Daniel R Headrick
Biographic Data
| ID | 155004 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Daniel R Headrick |
| GIVEN NAMES | Daniel R |
| FAMILY NAME | Headrick |
| SIGNATURE | HEADRICK D R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Roosevelt University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 115 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 60 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa
The plague and the population of Europe in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages
This article brings to the attention of historians the recent discoveries by palaeogeneticists of a pandemic of plague in Europe during the fourth and third millennia BCE that contributed to the decline of the once-thriving Neolithic farming population of Anatolian origin and opened the way to the migration of nomadic herders equipped with bronze weapons who came from the steppes of southern Russia.As the geneticists' sequencing of ancient DNA ha…
Eingegangene Bücher
Climate change: Debate and reality
The debate about climate change has been raging for over 30 years. Is the climate really changing? If it is, are the changes caused by human actions? If they are, can anything be done about it? And, if so, should anything be done? On each of these questions, opinions clash. On one side are those who would say yes to all four questions. Among them are almost all climate scientists, most of the world's governments and a large part of the educated p…
Giacomo Macola. The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics
With The Gun in Central Africa: A History of Technology and Politics, Giacomo Macola has made a major contribution to the history of Africa, and a small one to the history of technology. The book begins by criticizing the histories of guns in Africa written in the 1970s and 1980s for concentrating exclusively on the functional uses of guns for hunting and warfare. The social construction of technology that followed in the 1990s, which stressed th…
Maria Paula Diogo & Dirk Van Laak , Europeans Globalizing: Mapping, Exploiting, Exchanging
Sciendo provides publishing services and solutions to academic and professional organizations and individual authors. We publish journals, books, conference proceedings and a variety of other publications
Simone M. Müller. Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks
Authors are responsible for what they write, but publishers and editors share with them the responsibility for how their works are presented to the world. Simone M. Müller’s Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks is a case of egregious misrepresentation. The words “world” and “global” in the title may be trendy and hip, but they misrepresent the contents of this book, which focuses almost exclusively on th…
International Communication: History
A World Connecting: 1870–1945 Ed. by Emily S. Rosenberg (review)
Reviewed by: A World Connecting: 1870–1945 ed. by Emily S. Rosenberg Daniel R. Headrick (bio) A World Connecting: 1870–1945. Edited by Emily S. Rosenberg. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Pp. 1168. $39.95. Every age rediscovers the past in its own light. Since the end of the cold war, we have become obsessed with globalization. It is not surprising, then, that a book about world history from 1870 to 1945 would stress that period’s g…
Emmanuel LE ROY Ladurie, Daniel Rousseau, and ANOUCHKA Vasak. Les fluctuations du climat de l'an mil a nos jours
Journal Article Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Daniel Rousseau, and Anouchka Vasak. Les fluctuations du climat de l'an mil à nos jours. Get access Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Daniel Rousseau, and Anouchka Vasak. Les fluctuations du climat de l'an mil à nos jours.Paris: Fayard. 2011. Pp. 321. €22.00. Daniel R. Headrick Daniel R. Headrick Emeritus Roosevelt University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Hist…
Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present
Telegraphic Imperialism: Crisis and Panic in the Indian Empire, c. 1830 (review)
Reviewed by: Telegraphic Imperialism: Crisis and Panic in the Indian Empire, c. 1830 Daniel Headrick (bio) Telegraphic Imperialism: Crisis and Panic in the Indian Empire, c. 1830. By Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Pp. xi+277. $80. Readers should note that the title of this book is seriously misleading. It is not about telegraphic imperialism “c. 1830” (for there were no telegraphs in India at the time), but from …
Why America Is Not a New Rome (review)
Reviewed by: Why America Is Not a New Rome Daniel Headrick (bio) Why America Is Not a New Rome. By Vaclav Smil. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2010. Pp. xii+226. $24.95. In case you were wondering whether the United States is the new Rome, you can now put your mind at ease: it most definitely is not. However, if you were thinking that the United States is in some ways similar to ancient Rome, then you are in good company. In the first chapter of th…
The History of the Near Eastern Telegraphs Before the First World War
The History of the Near Eastern Telegraphs Before the First World War Jorma Ahvenainen Helsinki, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2011 352 pp., ISBN 978-951-41-1042-9 (€35.00 paperback) Jorm
Missions for Science: U.S. Technology and Medicine in America's African World (review)
