daily death tolls almost from the onset of the epidemic’s

detection in the U.S. The Times reported number of deaths a total of 27 times and the Journal-

Tribune reported number of deaths 18 times. These “death tolls” normally took the form of numbers

of dead locally and numbers of dead nationally.

Source 22:

…However, the important point is not whether Wilson acted wisely or foolishly; it is the way in which

his preparations for the peace conference predetermined the shape of the battle over the treaty that

would be signed. By appealing for the election of a Democratic Congress on the ground that a

Republican victory would imply a repudiation of his leadership in foreign affairs, and by appointing a

peace commission composed with one unimportant exception of Democrats, Wilson made a partisan

division on the issues of peace inevitable. In other words, he made it certain that Republicans would

oppose and Democrats would support whatever treaty he might help to write. Moreover, by first

ignoring the Senate in his appointment of the commissioners, and then by going himself to Paris,

Wilson made it inevitable that the treaty fight would renew in virulent form the old conflict between

the president and the upper house for control of foreign policy.

While Wilson was in Paris there were unmistakable signs at home that he would encounter bitter

opposition when he returned with his peace treaty…..

….Many historians have been frankly puzzled by Wilson’s refusal even to attempt to build support for

the peace settlement in the Senate and the Republican Party—among the very men who would have

the power of life or death over the Treaty of Versailles. How could an authority on the American

constitutional system have forgotten the Senate’s jealous role in foreign affairs?”

Source 33:

In this case study, as in other, careful analysis of the specific content of maternal representation

yields vital clues to its meaning and purpose on a political or policy level. The construction of

motherhood in the United States during World War I was highly dichotomized. On the one hand,

war culture valorized proper, “patriotic” motherhood, defined by obedience to the state and the

willing sacrifice of sons to the army; but it condemned “unpatriotic” forms of mothering, which

included feminist and pacifist activism and “selfish,” overly emotional attachment to children.

2 Link, Arthur S. Wilson the Diplomatist: A look at His Major Foreign Policies. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press), 1957. Link (1920-1998) was Professor Emeritus at Princeton University and held the position of Director for The Woodrow Wilson Papers. 3 Zeiger, Susan. "She Didn't Raise Her Boy to Be a Slacker: Motherhood, Conscription, and the Culture of the First World War." Feminist Studies 22, no. 1 (1996): 7-39. doi:10.2307/3178245. Susan Zeiger, PhD. has been a professor at Regis College in Massachusetts and currently works for Primary Source, a non-profit educational organization advancing access to historical sources in virtual learning spaces. She earned her doctorate at New York University.

Using these images as a starting point, this article will argue that the mobilization of motherhood as

a national symbol during World War I was closely linked to the implementation of the first national

military conscription in U.S. history. The passage of the Selective Service Act in May 1917 was

highly controversial, and it left the Wilson administration anxious to win public approval for its

experiment in military recruitment. Policymakers and administration officials were particularly

concerned that women, especially those in the prewar women’s peace movement, might constitute

a subversive element in the nation, detrimental to wartime unity and the smooth functioning of

selective service.

Wartime policymakers made it a priority to monitor and undermine the activities and influence of

prominent female opponents of the war—most notably Emma Goldman, Jane Addams, Lillian

Wald, and Crystal Eastman. This article, then will also explore the relationship of the peace

movement to foreign and domestic policy in wartime. The leaders of the war mobilization chose to

take seriously the peace movement’s rhetoric that women were inherently more peaceful than

men and would oppose war out of love for their children. The government seized upon these ideas

and turned them against women activists, warning that women were potentially traitorous and

subversive because of their personal aversion to war and their “excessive” attachment to sons.

One particularly significant medium for projecting these images of wartime motherhood was the

newly emerging motion picture industry. In numerous wartime films, the national and political

issues surrounding military conscription were translated into a family drama, in which a mother and

son struggle over a decision about military enlistment. The message of these films, and of other

wartime media, was clear and consistent: American mothers could disrupt the war effort and

subvert the war by holding their sons back from the army. American mothers must be taught their

proper place and American sons their manly duty. In short, the creators of the war culture

“managed” the problem of the draft, of antiwar opposition in general and women’s activism in

particular, by coding these national and political issues in gender and family terms. In doing so, the

wider political claims of feminist pacifism were diminished, and the feminist critique of war,

developed during the neutrality period, was projected back to the public as an individual and

selfishly unpatriotic response to the nation’s wartime crisis.

