Peter Hammond Liddle OBE FRHistS (born 1934) is a British historian and author specialising in the study of the First and Second World Wars . In the 1960s he developed the Liddle Collection , a large collection of interviews and memorabilia mainly relating to the First World War that is now held at the University of Leeds .
115-535: Peter Liddle was born in 1934. In 1968 Liddle started interviewing people about their lives during and around the First World War, collecting oral history from the era. He founded the Liddle Collection and worked to expand in throughout the 1970s and 1980s, placing advertisements and recording many interviews. He also collected personal papers and memorabilia connected to the First World War and
230-631: A decade between Irish immigrants and Black people for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground. At least 120 people were killed. Eleven Black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of Blacks to flee. The Black population in Manhattan fell below 10,000 by 1865. The White working class had established dominance. It was one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history . In 1886,
345-484: A discipline has fairly low barriers to entry, so it is an act in which laypeople can readily participate. In his book Doing Oral History , Donald Ritchie wrote that "oral history has room for both the academic and the layperson. With reasonable training... anyone can conduct a useable oral history." This is especially meaningful in cases like the Holocaust, where survivors may be less comfortable telling their story to
460-584: A flurry of methodological discussions as Palestinian oral history research reached its zenith in the latter quarter of the 20th century. Some of these researchers published their recommendations in manuals specifically designed to standardize and inform oral history research within the Palestinian context. Notable Palestinian oral history projects include the American University of Beirut 's Palestinian Oral History Archive ( POHA ), and
575-491: A focus on national leaders in the United States, but has expanded to include groups representing the entire population. In Britain, the influence of 'history from below' and interviewing people who had been 'hidden from history' was more influential. In both countries, elite oral history has emerged as an important strand. Scientists, for example, have been covered in numerous oral history projects. Doel (2003) discusses
690-522: A full virtual museum with intense use of oral history. Czech oral history began to develop beginning in the 1980s with a focus on social movements and political activism. The practice of oral history and any attempts to document stories prior to this is fairly unknown. The practice of oral history began to take shape in the 1990s. In 2000, The Oral History Center (COH) at the Institute of Contemporary History, Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic (AV ČR)
805-550: A journalist than they would be to a historian or family member. In the United States, there are several organizations dedicated to doing oral history which are not affiliated with universities or specific locations. StoryCorps is one of the most well-known of these: following the model of the Federal Writers’ Project created as part of the Works Progress Administration , StoryCorps’ mission
920-504: A lesson plan that encourages the study of local community history through interviews. By studying grassroots activism and the lived experiences of its participants, her high school students came to appreciate how African Americans worked to end Jim Crow laws in the 1950s. Mark D. Naison (2005) describes the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP), an oral community history project developed by
1035-630: A professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, traveled to Europe to record long interviews with "displaced persons"—most of them Holocaust survivors. Using the first device capable of capturing hours of audio—the wire recorder —Boder came back with the first recorded Holocaust testimonials and in all likelihood the first recorded oral histories of significant length. Over some forty years, Fran Leeper Buss interviewed marginalized women such as Jesusita Aragon ,
1150-571: A public voice to neglected groups, such as women, illiterates, political leftists, and ethnic minorities. In 1987, at Universidade De Santiago de Compostela, Marc Wouters and Isaura Varela started an oral history project focused on the Spanish Civil War, exile, and migration. The project explored victims of the war and the Francoist Dictatorship and includes 2100 interviews and 800 hours of audio. Oral history began with
1265-528: A respective county . The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area , the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area . New York is a global center of finance and commerce , culture , technology , entertainment and media , academics and scientific output , the arts and fashion , and, as home to
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#17328016574941380-531: A result of Sandy, and the economic losses in New York City were estimated to be roughly $ 19 billion. The disaster spawned long-term efforts towards infrastructural projects to counter climate change and rising seas, with $ 15 billion in federal funding received through 2022 towards those resiliency efforts. In March 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in the city was confirmed. With its population density and its extensive exposure to global travelers,
1495-485: A speech denying the request, which was paraphrased on the front page of the New York Daily News as "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD." The Municipal Assistance Corporation was formed and granted oversight authority over the city's finances. While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through that decade and into
1610-585: A traditionally trained midwife, and Maria Elena Lucas a migrant farm worker activist, using transcripts of the interviews to write their life stories. Many state and local historical societies have oral history programs. Sinclair Kopp (2002) reported on the Oregon Historical Society 's program. It began in 1976 with the hiring of Charles Digregorio, who had studied at Columbia with Nevins. Thousands of sound recordings, reel-to-reel tapes, transcriptions, and radio broadcasts have made it one of
