Rock Paper Scissors

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Ella Gardner
Question

Is the Rochambeau game (rock-paper-scissors) named after the French army general who served during the American Revolution?

Answer

Maybe, but in a roundabout way.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that this question is apparently not something that has elicited a lot of serious historical research up to now ("Where do I find historical evidence for a simple game played by children that requires no equipment?" and "Will I hurt my chances for tenure if I spend much time researching such a seemingly trivial subject?"), so I will have to go out on a limb here with my own theory, which is based only on circumstantial evidence. Because this is just my theory, I am going to have to explain how I arrived at it.

Clearing Out the Undergrowth of Misinformation

First, a confession: Although I began playing rock-paper-scissors when I was a child, I had never heard it called "Rochambeau" until you sent in your question. Asking around, however, I discovered that some of my colleagues, raised in various places around the country, had vaguely heard of "Rochambeau," but with some of them I was not able to figure out if they had definitely called the game of rock-paper-scissors "Rochambeau" when they were younger, or whether they had merely watched a certain South Park episode in which Eric Cartman challenged another child to play "Rochambeau," but which he explained as consisting in a kind of duel carried out by kicking each other (Google "Rochambeau" and "South Park" to find a link to the clip, but I hereby give you a "language warning" for this).

Nevertheless, more Googling makes it clear that "Rochambeau," used for rock-paper-scissors, has an older and wider provenance. Mathematicians and evolutionary biologists, for example, who have recently become interested in "multivariant" selection systems over the past 20 years or so, have written about rock-paper-scissors and have typically cited the game as "rock-paper-scissors" and then added "Rochambeau" or "Roshambo" in parentheses after it. So that carries the word back at least a couple of decades.

As an illustration of the severe limits on using Wikipedia for research, the English-language Wikipedia entry on rock-paper-scissors (or rock-scissors-paper, etc.) says that the game is called "Rochambeau" in French. But the French-language Wikipedia entry on the game lists the Francophone countries' names for it as: pierre-feuille-ciseaux, papier-caillou-ciseaux, roche-papier-ciseaux, pierre-papier-ciseaux, and feuille-caillou-ciseaux. It then says that the game is called "Rochambeau" in the United States. I wondered whether "Rochambeau" might be an English-language corruption of a French triplet beginning with "roche" (rock), but I have nothing else to offer in this speculative vein, so this is not part of my theory.

A Historical Connection with Count Rochambeau?

Next up was to consider the alleged connection with the Comte de Rochambeau, the French general who was a hero of the American Revolution.

Over the past decade, rock-paper-scissors has become a quasi-formally organized sport with international tournaments. Two American brothers, Douglas and Graham Walker, organized the World RPS Society, with tournaments, a website, t-shirts, and posters, and they have also published a light-hearted guide to playing "professional" rock-paper-scissors, which includes a brief and half-serious history of the game. Their Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide (2004) offers one theory about how the game became "synonymous with" the Comte de Rochambeau:

"It is widely believed that an ill-advised throw of Scissors (or Ciseaux) resulted in his being uprooted from his ancestral home to become the marshal of the French forces during the American Revolution. His arrival is widely credited with the introduction of RPS to the United States."

But this is all unlikely. Rochambeau (and Lafayette and other French military officers) were quite eager to come to America to fight with the Americans, and had to resist others' efforts to keep them in France so that their military experience would not be missed there.

Another mention of the supposed historical connection with Rochambeau is in physicist Len Fisher's Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life (2008):

"George Washington is reputed to have played it with Cornwallis and the Comte de Rochambeau to decide who would be the last to leave Cornwallis's tent after the signing of the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781. (The story goes that Rochambeau won, which is why the game is still called Ro-Sham-Bo in some quarters.)"

But Washington, Rochambeau, and Cornwallis did not negotiate surrender terms together in a tent; nor did they even meet together on that occasion. Cornwallis sent Washington a message under a flag of truce, proposing a cessation of hostilities so that officers appointed by each side could meet and "settle terms of the posts at York and Gloucester." After speaking with his own staff and with Rochambeau and his officers, Washington responded in writing that he wished to see Cornwallis' proposed terms of surrender before he could agree to the talks. Cornwallis sent back another written message to Washington, listing his terms. Washington then decided that he could not accept the terms as written, but that they were enough to begin negotiations, so he agreed to the ceasefire and to send representatives to the Moore house on the York River behind the Americans' lines, where Cornwallis had proposed the meeting take place.

The officers who met for negotiations the following day included Lieutenant-Colonel John Laurens, a native South Carolinian, who had previously been Washington's aide-de-camp, and (for Rochambeau) Colonels Louis Marie Antoine vicomte de Noailles (Lafayette's brother-in-law), and Guillaume Jacques Constant Liberge de Granchain. They met with British Lieutenant-Colonel Duridas and Major Ross, one of whom was Cornwallis' aide-de-camp. Negotiations lasted eight hours that day. They were extremely detailed about terms, including even the requirement for the British troops to march out with their colors masked and with their fifers not playing any British or German tunes. A final agreement was reached only during the second session, the following day, on October 19, when the same negotiators returned, having consulted with their superiors. They then brought back the Articles of Capitulation for their commanders to study and to sign "in the trenches." Cornwallis signed for the British side. Generals Washington and Rochambeau, and Admiral de Grasse, gathered elsewhere, signed for the opposing side.