Source 44:

From World War I until early 1920, railroad, mining, and grower interest prodded the U.S. Secretary

of Labor to waive the head tax, literacy tests, and the prohibition on contract labor to admit alien

labor from Mexico into the United States. This brought tremendous employment opportunity for

Mexicans. Mexican track workers helped modernize America’s railroad system, and increased

northern employer demand for labor allowed the entrance of Mexicans into steel and auto

manufacturing and meatpacking production, jobs in which they enjoyed a minimum wage and an

eight-hour day.

4 Zaragosa Vargas, Crucible of Struggle, A History of Mexican Americans from Colonial Times to the Present Era. (New York: Oxford University Press), 2011. Vargas is a Distinguished Professor of Latino Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has written many books on Mexican American experiences and is an expert in Mexican American labor unions in the Midwest.

Despite the great demand for labor during the World War I years, thousands of Mexicans fled to

Mexico because they feared military conscription for duty overseas. The exodus was the result of

widespread misunderstanding regarding the 1917 Selective Service legislation expanding the size of

the U.S. armed forces from one hundred thousand to five million within a year. As one scholar

observed, “this legislation required all men, including aliens, between twenty-one and thirty-one

years of age to register for military service. Mexicans in Texas could not understand why they were

required to register for military service if they were not subject to the draft.” Most Mexican

Americans patriotically backed World War I and served overseas as volunteers or draftees. They

viewed the war as an opportunity to improve their status by demonstrating their loyalty and

thereby gain full equality.

Owing to the patriotism of “One Hundred Percent Americanism” sweeping the country, Mexican

Americans were organized by the federal government into Loyalty Leagues. The leagues selected

“Four-Minute Men” to make brief speeches at churches, labor union halls, movie theatres, and

public gatherings as a way to encourage voluntary enlistments and home-front participation in

agencies such as the Councils of Defense and the Red Cross, the purchase of Liberty Bonds, and

patriotic commitment by men and women to the war effort.

The U.S. military was strictly segregated and rife with discrimination. Soldiers with Spanish

surnames were often the objects of ridicule and abject scorn by Anglo officers and enlisted men

and, like black soldiers, were relegated to menial positions. Mexican Americans who could not

speak English were separated by Spanish-language group and sent to Camp Cody in New Mexico or

to Camp Gordon in Georgia to improve their English proficiency with bilingual officers as their

instructors. Mexican American soldiers served on the front lines with the American Expeditionary

Force in France, Belgium, and Germany and fought bravely and effectively. About ten thousand

Spanish-speaking New Mexicans volunteered for service in the war. In southern Colorado the

Mexican American volunteer rates exceeded that of Anglos. Many Mexican Americans were cited

for their valor and bravery on the battlefields of Europe.

A member of the Company B of the 355th Infantry Regiment, Private Marcelino Serna of

Albuquerque, New Mexico, single-handedly charged and captured twenty-four Germans on

September 12, 1918. For this and other acts of bravery and courage under fire, Serna was awarded

the Distinguished Service Cross, the French Croix de Guerre, the Victory Medal with three bars, and

two Purple Hearts. David

B. Cantú of Laredo

enlisted in the U.S. Army

using his Anglo father’s

name Barkley to avoid

being segregated into a

noncombat unit. Barkley-

Cantú served with

Company A, 356th

Infantry, 89th Division, in

France. In November

1918, his unit was Figure 1 Private Marcelino Serna

engaged in pushing the Germans out of the Argonne Forest and across the Meuse River. The

Tejano drowned crossing the river after going behind German lines to gather information about

troop strength and deployments. For his actions, Barkley-Cantú was awarded the Medal of Honor,

the French Croix de Guerre, and the Italian Croce al Merito di Guerra. Fellow native Texan José de

la Luz Sáenz kept a diary, which was published in 1933. In recounting his wartime service, Sáenz

linked the American World War I “rhetoric of democracy” with the Mexican struggle for civil rights.

