Author: peterrossi1

What is Disaster?

May 3, 2017 / peterrossi1 / 1 Comment

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In Jonathan Bergman’s article Disaster: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis he explains the field of disaster history as being very divise and not totally formed into a cohesive study yet. He writes about the history of the subject how it went from disasters being events ordained from a deity to more rectly them being recognized as social events. He discusses about how historians, although they don’t believe they were sent by deities, they still argue about if they should be categorized as natural events or events that are apart of culture and social history. Bergman comes to the conclusion that it is most likely a combination of both and should be looked from a natural and human viewpoint to totally understand them. I agree with Bergman, and to me this argument reminds me of the old saying, “if a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around, does it make a sound?” If a hurricane hits an unpopulated area of the world, is it still such a disaster? If a totally man created event like a mass shooting or war happens, is it a disaster? I think there isn’t a concrete answer for either statement, but it is discussing the argument that was brought up in Koppes’ article on the Dust Bowl summed up by GRAVITY21 saying that Worster (a person Koppes brought into the argument) believed the Dust Bowl to be a creation of humans brought about by their greed. Later Cunfer would write a piece saying that the dust bowl would have naturally happened regardless of man, that it was an event solely of nature. I think one thing that is important in both of these pieces is for each historian to define exactly what a disaster is and offer arguments for why their interpretation is the most correct, because it’s obvious that humans have some influence on nature as nature has an influence on humans. There should be arguments made for how much of the natural world has an influence and how much of the human world has an influence.

Jupiter’s Tempest: Weather’s Impact on Major Historical Events.

April 17, 2017 / peterrossi1 / 0 Comments

The article “Scaling the Dust Bowl” by Geoff Cunfer he explores the question of if the increase of improper farming in the midwest in the 1920-30s helped create the situations for the Dust Bowl. Going through past recorded storms, maps of the locations of farms and intensive farming, as well as personal accounts he comes to the conclusion that dust storms in the area are normal and because of the bad drought this one just happened to be really bad, not as a consequence of human activity. This environmental lense of history reminds me of an article article I read about how the roman agrarian economy failed due to a long period of drought that destabilized the region and led to the fall of the Roman Empire. It also reminds me of Cronon’s writing on the urban theory of Chicago, where jessicabode summed up his theory, “One argument that Cronon proposes is that Chicago’s development happened not just because of its location but because of the people that lived in Chicago.” This seems exactly opposite of Cunfer’s theory here, where it’s nature that deemed this disaster happen, not people.

Class conflict and the Titanic

April 5, 2017 / peterrossi1 / 0 Comments

In Biel’s writing, Unknown and Unsung, he used the 1912 Titanic disaster and the reactions to it in the United States to explain and highlight the lesser known elements of the American culture in the Progressive era: the reactions of women, black people, and the poor. He explains how two major factions of feminists disagreed on the actions of the upper class women, how most black people were not phased by the disaster and only reacted about it through song, and how the rising socialist movement used the poor conditions on the titanic as an example of the dire straights of workers rights. The goals of the feminist and progressive movements remind me of a quote by Winston Churchill, “Never let a good tragedy go to waste.” Whether they meant it maliciously or were rather using it as an honest way to spread their message the results are the same. The third part of Biel’s writing focused on the progressive movement and that reminded me of the communist manifesto. Biel explains that the leaders of the movement denounced the lack of trained professional, for cutting costs (a common complaint against capitalists), and the disregard for human life for the purpose of cutting costs. He went on to explain how the radicals used this disaster to prove how little regard the bourgeoisie had about their lives (the amount of rich that lived compared to the poor) and the power that they had if they realized they literally made the ship run. As Marx explain in the manifesto, summed up by ZHEDRICK, ” Though this work can be seen as a call to arms, it is better used as a framework for a growing working class to understand the inherent powers they hold over the middle and upper classes.”

Mid-semester reflection.