That afternoon, the British forces marched out from where they had been besieged. Cornwallis was not among them. He pleaded illness, and left the formal surrender to Brigadier General Charles O'Hara, who rode up to the allied officers and asked which one was Rochambeau. He was immediately told to surrender to Washington, but when he stopped in front of Washington and offered him Cornwallis' sword, Washington refused, for reasons of military protocol, to receive a sword from the opposing side's subordinate commander. Washington directed him to surrender the sword to his second in command, General Benjamin Lincoln, which he did, and turned and rode away.

None of the details of the surrender or the ceremony itself seem like they would have been left to a game of chance.

I conclude, therefore, that the stories that try to link the game with Rochambeau himself, are likely recent and apocryphal, made up in an ad hoc fashion to give flesh to why the game was called "Rochambeau."

The Odd Lack of Written Evidence

Now we get to the nub of this matter: I did a rather tedious search in online databases of books, periodicals, and newspapers published in America from the 17th- through 19th-century and found absolutely no mention of "Rochambeau" used as the name of a game, or, for that matter, of any mention of Rochambeau playing rock-paper-scissors, or even any mention of the game of rock-paper-scissors itself being played in America at all until well into the 20th century. I certainly do not believe that my search has been exhaustive (many old newspapers are not online, for example), and there was plenty that was written that was never published, but if the game was being played by children of European descent "from time immemorial," it seems odd (but not conclusive) that I have been able to find no one mentioning it in anything published in America for the first several centuries of European presence here, even though the game, by its very nature, is not something on which writers would necessarily have thought to expend much ink, if they deigned to notice it at all.

The absence of any mention of the game does not mean, by the way, that American children did not have hand games for deciding winners or selecting alternatives—"Odds and evens," for example, has a long history in Anglo-American culture (James Boswell mentions it in his Life of Samuel Johnson).

In addition, there is evidence (by way of a conspicuous absence of another order) of American ignorance of the game as late as the turn of the 20th century: Stewart Culin, Director of the Museum of Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, published Korean Games with Notes on the Corresponding Games of China and Japan in 1895. In it, he described various East Asian hand games, among which was the Japanese game of Janken (or Jankenpon). This was precisely what became our game of rock-paper-scissors, and is most likely its ultimate source, either via Europe or across the Pacific (perhaps through Japanese immigrants to the West Coast). Culin, however, grinds right through his description of it, placing it among his descriptions of the other East Asian hand games to which it is closely related, without ever talking about any game in his own culture, that is, without mentioning anything like, "this is identical to our game of rock-paper-scissors." This too suggests that in fact the game had not yet become a part of American culture by that time.

The Game Appears and Becomes Popular

The first homegrown mention of the game rock-paper-scissors I found is in a compilation of children’s games, Handbook for Recreation Leaders, put together by Ella Gardner, the Government's "play expert" and "recreation specialist" with the Children's Bureau in Washington and first published by the Government Printing Office in 1935. In the 1930s, the Children's Bureau helped organize or participated in many national and international gatherings of child care specialists. Gardner herself was a kind of traveling outreach specialist on the subject of recreation activities.

In the Handbook, the game of rock-paper-scissors is called, precisely, "Rochambeau." Gardner appears to have been fond of team games, so to adapt rock-paper-scissors, her Handbook has the players of each of two teams decide among themselves whether their team will present rock, paper, or scissors. Then, with the two teams facing each other, the captains of each team raise their fisted arms and bring them down in partial steps, each at the same time, saying "Ro," then "cham," and then, on "beau," revealing their sign. The Handbook presents the game along with another, called "Fox, Hunter, Gun," in which foxes defeat hunters, hunters defeat guns, and guns defeat foxes. The signals of that game included simultaneous cries and arm gestures that impersonate the characters.

Soon after the government made the book available to educators, recreation planners, community groups, clubs, and parents around the country, more descriptions of the game began to appear in books, magazines, and newspapers. Bernard Sterling Mason's Social Games for Recreation, for example, published the following year, describes "rock scissors paper." And letters to the children's sections of domestic newspapers began explaining and recommending the game in the late 1930s.

There was an upsurge in the number of mentions of the game after World War II. It was initiated with articles in the Army's Stars and Stripes newspaper, written by army reporters stationed in Japan during the U.S. occupation of the country. The reporters appear to have been unfamiliar with the game from their own childhoods, calling it a kind of "odds and evens." From about that time, the game began being mentioned regularly in books, magazines, and newspapers. Clearly, by then it had become embedded in American culture. Judging by the "documentary" evidence, then, it looks like the game found its way to popularity in America through the combined efforts of Ella Gardner of the Children's Bureau and, later, G.I.s returning from Japan.

My Little Pet Theory

The author of the Children's Bureau handbook, Ella Gardner, was a Washington, D.C. native. The Children's Bureau had been in the Department of Labor, but with the Bureau's large expansion under the New Deal, and especially the Social Security Act of 1935, would soon end up with the Social Security Administration (and later with HEW and its successor, HHS).