On his return from the war, Sáenz translated his sacrifices and those of the many other American

soldiers of Mexican descent fighting for democracy into a movement for civil rights in Texas.

Source 55:

Under the authority granted to him by the [Food and Fuel Control Act], Wilson appointed

Progressive reformer Herbert Hoover as head of the United States Food Administration (USFA).

Hoover was given authority over the distribution, importation, exportation, production, purchase,

and storing of food, and had a monumental task ahead of him. Europe, which had been at war

since 1914, was on the brink of starvation. Fearing a similar fate, Americans had already begun

hoarding food, and shortages, price inflation, and food riots loomed on the horizon. A poor crop

season in 1916 and rising prices only worsened the situation and threatened to precipitate a major

food crisis. Hoover had to convince Americans to self-regulate their consumption of food

voluntarily, and realized that playing on patriotic sentiments would be the easiest, and quickest,

way to do so. He urged Americans to ‘Go back to simple food, simple clothes, and simple pleasures.

Pray hard, work hard, sleep hard and play hard. Do it all courageously and cheerfully.’ He

repeatedly stressed good old American self-sacrifice and selflessness would save the nation and

possibly the whole world.

When the US entered the war in 1917, approximately one-third of the American population were

either immigrants or the children of immigrants, and over 10 million Americans hailed from one of

the Central Powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire. Moreover,

millions of Irish Americans sided with the Central Powers because of their turbulent history with

the English. Thus in order to bridge the gap between its native and immigrant populations, the

federal government decided to create a series of propaganda posters designed to win the hearts

and minds of potential detractors. Through its Vernacular Press Division (VPD), the USFA called on

immigrants to participate in the food conservation effort. The most famous example of these

posters depicted ‘tempest tossed’ immigrants superimposed over a rainbow-framed Statue of

Liberty. As the poster, which was translated into numerous languages, including Italian and Yiddish,

5 Tunc, Tanfer Emin. 2012. "Less Sugar, More Warships: Food as American Propaganda in the First World War." War In History 19, no. 2: 193-216. Military & Government Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed September 30, 2017). Tunc is an Assistant Professor of American Culture and Literature at Hacettepe University in Turkey. She received her doctorate from State University of New York. She has published more than 70 works, has obtained grants and recognition of Ivy League institutions, and is a committee board member of several distinguished international organizations.

conveyed, ‘Food will win the war. You came here seeking Freedom. You must now help to

preserve it. WHEAT is needed for the allies. Waste nothing.”

Rather than forcing immigrant groups to Americanize through his food campaign, Herbert Hoover

attempted to mobilize them by pursuing the softer tactic of graphic persuasion and cross-cultural

cooperation. Conserving food became a patriotic duty—one that became equated with American

identity even for non-citizen immigrants. Thus, for many, participating in such efforts became

perhaps the first of many steps toward assimilation. However, this call to action was limited to the

‘right’ immigrants. While Jewish immigrants of German descent were invited to join the food

conservation movement through Yiddish powers, the majority of German immigrants were

blatantly excluded from these propaganda campaigns. In fact, many people became targets of

grass-roots ‘100% American campaigns’ which not only succeeded in practically eliminating the

teaching of German as a foreign language in American schools, but also lynched Germans, such as

Robert Prager, a baker with socialist sympathies living in Collinsville, Illinois. Declared the ‘scum of

the melting pot’ by the popular American magazine The Saturday Evening Post, German immigrants

were swept up in this hysteria, which included senseless violence, the burning of textbooks which

praised medieval Germany, the banning of German classical music and theatrical productions, and

the renaming of German food.

Source 66:

In June of 1917, the American Red Cross held a patriotic meeting at Carnegie Hall for the purpose of

recruiting nurses. Several black nurses attended and, as noted by the New York Age, “were given

every consideration.” Thoms, immediately responding to this “fervid plea for efficient nurses,”

urged all black nurses “of recognized, registered schools” to enroll in the American Red Cross.