1725-687: A vehicle for "history from above" from Malaysia and Singapore. In terms of "history from below", various oral history initiatives are being undertaken in Cambodia in an effort to record lived experiences from the rule of the Khmer Rouge regime while survivors are still living. These initiative take advantage of crowdsourced history to uncover the silences imposed on the oppressed. Two prominent and ongoing oral history projects out of South Asia stem from time periods of ethnic violence that were decades apart: 1947 and 1984. The 1947 Partition Archive
1840-490: A written work (published or unpublished) based on such data, often preserved in archives and large libraries . Knowledge presented by Oral History (OH) is unique in that it shares the tacit perspective, thoughts, opinions and understanding of the interviewee in its primary form. The term is sometimes used in a more general sense to refer to the study of information about past events that witnesses told anybody else, but professional historians usually consider this to be
1955-501: Is a relatively recent development. Since the 1960s, oral history has been accorded increasing attention on institutional and individual levels, representing "history from above" and "history from below". In Oral History and Public Memories, Blackburn writes about oral history as a tool that was used "by political elites and state-run institutions to contribute to the goal of national building" in postcolonial Southeast Asian countries. Blackburn draws most of his examples of oral history as
2070-508: Is one of the important aspects to the technology-based oral historiography. These made it easier to collect and disseminate oral history since access to millions of documents on national and international levels can be instantaneous. Since the early 1970s, oral history in Britain has grown from being a method in folklore studies (see for example the work of the School of Scottish Studies in
2185-405: Is one of the world's most populous megacities . The city and its metropolitan area are the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States . As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York City, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. In 2021, the city was home to nearly 3.1 million residents born outside the U.S., the largest foreign-born population of any city in
2300-492: Is partly attributed to the development of information technology, which allowed a method rooted in orality to contribute to research, particularly the use of personal testimonies made in a wide variety of public settings. For instance, oral historians have discovered the endless possibilities of posting data and information on the Internet , making them readily available to scholars, teachers, and ordinary people. This reinforced
2415-612: Is the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut , a department of the University Library of Yale . Historians , folklorists , anthropologists , human geographers , sociologists , journalists , linguists , and many others employ some form of interviewing in their research. Although multi-disciplinary, oral historians have promoted common ethics and standards of practice, most importantly
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#17328016574942530-588: Is thought to signal that the field of oral history studies in China has finally moved into a new phase of organized development. From 2003 to 2004, Professors Marianne Kamp and Russell Zanca researched agricultural collectivization in Uzbekistan in part by using oral history methodology to fill in gaps in information missing from the Central State Archive of Uzbekistan. The goal of the project
2645-458: Is to record the stories of Americans from all walks of life. On contrast to the scholarly tradition of oral history, StoryCorps subjects are interviewed by people they know. There are a number of StoryCorps initiatives that have targeted specific populations or problems, following in the tradition of using oral history as a method to amplify voices that might otherwise be marginalized. The development of digital databases with their text-search tools
2760-614: The American South . During construction in Foley Square in the 1990s, the African Burying Ground was discovered; the cemetery included 10,000 to 20,000 graves of colonial-era Africans, some enslaved and some free. The 1735 trial and acquittal in Manhattan of John Peter Zenger , who had been accused of seditious libel after criticizing colonial governor William Cosby , helped to establish freedom of
2875-866: The Atlantic port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes . Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall , a political machine supported by Irish and German immigrants . In 1831, New York University was founded. Several prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant , Washington Irving , Herman Melville , Rufus Wilmot Griswold , John Keese , Nathaniel Parker Willis , and Edgar Allan Poe . Members of
2990-668: The Bill of Rights there. The Supreme Court held its first organizational sessions in New York in 1790. In 1790, for the first time, New York City surpassed Philadelphia as the nation's largest city. At the end of 1790, the national capital was moved to Philadelphia . During the 19th century, New York City's population grew from 60,000 to 3.43 million. Under New York State's gradual emancipation act of 1799, children of slave mothers were to be eventually liberated but to be held in indentured servitude until their mid-to-late twenties. Together with slaves freed by their masters after
3105-753: The British Library Sound Archive in the oral history collection. In one of the largest memory project anywhere, The BBC in 2003-6 invited its audiences to send in recollections of the homefront in the Second World War. It put 47,000 of the recollections online, along with 15,000 photographs. Alessandro Portelli is an Italian oral historian. He is known for his work which compared workers' experiences in Harlan County, Kentucky and Terni, Italy. Other oral historians have drawn on Portelli's analysis of memory, identity, and
3220-726: The Caribbean . The attempt at a peaceful solution to the war took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates, including Benjamin Franklin , and British general Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York destroyed nearly 500 buildings, about a quarter of the structures in the city, including Trinity Church . In January 1785,