Reviewed by: Missions for Science: U.S. Technology and Medicine in America's African World Daniel R. Headrick David McBride . Missions for Science: U.S. Technology and Medicine in America's African World. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. viii + 308 pp. Ill. $40.00 (0-8135-3067-9). David McBride's subtitle, "U.S. Technology and Medicine in America's African World," indicates the scope of his project. By "America's African World…
The Fire of His Genius: Robert Fulton and the American Dream (review)
Robert Fulton is famous in American history as the inventor of the steamboat. In The Fire of His Genius, Kirkpatrick Sale, author of books about the European discovery of America, the Luddites, and other topics, sets out to debunk several myths about Fulton and give us a more balanced—and sometimes jaundiced—view of Fulton's life and the world in which he lived. There is no question that Fulton was a genius. During the first forty years of his li…
Storing Information: Dictionaries and Encyclopedias
Encyclopedias and dictionaries are the workhorses of culture; almost everyone consults them from time to time, but almost no one studies them. These useful compendia of knowledge serve their purpose for a few years and then are shelved or pulped. There are some notable exceptions to this rule, works whose significance transcends the time in which they appear. The most famous example of these is the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné of Didero…
A Nation Transformed by Information: How Information Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present (review)
For some time, the term "Information Age" and the idea that it has replaced the Industrial Age have been commonplaces among journalists, economists, and social scientists. What is new is the recognition that the Information Age and the information systems that comprise it date back at least to the eighteenth century. Historians are finally beginning to use information as a lens with which to analyze the past. This book is indicative of that trend
Submarine Telegraph Cables: Business and Politics, 1838–1939
International telecommunication is not only a business but also a political enterprise, the subject of great-power rivalries. In the late nineteenth century, British firms held a near monopoly, because Britain had more advanced industry, a wealthier capital market, and a merchant marine and colonial empire that provided customers for the new service. After the 1880s, they encountered increasing competition on the North Atlantic from American, Ger…
When information came of age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850
"Although the Information Age is often described as a new era, a cultural leap springing directly from the invention of modern computers, it is simply the latest step in a long cultural process. Its conceptual roots stretch back to the profound changes that occurred during the Age of Reason and Revolution. When Information Came of Age argues that the key to the present era lies in understanding the systems developed in the eighteenth and early ni…
Entreprise, technologie et souverainete: Les telecommunications transatlantiques de la France, XIXe-XXe siecles (review)
The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (review)
Reviewed by: The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making * Daniel R. Headrick (bio) The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making. By Adrian Johns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. xxi+753; illustrations, tables, notes/references, bibliography, index. $40. The citation above tells you who wrote this book, what it is called, and when, where, and by whom it was published. But how do you know that this inform…
Technology and European Overseas Enterprise: Diffusion, Adaption, and Adoption ed. by Michael Adas
352 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE securing technological advantage. Wealth of Contrasts is beautifully produced, with numerous black and white photographs and tables and a clear layout. A few typographical errors and some titles missing from the bibliography do not diminish the value of the book. It pro vides an insightful contribution to the history of the pharmaceutical industry. In particular, it contributes to a secondary literature th…
Technology and European Overseas Enterprise: Diffusion, Adaption, and Adoption
Colonialism, Health and Illness in French Equatorial Africa, 1885-1935
Submarine Telegraph Cables: Business and Politics, 1838–1939
International telecommunication is not only a business but also a political enterprise, the subject of great-power rivalries. In the late nineteenth century, British firms held a near monopoly, because Britain had more advanced industry, a wealthier capital market, and a merchant marine and colonial empire that provided customers for the new service. After the 1880s, they encountered increasing competition on the North Atlantic from American, Ger…
The Role of Technology in the African past
The study of African technological history cannot bt pursued without first considering two fundamental problems. The most fundamental of all is the relationship between technology and the broader social process. It is quite obvious that the two are linked but it is not at all clear, even in a study focused on technology, where to begin the explanation of this relationship. Second, there is the more specific question of African “backwardness”: why…