What Thoms did not consider was that the American Red Cross deemed efficient nurses to be white

nurses. Frances R. Elliot Davis was the first black nurse to take a course at Columbia University for

the Town and Country Nursing Service of the American Red Cross, a branch associated with rural

nursing and charity work. When America entered the war in 1917, all of the Town and Country Red

Cross Nurses were automatically enrolled as American Red Cross Nurses and received the Red Cross

Pin—except Davis.

A storm of protests ensued and the issue was given great coverage in the black press. Sympathetic

newspapers printed letters from black nurses who found themselves equally slighted. One angry

black nurse, who identified herself as having three years of hospital, operating room, and clinical

experience, was stunned when she and her patriotic friends were informed that they would not be

6 Patterson, Andrea. 2012. "Black Nurses in the Great War: Fighting for and with the American Military in the Struggle for Civil Rights." Canadian Journal Of History 47, no. 3: 545-566. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson), EBSCOhost (accessed September 30, 2017). Patterson is Professor of Liberal Studies at the California State University—Fullerton. She earned a PhD in the history of science, with emphasis in medicine, from the University of California—Berkeley.

accepted. Her anonymous editorial, published in the New York City Sun, claimed that “our good

intentions were thwarted, and the Government was deprived of whatever ability we possessed.”

This anonymous black nurse pointedly denounced Jane A. Delano, the chairman of the National

Committee of Red Cross Nursing, calling her “the dictator of Red Cross destinies….” [and stated]

black nurses were “ready and willing to enter the government service without compensation other

than our own satisfied consciences, but absolutely not through the condescension of Miss Delano.”

It is evident that nurses not only made strategic use of black newspapers, but also directly

challenged white authority by opening criticizing “dictator” Delano. This nurse further used her

editorial platform to recommend that American black nurses offer services to the British Red Cross

in Canada, “where the strain of bigotry never smirches,” and which would receive them “with open

arms.”

It is important to mention that not all whites had an opportunity to serve either, as poor and less

educated women were also denied access. Furthermore, according to Susan Zeiger, even middle-

and upper-class white nurses were “frustrated by lack of formal recognition.” The American

military viewed nurses as threatening “precisely because nursing was considered an indisputable

military need, because women controlled it, and because it was thought to have the potential to

disrupt gender relations in the post-war period.” The independence of wartime nurses gave rise to

fears that these single women might not be willing to settle down into domesticity once the war

ended.

The refusal to accept black nurses into the American Red Cross was more than some blacks could

tolerate after black soldiers had enlisted in unprecedented numbers. The Red Cross and the War

Department blamed each other for the failure to recruit black nurses. The Red Cross insisted that it

“at all times had been willing to enroll colored nurses meeting requirements for service in military

hospitals,” but the appointment of nurses rested with the Surgeon General. At a meeting of the

National Committee of Red Cross Nursing Service before the war, the Surgeon General stated that

the Army Nurse Corps did not recruit black nurses because proper quarters could not be secured

for them. Based on that decision the Red Cross decided not to enroll them either.

Reviews

A review is different from an argument in that the review is a critique of published research. An author of a

review might examine the quality of the argument presented by a historian, or comment on how this new

research fits into the current classifications of the topic. Reviews often comment on the format and structure of

a work, the length and types of sources utilized, and the writing style. A review may highlight drawbacks to a

source, i.e. too many statistics, too narrow to be applicable to generalities, too dry, too dense, filled with errors.

Reviews may contrast a current publication with a “classic” or “leading” perspective in the field. These

comparative critiques can also be useful for understanding what is valued by scholars at a given period of time.

For example, if a reviewer comments on a historian’s decision to analyze irrigation development and difficulties

in West Texas, while ignoring East Texas, this reflects a regional bias. If a reviewer acknowledges an author’s

contributions to feminist studies by responding positively to the author’s research of women during wartime,

but then negatively sheds light on the author’s decision to ignore the specific contributions of Asian American

women, then this reflects the reviewer’s sensitivity to continued marginalization of Asian American women in

the historical memory.

In sum, a review evaluates the worthiness of research as well as its worth to the field (of other publications on

that particular topic). In the following examples, study the phrasing of each source to determine what

information should be extracted from a review during the course of research.