At the time the book was published, the Children's Bureau was in the Widner building in Washington, D.C., on Connecticut Avenue. But the government was in the midst of a huge expansion, and was buying and leasing buildings all over downtown, and moving agencies from one place to another. The new Social Security Administration would quickly be moved into an apartment building that had been commandeered by the Government about a block away from the Children's Bureau. This building was the Rochambeau Apartments, at the corner of 17th and K Streets. The building had that name because it faced Lafayette Square, which has a large bronze statue of the Comte de Rochambeau.

The Rochambeau statue had been erected in 1902 and, in 1931, had been the focus of a large celebration of the sesquicentennial of the victory at Yorktown. If the Children's Bureau staff were looking for a ready place to try out games with a group of children, Lafayette Square would have been ideal. And if they were looking for a three-syllable word to hang on the game of rock-paper-scissors, "Rochambeau" would certainly have been near at hand.

But why bother with making up a new name for the game? Well, it was a Japanese game and English-speaking children might have been leery of a name as unfamiliar as "Jankenpon." Diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States were growing quite cool by the mid-1930s, so perhaps the Children's Bureau reduced the "foreign" feeling of the name "Jankenpon" by attaching a foreign name to it that was nevertheless indubitably a "patriotic" one: "Rochambeau."

The upshot is that the name "Rochambeau" does appear to link the game to the French General, but it is likely his statue, not the gentleman himself, that is responsible for the link.

So that is my theory, and I am sticking to it. At least for now. It seems more reasonable than supposing Washington, Cornwallis, and Rochambeau were playing hand games together during the British surrender. However, my theory is based almost entirely on a long chain of guesses and circumstantial evidence. If or when someone runs across some early mention of "Rochambeau" applied to the game, the entire limb I have climbed out on will be sawed off. But for now, that is the best I can come up with.

For more information

Douglas and Graham Walker's World RPS Society
The Straight Dope ("What's the origin of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'?" July 10, 2001).

Bibliography

John E. Ferling, Almost a Miracle: American Victory in the War of Independence, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. pps. 534-539.

Henry P. Johnston, The Yorktown Campaign and the Surrender of Cornwallis, 1781, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881. pps. 152-158.

Douglas and Graham Walker, The Official Rock Paper Scissors Strategy Guide. New York: Fireside, 2004.

Len Fisher, Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
Stewart Culin, Korean Games with Notes on the Corresponding Games of China and Japan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1895.

Ella Gardner, Handbook for Recreation Leaders. Washington, D.C.: Children's Bureau, Government Printing Office, 1935.

Bernard Sterling Mason, Social Games for Recreation. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1935. p. 70.
Iona and Peter Opie, Children's Games in Street and Playground. London: Oxford University Press, London, 1969.

Post-War U.S. Occupation Forces:
"Korean 'Boys' Town'," Stars and Stripes, July 22, 1952.
William B. Colton, "Three Bamboo," Stars and Stripes, September 21, 1954.
Sandy Colton, "Jan-Ken-Pon," Stars and Stripes, August 11, 1956.

On Ella Gardner:
"Need of Playground Instructors is Seen: Supervision as necessary as school program, says Miss Gardner," Washington Post, March 15, 1927.
"2,000 Will Attend Child Conference," Washington Post, August 17, 1930.
"Recreation Series to Open Tomorrow: Many agencies cooperate in work of annual play institute," Washington Post, March 13, 1932.
"Play Institute Set to Start on Tuesday to Run Six Weeks," Washington Post, April 7, 1935.
"Rochambeau's Tenants Gone; U.S. to Move In," Washington Post, December 1, 1935.
"Government Play Expert Starts Trip: Miss Gardner to aid three states plan recreation; will give instruction in communities lacking directors," Washington Post, July 8, 1937.
"U.S. Leaflet to Teach Small Towns to Play," Washington Post, October 18, 1937.
"Ella Gardner's Rites Scheduled Today at 1 O'Clock," Washington Post, April 1, 1942.

Images:
Rochambeau statue in Lafayette Park, Washington, D.C.

Photo of Ella Gardner, Washington Post, April 1, 1942.

The U.S. and Egypt in the 1950s

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Eisenhower and JF Dulles 1956
Question

What did the United States do to try to stop Egypt from becoming a communist satellite state in the 1950s?

Answer

The goals of U.S. foreign policy toward Egypt during the 1950s were to protect American and western European access to oil in the Middle East, to end British colonial rule throughout the area in line with the ideal of self-determination expressed in the Atlantic Charter, to contain the expansion of communism and particularly the influence of the Soviet Union in the region, and to support the independence of Israel without alienating the Arab states.

In all this, the U.S. State Department regarded Egypt as the natural leader among the Arab states and sought to make it an ally and to encourage pro-Western elements in Egyptian society.

The Basic U.S. Strategy

One essential problem was that the various goals of U.S. policy toward Egypt were often at odds with one another. As one example, the U.S. was sympathetic to Egypt's desire to free itself from British colonial rule--just as the U.S. had done--and emphasized its support for full Egyptian self-rule to the country's political and military leaders. But the U.S. was also allied with Britain to oppose the Soviet Union's expansion into Europe.

