Dan Russell's Hist 299

My final copy of my paper on the Battle off Samar can be found here: History 299 final paper

The literature review that I wrote for the battle off Samar can be found here: History 299 Literature Review

I was unable to find a side-by-side comparison of Ambrose’s work and the work he plagiarized from, but I was able to find an interesting website that pulled together news articles of the scandal as well as responses from the people who’s work Ambrose used.

http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/ronin39/Ambrose.html

I found a book review on a biography of George C. Marshall (FDR’s chief military adviser during World War II) on JSTOR from The Journal of Military History. It can be found here

The most interesting article review I could find from the same journal (The Journal of Military History) was of the history of medieval siege warfare found here

My paper proposal on the battle off Samar can be found here: History 299 Paper Proposal

Today I met with Professor Blakemore to discuss my topic (the decisions that led up to the battle off Samar) and the battle of Leyte Gulf. He didn’t give me much in terms of pure primary sources, as other students have received from their own meetings, instead he gave me the contact information of Tom Cutler. Cutler is one of the leading naval historians to date, and lives in Annapolis teaching students and the US Naval Academy. In addition Professor Blakemore told me of the National Naval History Museum in Anacostia, Virginia where most of the primary sources pertaining to my topic can be found.

For my research project I will be analyzing the naval Battle off Samar (part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf) and the decisions that led up to it.

My first primary source analysis can be found here: Primary Source Analysis for Battle off samar

The Edmund Morgan article was interesting in that it’s the first professional piece I’ve read and had somewhat serious disagreements with. Morgan himself has an excellent writing style, and it was a fairly easy and well written piece; the problem I faced with the article was in the content. On page four Morgan stated that the Puritan ideal planted the seeds of American early policy making, and then uses the rest of the next few pages to explain what these ideals are. The main theme is that God calls all men to work diligently and live a frugal and thrifty life in order to gain passage to heaven. In this he makes the comparison to the founding fathers, who also preached and practiced (more or less) that same frugality. I take issue in that namely because the ideals that the puritans preached were hardly unique, and to claim that that theology molded the American mentality at the time is a bit too bold for me to try and obtain much value from it. The “American Spirit”, even at that time, was too diverse for any one mentality to hold much sway over it.

In my experience writing about and studying history, primary sources have typically taken a back seat to secondary ones due to them (secondary) being easier to comprehend and translate into data relevant to whatever it was I was working on at the time. These “Rhea” papers however showed me just how more valuable a primary source can be, and how the presentation of the source can change its value. Just from my initial scan through the reading I learned much of an understanding of Col. Rhea, the impact he had internationally, and the role the United States military took in diplomacy following the conclusion of World War I. The impacts of the events that Col. Rhea oversaw and participated in were explained well, making it a relatively easy read, and if researched more thoroughly would provide an excellent base for any type of research project.

The readings from Carr, and especially Tosh, did not change or enlighten my views on what history is, as much as they changed my knowledge of how history is perceived. In the broadest sense of the word: history, to us students, is the information that we have at hand (or are able to obtain) on the past. As Tosh said, the majority of that information is political history because that is what many historians prioritized studying until relatively recently. Thankfully in this day and age historians have branched out into many aspects of history beyond the political spectrum, which makes studying the topic infinitely more interesting.