Source 77:

The main thesis of this book is that, as a result of the measures adopted and employed by the Wilson administration to control speech and behavior during the period of American belligerency in World War I, ''Civil liberties emerged ... as a relatively significant issue in public policy for the first time in American history." Then there follow discussions of the general legal status of civil liberties before World War I; the struggle in 1917 and 1918 over the adoption of legislation to curtail certain types of speech and action; the enforcement of these laws by the Wilson administration; the impact of this enforcement upon the public, the bar, and the courts; and the emergence of a group (the Civil Liberties Bureau) organized for the express purpose of protecting civil liberties. The next- to-the-last chapter, "The Reaction of Legal Community," is particularly good, although it would have been stronger if the author had broadened his research to include the actions and decisions of federal judges George W. Anderson in Boston and Francis Fisher Kane in Philadelphia.

…. We do desperately need a fresh new study of the Wilson administration's policies toward civil liberties, but Paul L. Murphy has not given us one. On the contrary, the major part of his book simply distills what earlier historians, most of them doctrinaire civil-libertarian publicists, have written. For example, we need to place the record of the Wilson administration within a worldwide context. The most important reality of 1917-1918 was the fact that the United States was engaged in a total war, and it seems a bit much to expect the government to tolerate any significant opposition to or obstruction of the war effort. Murphy avoids this problem by ignoring it. Actually, compared to the civil-rights policies of the governments of the European belligerents during World War I, those of the United States seem almost tolerant. Finally, there are a disturbing number of errors in this book. A few examples must suffice. Wilson did not call for anti-free-speech legislation in his annual message of 1915; no "cabinet measures" were introduced into Congress in mid-1916 calling for "sharp" curtailment of freedom of speech and of the press; and the Webb-Overman Bill of early 1917 (considered by a regular, not a special, session) punished only espionage and sabotage. The Espionage Act did not "categorically" reject, "by legislature [sic] enactment, freedom of expression for the first time in American history." Moreover, "courageous" Senator Joseph I. France could not have known about the British Defense of the Realm Act of 1914 when he said that the western world had seen "no such repressive a criminal statute [the Espionage Bill] since the dark ages." The membership of the Socialist party in 1917 was between 80,000 and 100,000, not "hundreds of thousands." To cite a final example, Murphy's interpretation of the Adamson Act is, to say the least, remarkable. "The historian, sixty years removed," this book concludes, "observes what was happening in the civil liberties area during World War I with a sense of impatience and annoyance." No one would dispute this explanation of the author's approach and method.

7 Link, Arthur. (1981). The Journal of American History, 68(1), 165-166. doi:10.2307/1890974

Source 88:

Professor Arthur S. Link, the leading authority on Woodrow Wilson, has now turned his attention to

Wilson as an international statesman in Wilson the Diplomatist. His book is interpretative rather than

narrative; it has no elaborate apparatus of footnotes or bibliography; but it none the less valuable for

that. Mr. Link’s purpose has been to relate Wilson, the man, to the problems he faced, to show how

Wilson’s preconceptions led him to judge a situation, and how, in turn, the facts of that situation

modified his judgments. This kind of assessment is perhaps peculiarly appropriate to an American.

When Wilson came to the White House he had made no more than a fairly casual study of foreign

affairs. his main interests had been domestic and constitutional. The outside world was still not the

accepted context, nor foreign policy the determinant, of national activity. Wilson brought to his

diplomacy moral standards learned in a land both diverse and isolated. He faced a problem worthy of

him, unique in its moral complexity. The first World War is still the greatest cataclysm since the French

Revolution. Its outbreak could not be explained merely in diplomatic terms. Much effort and skill

were wasted then, and have been wasted since, on the false issue of war guilt; but thinking men were

shocked into questioning the basis of their society. To these Wilson was uniquely able to appeal. This

man and the opportunity met. Attention has been concentrated on the origins of the war. In Europe

much less attention has been given to the period when war might have been ended by negotiation.

