In the spring quarter the History Forum sponsored Dr. Lia Schraeder (right), our new lecturer in Latin American history at CSUB, who spoke on April 24 at 3:30 in the Albertson Room. Her presentation, "Spirits of the Times: Spiritism and the Mythology of the Mexican Revolution," was based on a portion of her dissertation and manuscript on the religious movement of spiritism in Mexico. Scholars of Mexican history generally represent spiritism as a "dissident" social movement and associate it with the first president of the Mexican Revolution, Francisco Madero. Dr. Schraeder’s presentation re-examined such scholarship, while exploring the latent radicalism within spiritist rituals and on the margins of the movement. Her fascinating presentation provoked many questions from the audience leading to a lively discussion.

By the end of the 1620s the Lower Hudson River Valley had become a vital part of the Atlantic trading empire of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, and it would remain so until the English conquest of 1664. From the date of the estuary's discovery to the end of Dutch occupation, ship captains, who had honed their skills in the deadly waters of the Zuider Zee and the North Sea, made the waters of the lower Hudson River their workplace. Dutch colonists also came, pursuing more personal goals and inevitably finding themselves at odds with the Chartered West India Company. This tension between Company monopoly and the entrepreneurial energy of the settlers dominated New Netherland's politics. Always at the center of the conflict stood trade, the ubiquitous buying and selling, bartering and bargaining of exchange.  Dutch sailors, skippers, farmers, and merchants created this vibrant trade system in the lower Hudson River Valley and maintained it for a half century. Here a Netherlander could feel at home working a farm, hawking goods at market, secure on the deck of a ship or grasping the tiller of a yacht. Professor Rink will take us on an expedition into the trade-driven world of New Netherland.