Republicans Versus Fascists

The Spanish Civil War, which lasted from 1936 until 1939, is often now regarded as the precursor to World War II. Left-leaning Republican forces fought futilely to defend their young government against a fascist Nationalist force led by Francisco Franco. The term "Nationalist" in connection with this group was in fact coined by Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, whose regime generously supported Franco and his fascist insurrectionists. The Republicans were supported in their efforts by the Soviet Union, who supplied them with arms and also encouraged members of the Community Party to come from all over the globe to fight the fascists.

Joe Dallet, a non-graduating member of the class of 1927, was one of those members. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dallet grew up in a well-to-do conservative family on Long Island before coming to Dartmouth After two and a half years of schooling, he decided that it wasn't for him. He left and worked for a while in the insurance business before leaving to become a longshoreman in order to earn his wages through productive labor. He joined the Communist Party in 1929 and became a union organizer for steel workers and other laborers who had been crushed by the Great Depression.

In 1937, when the call went out for men of conviction to fight against fascists in Spain, Dallet answered. After sneaking across the border from France, Dallet joined nearly forty thousand other men and women in their fight alongside Spanish Republican forces. These fighters were divided into military units set up by the Communist International and known collectively as the "International Brigades." Dallet served with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion, a unit comprised of both Canadians and United States citizens. Only a few months after making it to the front, Dallet was killed in action on October 13, 1937, during the battalion's first engagement with fascist forces at Fuentes De Ebro. According to eye-witnesses, he was mortally wounded while leading his men in an advance and then died after refusing to allow medics to approach him because of his extremely exposed position.

In the six months leading up to his deployment, Dallet wrote letters to his wife Kitty, describing his experiences in Europe. They were published as a small pamphlet a year after his death. To read more about this fascinating individual, come to Rauner and ask to see Alumni D164l.

Is Time a Flat Circle?

Photograph albums of Dartmouth campus, especially those from the 19th and early 20th century, always captivate me. I get caught up in the sameness and yet profound difference that each image represents. In some, the large, mature elm trees along the green droop down and create a sense of shelter and shade. In others, the rough and dirty streets of downtown Hanover make me wonder how anyone ever kept their clothes clean for more than an hour.

Today, I leafed through a photo album that was compiled by Merrill Shurtleff, a member of the class of 1892. Along with the usual photographs of college students goofing around or playing sports on the green, there were a number of circular photographs. My curiosity was piqued by the shape of these prints, and I soon discovered by reading the catalog record that the images were taken with a newly-patented Kodak Number 2 camera, also known as a Brownie. Given that these weren't manufactured until 1901 at the earliest, my guess is that Shurtleff must have taken these photos during a trip back to his alma mater.

This photo of the Hanover Inn, with a rather fancy elderly gentlemen crossing the street in front of it, is an excellent example of the permanence of some institutions and the ephemerality of others. To explore Merrill Shurtleff's photo album for yourself, come to Special Collections and ask to see Iconography 1627.

Giving It to the Man by Doing It Like a (Wo)man

"I am a radical feminist, there is no doubt about it." - Professor Marysa Navarro, 11/2/1981 interview with The Dartmouth

Traditions are typically celebrated at Dartmouth, and Ivy League institutions are renowned for their rich history, traditions, and culture. The Dartmouth of today is an ever-changing place, with the school becoming increasingly diverse in race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class. However, there was a time when questioning traditions at Dartmouth was much more taboo. Throughout most of Dartmouth's history up to the 1960s, Dartmouth was an almost all-white, all-male university to which most of the American population likely never had access. It came as a shock to me when I discovered that one of the first women to receive tenure at Dartmouth, Latin American History Professor Marysa Navarro Aranguren, was also a Hispanic immigrant. given our shared Hispanic identity, along with having experienced the immigrant perspective from the third person perspective through my parents, I was immediately interested in studying her life and career at Dartmouth.

Navarro was born in Pamplona, Spain on October 12, 1934. Navarro painted a portrait of a 20th-century Hispanic intellectual, a feminist, an activist, and a professor, despite living and teaching in an overwhelmingly white space. in a 1975 interview with The Dartmouth, Navarro spoke about her childhood and life before Dartmouth. She was born to a republican Spanish family who was forced to flee their home after the Fascist takeover of Spain while she was a baby. First, the Navarro family moved to France, but after it was taken over by the Germans during WWII, they found themselves stateless. As a result, the family finally decided to move to Uruguay, where Navarro finished her high school and her undergraduate education. Afterward, Navarro was able to complete a fellowship at Douglas College in New Jersey, and eventually married and completed her master's and doctorate degrees at Columbia University. Her decision to study Spanish American history over Spanish history stems from the fact that she thought the Spanish civil war was "too traumatic to study." Her upbringing and violent childhood inspired much of her beliefs, decisions, and political activism later in her life.

