Department of History | Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Spotlight

 

Two New Books from the History Faculty

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S. Jonathan Wiesen. Creating the Nazi Marketplace: Commerce and Consumption in the Third Reich. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

 

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they promised to build a vibrant consumer society. But they faced a dilemma. They recognized that consolidating support for the regime required providing Germans with the products they desired. At the same time, the Nazis worried about the degrading cultural effects of mass consumption and its association with "Jewish" interests. This book examines how both the state and private companies sought to overcome this predicament. Drawing on a wide range of sources - advertisements, exhibition programs, films, consumer research, and marketing publications - the book traces the ways National Socialists attempted to create their own distinctive world of buying and selling. At the same time, it shows how corporate leaders and everyday Germans navigated what S. Jonathan Wiesen calls "the Nazi marketplace." A groundbreaking work that combines cultural, intellectual, and business history, Creating the Nazi Marketplace offers an innovative interpretation of commerce and ideology in the Third Reich.

Contact jwiesen@siu.edu for more information.

 

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Gray H. Whaley. Oregon and the Collapse of the Illahee: U. S. Empire and the Transformation of an Indigenous World, 1792-1859. The University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

 

Modern western Oregon was a crucial site of imperial competition in North America during the formative decades of the United States. In his new book, Gray Whaley examines relations among newcomers and between newcomers and Native peoples--focusing on political sovereignty, religion, trade, sexuality, and the land--from initial encounters to Oregon's statehood. He emphasizes Native perspectives, using the Chinook work Illahee (homeland) to refer to the indigenous world he examines. Whaley argues that the process of Oregon's founding is best understood as a contest between the British empire and a nascent American one, with Oregon's Native people and their lands at the heart of the conflict. He identifies race, republicanism, liberal economics, and violence as the key ideological and practical components of American settler-colonialism. Native peoples faced capriciousness, demographic collapse, and attempted genocide, but they fought to preserve Illahee even as external forces caused the collapse of their world. Whaley's analysis compellingly challenges standard accounts of the quintessential antebellum "Promised Land."

Contact gwhaley@siu.edu for more information.

 

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