Almost all of Europe's oil at the time came through the Suez Canal. Britain was divesting itself of its empire, but in Egypt it had strong concerns about leaving the Suez Canal undefended. Britain's lingering military presence in the Mideast helped protect oil shipping lanes, the canal, and the oil fields from the threat posed by the Soviet Red Army. For its part, Egypt simply wanted Britain out and was disappointed when the U.S. did not always take its side.

Another example of internally conflicting goals--the U.S. supported "peoples' right to self-determination." This was, in fact, one way of framing why the U.S. opposed communism and the Soviet Union in particular: because it was totalitarian and crushed individuals' liberties. However, the U.S. had in mind a model of self-governance that assumed its own historical situation and that of other western European states who were the heirs of the Enlightenment and its ideals of individual autonomy. Other places were not necessarily burgeoning libertarian strongholds that only wanted a chance to grow to fruition as western-style capitalist democracies.

Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, approached this dilemma by applying a "Marshall Plan" strategy of massive aid to places such as the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, while also implicitly dealing with the fact that in these places (unlike in the European countries with strong democratic traditions that had been devastated by World War II), the "people" were not necessarily committed to turning their countries into capitalist, pro-western democracies.

Dulles's State Department believed that countries such as Egypt, for example, would naturally undergo a two-step process. First, relatively corrupt old regimes would be cast aside (least destructively, by military coups) and the governments would then be controlled by relatively authoritarian regimes that would pull together and organize the country's various factions. Second, with development aid and the establishment of trade ties with the rest of the world, the countries would emerge (through a peaceful evolutionary process, it was hoped) as full-fledged democracies.

Even if this were a true description of the "natural" evolution of Third World countries, however, none of this could happen in isolation. Larger political forces, outside the individual countries, affected their internal politics.

For the U.S., Dulles's goal of opposing and, as he framed it, "containing" the expansion of the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and China provided a dilemma. When colonial powers disengaged from their former colonies in the Third World, the power vacuum that resulted meant that the U.S. found itself in various places giving its support to indigenous, but authoritarian and even dictatorial, regimes. This, it was thought, would cordon off these countries' borders, as it were, against communist intrusion and provide an opportunity for the U.S. to engage there in what the State Department came to call "nation building," which generally meant the infusion of massive economic and military aid. The eventual goal was the peaceful evolution of these countries into functioning, pro-western democracies.

This was the template for U.S. policy toward Egypt in the 1950s. Unfortunately for its prospects of success, it was only partly congruent with Egypt's own perceived interests. In particular, Egypt's leaders were generally never sympathetic to communism, but they did not fear anything like a takeover by the Soviet Union. In fact, following a long established practice in Mideast diplomatic circles, they looked for ways to play off one great power against another to their advantage.

Egypt had centuries of experience in warding off the domination of great powers by playing them against one another. When the U.S. stalled in advancing Egypt's positions against Britain, Egypt sought to engage with the Soviet Union, partly because that was where it could find military and economic support and partly because it was a way to exact more concessions from the U.S. in return.

In addition, the political power that Egyptian leaders wielded, like that in other countries in the region, was weak. In a way that American diplomats did not understand, Mideast leaders had to adjust their countries' alliances constantly with one another and could not make permanent, unilateral alliances. It was an Egyptian goal to enhance its own power in the region, not as the leader of a pro-American alliance.

Initial Post-World War II Problems for the U.S. and Egypt

Beginning with President Roosevelt's meeting with King Farouk at the end of World War II, American diplomats (including Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson) assured Egyptian leaders that the U.S. supported the country's efforts at self-determination. The Egyptians unfailingly heard these assurances to mean that the U.S. would help them rid Egypt of Britain. Sometimes, however, U.S. diplomats used this sort of language to mean that the U.S. would protect Egypt from communist subversion, internally or externally, from the Soviet Union. This miscommunication caused confusion.

Internal Egyptian politics made Egyptian King Farouk align himself increasingly with factions that demanded an immediate abrogation of an earlier treaty that allowed Britain to continue control over the Suez Canal and that Britain pull all its troops out of Egypt. The U.S. found the King to be unsympathetic to America's reluctance to go along with the demand for Britain to abandon Egypt and the canal immediately. To the U.S., it seemed that political power in Egypt was rapidly being corrupted and that it was flowing "down the drain," out to the more radical political factions.

The U.S. State Department concluded that it would find a more sympathetic hearing from another ruler. Historians have reached different conclusions about the extent of the involvement of U.S. diplomats and CIA operatives at this juncture, but it seems fairly clear that they met with dissatisfied Egyptian military officers and at least promised them that if there was a military coup, that the U.S. would not oppose it, and that the U.S. would prevent possible British opposition to it, as long as foreign nationals and property were protected.

The coup occurred in July 1952. Two military officers, General Mohammed Naguid and Colonel Gamel Abdel Nasser, emerged as the new Egyptian leaders. The military government immediately asked for U.S. military and economic aid. A State Department official agreed, but the Secretary of State and the President balked at the deal, which caused internal political problems for the Egyptian leaders.

U.S. Efforts Intensify after Truman and Acheson Give Way to Eisenhower and Dulles

President Truman and Secretary of State Acheson were succeeded by President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles in 1953. Dulles' brother Allen was made director of the CIA.