Spies among us

Winter Carnival is this weekend. We have plenty of snow this year thanks to last week's storm, so the winter games should be festive and fun. The theme is Mission Impossible, so we went searching the collections. There are a ton of options--many impossible missions to the Arctic; books on imaginary contraptions impossible to build; collections where one impossible-to-find-item leaves them incomplete; and amazing items whose survival seems, well impossible. But the fun part of Mission Impossible is the intrigue of cloak and dagger spies. That led us to an innocuous letter from John Henry to Dartmouth President John Wheelock.

Written in 1810 by a formal military officer and sometimes Vermont farmer, John Henry, from his quarters in Boston, the letter thanks John Wheelock for a letter of introduction and expresses Henry's desire to get to know more people of Wheelock's social standing. Why might John Henry have been trying to get to know more social elites in the young republic? Well, at the time he was busy spying on the United States for the Canadian colonial government. When London failed to pay for his work, Henry switched allegiances and sold all of his information to the U. S. government. The result appeared to be another justification for deepening distrust of the British in the lead up to the War of 1812. It sounds kind of like a Mission Impossible plot: a spy cozying up to those in power, turned against one government and flipping to the other side when the profit margin reached the right level. [Cue Mission Impossible theme]

To see the letter ask for Mss 810360. Have a great Carnival! 

Ketchup, Five Ways

Did you know that ketchup used to be a fish-based sauce? Originating centuries before in southern China, British traders developed a taste for the condiment by the early 18th century. Attempts to replicate it at home were varied, and British ketchups often made use of anchovies, mushrooms, or walnuts.

A 1796 edition of Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper offers five recipes. The fourth, "catchup that keeps seven years," reads as follows:

"Take two quarts of the oldest strong-beer you can get, put it to one quart of red wine, three quarters of a pound of anchovies, three ounces of shalots peeled; half an ounce of mace, the same of nutmegs; a quarter of an ounce of cloves, three large races of ginger cut in slices, boil all together over a moderate fire till one third is wafted, the next day bottle it for use; it will carry to the East-Indies."

None of Raffald's ketchups make use of tomatoes, a trend that wouldn't emerge for a few more years. It would be nearly another century before tomato ketchup took on the sweeter flavor we're used to today - adding sugar improved the effectiveness of the preservation process.

To read Raffald's other four ketchup recipes, and to sneak a peek at more in The Experienced English Housekeeper, ask for Rare Book TX705 .R33 1796.

Best-Laid Plans

Walter Y. L. Kong, member of the class of 1929, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, only a decade or so after the islands became a United States territory. One of the first Asian-Americans to go to Dartmouth, Kong traveled halfway around the world to receive his college education after attending secondary school in Guangzhou, China. During his college years, and for many years after, Kong planned to return to China to be an educator. Upon receiving his undergraduate degree here, he immediately enrolled in the Teacher's College, Columbia University, and received his master's degree from that institution in 1930. His education complete, Kong went west to San Diego, where a friend had offered him a job managing his store, in the hopes of raising enough money to procure passage back to China.

However, as the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. While in San Diego, Kong became a husband, and then a father. He also decided that the quickest way to raise money for travel was by having a business of his own. He started a Chinese arts store in 1932 in Santa Barbara with the intention of shuttering the business once he had enough capital to fund his family's trans-Pacific passage. Still, opening a business during the Great Depression, and then keeping it open, soon occupied so much of his time and energy that his dreams of moving to China became a distant memory. He also discovered, to his delight, that he greatly enjoyed the independence of owning his own endeavor as well as the joys of interacting with his customer. As Kong himself said, "My business experience in Santa Barbara made the picture of teaching in China...unattractive."

Still, despite his decision to be a businessman instead of a teacher, Kong found other ways to lead and to educate those around him, especially with regard to international relations. He was both the director of the Santa Barbara chapter of the United Nations Association and the president of the Santa Barbara China Club, as well as participating in numerous civic organizations. He also published several magazine articles, one of which emphasized the importance of racial empathy and offered practical advice for how Americans from different communities and races could build cross-cultural relationships.

A copy of that article as well as a brief auto-biography, are housed here at Special Collections in Kong's alumni file. Rauner Library has an alumni file for every deceased previous student of the college, all the way back to the 1770s. Come explore the past lives of amazing alumni like Walter Y. L. Kong whenever we're open by walking into Webster Hall and asking our desk staff to help you get started.

In Memoriam: Stanley Brown '67

We are mourning the loss of Stanley Brown, retired Curator of Rare Books, who passed away earlier this week after a long illness. Stan graduated from Dartmouth in 1967, and returned three years later under the tutelage of Edward Connery Lathem '51 to help direct the Library's Special Collections Department. During his long tenure, he built up our rare book and fine presses holdings and ushered in several major book collections including the Edward P. Sine '51 Illustrated Book collection. He also authored a guide to our rare books collections that we still use today.

This image of Stan's loving hands cradling a selection of miniature books donated by Madelyn Hickmott best exemplifies the nurturing attention Stan devoted to the collections. The rare books were literally in good hands with him.

Stan retired from Dartmouth Library in 2004, but he stayed connected to Special Collections and was an avid reader of this blog. We will miss his meticulous fact checking, and his enthusiastic responses when we published a particularly meaty post. But we will always remember Stan through the collections that he grew and cultivated with a loving and skillful touch.