But in the United States too, attention has been concentrated on the origins of the war—the American

war—and on the process by which Wilson, the advocate of neutrality both on moral and on political

grounds, came to be convinced that the United States must intervene. Wilson was dominated, as was

no other leader, by the peace to which he looked forward. His fight for the treaty and for the League

was almost too directly the result of his decision for war. It is for that reason less interesting. It is also,

probably, less important. For Wilson’s mistakes at Versailles, and his failure to retain American

support, were secondary. The treaty was vastly better than it would have been without the moral

forces which Wilson called up and led. And most of the mistakes of the post-war years—which were

obviously not Wilson’s—were not even American. Between the wars Europe might, with knowledge

and determination, have saved herself. These lacking, the United States could not have saved her.

This must affect our judgment of Wilson’s work. His critics have too often fallen into the idealistic

error to which Wilson was prone—and for which they do not hesitate to attack him—that of regarding

as failure anything less than complete success. His final ‘failure’ has led too many to overlook how

subtle, and how largely correct, his important judgments were. Mr. Link is not misled. His account of

Wilson’s policy is balanced, lucid and perceptive. In giving it he is constantly illuminating about the

great struggle which Wilson was trying to assess. Historians will always differ about this subject, but

here is required reading for students both of Wilson and of the war.

8 A. E. Campbell. The English Historical Review 74, no. 292 (1959): 546-47. http://0- www.jstor.org.libcat.sanjac.edu/stable/559295. Campbell’s critique is a review of Authur S. Link’s, Wilson the Diplomatist: A look at His Major Foreign Policies, 1957, John Hopkins University Press. At the time of the review’s publication, Campbell was a professor at King’s College in Cambridge, but concluded his work as Professor Emeritus at University of Birmingham. He is a British scholar who was considered a leading historian of early twentieth century U.S. foreign policy.

Reviews provide a rich amount of information and can be a useful starting point for students who need to

quickly deduce which issues are currently debated by historians. There are websites dedicated to informing the

public about recent history publications and these sites provide scholarly critiques to assist readers. Here are a

few:

 Project MUSE -- https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/168

 H-Net -- https://www.h-net.org/reviews/home.php

 History Matters -- http://historymatters.gmu.edu/webreviews/

Some sites provide specific guidelines for submitting a review:

 American Historical Association -- https://www.historians.org/publications-and-

directories/american-historical-review/book-review-guide

 Johns Hopkins University Press --

https://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/reviews_in_american_history/guidelines.html

 Organization of American Historians -- http://jah.oah.org/submit/book-reviews/

Determining Credibility

Secondary sources vary in quality. Some books and articles are better researched or take into consideration a

broader range of perspectives. How can you tell which secondary source is more reputable? Which source

should you trust? There are intrinsic and extrinsic measures of quality. Intrinsic gauges of quality appear in the

book or article itself, while extrinsic measures of quality require you to refer to book reviews and other

published aids to assess the quality of a secondary source.

Intrinsic measures of merit include the following tests:

1. How detailed is the author’s account? Does it have enough facts to satisfy an ordinary reader’s

curiosity? How well did the author convince you?

2. Does the author seem familiar with other scholars’ arguments? Does he or she recognize and augment

or challenge other scholars’ conclusions in the text or notes?

3. Does the author use sufficient reference notes? Do the notes cite primary material or merely other

secondary sources? Does the author seem to have gone directly to the primary material or relied on

others’ research? Do the notes seem fresh (that is, has the author made use of the most recent

research on his or her topic)?

4. If your secondary source is a book, who published it? A good piece of scholarship will generally find a

good publisher—that is, if the book was published by a first-rate press, you can be sure that it received a

thorough review before it was accepted. Universities sponsor some of the best scholarly presses. Many

leading commercial publishers also have extensive lists of history books. The quality of the journal in

which an article is published is a good guide to the quality of the article.

Extrinsic guides to quality secondary sources:

1. As you become familiar with a number of secondary sources on any topic, you will begin to find that

some of them are cited widely. By their choice of authorities, the historians themselves are telling you

which secondary sources they rate the highest.

2. Book reviews will help you to discover other scholars’ evaluation of the history book you have in your

hand. The reviewers restate the thesis or theme of a book, report its findings, and then assess the

quality of the book and the success of the author in completing the task he or she has set out to

accomplish.