The Dulles brothers provided military advisors and equipment to the Egyptian army. Through clandestine contacts, both the State Department and the CIA gave Egyptian leaders, especially Nasser, important intelligence training and assistance in moderating potential internal political rivals and in conducting propaganda campaigns.

In 1954, Nasser edged out Naguid and ascended to sole leadership of the military government. During the tumult surrounding this, Nasser was able to disband the main faction of his opposition, the Moslem Brotherhood, after an assassination attempt during one of his speeches, in which the would-be assassin fired seven shots at him, but missed. Public sympathy for Nasser surged, allowing him to quash his opposition. Nasser's chief of security much later admitted that the CIA had given Nasser a bulletproof vest, which he was wearing during his speech, raising the issue of whether the assassination attempt was a setup, designed to benefit Nasser.

Egypt looked for military equipment and aid. During this period, both State and the CIA provided it, sometimes clandestinely, hoping for a formal military alliance with Egypt, and for Egypt to take the lead in reaching a peace settlement with Israel. Egypt, however, extracted as much military and economic assistance from the U.S. as it could, but refused a military alliance with the West. It was Nasser's intention to adopt a policy of "neutralism" between West and East (that is, between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.) in order to maintain its own independence, and, in fact, to heighten competition between the two in the region in order to fend off domination and to gain as much aid as possible from each.

U.S. Hopes for a Mideast Pro-Western Alliance

The U.S. recognized that by the mid-1950s the U.S.S.R. had developed a Third World strategy of pouring vast amounts of money and material into countries in Asia, Africa, and the Mideast that had recently been colonies of Western countries. The Soviets hoped to counter Western influence in these countries by promoting anti-colonial sentiment and supporting socialist reform there. The strategy was quite successful, at least for a time. The result was that in much of the Third World, the Soviet Union was viewed more favorably than the United States.

The U.S. and Britain attempted to form a cordon of defensive alliances around the world in order to prevent Soviet expansion. This included NATA in Europe and SEATO in Southeast Asia. The initial plan also included a Mideast alliance to bridge the gap between the two, but when the U.S. and Britain began formalizing agreements with Turkey and Iraq (rivals of Egypt in regional influence), Nasser felt that they had discarded Egypt. Nasser's idea was to form a regional military alliance within the Arab League, with him as leader. The souring of relations between Nasser and the West resulted in a turning point in 1955 in which Nasser asked for, and received, large-scale military equipment sales from the Soviet Union, and distanced his country and himself from the United States. Indeed, he adopted socialist reforms and heavily promoted "pan-Arab nationalism," as well as "neutralism" and "noncooperation with the West."

Despite that, the U.S. continued to court Nasser with economic aid, which indeed he was happy to receive. The U.S. accepted that a "neutralist" Egypt was better than a communist one, and recognized that the Soviets, from this time, intended to block Western efforts to cordon them and, to do that, were encouraging vast sales of its military equipment all over the region, as well as supporting the idea of Arab nationalism, especially in opposition to Israel. The U.S. pressured Israel and Egypt to make concessions toward a settlement, with the intention of avoiding war and reducing Soviet influence in the region.

The U.S. Ends Its Balancing Act

When the U.S. found that Nasser and Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion were ultimately unable or unwilling to conclude a peace agreement, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dulles opted to call Nasser's bluff by countering him in several covert ways, especially in promoting relations with his regional Arab rivals in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Libya. The U.S. calculated that Nasser, confronted by the possibility that the other Arab states were aligning with the West, would find himself in a situation that he would find unacceptable--namely, with only one powerful "friend," the Soviet Union.

In order to avoid such an outcome, the U.S. believed, Nasser would become more tractable to a peace settlement with Israel, so that he would not be left behind, relative to the other Arab states. In response, Nasser stepped up anti-American rhetoric in the region and, in return from the Soviets for help in setting up covert intelligence operations in the region designed to undermine the Arab monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, and Iraq, Nasser agreed to accept Soviet military assistance.

The denouement occurred over the plans to construct the Aswan High Dam, which the U.S. had been willing to fund, but which the Soviet Union had told Nasser that it would also be willing to do. Secretary of State Dulles, with Eisenhower's agreement, finally decided to extract the U.S. from situations in the Third World in which the countries were deliberately playing them off against the Soviet Union. In 1956, Dulles let it be known to Nasser that the U.S. would not fund the dam, believing that Nasser's only other option to finance it was to accept the Soviet Union's offer. This, Dulles believed correctly, Nasser would be highly reluctant to do. Nasser responded by opening diplomatic relations with China.

The Suez Crisis

Nasser also had another option that the U.S. did not anticipate: He suddenly took an enormously dangerous risk and nationalized the Suez Canal, anticipating that Egypt could use the canal revenues to finance the construction of the Aswan High Dam without U.S. or Soviet funding.

In response, three months later, Britain, France (the two foreign shareholders in the canal), and Israel attacked Egypt, resulting in a quick and decisive military defeat for Egypt. The Israelis occupied a large portion of the Sinai Peninsula, and the Anglo-French forces occupied Port Said and Port Fouad at the Mediterranean terminus of the Suez Canal. All of this they did without consulting the U.S.

