the ascendant historian

Full Issue

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700

Editor’s Note

Gwendoline Hodges — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 09:00:40 -0700

Cover Photo Note

Fiona McVeigh — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700

Chair’s Message

Jason Colby — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 09:02:31 -0700

Agriculture on the Lombard Plain: A Medieval and Early Modern Overview

Stefano Buckley — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 09:10:29 -0700

Examining the composition of a particular landscape is a fruitful framework by which to understand its human history. The Lombard Plain, in northern Italy, is no exception. This paper identifies key forces which shaped the region during the medieval and early modern period, such as the ambitions of the ducal families of Milan, an emphasis on intensive agriculture, commercial interests, and the development of canals. It also argues that despite praise for Lombardy’s fertility and productivity, one must consider the influences of disease, war, and the oppression of the rural population in order to provide a balanced understanding of this landscape.

The Panama Canal, Cocaine, and Communism: An Analysis on the Timing of the U.S. Action Against General Manuel Noriega

Peter Kruschke — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 09:19:54 -0700

This paper examines the timing of the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, codenamed Operation Just Cause. This often overshadowed event ties together and highlights two pivotal episodes in 20th-century American history: The War on Drugs and the Cold War. It analyzes why the U.S. government chose to act as late as 1989, given that the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs became aware of Noriega’s involvement in drug trafficking as early as 1971. Namely, this essay argues that the U.S. government's decision to create and maintain a relationship with Noriega was part of a larger geopolitical strategy that prioritized the containment of communism in Latin America over the trafficking of illicit drugs. The decision to oust Noriega only occurred as the Cold War was ending and U.S. public opinion had shifted from a desire to contain communism to combating drug traffickers. This made Noriega, who had amassed a personal fortune through such activities and had begun to garner an image in the U.S. as a despotic dictator, a perfect target.

Death From Above: An Examination of the German Airborne Invasion of Crete

Justin Lucoe — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700

Operation Merkur, German for "Operation Mercury", was the first large-scale airborne invasion in history. This operation was conducted by Nazi Germany on the Greek island of Crete in May 1941. In a bold and costly attack, thousands of German paratroopers launched a new form of warfare: airborne assault. Though the operation resulted in a German victory, a multitude of factors led them to abandon large-scale airborne operations for the remainder of the war. Conversely, the battle’s tactics and outcome influenced Allied forces and continue to shape military doctrine today. “Death from Above” analyzes Operation Mercury to uncover why it dissuaded further German airborne operations; while simultaneously demonstrating enough tactical promise to inspire future operations by other nations. Drawing on primary sources and firsthand accounts from both German and Allied perspectives, this paper breaks down the operation’s events and evaluates its lasting impact on modern military strategy.

Chinese Canadian Masculinity During the Exclusion Era

Heather Macnab — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0700

This paper examines how Chinese Canadian men reconstructed ideas and expressions of masculinity in response to the unique pressures of the Chinese exclusion era, defined by the Chinese Headtax and Chinese Exclusion Act. The consequences of anti-Chinese legislation, discourse, and beliefs created a unique environment for Chinese communities in Canada, with few women, limited access to jobs, and oppressive stereotypes. During this time, dominant Canadian culture attempted to isolate Chinese Canadian men from the ideals of hegemonic masculinity. However, these men transformed cultural and social practices to create a distinct Chinese Canadian masculinity and assert manhood within their communities and the larger nation. These assertions included the embodiment of both Western and Chinese ideals of masculine appearance, which allowed men of Chinese heritage to project manhood within society. They also reorganized gendered roles, finding economic success and social respectability through domestic and traditionally feminine labour as exemplified by the prominence of Chinese owned laundries and restaurants during this time. Furthermore, these communities reassigned meaning to interpersonal relationships by placing new significance on homosocial bonds and redefining heterosexual relationship dynamics. The evidence presented argues that Chinese Canadian men resisted Canada’s attempts to emasculate them by reimagining community structures and creating new gender ideals that suited Chinese Canadian life.