The Tools of Imperialism: Technology and the Expansion of European Colonial Empires in the Nineteenth Century
The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics 1851-1945
Telecommunication is, and always has been, a political technology, as the timely flow of information is a vital instrument of power. This book examines the political history of telecommunications between 1851, the year the first telegraph cable linked France and Britain, and the end of World War II. Headrick argues that telecommunication gives people options, not orders. During periods of peace, cables and radio were, as many had predicted, instr…
The World Revolution of Westernization: The Twentieth Century in Global Perspective
The author argues that the global violence and warfare of this century are the consequence of the world revolution of westernization which has characterized it. The ascendance of Europe had, by the turn of the century, brought all parts of the world under its influence and control. Westerners have seen such global emulation as a 'civilizing' process. The author argues, however, that the globe's attempt to catch up with the West militarily, econom…
When information came of age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason and Revolution, 1700-1850
"Although the Information Age is often described as a new era, a cultural leap springing directly from the invention of modern computers, it is simply the latest step in a long cultural process. Its conceptual roots stretch back to the profound changes that occurred during the Age of Reason and Revolution. When Information Came of Age argues that the key to the present era lies in understanding the systems developed in the eighteenth and early ni…
Botany, Chemistry, and Tropical Development
Two sciences, botany and chemistry, have contributed to the current imbalance between rich and poor countries. In the nineteenth century, to bring the tropics into the world market, Europeans transferred valuable plants and established botanical research institutions. Before 1914 tropical economies kept pace with those of temperate zones. Chemistry had an opposite effect. Synthetic dyes appeared before 1914. During the world wars, chemists synthe…
The History of the Near Eastern Telegraphs Before the First World War
The History of the Near Eastern Telegraphs Before the First World War Jorma Ahvenainen Helsinki, Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2011 352 pp., ISBN 978-951-41-1042-9 (€35.00 paperback) Jorm
The plague and the population of Europe in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages
This article brings to the attention of historians the recent discoveries by palaeogeneticists of a pandemic of plague in Europe during the fourth and third millennia BCE that contributed to the decline of the once-thriving Neolithic farming population of Anatolian origin and opened the way to the migration of nomadic herders equipped with bronze weapons who came from the steppes of southern Russia.As the geneticists' sequencing of ancient DNA ha…
Colonialism, Health and Illness in French Equatorial Africa, 1885-1935
Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens. Lucile H. Brockway
The Tools of Imperialism: Technology and the Expansion of European Colonial Empires in the Nineteenth Century
The tools of empire: Technology and European imperialism in the nineteenth century
Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens. Lucile H. Brockway
The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperalism in the Nineteenth Century
The Role of Technology in the African past
The study of African technological history cannot bt pursued without first considering two fundamental problems. The most fundamental of all is the relationship between technology and the broader social process. It is quite obvious that the two are linked but it is not at all clear, even in a study focused on technology, where to begin the explanation of this relationship. Second, there is the more specific question of African “backwardness”: why…
African Fever: A Study of British Science, Technology, and Politics in West Africa, 1787-1864
Gutta-Percha: A Case of Resource Depletion and International Rivalry
Gutta-percha, the latex of the Palaquium tree, is a natural plastic with good dielectric properties, once used to insulate submarine telegraph cables. The rapid expansion of telegraphy after 1850 led to the almost total destruction of the wild trees by natives of Malaya, Sumatra, and Borneo. By the turn of the century, the depletion of this essential but slowly renewable resource caused much concern in European and American business circles. Two …
The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Meeting, October 23-26, 1986
Organizational Notes THE PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, MEETING, OCTOBER 23—26, 1986 More than 275 people attended the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) at the Pittsburgh Hilton, October 23—26, 1986. The meeting was held simultaneously with those of the History of Science Society (HSS), the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA), and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S); total attendance at Pitt…
The tentacles of progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940
Makers of Modem Strategy: From. Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age ed. by Peter Paret