March 15, 2017 / peterrossi1 / 0 Comments

Going back on my own posts, and my classmates, it shows how much we have grown in terms of being able to analyze historical writing. One thing I’ve grown at myself is being able to analyze exactly what the thesis of the writing is, or basically what point the author is trying to make with their writings. Going back to my first post you can see how much I struggled to really grasp exactly what Cronon was saying, I contradicted myself a couple of times as well as being a bit unclear on exactly what Cronon was saying with in his chapters. As time went on and I had more experience my posts became more focused on the concepts presented within the chapters and addressing those, rather than addressing just the points the author was making. A good example of this was my own writing on the great fire and how I addressed the themes of classism and sexism rather than just the idea of how ridiculous it is to blame an entire fire on one farmer with very little evidence.

On the topic of classism, that seems to be a common theme in a lot of our class’ writings. For example in a writing by CLUNA3 she discussed how Ms. O’Leary’s class and sex were two great factors that led to her being blamed for the fire, and in CRISCOBARS writing he explains how in Faith and Doubt the author made it clear that the fire didn’t spare the lives of the poor of the rich, everyone stuffered. This was once again brought up in Isaac’s Storm with a post by SEVALLOS on how both the commoners and upper class of Galveston wanted the city to be rebuilt to protect their investments. I think classism is a prevalent theme in all of our writings because it’s a prevalent theme within all of these texts. Most of the texts we are reading were written in, or about a time period of extreme wealth disparity which then affected everything in that time from the most minute day to day things to government agendas. I think as we learned about more themes from the early 20th century (racism, naturalism, immigration, etc.) we can see these themes discussed in the blog posts about how each one was either in the writing or not in it at all, and why that was so important. As we go forward we will most likely learn new themes and then relate those back to what we’ve read and create some discussions on that.

Peter Rossi’s Presentation 3/1

March 1, 2017 / peterrossi1 / 0 Comments

I recently rewatched the HBO tv show ROME. It is a surprisingly historically accurate drama about Julius Caesar and the fall of the Roman Republic take from the point of view of two legionnaires, Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus. In the episode I just saw it was focused on after Caesar marched on Rome and was following Pompey across the Adriatic Sea into Greece to engage him in battle, but there was a large storm while Caesar was crossing and large amount of his fleet sunk. Among those caught up in the shipwreck were the two main characters, who then washed to shore and had to find their way back to Caesar’s camp, thus missing the iconic battle between the two legendary generals. Now this battle was most likely skipped due to budget reasons, normally I would have disappointed that they skipped the battle but now that I’m learning the importance of historical perspectives it brought an interesting thought to my head. I’ve only heard about this battle from two perspectives, that of Pompey and Caesar, no one else. Not a soldier who got caught up in the shipwreck, not a soldier who fled in fear, not anyone else but the rich senators who wrote accounts of this battle. This reminded me that events happen from different perspectives, and it’s very common to see a major event from only one point of view. History is all about learning events from different perspectives and determining the truth and bias. Even though this fake retelling of this historical event, it opened by eyes to seek out new perspectives on events I know from only one.

The Galveston Hurricane. Who’s to blame?

February 27, 2017 / peterrossi1 / 2 Comments

The book Isaac’s Storm, by Erik Larson, is a dramatized historical retelling of the events preceding and proceeding the Galveston Hurricane which totally decimated the town. The first couple of chapters follows Isaac Monroe and his his life leading up to his assignment at Galveston, as well as giving the reader some background information on hurricanes and tropical weather systems. The first chapter goes on to explain the science behind how hurricanes from from thunderstorms and how they affect barometric pressure gauges. The thing that struck me as surprising is how little we still know about the weather and how unpredictable it is. In the second chapter the Larson explains how the Signal Corps were receiving data about an incoming storm from Cuba and when the leader of the organization got wind of this (no pun intended) they shut down all incoming information from Cuba. This mistake is probably what led to the storm being much worse than it could have been, according to Isaac Cubans had almost perfected the art at predicting hurricanes. In SANCHEZRON13‘s blog post on the flood in Jamestown they talk about how the flood was a manmade disaster and after reading about all the warning signs that were ignored by the Signal Corps I think one can make an argument for loss of life in Galveston being a man made disaster, the property destruction is inevitable. I think that ignoring the warnings of a storm, is a form a negligence that can be blamed for the loss of life in the storm. In the same way that in the modern era the government/metrologists not letting a town know a disaster was coming, would be held partially responsible.