Eisenhower and Dulles were appalled at the attack. They believed with some good evidence that it would result in a military response from the Soviet Union, risking a much larger war, and, in any event, would throw the weight of public opinion throughout the Arab Middle East entirely against the West and into the Soviet camp. The U.S., therefore, strongly and publicly opposed the invasion and worked in the U.N., especially with Canada, to pass a cease-fire resolution and a call for the withdrawal of military forces.

In addition, the U.S. pressured Britain by threatening to sell the British bonds it held, which would have forced a devaluation of the British currency and threatened Britain's ability to import food and oil. The British relented, a cease-fire was called, and the occupying forces were evacuated.

In the Suez Crisis, the Third World in general and the Arab states in particular saw the U.S. as having acted as its friend. Despite Egypt's military loss, Nasser remained in power with the Suez Canal under Egypt's control, and the British, French, and Israelis evacuated the region they had invaded.

The Eisenhower Doctrine

For the next few years, U.S. policy toward Egypt was guided by what became known as the "Eisenhower Doctrine," a declaration that the U.S. was prepared to offer assistance to any Middle Eastern country (if it asked for assistance) in order to oppose the military threat of "any nation controlled by international communism." In reality, the doctrine was fairly impractical for a number of reasons.

It invited pro-Western countries in the region to gin up internal or external "communist threats" as a simple way to procure U.S. aid without the necessity to negotiate agreements or treaties. Also, the policy was actually aimed at thwarting Nasser's ambitions to undermine his Middle Eastern rivals in the region, many of whom were pro-Western. The policy was given public shape, however, in a resolution that the Eisenhower Administration had pushed through Congress by the expediency of using the phrase "international communism." This left the Administration's actual policy in the dark and often at odds with its publicly expressed policy.

The practical result of this was State Department and CIA involvement, by covert means, in the complicated internal politics of the region, as the political winds within each country shifted. This created unintended and unwanted consequences for the United States, for which the CIA coined the term "blowback." Much of this activity, including coups and counter-coups, was inspired, influenced, or even orchestrated by the CIA. In Egypt, CIA operator Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. (Teddy's grandson), developed an exceedingly complicated and intimate relationship with (and sometimes against) the Nasser regime, as did CIA operative Miles Copeland. The U.S., however, acted for the rest of the decade under the conviction that Nasser himself was too powerful to be deposed and came to reconcile itself to containing his attempts to consolidate his influence with the other Arab states.

For more information

L. Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East: Old Rules, Dangerous Game. Princeton: University Press, 1984.

Miles Copeland, The Game Player: Confessions of the CIA's Original Political Operative. London: Aurum, 1989.

Rami Ginat, The Soviet Union and Egypt, 1945-1955. London: Frank Cass, 1993.

Peter L. Hahn, The United States, Great Britain, and Egypt, 1945-1956: strategy and diplomacy in the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

Matthew F. Holland, America and Egypt: from Roosevelt to Eisenhower. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.

Mohrez Mahmoud El Hussini, Soviet-Egyptian Relations, 1945-85. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.

"Memo to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles from President Dwight D. Eisenhower Regarding Ceasefire during Suez Crisis, November 1, 1956." John Foster Dulles Papers, 1950-1959, National Archives and Records Administration. Archival Research Catalog 594643.

Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.

Ray Takeyh, The Origins of the Eisenhower Doctrine: The US, Britain and Nasser's Egypt, 1953-57. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001.

Bibliography

Images:
Detail of DOD map of Port Said, Egypt, October 1956. National Archives and Records Administration, Archival Research Catalog 596269.

Photograph of Dwight D. Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles Meeting, August 14, 1956. National Archives and Records Administration, Archival Research Catalog 594350.

Stumbling Down the Road to Health

Quiz Webform ID
22415
date_published
Teaser

It seemed like a good idea at the time. . . Identify "healthful" ingredients.

quiz_instructions

In every era, people chase the shining ideal of long life and perfect health—but sometimes the tools they use harm more than help. From poisonous pills to deadly drinking water, the next best thing has often been anything but. Choose the correct answers for the questions below:

Quiz Answer

1. Calomel, made popular by physician and patriot Dr. Benjamin Rush in the late 18th century, was perhaps the most commonly prescribed medicine through the first half of the 19th century. In the 1850s, it was recognized that the most important ingredient, which induced salivation and vomiting, poisoned patients over the long run. What was that ingredient?

b. Mercury. Specifically, Mercurous chloride, which, when acted on by stomach acid, freed the mercury and settled in the joints, loosened the teeth, inflamed the gums, and, with continued or heavy use, could result in mental debility and death.

2. Starting in the 1930s, shoe stores commonly measured children's feet with a new machine. This machine promised to ensure precise fitting of shoes, allowing children's feet room to grow properly. The machines were banned in the 1950s, however, because they used what to measure the feet?

b. X-rays. The shoe stores' young customers were directed to stand up against a cabinet and place their feet, still in their shoes, inside. An x-ray image of their feet inside their shoes could then be viewed on a screen.

