2021-2022 Senior Honors Theses
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This collection contains theses produced by Class of 2022 Honors students
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Browsing 2021-2022 Senior Honors Theses by Department "History, Department of"
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Item Pathways to Vassalage in Tierra Firme: Conflict, Negotiation, and Rebellion in Early Colonial Panamá(2022-05-08) Georgeson, Tara M.Vassalage in the context of this paper is defined as a position of subordination or submission and the homage, fealty, or services du from being a vassal of a political power, in this case the Spanish Church and monarchy. The agenda was to make Christians and vassals of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. As vassals they would be expected to give up what the Spanish viewed as “evil” or “barbarous” ways to labor in mines, cultivation, and building processes. In exchange they would be indoctrinated into the Christian faith, provided food and shelter, and allowed to remain in their own lands. Those who did not comply were forced to labor. In this thesis, I argue that Spanish explorers and settlers were not diplomats and had little interest in the effort and expense of evangelizing, feeding, or sheltering the Indigenous peoples. As long as they prospered off the subjugation of the Indigenous peoples and, later, Africans, they did not uphold the laws as they had expected to be followed. I argue that vassalage, at this time, was used as an ultimatum or an opportunity to exploit. Those who did not agree were enslaved and those who did agree had often been intimidated to do so. Enslaved Africans had arrived with the Spaniards in their first voyages. However, it wasn’t until the cheaper Indigenous labor declined, and the laws protecting them began to be enforced in earnest, that the Spaniards began to lean more heavily on enslaved Africans as a labor resource. The African path to vassalage was very different from the Indigenous. It was not as readily offered until self-emancipated Africans, or cimarrones, soon dominated the region, crowned their own king, collaborated with Spanish enemies, and began raiding Spanish mule trains along the Camino Real, the vital trade route that transported Peruvian gold along the isthmus between Panama City on the Pacific side to Nombre de Dios on the Atlantic side. As conflict escalated vassalage would become a bargaining tool to establish peace.Item Political Violence in the Late Roman Republic(2022-04-29) O'Connell, Jack T.This thesis tackles the role of political violence in the Late Roman Republic. It begins with a discussion over the careers of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, with an emphasis on the social issue of land redistribution. The focus is on the failure of traditional institutions to pass legislation, and how violence was first employed by Tiberius Gracchus as a last resort response to this crisis. Assassination on the part of Nasica was also the most effective means to overcome the power Tiberius had gained from his own violent tactics. The further instrumentalization and escalation of violence occurred with Marius, Saturninus, and Glaucia. These three perfected the implementation of mob violence to further political ambitions and also started the process of beginning the legislative process with violence at the ready. This transferred political violence from an emergency response to a standard means of political expression. The trio also developed an alliance which overpowered the republic’s government. From here, the thesis moves to discuss the Social War. The particular point of interest is the juxtaposition between failed decades of nonviolent political reform, and the efficacy of a violent uprising. Furthermore, the Social War sheds light on the potency of political violence once it is intermingled with the mechanisms of war. Sulla is emblematic of the perfection of political violence’s techniques in the Roman Republic. Sulla fully brought civil war to Rome, slaughtered all opposition, and reforged the Roman Republic to fit his ideal image. With Sulla come the creation of the Proscriptions The power of unleashed political violence was on full display for all Romans to see. The next five decades would see repeats of these forms of violence until the Roman citizens chose to shed its violent, republican government in favor of autocracy. These conflicts demonstrate the struggle between Rome’s city-state government, and the burdens of empire. No longer could the institutions of Republican Rome, designed specifically to manage a city-state, handle the radical shifts in power brought upon by the Imperial Republic. Political violence managed the demands of Rome’s empire and provided solutions to the failures of the republican government.Item “Telling Our Own Story”: Analyzing the Recontextualization of the Spirit of the Confederacy Monument by the Houston Museum of African American Culture(2022-05-13) Thomas, Morgan E.In 2020, the Houston Museum of African American Culture (HMAAC) acquired Spirit of the Confederacy, a Confederate monument commissioned by the Robert E. Lee Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in 1908. As a result, HMAAC became the first and only known African American museum in the United States to house and display a Confederate monument. Interested in the significance of the museum’s acquisition for the nation’s Confederate monument debate – which is generally divided between those who view monuments as emblems of a southern heritage and those who view them as connected to anti-Black racism and white supremacy – this thesis examined two key questions. First, as an establishment that extends the tradition of African American museums while attempting a new, contemporary, and multicultural vision, how does HMAAC respond to the legacy of white supremacy encapsulated in Spirit of the Confederacy? Second, how does the museum’s acquisition expand upon our understanding of the Houston Robert E. Lee Chapter’s activities and its commissioning of Spirit? This thesis analyzed primary sources related to the Robert E. Lee Chapter of the UDC and HMAAC. It contextualized those sources with previous scholarship on the Confederate tradition, the African American museum movement, and relevant periods in American history, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow Era. The findings of this project suggest that HMAAC’s acquisition of Spirit exemplifies and extends the museum’s simultaneous commitment to the African American museum tradition and its present-day multicultural, community-oriented mission. These findings may be of interest to American/African American museums who, in pondering what to do with monuments remaining in public spaces, can refer this case study to inform their handling of these controversial items.