3335-905: The Hudson River , which he named Río de San Antonio ('Saint Anthony's River'). In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company . He sailed up what the Dutch called North River (now the Hudson River), named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange . Hudson claimed
3450-721: The Lower Hudson Valley . The first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano . He claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angoulême ). A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Estêvão Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles V , arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of
3565-742: The New York City Fire Department and 71 law enforcement officers. The area was rebuilt with a new World Trade Center , the National September 11 Memorial and Museum , and other new buildings and infrastructure, including the World Trade Center Transportation Hub , the city's third-largest hub. The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere and the seventh-tallest building in
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3680-633: The Oral History Society has played a key role in facilitating and developing the use of oral history. A more complete account of the history of oral history in Britain and Northern Ireland can be found at "Making Oral History" on the Institute of Historical Research 's website. The Bureau of Military History conducted over 1700 interviews with veterans of the First World War and Irish revolutionary period in Ireland. The documentation
3795-594: The Palestinian Oral History Map , Columbia University 's Oral History Project in New York , Duke University 's Palestinian Oral History Project, the Palestinian Rural History Project (PRHP), Palestine Remembered , and Zochrot . The rise of oral history is a new trend in historical studies in China that began in the late twentieth century. Some oral historians, stress the collection of eyewitness accounts of
3910-511: The Statue of Liberty , a gift from France , was dedicated in New York Harbor. The statue welcomed 14 million immigrants as they came to the U.S. via Ellis Island by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the United States and American ideals of liberty and peace. In 1898, the City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate city),
4025-709: The Stonewall riots were a series of violent protests by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village . They are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights . Wayne R. Dynes , author of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality , wrote that drag queens were
4140-501: The Works Progress Administration (WPA)—sent out interviewers to collect accounts from various groups, including surviving witnesses of the Civil War, slavery, and other major historical events. The Library of Congress also began recording traditional American music and folklore onto acetate discs . With the development of audio tape recordings after World War II, the task of oral historians became easier. In 1946, David P. Boder ,
4255-582: The headquarters of the United Nations , international diplomacy . With an estimated population in 2023 of 8,258,035 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km ), the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles , the nation's second-most populous city. With more than 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York City
4370-612: The steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River , killing 1,021 people. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire , the city's worst industrial disaster, killed 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards. New York's non-White population was 36,620 in 1890. New York City
4485-432: The 1950s) to becoming a key component in community histories. Oral history continues to be an important means by which non-academics can actively participate in the compilation and study of history. Practitioners in a wide range of academic disciplines have also developed the method into a way of recording, understanding, and archiving narrated memories. Influences have included women's history and labour history. In Britain,
4600-553: The 1960s and '70s, influenced by the rise of new social history, interviewing began to be employed more often when historians investigated history from below . Whatever the field or focus of a project, oral historians attempt to record the memories of many different people when researching a given event. Interviewing a single person provides a single perspective. People misremember events or distort their accounts for various reasons. By interviewing widely, oral historians seek points of agreement among many different sources, and also record
4715-538: The 19th century, the city was transformed by both commercial and residential development relating to its status as a national and international trading center , as well as by European immigration, respectively. The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 , which expanded the city street grid to encompass almost all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal through central New York connected
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4830-804: The Bronx County Historical Society. Its goal was to document the histories of black working- and middle-class residents of the South Bronx neighborhood of Morrisania in New York City since the 1940s. Katharina Lange studied the tribal histories of Syria . The oral histories in this area could not be transposed into tangible, written form due to their positionalities, which Lange describes as "taking sides". The positionality of oral history could lead to conflict and tension. The tribal histories are typically narrated by men. While histories are also told by women, they are not accepted locally as "real history". Oral histories often detail
4945-584: The Collection" to develop the archive. While at Leeds, Liddle expanded the scope of the collection to include the Second World War. Many items from collected relating to that war were instead placed at Walton-on-Thames in the Second World War Experience Centre. Fred Ratcliffe, the director of Cambridge University Library , considered the collection "one of the most important private collections of 20th century papers". In 2014