3. Awards from a reputable organization may distinguish the source as highly credible.

4. You may want to review the education level and occupation of the author. However, you also want to

see whether or not the research preferences of the author match his/her degree(s). For example, while

an individual may hold a doctorate in Business Technology with emphasis in Marketing and Computer

Graphics, this would be a poor match for a published work on the philosophy of teaching kindergartners.

Historiography The study of the evolution of research on a particular topic is known as historiography. In other words, a history

of what people have said and thought about a historical event. When conducting research, it is always best to

understand what has been explored previously, which aspects of the research have been fully explored, to

identify research gaps, and to rethink past publications in light of new sources, new events, new approaches to

managing similar events, etc. Yes, “history repeats itself,” but never in exactly the same way. When a period in

time seems very similar to past experiences, it is useful to understand what is similar and what is dissimilar.

Often it is the ‘dissimilar’ angle of the current event that reignites public interest in the past. The ‘dissimilar’

component also may breathe new life into interpretations of the past. In the following source selection,

identify the evolution of the historical topic and how the historian explains these changes in interpretation over

time.

Source 89:

Why did the United States intervene in World War I? The immediate impetus behind the decision

to declare war is clear enough, but its deeper roots are more puzzling. In defiance of American

threats, Germany launched a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917.

President Woodrow Wilson was not eager for war but both contemporary observers and

subsequent historians generally agree that failure to carry out his earlier threats would have caused

an unacceptable loss of prestige and credibility. On the other hand, as Kennan's comments suggest,

9 Fordham, Benjamin O. "Revisionism Reconsidered: Exports and American Intervention in World War I." International Organization 61, no. 2 (2007): 277-310. http://0-www.jstor.org.libcat.sanjac.edu/stable/4498146. Fordham is a Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University and considers himself an expert on economic influence in international relations. The most thorough World War I historiographies include Jennifer D. Keene’s, “Remembering the ‘Forgotten War’: American Historiography on World War I, Historian 78, no. 3: 439-468. History Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed September 30, 2017). Keene is a Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Chapman University and has published many books on the United States during World War I. For a global historiography, see Keir A. Lieber’s, “The New History of World War I and What It Means for International Relations Theory,” in International Security 32, no. 2, pgs. 155-191. Lieber is a professor at Georgetown University and specializes in international affairs.

the reasons Wilson made the threats that led to war in 1917 are far less obvious. The risk of war

was apparent at the time. As early as mid-1915, many observers, including Wilson's secretary of

state, William Jennings Bryan, worried that the president's response to the German submarine

campaign could eventually lead to intervention. The submarine threat to American lives does not

offer a very convincing explanation on its own. German submarine activity had cost only 236

American lives by April 1917, all but fourteen embarked on ships flying the flags of belligerent

states. From the perspective of 7 December 1941, or 11 September 2001-not to mention the

53,402 American combat deaths sustained after intervention-these losses are not especially large.

They hardly seem sufficient to explain the abandonment of the long-standing American policy of

avoiding entanglement in conflicts among the European powers.

Debate among historians about American intervention has focused on filling this explanatory gap.

Some have stressed broader strategic considerations, particularly the need to prevent Germany

from dominating the European continent or eroding British control of the seas. Others have argued

that Wilson's policies arose from his ideological commitments to democracy and international law.

Still others have focused on the psychology of Wilson and his closest advisers to explain his choices.

One potential explanation is almost universally dismissed by contemporary historians of U.S.

foreign relations: that the war-induced boom in exports to the Allies prompted the Wilson

administration to take a strong stand against German submarine warfare, ultimately leading to

intervention. This explanation was widely accepted during the interwar period and provided the

intellectual justification for the neutrality legislation of the 1930s. Largely for this reason, it became

deeply unfashionable after Pearl Harbor. Today, the "revisionist" historians who advanced this line

of argument during the 1920s and 1930s, when they are remembered at all, tend to be lumped

together with the isolationist politicians who resisted American intervention in World War II. This

article will make a case for reconsidering their argument about the influence of economic interests

on American involvement in the war. The economic explanation offered by most academic

revisionists was subtler and more convincing than the conspiracy theories about influential

"merchants of death" that publicists and politicians promoted during the interwar period. It also

bears directly on recent scholarly debates about the effect of trade on international conflict. An

analysis of data on the wartime export boom and congressional voting on war-related measures

offers substantial evidence that economic factors influenced political actors' positions on the war.