Hypatia the Highest: Analyzing the Life, Legacy, and Liberties of Hypatia of Alexandria

Emma Newton — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 09:52:29 -0700

This paper outlines the structures which allowed Hypatia of Alexandria to succeed as a female scholar in the highly paternalistic world of Greco-Roman academia. Despite the excessive focus surrounding her death, the circumstances of Hypatia’s life are equally fascinating and merit more discussion than they are often given. To begin, Hypatia’s unusually close relationship with her father allowed her to pursue
academic interests which were typically inaccessible to Greco-Roman girls during the fifth century. In wider society, although accounts of Hypatia’s adult life are mostly posthumous, we can infer that she was generally well-regarded despite taking up space in a typically male environment. Finally, by contextualizing Hypatia’s murder within the greater socio-political context of fifth-century Alexandria, we can lessen
much of the sensationalism surrounding her death. In conclusion, Hypatia stands out as an example of how the complex dynamics of Alexandrian social and legal frameworks could—in some cases—allow for greater freedoms than were typically thought to exist for Hellenistic women.

In loving memory of my own father, Jon Newton. Thank you for teaching me to follow my passions and convictions, and believing I could do anything.

Thomas Sankara’s Legacy: Forging the Burkinabe Cultural Identity

Melanie Warwick — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 09:57:50 -0700

This paper explores the legacy of Thomas Sankara, the first president of Burkina Faso, whose brief yet impactful time in power from 1983 to 1987 continues to influence Burkinabè identity and Pan-African political thought. Sankara’s policies were grounded in an ideology that focused on decolonization, Pan-African unity, anti-corruption, women’s emancipation. He fostered a national identity rooted in indigenous African values through his dedicated promotion of local and traditional culture, language, and independence. This paper examines the influence of Sankara’s ideology, both during his life and after his death, as Blaise Compaoré attempted to use his regime to erase Sankara’s place in Burkinabè history. It also investigates the resurgence of Sankarist ideals in political parties, social movements, and youth activism in contemporary Burkina Faso. While acknowledging the limitations and contradictions of Sankara’s leadership, this paper argues that his revolutionary vision played a central role in constructing a resilient Burkinabè identity that persists beyond his assassination and continues to inspire collective action and national pride today.

From Saint-Domingue to Haiti: How the Impetus of the Haitian Revolution Changed Throughout the Revolutionary Process

Henry Watt-Walter — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 10:02:25 -0700

In recent decades scholars have established the Haitian Revolution as a momentous historical event alongside the other canonical Atlantic revolutions. The Haitian Revolution was distinctive, however, because it was the only slave revolt in the Americas to overcome European colonial governance and found an autonomous state. This extraordinary event erupted out of the extreme societal conditions in the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Supported by France, the plantocracy dominated the colony through mass enslavement and political exclusion of the colony’s free population of colour. These two structural conflicts determined the revolutionary process. Initially, the political and economic conflict between intransigent white Dominguans and aspirational free Dominguans of colour resulted in a civil war and as this conflict destabilized the fragile structure of colonial oppression the enslaved population seized control of the revolutionary process.

In The Beginning There Was Violence: Epic Emplotment and the Sorelian Myth

Sarah Wilkinson — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 10:10:26 -0700

In his infamous publication, Reflections on Violence, French syndicalist Georges Sorel explores the social ails of his contemporary France at the beginning of the twentieth century. Following the rise of enlightened pacifism and diffusion of class tensions, the socialist revolution promised by Marx appeared to drift ever further from Sorel’s reach. In Reflections, Sorel argues that these challenges may be overcome through the use of the myth to spur the working class into violent action. Despite its centrality to Sorel’s work, the myth itself remains nebulous in its construction and provides a challenge to later scholars’ attempts to understand Sorel. For this reason, the nature of the myth and its capacity to spur the working class into action is examined in this paper against Hayden White’s “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact”. In reading Sorel through the lens of White’s literary emplotment of historical events, this paper offers a new understanding of the Sorelian myth’s method of action as the creation of a future history using culturally-bound literary structures.