5060-705: The Continental Army at the Battle of Fort Washington in November 1776 eliminated the last American stronghold in Manhattan, causing George Washington and his forces to retreat across the Hudson River to New Jersey , pursued by British forces. After the battle, in which the Americans were defeated, the British made the city their military and political base of operations in North America. The city
5175-575: The County of New York (which then included parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens. The opening of the New York City Subway in 1904, first built as separate private systems, helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication. In 1904,
5290-943: The Creating Emerging Markets project, which "explores the evolution of business leadership in Africa, Asia, and Latin America throughout recent decades" through oral history. "At its core are interviews, many on video, by the School's faculty with leaders or former leaders of firms and NGOs who have had a major impact on their societies and enterprises across three continents." There are now numerous national organizations and an International Oral History Association , which hold workshops and conferences and publish newsletters and journals devoted to oral history theory and practices. Specialized collections of oral history sometimes have archives of widespread global interest; an example
5405-409: The Duke of York (the future King James II and VII). The duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley . On August 24, 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War , Anthony Colve of the Dutch navy seized New York at the behest of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and rechristened it "New Orange" after William III , the Prince of Orange . The Dutch soon returned
5520-438: The Dutch West India Company had operated as a monopoly in New Netherland, on authority granted by the Dutch States General . In 1639–1640, in an effort to bolster economic growth, the Dutch West India Company relinquished its monopoly over the fur trade, leading to growth in the production and trade of food, timber, tobacco, and slaves (particularly with the Dutch West Indies ). In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant began his tenure as
5635-405: The New York metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan economy in the world , with a gross metropolitan product of over US$ 2.16 trillion. If the New York metropolitan area were its own country , it would have the tenth-largest economy in the world . Despite having a 24/7 rapid transit system , New York also leads the world in urban automobile traffic congestion . The city is home to
5750-578: The Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-Black population gradually developed in Manhattan. The New York Manumission Society worked for abolition and established the African Free School to educate Black children. It was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished in the state . Free Blacks struggled with discrimination and interracial abolitionist activism continued. New York City's population jumped from 123,706 in 1820 (10,886 of whom were Black and of which 518 were enslaved) to 312,710 by 1840 (16,358 of whom were Black). Also in
5865-475: The Study of Totalitarian Regimes . Their oral history project Memory of Nation was created in 2008 and interviews are archived online for user access. As of January 2015, the project has more than 2100 published witness accounts in several languages, with more than 24,000 pictures. Other projects, including articles and books have been funded by the Czech Science Foundation (AV ČR) including: These publications aim to demonstrate that oral history contributes to
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#17328016574945980-864: The Threshold of War , an edited collection of twenty-nine interviews. Liddle was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to heritage and public understanding of the World Wars. Oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews . These interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are to be preserved as an aural record for future generations. Oral history strives to obtain information from different perspectives and most of these cannot be found in written sources. Oral history also refers to information gathered in this manner and to
6095-480: The Victorian Community History Awards held annually to recognise the contributions made by Victorians in the preservation of the state's history, published during the previous year. In 1948, Allan Nevins , a Columbia University historian, established the Columbia Oral History Research Office, now known as the Columbia Center for Oral History Research , with a mission of recording, transcribing, and preserving oral history interviews. The Regional Oral History Office
6210-427: The accessibility of tape recorders in the 1960s and 1970s led to oral documentation of the era's movements and protests. Following this, oral history has increasingly become a respected record type. Some oral historians now also account for the subjective memories of interviewees due to the research of Italian historian Alessandro Portelli and his associates. Oral histories are also used in many communities to document
6325-407: The agency as the Astrobiology Program, and to collect the oral histories of women in NASA . Contemporary oral history involves recording or transcribing eyewitness accounts of historical events. Some anthropologists started collecting recordings (at first especially of Native American folklore ) on phonograph cylinders in the late 19th century. In the 1930s, the Federal Writers' Project —part of
6440-426: The assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital. New York was the last capital of the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation and the first capital under the Constitution of the United States . As the U.S. capital, New York City hosted the inauguration of the first President, George Washington , and the first Congress , at Federal Hall on Wall Street . Congress drafted
6555-459: The attaining of the " informed consent " of those being interviewed. Usually this is achieved through a deed of gift , which also establishes copyright ownership that is critical for publication and archival preservation. Oral historians generally prefer to ask open-ended questions and avoid leading questions that encourage people to say what they think the interviewer wants them to say. Some interviews are "life reviews", conducted with people at