3. In the 1920s and 1930s, manufacturers of consumer goods identified a new "rejuvenating" and "reinvigorating" ingredient that they added to face cream, lipstick, sunburn cream, toothpaste, and chocolate. Most of these products were made in Europe and imported into the U.S., but they were all eventually banned as health risks. What ingredient caused concern?

a. Radium. The Radior Company in London manufactured radium-impregnated foundation power and other radioactive cosmetics. French and German manufacturers sold radium toothpaste and chocolate and also used thorium in cosmetics.

4. Beginning in 1870, General Augustus J. Pleasanton (1808-1894) publicly promoted bathing in light of a specific color. Pleasanton and his advocates believed the light was a panacea which would cure most ailments and give people supernormal physical and mental powers. From 1875 to 1877, replacing clear glass windowpanes with glass panes tinted this color became a national craze. What color was it?

c. Blue. The "Blue Glass Cure" was the brainchild of Pleasanton, who wrote The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and the Blue Colour of the Sky, in developing animal and vegetable life; in arresting disease, and in restoring health in acute and chronic disorders to human and domestic animals … in 1876.

5. From 1952 to 1956, manufacturer P. Lorillard sold its brand of Kent cigarettes with special "Micronite" filters. The filters were made of cellulose, acetate, and a third ingredient, intended to increase the cigarettes' ability to deliver less harmful smoke. Instead, this ingredient caused its own health concerns, leading Lorillard to discontinue its use. What was the ingredient?

a. Asbestos. Industrial workers mixed an especially pernicious form of asbestos with cellulose and acetate in huge machines to create Crocodilite fibers. Many of these workers later developed cancer.

6. From the 1860s and well into the 20th century, special belts were marketed to men. Designed to be worn around the waist (some with downward extensions), they were supposed to rejuvenate men who felt "weak" in some way. Magnets were sewn into the first belts, but by the 1880s, many belts used something else that aimed to "rejuvenate the flesh." What was it?

d. Electrical current. The first belts, with copper or silver discs sewn in, produced their weak current through soaking in salt water. Later belts used batteries to produce their current.

For more information

 health-image-ctlm.jpg For more on health in U.S. history (and the business, ethical and not, of medicine), search NHEC’s Website Reviews using Topic: Health and Medicine, to turn up reviews and links to websites including Duke University’s Medicine and Madison Avenue,—a collection of health-related advertisements from the 1910s through the 1950s—and the Eugenics Archive, an online archive and exhibit documenting a sinister health “fad."

The Hagley Museum and Library hosts a digital exhibit on patent medicines, while the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History offers the digital Balm of America: Patent Medicine Collection

If you want to bring some drama into your classroom, Donald W. Gregory’s play Radium Girls tells the story of a group of early 20th-century New Jersey factory girls who painted watch faces with “harmless" radium—and found themselves developing jaw cancer from “tipping" their paintbrushes on their tongues. The play also looks at the use of radium in other products, including health drinks, and the exposes and cover-ups that occurred when people began to learn about radium’s effects. Claudia Clark’s book Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform: 1910-1935 takes a scholarly, nonfictionalized look at the same story.

The Internet Archive provides the full text of Augustus Pleasonton’s The Influence of the Blue Ray of Sunlight ….

Sources
  • Ads for Dr. A. Reed Shoe Company X-Ray Shoe Fitter machines. Los
    Angeles Times
    , (Los Angeles, CA) 1929.
  • Ads for Radior cosmetic products. New York Times, (New York,
    NY) 1916-1919.
  • "Blue Glass Bonanza." Denver Daily News, (Denver, CO) Jun. 11, 1876.
  • "Blue Glass," sheet music, by Sam Devere, published by Louis Goullaud,
    Boston, 1877.
  • "Drs. Owen, Cheever, Heidelberg, Horne, Edison, Copeland, Sanden,
    Cook, Bennett, and Chrystal electric belts," 1875-1889, newspaper ad
    for Health and Strength Regained, 1896.
  • Gibbons, Roy. "Ban on X-Ray Shoe Fitting Devices Urged," Chicago
    Daily Tribune
    , (Chicago, IL) June 3, 1959.
  • Mack, E. "Blue Glass Schottische." Philadelphia: F. A North, 1877.
  • Oak Ridge Associated Universities. "Shoe-Fitting
    Flouroscope
    " Health Physics
    Historical Instrumentation Museum Collection
    . 26 January
    2010. http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm.
  • Pancoast, Seth.
    Blue
    and Red Light; or, Light and its rays as medicine; showing that light
    is the original and sole source of life …
    . Philadelphia: J.
    M. Stoddart, 1877.
  • Pleasanton, Augustus James. The
    Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight
    . Philadelphia:
    Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1876.
  • "States Urged: Outlaw X-Ray in Shoe Fitting," Chicago Daily
    Tribune
    , (Chicago, IL) August 26, 1958.
  • "Supernal Vision; the Culminating Scientific Discovery of the Century;
    Wonders of Blue Light: Females Seven Years of Age Developed into
    Full-Grown Women: Thought Becoming Apparent," St. Louis
    Globe-Democrat
    , (St. Louis, MO) July 16, 1876.
  • Youmans, E.L. "Editor's Table: Concerning 'Blue Glass,'" Popular
    Science Monthly
    , May-Oct. 1877.
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Take Me Out To The Ball Game: 100 Years of Musical History

Description

This Electronic Field Trip takes a look at the song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," written by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer a century ago. Today, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is synonymous with a baseball game's seventh-inning stretch, but the song was originally written to be performed on home pianos and the vaudeville stage.