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 139 any other war, yet Hue did not fall to bombardment or smart bombs. Hue was taken and retaken the way the Spanish took Port’Ercole (1555) in the War of Siena, by infantry assaults. Since Hue, the United States has shifted resources away from com bat infantry and toward esoteric weapons that are seldom employed and often have no combat function. This shift away from infantry has nothing to do with technologi…
Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
The World Revolution of Westernization: The Twentieth Century in Global Perspective
The author argues that the global violence and warfare of this century are the consequence of the world revolution of westernization which has characterized it. The ascendance of Europe had, by the turn of the century, brought all parts of the world under its influence and control. Westerners have seen such global emulation as a 'civilizing' process. The author argues, however, that the globe's attempt to catch up with the West militarily, econom…
Mechanization and Maize: Agriculture and the Politics of Technology Transfer in East Africa
Mechanization and Maize: Agriculture and the Politics of Technology Transfer in East Africa by Constance G. Anthony
712 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE benau traces the development of the industry up to the Second World War. Overall, he does a fine job in this short monograph (only 134 pages of text), although his discussion of the industrial technology used to expand drug manufacturing leaves much to be desired. Liebenau succeeds best in his discussion of the institutional history of the American pharmaceutical industry and its relation to broader social …
The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940
Daniel Headrick examines why the massive transfer of Western technology to European colonies did not spark an industrial revolution in those countries. Rather than spurring economic progress, he argues, the transfer of stock technology between 1850 and 1940 caused the traditional self-sufficient economies of the colonial regions to be stuck in a state of underdevelopment, a legacy which burdens these countries to this day
Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance by Michael Adas (review)
Book Reviews Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance. By Michael Adas. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer sity Press, 1989. Pp. xii + 430; illustrations, notes, index. $29.95. The influence of Western technology on global relations in the last few centuries is more complex than historians had previously imag ined. Michael Adas’s book investigates one aspect that seems obvious but has never before been …
Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance
The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850-1940
The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics 1851-1945
Telecommunication is, and always has been, a political technology, as the timely flow of information is a vital instrument of power. This book examines the political history of telecommunications between 1851, the year the first telegraph cable linked France and Britain, and the end of World War II. Headrick argues that telecommunication gives people options, not orders. During periods of peace, cables and radio were, as many had predicted, instr…
Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas, and Institutions of Warfare, 1445–1871 ed. by John A. Lynn
648 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the German Staff, 1865-1941 (1971). Too often he criticizes past armies with the phrase “by today’s standard.” He also tries to compare the numbers of dead in the demise of the Aztecs (51 million dead in a century) with that of World War II (55 million dead in six years) (p. 115). Finally, he incautiously reports that, in the Bronze and Iron Ages, military paperwork “was much less than in our own age of typ…
The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress by Joel Mokyr
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 1105 The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. By Joel Mokyr. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Pp. ix + 349; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95. Economic historian Joel Mokyr, best known for his studies of Britain, the Netherlands, and Ireland during the Industrial Revolu tion, has gone far beyond economic history in this bold attempt to explain the causes of e…
Tools of War: Instruments, Ideas, and Institutions of Warfare, 1445-1871
The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress
Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919-1939
Science, Technology and Colonisation: An Indian Experience, 1757-1857 by Satpal Sangwan
TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 801 The Vital Machine tells the story of the historical rivalry between a mechanical and an organic worldview and its eventual conciliation. Both originated in antiquity: a survey of their concurrent but com peting and interacting developments makes up the bulk of the book. David Channell takes care to distinguish between practical technolo gies and the associated scientific theories on one level and the worl…
Political science (41 works) · History (38 works) · Law (29 works) · Politics (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Ancient history (15 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Engineering (14 works) · Archaeology (12 works) · Economics (11 works)