6670-493: The beginning of the 1990s. By the mid-1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification , and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. New York City's population exceeded 8 million for the first time in the 2000 United States census ; further records were set in 2010 , and 2020 U.S. censuses. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley , emerged in
6785-534: The business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park , which in 1857 became the first landscaped park in an American city. The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, of whom more than 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, representing over a quarter of the city's population. Extensive immigration from the German provinces meant that Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860. Democratic Party candidates were consistently elected to local office, increasing
6900-510: The city from New Jersey. The East River—a tidal strait —flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River , another tidal strait between the East and Hudson rivers, separates most of Manhattan from the Bronx. The Bronx River , which flows through the Bronx and Westchester County , is the only entirely freshwater river in the city. The city's land has been altered substantially by human intervention, with considerable land reclamation along
7015-439: The city rapidly replaced Wuhan , China as the global epicenter of the pandemic during the early phase, straining the city's healthcare infrastructure. Through March 2023, New York City recorded more than 80,000 deaths from COVID-19-related complications. New York City is situated in the northeastern United States , in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston . Its location at
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#17328016574947130-447: The city's economy. The advent of Y2K was celebrated with fanfare in Times Square . New York City suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks . Two of the four airliners hijacked that day were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, resulting in the collapse of both buildings and the deaths of 2,753 people, including 343 first responders from
7245-615: The city's ties to the South and its dominant party. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood called on the aldermen to declare independence from Albany and the United States after the South seceded, but his proposal was not acted on. Anger at new military conscription laws during the American Civil War (1861–1865), which spared wealthier men who could afford to hire a substitute, led to the Draft Riots of 1863 , whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class. The draft riots deteriorated into attacks on New York's elite, followed by attacks on Black New Yorkers after fierce competition for
7360-405: The collection grew to be the "largest archive of personal documents from the first world war". He developed a team of volunteers to handle the influx of materials. In 1974 Liddle visited New Zealand , where he interviewed 150 war veterans and took the diary of Hartley Valentine Palmer. Palmer and Liddle came into disagreement as Palmer requested the diary back, and Liddle refused, maintaining that it
7475-509: The collection had over 4,300 records in 2500 boxes, and in 2011 it was written that 7,000 people had their stories documented with 4,000 interviews. After his retirement he was president of The Second World War Experience Centre, which had 6,000 accounts of the war in 2011. Liddle's publications include Facing Armageddon: The First World War Experienced, D-Day, by Those Who Were There , and The Great War 1914–1945: Lightning Strikes Twice . In 2011 he published Captured Memories 1990-1918: Across
7590-411: The collection was at risk of being "split up or moved to North America" because the collection had grown out of the facilities where it was being held at Sunderland. Liddle was paying £2,000 a year to house the collection and was forced to stop collecting new items. The University of Leeds had purchased the collection by 1988, where it was moved. Liddle then worked at Leeds for ten years as the "Keeper of
7705-418: The complexity of the issues. The nature of memories is as much a part of the practice of oral history as are the stories collected. New York City New York , often called New York City or NYC , is the most populous city in the United States , located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors . The city comprises five boroughs , each coextensive with
7820-430: The construction of history. As of 2015 , since the government-run historiography in modern Belarus almost fully excludes repression during the epoch when Belarus was part of the Soviet Union , only private initiatives cover the oral memories of the Belarusians. Citizens' groups in Belarus use the methods of oral history and record narrative interviews on video; the Virtual Museum of Soviet Repression in Belarus presents
7935-417: The development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens and Nassau County , with Wall Street leading America's place as the world's dominant economic power. The United Nations headquarters was completed in 1952, solidifying New York's global geopolitical influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world. In 1969,
8050-418: The early 18th century, New York grew in importance as a trading port while as a part of the colony of New York . It became a center of slavery , with 42% of households enslaving Africans by 1730. Most were domestic slaves ; others were hired out as labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banking and shipping industries trading with
8165-404: The end of their careers. Other interviews focus on a specific period or a specific event in people's lives, such as in the case of war veterans or survivors of a hurricane. Feldstein (2004) considers oral history to be akin to journalism, Both are committed to uncovering truths and compiling narratives about people, places, and events. Felstein says each could benefit from adopting techniques from