Whodunit? The Blame for the Great Fire.

February 13, 2017 / peterrossi1 / 2 Comments

In 1871 a fire raged through Chicago, it burnt down a large section of the city and killed around three hundred people. It was the biggest fire and disasters the city ever suffered but the fire didn’t start itself, so who did it? Well in the article by Richard Bales he explains how the city blamed an old Irish woman named Catherine O’Leary for letting her cow knock over a lantern and start a small fire which would then grow to its full destructive force, even though an investigation found no one guilty. Bales goes on to explain how unlikely it is for O’Leary to have started the fire and how the more likely suspect is a neighbor named Sullivan who probably accidentally started the fire in O’Leary’s barn. So why did a whole city blame one woman if the courts couldn’t figure out who did it? She was a poor immigrant from Ireland.

The fire took place during the height of the gilded age and as Johnkane described it, “The Gilded Age was a time in American history….when urbanization began to increase throughout the nation.” As urbanization spread poor and rich people were living closer together than they ever did before. From the 1700s to the 1800s urbanization grew and immigrants came to fill the tall buildings scraping America’s skies. Throughout time rich and poor people were spread far apart and the conflict between the two was limited due to the location. However as we read in the The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin conflicts between the working class and the rich often presented themselves in physical acts, rather than just complaints. In that great fire many rich people lost property and investments and they were looking for a blame, and when the newspapers would print the supposed ‘story’ of what happened they jumped on the bandwagon to blame a foreign born poor person for their misfortune. Urbanization brought the rich, poor, native born, and immigrant closer together than ever before in history, it would lead to a future of diverse and accepting cities, the road there was bumpy and filled with accusations, violence, and unrest.

Theory of City Development

February 1, 2017 / peterrossi1 / 5 Comments

In Cronon’s book, Nature’s Metropolis, he spends the introduction and the first chapter talking about what made Chicago the great city it was and posed the question; why do cities form where they do? Cronon presents the idea that there are two factors that lead to great cities geographical factors and economic factors, but Cronon believes that in the modern era economical factors become more important the geographical ones. I agree with this belief and you can see real life examples in it when you look at a city like Constantinople. Constantinople was the biggest and richest city in the western world in the early medieval era, built in a very geographically strategic position between Europe and the middle East . The superior geographical position of the city forced them to be an economical hub of trade, it was the stop between two major markets for both sea and land routes. The same could be said for any preindustrial city, all successful cities were either on the coast, along a major river, or a geographical stop between two major economical markets. However once the industrial revolution happened and the way humans became to grow and consume agriculture grew and people began to move into the cities and away from rural areas as Jessica Abode said on her blog post. As things changed people began to shape the landscape to fit the economical needs of an area, as Cronon said. Chicago isn’t a coastal city, doesn’t have a wide and flowing river, and is built on a swamp, but it made sense for there to be a big city in that commanding of a economical position in the middle of the US. Chicago wouldn’t have been able to be exist a couple hundred years ago but with the new technology and advancements it allowed the city to flourish

Author: peterrossi1

What is Disaster?

Jupiter’s Tempest: Weather’s Impact on Major Historical Events.

Class conflict and the Titanic

Mid-semester reflection.

Peter Rossi’s Presentation 3/1

The Galveston Hurricane. Who’s to blame?

Whodunit? The Blame for the Great Fire.

Theory of City Development

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