This article proceeds in four sections. The first reviews the revisionist argument and its relationship

to current scholarship on trade and conflict. The second evaluates the plausibility of the

revisionists' claims by examining data on the aggregate economic impact of the war on the United

States before intervention. The third section tests the influence of economic considerations on the

positions of political actors more rigorously using congressional roll-call votes on war-related

measures. A final section summarizes and concludes.

Source 910:

Interpretations of Woodrow Wilson’s “progressive” foreign policy have changed continually in

response to widening bodies of research material and the developing tones of society. After writings

of the 1920s offered generally positive appraisals, the depression decade delivered some striking

criticisms of Wilson’s diplomacy. Positive assessments returned to the fore in the era of World War II,

but these interpretations were soon countered by neorevisionist writings of the 1960s which focused

on counterrevolutionary, ethnocentric elements in Wilsonian ideology. During the 1970s Mr. Wilson

was reinterpreted yet again, this time with the use of recently opened foreign records as well as new

insights advanced by the Woodrow Wilson Papers project under the direction of Arthur S. Link.

Indeed, Link himself provided further delineation of the President’s religious views, and a substantial

body of literature portrayed the modern complexity of not just Wilson but his times. Economic,

political, moral, legal, and security factors became integrated in multicausal estimates of what

motivated Wilson; idealism and realism were considered intertwined strains of his world view.

Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World in many ways represents an extension of this most recent

wave of Wilsonian studies. Edited by Professor Link and offered as a supplement to The Papers of

Woodrow Wilson, the work brings together original essays by seven scholars. Although most of the

essays detail individual episodes of Wilsonian diplomacy, all share the unifying theme that Wilson was

neither a rapid interventionist nor an ineffectual idealist. The book unfolds the argument that Wilson

usually took rational, well-informed positions on the revolutionary upheaval and social disorder of the

era of World War I.

Questions for Consideration:

1. DEFINE: What does historiography mean? 2. IDENTIFY: What kind of information should be included in a review or critique? 3. COMPARE AND CLASSIFY: Based on our study of U.S. entry into World War 1, which

historian argued the war was a matter of national security and would this author be classified as

orthodox or revisionist? What “schools of thought” were outlined in this packet? Where would

other scholars/publications fit; how would they be classified?

4. CONTRAST AND EVALUATE: How do scholars organize their writing? Did all of the scholarly examples included in the packet clarify their purpose and/or thesis? Does the creation

of a contrasting framework make it easier for readers to process similarities and differences in

interpretation?

5. RESEARCH AND CRITICAL THINKING: Perform an internet search and locate a recent publication on WW1. Take a moment to read the synopsis and a couple of reader reviews of this

publication. Would the author of the book you examined be considered orthodox, revisionists,

post-revisionist, or neo-orthodox, and why? Did the information provided in the review of the

book you located offer a balanced perspective of advantages and disadvantages associated with

this book?

10 Tennant S. McWilliams. The Journal of Southern History 49, no. 3 (1983): 470-472. This is a review of Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913-1921, edited by Arthur S. Link and published by University of North Carolina Press in 1982. McWilliams has held positions in teaching and as Dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Alabama—Birmingham.

6. CAUSE AND EFFECT: What is propaganda and what role did this type of source material play in U.S. war involvement?

7. BIOGRAPHY/TOP DOWN: Woodrow Wilson is one of the most frequently studied world leaders; why are scholars drawn to Wilson? How do historians understand his world view? Is

there consensus about Wilson’s agenda and/or importance; why or why not?

8. WORLD VIEWS CONSIDERED: What did the treaty concluding the war specify? How did leaders in the U.S. view the treaty? What issues were discussed in regards to signing the treaty?

How did other nations view the treaty? Did the United States, or Wilson in particular, uphold the

ideas presented in the treaty or were the ideas aimed at rewarding some while disadvantaging

others? (You may need to reflect on information presented about the USSR in your textbook, as

well as other information presented in the lecture).