8280-407: The evolution of a major federal agency. The collection consists primarily of oral histories conducted by scholars working on books about the agency. Since 1996, it has included oral histories of senior NASA administrators and officials, astronauts, and project managers, part of a broader project to document the lives of key agents. Launius emphasizes efforts to include such less-well-known groups within
8395-459: The experiences of survivors of tragedies. Following the Holocaust , there has emerged a rich tradition of oral history, particularly of Jewish survivors. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has an extensive archive of over 70,000 oral history interviews. There are also several organizations dedicated specifically to collecting and preserving oral histories of survivors. Oral history as
8510-619: The former territory of New Netherland , including the city of New Amsterdam , when the Kingdom of England seized it from Dutch control. In the pre-Columbian era , the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquians , including the Lenape . Their homeland, known as Lenapehoking , included the present-day areas of Staten Island , Manhattan , the Bronx , the western portion of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens ), and
8625-473: The ice (and its subsequent retreat) contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a relatively shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers. The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay . Between New York City and Troy, New York , the river is an estuary . The Hudson River separates
8740-677: The island to England under the Treaty of Westminster of November 1674. Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans and epidemics brought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizeable population losses for the Lenape between 1660 and 1670. By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200. New York experienced several yellow fever epidemics in the 18th century, losing ten percent of its population in 1702 alone. In
8855-557: The largest collections of oral history on the Pacific Coast. In addition to political figures and prominent businessmen, the Oregon Historical Society has done interviews with minorities, women, farmers, and other ordinary citizens, who have contributed extraordinary stories reflecting the state's cultural and social heritage. Hill (2004) encourages oral history projects in high school courses. She demonstrates
8970-671: The last Director-General of New Netherland. During his tenure, the population of New Netherland grew from 2,000 to 8,000. Stuyvesant has been credited with improving law and order; however, he earned a reputation as a despotic leader. He instituted regulations on liquor sales, attempted to assert control over the Dutch Reformed Church , and blocked other religious groups from establishing houses of worship. In 1664, unable to summon any significant resistance, Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to English troops, led by Colonel Richard Nicolls , without bloodshed. The terms of
9085-432: The lives and feats of ancestors. Genealogy is a prominent subject in the area. According to Lange, the oral historians often tell their own personalized genealogies to demonstrate their credibility, both in their social standing and their expertise in the field. Oral sources have established themselves as a vital, diverse, and adaptable source of information for the study of Palestinian history. Researchers benefited from
9200-545: The local population as a representative of the Dutch colonists. A permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624, making New York the 12th-oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States , with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island . In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam , later called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), on present-day Manhattan Island. The colony of New Amsterdam extended from
9315-519: The material contributions of oral studies to studies examining a wide range of topics, including folktales, food and clothing , linguistics and toponymy , genealogy , agricultural activities, and religious cult . Furthermore, due to the dearth of extant indigenous documentation , oral histories continue to play a crucial role in Palestinian academics' continuous efforts to narrate significant moments in Palestine's history. Researchers engaged in
9430-842: The method. Because of repression in Francoist Spain (1939–75), the development of oral history in Spain was quite limited until the 1970s. It became well-developed in the early 1980s, and often had a focus on the Civil War years (1936–39), especially regarding the ones who lost the war and whose stories had been suppressed. At the University of Barcelona, Professor Mercedes Vilanova was a leading scholar, who combined oral history with her interest in quantification and social history. Barcelona scholars sought to integrate oral sources with traditional written sources to create mainstream, not ghettoized, historical interpretations. They sought to give
9545-419: The most populous urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London . The metropolitan area surpassed 10 million in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity . The Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance. Returning World War II veterans created a post-war economic boom and
9660-556: The mouth of the Hudson River , which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean , has helped the city grow in significance as a trading port. Most of the city is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island. During the Wisconsin glaciation , 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City area was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet . The erosive forward movement of
9775-496: The only " transgender folks around" during the June 1969 Stonewall riots. The transgender community in New York City played a significant role in fighting for LGBT equality. In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates. Growing fiscal deficits in 1975 led the city to appeal to the federal government for financial aid; President Gerald Ford gave
9890-504: The other. Journalism could benefit by emulating the exhaustive and nuanced research methodologies used by oral historians. The practice of oral historians could be enhanced by utilizing the more sophisticated interviewing techniques employed by journalists, in particular, the use of adversarial encounters as a tactic for obtaining information from a respondent. The first oral history archives focused on interviews with prominent politicians, diplomats, military officers, and business leaders. By