Broadcast from Brooklyn, NY, this presentation explores not only the history of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", but also the influence of various musical styles of the past 100 years from vaudeville and swing to rock and hip hop.

Unpublished, as the page no longer exists.

Prison Camps in Postwar California

Answer

Teachinghistory.org, created by George Mason University's Center for History and New Media with funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is a non-profit web resource for K-12 teachers and administrators, which seeks to gather the highest quality U.S. history and teaching methodology resources on the world wide web.

Since 1994, George Mason University's Center for History and New Media has used digital media and computer technology to change the ways that scholars, students, and the general public learn about and use the past. We do that by bringing together the most exciting and innovative digital media with the latest and best historical scholarship. For more information about the center please see: chnm
Thank you for your assistance, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

For more information

Janssen, Volker. "When the 'Jungle Met the Forest: Public Works, Civil Defense, and Prison Camps in Postwar California." Journal of American History96 (Dec. 2009), 702–26. Accessed May 1, 2011.

Bibliography

Fill in later

Worklore: Brooklyn Workers Speak

Image
Photo, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel Construction Workers, 1947
Annotation

This site explores the work lives of Brooklynites (historic and present) as they made their living in the borough. The site has four main sections: Confronting Racial Bias documents discrimination in the workplace; Women Breaking Barriers examines the ways in which women's work roles changed over the decades; Seeking a Better Life takes a look at the issues facing new immigrants; and Changes in the Workplace discusses challenges such as unemployment and job displacement.

Each section contains an approximately 2,000-word article on its respective topic, photographs, and audio files of people speaking about their various vocations. The site also includes eight help wanted advertisements from the 1850s, 1860s, 1920s, and 1930s.

Visitors should not miss the interactive feature Can You Make Ends Meet?, where they can pick one of four vocations, and see if they can stretch their salary out to adequately include housing, transportation, and entertainment.

Telling Your Story allows visitors to share their own recollections of Brooklyn life. The site includes few primary sources, but the personal stories of Brooklyn workers may be useful to students, teachers, or researchers.

Brown@50: Fulfilling the Promise

Image
Photo, School integration. Barnard School, Washington, D.C., May 27, 1955
Annotation

Created for the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, this website provides the legal history of the court case, and focuses attention on Howard University's contributions.

The website is divided into five main sections. Chronology presents a timeline of events and offers links to external resources. Brief History is a concise background of the Brown v. Board case and an overview of the case details and impact. Cases & Other Law provides a "legal road to Brown," with court decisions leading up to and following the Brown decision. Biographical Sketches introduces key figures. And Educational & Other Resources links to a wide variety of external websites and resources pertaining both to Brown v. Board of Education and to civil rights more generally.

Brown@50 will be especially useful to those researching the legal arguments of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case.

SpaceProgramArchive.com

Image
Photo from Press Telegram, February 1, 1958
Annotation

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, effectively beginning the "space race" with the U.S. that would last throughout the Cold War. Sputnik followed more than 25 years of research by scientists interested in rocket propulsion. This extensive archive presents more than 50,000 scanned newspaper pages, shedding light on virtually all aspects of the space program from 1930 through 2009. A good place to begin is the website's "Timeline" section, which highlights prominent events in the history of space discovery, such as the Guggenheim Foundation's decision in 1935 to support Dr. Robert H. Goddard's research into self-propelled rockets, and the launch of the Challenger in 1985 which made Sally Ride America's first woman in space. It also provides links to newspaper articles. An "Advanced Search" features allows users to input specific search terms and dates and retrieve newspaper pages—primarily from newspapers published in smaller and medium-sized cities in the south, mid-west, and California (Fresno, Jefferson City, Tuscon, Danville, VA) covering those events. The archive's decision to provide full scanned newspaper pages (as opposed to transcribed articles) allows users to better historically contextualize these events with other prominent contemporaneous events.

Classic African American Literature

Image
Logo, Multicultural Pavilion
Annotation

Provides links to 49 full-text versions of books, essays, articles, and poems about African-American life and culture, from the 18th century to the present day. Authors represented include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chester W. Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Marcus Garvey, Rita Dove, Booker T. Washington, Phillis Wheatley, and Maya Angelou. Many texts are from the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center.

Doing Oral History

Image
Photo, From project, "The Stonewall Riots and Their Aftermath"
Annotation

A collection of 17 oral histories conducted by secondary students focusing on topics relating to "The American Century": World War II; the Cold War; Vietnam; the "rights revolution"; immigration; education; and science and technology. Each oral history entry contains a biography of the interviewee, historical contextualization and evaluation essays, and bibliography.

The site provides tools for teachers to use in designing oral history courses: release form for interviewees, pre-interview worksheet, "do's and don'ts," guidelines for transcribing and editing interviews, how to analyze the historical value of an interview, grading rubrics, and student feedback. Also offers a 36-title bibliography, including 24 links to related sites. Of interest to teachers preparing oral history courses and for those studying selected 20th-century American history topics.