10005-728: The press in North America . In 1754, Columbia University was founded. The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765, as the Sons of Liberty organization emerged in the city and skirmished over the next ten years with British troops stationed there. The Battle of Long Island , the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War , was fought in August 1776 within modern-day Brooklyn. A British rout of
10120-539: The region for the Dutch East India Company. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and called Nieuw-Nederland (' New Netherland '). The first non–Native American inhabitant of what became New York City was Juan Rodriguez , a merchant from Santo Domingo who arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14, trapping for pelts and trading with
10235-580: The role scientists played in shaping US policy after World War II. Interviews furthermore can provide road maps for researching archives, and can even serve as a fail-safe resource when written documents have been lost or destroyed. Roger D. Launius (2003) shows the huge size and complexity of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) oral history program since 1959. NASA systematically documented its operations through oral histories. They can help to explore broader issues regarding
10350-611: The southern tip of Manhattan to modern-day Wall Street , where a 12-foot (3.7 m) wooden stockade was built in 1653 to protect against Native American and English raids. In 1626, the Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit , as charged by the Dutch West India Company , purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie , a small Lenape band, for "the value of 60 guilders " (about $ 900 in 2018). A frequently told but disproved legend claims that Manhattan
10465-525: The stories of Indigenous Australians and others involved in or affected by the child removals resulting in the Stolen Generations . Other contributors included missionaries , police and government administrators. There are now many organisations and projects all over Australia involved in recording oral histories from Australians of all ethnicities and in all walks of life. Oral History Victoria support an annual Oral history award as part of
10580-503: The study of oral tradition or traditional oral history due to the source receiving the information aurally. It is believed that the term oral history originates with Joe Gould , a homeless man living in New York City who solicited donations by claiming that he was working on a massive manuscript called "An Oral History of Our Time", which he said consisted of thousands of recorded conversations on various topics. Although he
10695-507: The surrender permitted Dutch residents to remain in the colony and allowed for religious freedom. In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War , the victorious Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of what is now Suriname , which they had gained from the English, and in return the English kept New Amsterdam. The settlement was promptly renamed "New York" after
10810-558: The understanding of human lives and history itself, such as the motives behind the dissidents' activities, the formation of opposition groups, communication between dissidents and state representatives and the emergence of ex-communist elites and their decision-making processes. Oral history centers in the Czech Republic emphasize educational activities (seminars, lectures, conferences), archiving and maintaining interview collections, and providing consultations to those interested in
10925-525: The use of oral interviews by scholars as primary sources, He lists major oral history projects in the history of science begun after 1950. Oral histories, he concludes, can augment the biographies of scientists and help spotlight how their social origins influenced their research. Doel acknowledges the common concerns historians have regarding the validity of oral history accounts. He identifies studies that used oral histories successfully to provide critical and unique insight into otherwise obscure subjects, such as
11040-499: The viability of oral history since the new modes of transmission allowed history to get off archival shelves and reach the larger community. Oral historians in different countries have approached the collection, analysis, and dissemination of oral history in different modes. There are many ways of creating and studying oral histories even within individual national contexts. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia :,
11155-519: The words and deeds of important historical figures and what really happened during those important historical events, which is similar to common practice in the west, while the others focus more on important people and event, asking important figures to describe the decision making and details of important historical events. In December 2004, the Chinese Association of Oral History Studies was established. The establishment of this institution
11270-597: The world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541.3 m), a reference to the year of U.S. independence . The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and popularizing the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide. New York City
11385-493: The world's two largest stock exchanges by market capitalization of their listed companies: the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq . New York City is an established safe haven for global investors. As of 2023 , New York City is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates and has by a wide margin the highest U.S. city residential rents; and Fifth Avenue is the most expensive shopping street in
11500-525: The world. New York City traces its origins to Fort Amsterdam and a trading post founded on Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists around 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under English control in 1664 and was temporarily renamed New York after King Charles II granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York , before being permanently renamed New York in November 1674. New York City
11615-453: The world. New York City is home by a significant margin to the highest number of billionaires , individuals of ultra-high net worth (greater than US$ 30 million), and millionaires of any city in the world. In 1664, New York was named in honor of the Duke of York (later King James II of England ). James's elder brother, King Charles II , appointed the Duke as proprietor of
11730-566: Was heavily affected by Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012. Sandy's impacts included flooding that led to the days-long shutdown of the subway system and flooding of all East River subway tunnels and of all road tunnels entering Manhattan except the Lincoln Tunnel . The New York Stock Exchange closed for two days due to weather for the first time since the Great Blizzard of 1888 . At least 43 people died in New York City as
11845-535: Was a haven for Loyalist refugees and escaped slaves who joined the British lines for freedom promised by the Crown , with as many as 10,000 escaped slaves crowded into the city during the British occupation, the largest such community on the continent. When the British forces evacuated New York at the close of the war in 1783, they transported thousands of freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia , England, and
11960-708: Was a lecturer at Stanford University in California. The project focuses on interviews with members of the Sikh diaspora in the U.S. and Canada, including the many who migrated after the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in India. Hazel de Berg began recording Australian writers, artists, musicians and others in the Arts community in 1957. She conducted nearly 1300 interviews. Together with the National Library of Australia , she
12075-824: Was a pioneer in the field in Australia, working together for twenty-seven years. In December 1997, in response to the first recommendation of the Bringing Them Home : Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families report, the Australian Government announced funding for the National Library to develop and manage an oral history project. The Bringing Them Home Oral History Project (1998–2002) collected and preserved
12190-539: Was a prime destination in the early 20th century for Blacks during the Great Migration from the American South, and by 1916, New York City had the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance of literary and cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition . The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height. New York City became
12305-448: Was established with the aim of "systematically support the development of oral history methodology and its application in historical research". In 2001, Post Bellum , a nonprofit organization, was established to "documents the memories of witnesses of the important historical phenomenons of the 20th century" within the Czech Republic and surrounding European countries. Post Bellum works in partnership with Czech Radio and Institute for
12420-608: Was founded in 1954 as a division of the University of California, Berkeley's Bancroft Library . In 1967, American oral historians founded the Oral History Association , and British oral historians founded the Oral History Society in 1969. In 1981, Mansel G. Blackford , a business historian at Ohio State University , argued that oral history was a useful tool to write the history of corporate mergers. More recently, Harvard Business School launched
12535-584: Was founded in 2010 by Guneeta Singe Bhalla, a physicist in Berkeley, California, who began conducting and recording interviews "to collect and preserve the stories of those who lived through this tumultuous time, to make sure this great human tragedy isn't forgotten". [1] The Sikh Diaspora Project was founded in 2014 by Brajesh Samarth, senior lecturer in Hindi-Urdu at Emory University in Atlanta, when he
12650-633: Was his "unequivocally". He refused to return it even after the New Zealand Police Association and federal government of New Zealand requested its return. In 2016 a museum in Leeds scanned images of the diary and sent them to Palmer's family. In 2017 it was reported that Liddle had taken 14 such diaries. By 1986, Liddle was a senior lecturer of history at the University of Sunderland . That year, The Sunday Times reported that
12765-464: Was known to have a history of mental illness and violence, Gould was beloved by some writers in Greenwich Village , including Ezra Pound and E. E. Cummings . His writing, supposedly excerpts from this "Oral History", was published in elite literary magazines, and he was eventually profiled in The New Yorker . Oral history has become an international movement in historical research. This
12880-415: Was purchased for $ 24 worth of glass beads. Following the purchase, New Amsterdam grew slowly. To attract settlers, the Dutch instituted the patroon system in 1628, whereby wealthy Dutchmen ( patroons , or patrons) who brought 50 colonists to New Netherland would be awarded land, local political autonomy, and rights to participate in the lucrative fur trade. This program had little success. Since 1621,
12995-567: Was released for research in 2003. During 1998 and 1999, 40 BBC local radio stations recorded personal oral histories from a broad cross-section of the population for The Century Speaks series. The result was 640 half-hour radio documentaries, broadcast in the final weeks of the millennium, and one of the largest single oral history collections in Europe, the Millennium Memory Bank (MMB). The interview based recordings are held by
13110-417: Was the U.S. capital from 1785 until 1790. The modern city was formed by the 1898 consolidation of its five boroughs : Manhattan , Brooklyn , Queens , the Bronx , and Staten Island . Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District, Manhattan , New York City has been called both the world's premier financial and fintech center and the most economically powerful city in the world. As of 2022 ,
13225-557: Was to learn more about life in the 1920s and 1930s to study the impact of the Soviet Union's conquest. 20 interviews each were conducted in the Fergana valley , Tashkent , Bukhara , Khorezm , and Kashkadarya regions. Their interviews uncovered stories of famine and death that had not been widely known outside of local memory in the region. While oral tradition is an integral part of ancient Southeast Asian history, oral history
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